And I grew up going to the yearly Christmas Revels concert/play in Cambridge, MA, and while nothing beats the live shows, I also love their albums, especially this spirited 1978 one: The Christmas Revels: In Celebration of the Winter Solstice [spotify]. The Revels also feature the “Abbots Bromley Horn Dance” in every show, and seeing it live usually sends chills up my spine:
Last night my family listened to “The Wexford Carol” after my husband asked if I knew about its backstory. I didn’t, but I learned that while the song is centuries old, it was only relatively recently transcribed.
There’s an affecting version of that story in a recent post on America: The Jesuit Review, by Maggi Van Dorn. “I have learned to take Christmas carols seriously,” she writes, “and to anticipate the epiphanies they may bear in my spiritual life as I contemplate them anew. […] As for ‘The Wexford Carol,’ it quietly survived over 400 years of British colonial suppression and was first put to paper in the small Irish village of Enniscorthy,” where she traveled to ask locals about the song.
The above Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma rendition appears on Ma’s 2008 holiday album, Songs of Joy & Peace. Loreena McKennitt also has a beautiful version, as does the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which made a cheesy music video that also made me cry.
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