On Carols

Every Christmas I ponder again the problem of why old Christmas carols are so good when most modern Christian hymns are so bad. The latter is an excruciating enigma in itself 3 but perhaps one not to be dealt with except delicately in this place. It is not because our religious -poetry is necessarily bad. Most of the best poetry in the world was and is still religious poetry j but that does not explain the appalling difference between Marlowe's great description of the red sunset as the blood of Christ streaming in the sky and the actual literary quality of "There is a fountain filled with blood." But Christmas being a season of contentment and charity, I am not concerned with the bad hymn-writers but with the good carol-singers. And it is certain that the early carol-singers almost invariably had, what the more modern hymn-writers emphatically have not, a certain natural carriage and distinction of diction: what we have come to call style.

There is an old carol about St. Stephen, who was (it would appear) an important official at the court of King Herod. I do not give this piece of information as dogma, or part of the deposit of faith, or as absolutely binding upon Christian menj nor indeed do I give it as the result of my own historical researches, or as something proved by recent excavations in Palestine or as the very latest result of the Higher Criticism, though some of its results are very much more improbable. I accept the poet's assurance that St. Stephen was a clerk "in King Her-ode's hall," in a certain spirit which is necessary for the appreciation of this very fine sort of literature.

The first necessity is to have a certain affection for anachronism. It is right in all religious art that times should be telescoped together. Anachronism is only the pedantic word for eternity.

Thus when the carol says that St. Stephen came into Herod's hall with "the boar's head on hand," it conceived that servitor as serving up a complete and comfortable Christmas dinner for King Herod. Some will say that this was rather an early meal of the sort to serve. But the same can be found in any really good modern carol, as in one of Mr. Belloc's, where the innkeeper is represented as refusing the Holy Family in the words:

"Poor folk, said he, must sleep where they may. For the Duke of Jewry comes this way With all his train on a Christmas Day."

And I do not doubt that some very learned man at Cambridge has already written to correct this error, and point out that Mr. Belloc is probably unaware that Christmas means the Mass of Christ and was not in general use in the time of the Idumean monarch. I have known very learned men at Cambridge write things quite as funny. But this apparent confusion of periods is as deliberate in the modern carol-writer as it was instinctive in the earlier master of that craft. They really meant that there is a feast of Herod, or of the Duke of Jewry, going on all the timej so that there is in a sense a salutation at Bethlehem going on all the time. He really meant that a king as bad as Herod might have the boar's head carried before him at any Christmas feast. And when St. Stephen is asked whether there "lacketh him food and drink in King Herode's hall," he answered with a certain abruptness which admirably expresses the deep division between the two things that are always contemporary:

"Lacketh me neither meat nor drink In King Herode's hall. There is a child in Bethlehem born Is better than we all."

There is a sort of logical break, an inconsequence, between the first and the second couplet, which profoundly conveys the fact that the two things are incommensurate. It is not for him a matter of chronological sequence, of the paganism of the Herodian palace coming first and the Christianity of the Christmas feast coming afterwards. It is a question of every man standing like Stephen, conscious that each can co-exist with its counterpart, and even its contrary. When King Herod was represented in the mediaeval miracle plays he wore the crown of a mediaeval king J and probably wore it sideways like the hat of a music-hall comedian. He was made a buffoon 3 but he was made a mediaeval buffoon j and even a royal mediaeval buffoon. Sometimes Caiaphas wore the vestments of a mediaeval priest: to suggest that a priest also might miss an eternal opportunity and fail at an eternal crisis. There was nothing antiquarian about these antiquated persons. They did not try to "reconstruct" the costume of an Idumean Prince under the suzerainty of Caesar Augustus. Yet it was not always ignorance: it was sometimes rather a profound and philosophical indifference. They instinctively insisted on the brotherhood of men across the ages. Antiquarians sometimes say that they imagined Herod as being like themselves. It would be truer to say that they imagined themselves as possibly becoming too like Herod.

After the artistic truth that is called anachronism, the next artistic quality is what many would call an innocent incongruity. But it is not incongruity: it is rather a comic congruity. It is the art of the grotesque j but many critics forget that the art of the grotesque is an art. Caricature depends on proportion as much as classical design. Even much more frivolous forms of the grotesque illustrate this truth. The Mock Turtle may be a mixture of different animals j but not a mixture of any animals or all animals. The Mad Hatter may have a moderately and reasonably mad hat. But he must not have a hat too mad to be recognized as a hat at all. Real people may wear hats of that sort, but unreal people have to be more reasonable. There must be a shape, a design, and a relation in fantastic form. Now, although the old Christmas poets combined many things that sound profane or preposterous to a smug piety, they always combined them with the instinct of ^ound poetry. There is no proof of this to those who have no sense of what is meant by sound poetry. It will never be demonstrated to people who do not know what poetry is, and it will never need to be demonstrated to people who do know what it is. But any of the latter will know what I mean, when I say that there is instinctive selection in lines like those about the shepherd:

"He put his hand under his hood, He saw a star as red as blood."

The historical expert will earnestly question whether a shepherd at Bethlehem would have worn a mediaeval hood. The Higher Critic will doubt whether there is any real historical evidence for the star of

Bethlehem having been bright red. The person who understands these things will simply recognize that he is dealing with a real poet. The poet, I presume, suggested a hood because it was his own habit j and the blood-red light in the dark sky, I imagine, he made up out of his own head. But it was an imaginative head, or he would never have happened to combine the blood-red star with the dark arch or aperture of the hood. It is the same when we come to things counted more incongruous. The legendary gifts of the Three Shepherds are really quite as poetical as the recorded gifts of the Three Kings. But the shepherds' gifts are all the more poetical because they are really the gifts of shepherds. Of course when I say there was a selection, I do not necessarily mean that there was a conscious selection. It is exceedingly diiBcult to say of any artistic creation whether it was a conscious selection. The writer of the mediaeval carol would doubtless have been mildly surprised, if he had read my analysis of his intentions in this essay. But so very probably would Shakespeare have been very much surprised, if he had read the critical explanations of the purpose of his plays j or Botticelli been very much surprised, if he had read the artistic analysis of his pictures. It is one thing to be able to do something and quite another to be able to discuss how it is done. But that does not mean that Shakespeare wrote his

■^.^■■^•^■^.^■■t plays by accident, or Botticelli threw his paints anyhow at the canvas. The poet made an instinctive but imaginative selection, when he introduced that thundering on the closed door of the guilty house of Macbeth j the painter made an instinctive but imaginative selection, when he introducted a silvery light filtering through the thin plantation of trees seen under the shed of Bethlehem. And the carol-writer made an instinctive but imaginative selection when he made the shepherd offer his pipe like a toy to the Holy Child.

Lastly, there is a quality in these mediaeval songs than can only be expressed by the mediaeval word "lusty." There is a grand and even gigantic gusto, which is never found in modern moral and religious poetry, or only very seldom and in people of the same tradition. The good news seems to be not only really good but really new. It is hailed with a sort of shout j not with a mere chorus of congratulation, like a recognized occasion of rejoicing. One of the carols ha^ for a sort of rowdy refrain the more or less meaningless halloo of "Ut hoy!" Even in reading it on a printed page after five hundred years, it is impossible not to have a sort of illusion that we are hearing the loud but distant hail of some hearty shepherd far away upon the hills. If it is ever sung, that chorus can hardly be sung too loud. I will not attempt to inquire here why the mediaeval carol, as

'^■^^■^■^■^■^■^■^■^■^■^'"^'•'^•^^■■^•^■■^•'^-^'^••^■'^■■^■^■•t distinct from the modern hymn, could manage to achieve the resounding reality of that shout. I should be inclined to suggest that some part of it may have been due to men really believing that there was something to shout about. But certainly the spirit of Christmas is in these songs more than in any other literature that has since been produced j and if I am forbidden by good taste to express myself in theological terms, I will confine myself to saying in a loud voice, "Ut hoy!"