ssels in sight fly
their flags and carry bunches of holly at their topmast-heads: and I
confess the day is made cheerfuller for us if they are answered by the
voices of carollers on the waterside, or if, walking inland, I hear the
note of the clarionet in some 'town-place' or meet a singing-party
tramping between farm and farm.

That the fresh bloom of the carol was evanescent and all too easily
destroyed I always knew; but never realised its extreme fugacity until,
some five years ago, it fell to me to prepare an anthology, which, under
the title of _The Oxford Book of English Verse_, has since achieved some
popularity. I believed that previous English anthologists had unjustly,
even unaccountably, neglected our English carols, and promised myself to
redress the balance. I hunted through many collections, and brought
together a score or so of pieces which, considered merely as carols, were
gems of the first water. But no sooner did I set them among our finer
lyrics than, to my dismay, their colours vanished; the juxtaposition
became an opposition which killed them, and all but half a dozen had to be
withdrawn. There are few gems more beautiful than the amethyst: but an
amethyst will not live in the company of rubies. A few held their own--
the exquisite 'I sing of a Maiden' for instance--

"I sing of a Maiden
That is makeles;[1]
King of all kings
To her son she ches.[2]

"He came al so still
There his mother was,
As dew in April
That falleth on the grass.

"He came al so still
To his mother's bour,
As dew in April
That falleth on the flour.

"He came al so still
There his mother lay
As dew in April
That falleth on the spray.

"Mother and maiden
Was never none but she;
Well may such a lady
Goddes mother be."

[1] Without a mate.
[2] Chose.

Or 'Lestenyt, lordings,' or 'Of one that is so fair and bright;' and my
favourite, 'The Seven Virgins,' set among the ballads lost none of its
lovely candour. But on the whole, and sorely against my will, it had to
be allowed that our most typical carols will not bear an ordeal through
which many of the rudest ballads pass safely enough. So it will be found,
I suspect, with the carols of other nations. I take a typical English
one, exhumed not long ago by Professor Flugel from a sixteenth century MS.
at Balliol College, O