The Man That Lives
Knock At The Knocker, Ring At The Bell track 5
The border counties of Shropshire, Herefordshire and Warwickshire provided Sharp and other folk carol collectors with rich pickings, and Lilleshall in 1911 certainly seems to have been a hotbed of carol singers. The Man that Lives was noted there from a Mrs Kilford in December of that year. It represents a style of carol which was common in the folk tradition, but (perhaps not surprisingly) is unlikely to feature in a present day carol service: there is no mention of ox, ass or baby in a manger; indeed there is nothing about the carol to chime with our post-Victorian romantic image of Christmas. Instead we are reminded of the necessity of leading a godly life, and warned of the dire consequences should we stray – not only is the sinner condemned to the flames of hell, but “his beasts shall die, his sheep shall rot”. Which seems a trifle unfair on the poor innocent sheep…
Lest anyone should imagine that these lyrics have been mangled by some illiterate peasant, it is worth pointing out that they tally almost word-for-word with a broadside printed by W. Pratt of Birmingham around 1850, and included in the Bodleian Library’s collection. Mrs Kilford’s text is also very similar to that found in A Good Christmas Box, a collection from 1847 which we know was still widely used as a source by the singers Sharp met in this area in the early 1900s. So it seems likely that Mrs Kilford had learned this song from a printed source. Other versions of the carol were collected by Ella Leather and Vaughan Williams in Herefordshire, and by Sharp himself from a Mrs Halfpenny, again at Lilleshall on 20th December 1911.