Greensleeves on Christmas Day

Pieter Claesz: Still Life with a Turkey Pie, 1627 Oil on panel, Rijksmuseum 

For most people these days, any interaction with the tune of ‘Greensleeves’ will likely precede – if they’re lucky – an ice-cream, or – unlucky – a battle with a customer service call centre. Perhaps they might recognise it in the background of a period play or film as something historical (think Michael Flanders’s epithet of it as ‘another entry in England’s long history of musical rhubarb’). If any words are known, they are most likely of an unrequited (or at least disinterested) love.

This project is using ‘Greensleeves’ in its form as a song about a frustrated lover sending gifts to his “Lady Greensleeves”, its earliest surviving manifestation, but the melody remained popular for centuries, and innumerable other sets of words were also put to the tune. 

Here is one for Christmas Day.

It comes from a small book of Christmas carols printed c.1661 and now in the Bodleian Library: New carolls for this merry time of Christmas To sundry pleasant tunes. With new additions never before printed, to be sung to delight the hearers.

The book contains a selection of anonymous carols for the twelve days of Christmas, including this one, which is to be sung on Christmas Day at night. It was the custom for [good] employers and land owners to look after their employees and tenants generously throughout the festive season, and the words of this song, which is written from a servant’s point of view, describe many of the good foods associated with the Christmas feast.

In common with many broadside ballads, the carol appears with lyrics but no music. Instead, instructions are given for the choice of melody – to the tune of Greensleeves. 

The words are humorous: the servant puns on “Christmas Night” with “Christmas knight”, with whom he must do battle. The various foodstuffs are listed in such a way that he is pretending to combat with them – everything from “Sir Pig” to the “lofty walls” of a minced pie.

Here follows a transcription:

My master and dame, I well perceive are purposed to be merry tonight, 
And willingly have given me leave to combat with a Christmas knight. 
Sir Pig, I see, comes prancing in and bids me draw if that I dare; 
I care not for his valour a pin, for Jack of him will have a share. 
My Lady Goose among the rest upon the table takes her place, 
And piping-hot bids me do my best, and bravely looks me in the face: 
For pigs and geese are gallant cheer, God bless my master and dame therefore! 
I trust before the next new year to eat my part of half a score. 
I likewise see good minced pie here standing swaggering on the table: 
The lofty walls so large and high I’ll level down if I be able; 
For they be furnished with good plums, and spiced well with pepper and salt, 
Every prune as big as both my thumbs to drive down bravely the juice of malt. 
Fill me some more of your Christmas beer, your pepper sets my mouth on heat, 
And Jack’s a-dry with your good cheer, give me some good ale to my meat. 
And for the plenty of this house, God keep it thus well-stored always; 
Come, butler, fill me a good carouse, and so we’ll end our Christmas Day. 

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