Coventry Carol

(Traditional English/Robert Croo/Thomas Mawdyke)

This song was the second song that was performed as one of the three used in the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors that was originally put on by the city guilds in the Coventry Mystery Plays. These plays also known as Coventry Corpus Christi Pageants were performed and referred to since at least 1392 and carried on until the 1570s when they were suppressed due to religious changes.

In March 1534 before they were suppressed, the plays were revised by Robert Croo, who was involved in the pageants in various capacities. The Shearmen and Tailors Pageant included a nativity play where the song was sung by three women from Bethlehem entering the stage with their children after they had been warned by Joseph to take them to Egypt. Although the pageants were performed in the summer, this song is always referred to as a Christmas carol as it came from a play that retold about the Annunciation to Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents.

Robert Croo copied out this song as well as possibly editing the dialogue. His book that contained the songs and his revisions were later been published by Thomas Sharp, who had also transcribed it, before it was destroyed in a fire in 1817. It was reprinted in 1825 and included the carol’s music, which was very lucky as Croo’s original manuscript was kept in the Birmingham Free Library but was incinerated when the library had a fire in 1879.

The music that accompanies the carol was written in 1591 by Thomas Mawdyke, who could have been a local tailor in Coventry, which was after the pageants were suppressed, but when they were trying to get them revived. It is not known if he was the original composer, but the music is written in a three-part harmony using the “Picardy Third”. Coventry Cathedral revived the pageants from 1951. Amore modern arrangement of it was done for the Student’s Hymnal by the composer Sir Walford Davies in 1923.

There is another version of the carol which was collected by the composer John Jacob Niles in Tennessee in 1934, but the music is different even though the text resembles it and has an extra verse added.

Although the carol and its story is seen today as very dark and sombre compared to most others, although possibly not seen that way when first performed, it has been performed by artists such as Tori Amos, Chet Atkins, Chas & Dave, John Denver, The King’s Singers, Annie Lennox, Mannheim Steamroller, Medieval Babes and Alison Moyet and many others with the music being used by The Zombies.

Sources:

Coventry Carol

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