OT Advent Calendar Day 27: The Boar’s Head Carol
Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.
Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.
Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Today’s tune is “The Boar’s Head Carol.”
Today’s carol has a long history and an even longer tradition. The text was collected in Christmas Carolles by Wynkyn de Worde and published by him in 1521. He was an early adopter of the printing press and worked closely with William Caxton, who brought the printing press to England in 1476.
The Boar’s Head tradition was likely brought to England by the Anglo Saxons, and certainly existed in the Middle Ages. The tradition, that of a boar’s head being presented for a feast to someone who has made some great achievement, may have originated in similar North Germanic sacrifices to Freyr. In fact, those sacrifices to Freyr would have occurred on St. Stephen’s Day, December 26th, and there is some evidence that suggests that some traditions associated with Freyr may have been transferred to St. Stephen.
The more recent association has been with the Christmas festivities of Queen’s College, Oxford. In the 1880’s, according to William Henry Husk, the students said the commemoration was that of a student who had wandered off absorbed in a book of Aristotle who was then attacked by a wild boar but saved himself by stuffing the book into his assailant’s mouth shouting, “Græcum est!” (it’s all Greek to me!).
The boar’s head in hand bring I,
Bedeck’d with bays and rosemary.
And I pray you, my masters, be merry
Quot estis in convivio (As many as are in the feast)Caput apri defero (The boar’s head I bear)
Reddens laudes Domino (Giving praises to the Lord)The boar’s head, as I understand,
Is the rarest dish in all this land,
Which thus bedeck’d with a gay garland
Let us servire cantico. (Let us serve with a song)Caput apri defero (The boar’s head I bear)
Reddens laudes Domino (Giving praises to the Lord)Our steward hath provided this
In honor of the King of Bliss;
Which on this day to be servèd is
In Regimensi atrio. (In the hall of Queen’s)Caput apri defero (The boar’s head I bear)
Reddens laudes Domino (Giving praises to the Lord)
