Lazarus
Six for Gold track 15
An illustration of the point that not all carols are Christmas carols. Its central theme - the need to live an honest god-fearing life, and warning of the fate which lies in store for those who do not - is typical. Even a good number of traditional Christmas carols concentrated more on this type of message, than with the sweet baby Jesus laid in a manger.
The musician and BBC radio presenter Francis Collinson collected this song in the 1940s from Mrs Frances Lurcock of Bredgar, on the North Downs, in Kent. The words have been collated with those printed in the Oxford Book of Carols (from Mrs Eliza Woodberry, of Ash Priors, Somerset). The song was also in the repertoire of Charles Tanner of Bampton.
Many thanks to George Frampton for making a copy of Collinson's Kentish material available to me some years before they became generally available as part of the Take Six website.