minstrel: [Fwd: [MK8]Holiday Song Histories]

[Patricia Yarrow]

Tangwystyl:
<<> Deck the Hall

Good question. This isn't in my edition of the Oxford book (which tends to
omit purely secular songs). The "standard" _Welsh_ lyrics to this tune
("Oer yw'r gwr sy'n methu caru etc.") were composed by John "Ceiriog"
Hughes and first published in 1873 in Brinley Richards' "Songs of Wales"
(Boosey & Co., Ltd., London). In this edition, they were accompanied by
English lyrics coposed by John Oxenford that are of the same general
sentiment as Hughes' Welsh lyrics (and the more commonly known modern
English lyrics) but do not correspond precisely to either.

Since the tune is uniformly known as "an old Welsh tune" I would tend to
assume that the various English versions followed upon the popularizing of
the tune by Hughes and thus date to the late 19th century or later, but I
can't find any collection in my own library that assigns an actual author
to the "Deck the halls" words.>>

The tune also appears under the title "Nos Galan" in one of Jones' Relics 
of the Welsh Bards collections, either 1794 or 1804.  There are Welsh 
lyrics appropriate to the New Year.  I don't have my copy handy, so I can't 
say how they compare with the lyrics by Hughes, but I can dig them up and 
post them if anyone's interested.
 - Vivien 


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