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Hymn For Christmas Day

Knock At The Knocker, Ring At The Bell track 8

We were completely unaware of the Hymn for Christmas Day until this recording project was well under way. The hymn comes from a hand-written, leather-bound manuscript book which had only recently come into the possession of our recording engineer Dave Eynstone. The book formerly belonged to his ancestor, Thomas Eynstone (1811-1876), agricultural labourer of Cot Hill, Berkshire (this is Cothill – just West of Abingdon – which has actually been in Oxfordshire since 1974). It contains over 175 religious pieces – metrical psalms, anthems, and three pieces entitled ‘Hymn for Christmas Day’: No. 25 is Joseph Stephenson’s well-known ‘Hark, Hark What News’, but we chose No. 26, the more rarely encountered ‘Hark! Hear you not a cheerfull noise’.

There is a version of this in the New Oxford Book of Carols, taken from A Book of Psalmody, published by Matthew Wilkins of Great Milton in Oxfordshire c.1760. Apart from the fact that the words were set to music twice by the American composer, William Billings, the NOBC editors have very little information on the piece. Since then, Dave Townsend has included the Wilkins setting of 'Hark hear you not a cheerful noise' in his Oxfordshire Carols (Serpent Press, 2013). Dave's transcriptions is from A Collection of Church Musick, published by Elizabeth Wilkins, c.1775 – this would appear to be either Matthew Wilkins’ widow, or his daughter (they were both called Elizabeth). Dave doesn’t have anything to add on the provenance of the piece, but notes that it has now been found in another Oxfordshire West Gallery manuscript, belonging to Richard Herring of Marsh Gibbon.

An earlier source - possibly the original source - has also come to light. This is Anthems for Christmas Day, publishd in1744 by the Dorset composer William Knapp (1698-1768). Unlike Matthew Wilkins who happily included works by Knapp and other composers in his books without any attribution, Knapp was a fairly prolific composer of sacred works. So although we can't say for sure that Kanpp wrote this piece, it seems highly likely.

The Knapp, Wilkins and Eynstone versions are very similar, but Thomas Eynstone’s has only three harmony parts while the others have four. And the parts are all subtly different - it looks to me as though the carol may have been passed via the oral tradition, rather than simply copied from book to book.

Hymn for Christmas Day - transcribed from the original MS (PDF)

You can hear a live recording of this carol from 2012 at A Folk Song A Week Week 122 – Hymn for Christmas Day / Sellwood Mollineux’ Carol / Newton’s Double