This is an extra long set - over 30 minutes - and is my last posting for this year’s Bill’s Midwinter Music series. I hope that you have enjoyed both my musical selections and the background information about them. At the end of the text part of this mail-out my “Reminiscences and looking ahead” section includes my current intentions about where the series is heading in the future.
I wish everyone a harmonious new year!
Playlist
Turn of the Wheel James Keelaghan 3:40
Turn Ye Seasons Straw into Gold 2:29
Carol for the New Year Nowell Sing We Clear 3:06
An Dro Nevez The O’Reilly Consort 3:18
Oublions l’an passé La Bouttine Souriante 2:48
Touch It Not The Elastic Millennium Choir 1:48
Drink Drink The Elastic Millennium Choir 1:45
Ring In the New Year Pint & Dale and friends 4:06
The End of Another Year Bob Zantz 4:11
Auld Lang Syne The Barra MacNeills 5:04
Music notes
Turn of the Wheel As I have often mentioned, for any cycle it is arbitrary what point we chose to mark as the beginning. The cycle of the year in the western world has been January 1 ever since Julius Caesar reformed the older version of the Roman calendar in 46 BCE when it had gotten hopelessly out-of-tune with the seasons. The first day of the new year was the Kalends (first day of the month) of January, a newly-made month named after the god Janus the two-faced god of gates, doors and beginnings.
(The Julian calendar had 365 days with no leap years so it too eventually got out-of-touch with the seasons. In 1582 in Roman Catholic Europe the Julian calendar was replaced by the Gregorian calendar, which included leap years. To keep it in tune with the earth’s rotation around the sun it was later fine-tuned to eliminate the leap days in years that marked the change of centuries (except for ones divisible by 1000.) In 1972 a further fine-tuned by adding occasional leap-seconds, the most recent of which was at the end of 2016.)
The Kalends of January was the climax of the Roman midwinter festival season which began with Saturnalia on Dec 17. But Saturnalia, the Sigillaria, Sol Invictus, and the rest of the festival were all preamble to the big day (or to be precise, the biggest three days since the Kalends of January was celebrated through to Jan 3.)
Celebration of the Winter Solstice itself had long been deferred for some variable amount of time subject to weather and observing conditions, to when the astronomical event could be confirmed to have happened. Thus this pinning of the New Year to a date 11 days after the actual astronomical solstice was actually just a standardization in the offset time of the already-ancient Winter Solstice celebration.
Personally, I have never been much into celebrating this entrance of the New Year. The holiday seems to me to be rather anticlimactic after Christmas, and I am not really a party person anyway. I don’t even watch the festivities on television. But the way that Romans celebrated the Eve of the Kalends of January sounds very familiar to us.
The 4th century Greek scholar Libanius recorded that almost everyone stayed up on Kalends Eve to usher in the new year with drinking and revelry. People celebrated the stroke of midnight (as marked by a water-clock or by hearing the celebrations coming from those who had one) with singing, noisemaking, and kissing each other. Crowds of people roamed through the streets partying. They returned to their homes near daybreak to install seasonal greenery for the next day's festivities, which were considered the high point of the Roman holiday season, then slept off their night's over-indulgence. (The Kalends day itself was the primary gift-giving day but that custom has since migrated to Christmas.)
This song is by Canadian singer-songwriter James Keelaghan and this version is from his 2004 album Then Again. (He had written and recorded it previously in 1994.) Keelaghan studied History at university and many of his songs are ballads about true episodes from the past, or like this one about other aspects of our cultural heritage. You can read more about it, including his liner notes about the song’s origin, here.
I don't know, but I’ve been told
This world was shaped from unformed matter
Back when chaos reigned supreme
You and I were widely scattered
Something coalesced from the universe's voice
Nothing was created, no, nothing was destroyed
All you see around you is just something else reformed
The steady state of matter is said to be the norm
But wait for a turn of the wheel
Wait for a turn of the wheel
Now reform and revolution almost the same
The heart aflame, the vital spark
The engine that propels the state
The voice that speaks out of the dark
Martin Luther wrote a paper he nailed it to the door
Rosa Parks took her seat she couldn't take it anymore
Galileo set the sun at the center of the stage
The things we never challenge are the things that never change
But wait for a turn of the wheel
Wait for a turn of the wheelNow I know that it seems crazy, it’s a paradox
Change is constant never ending
Sometimes effects outweigh the cause
The jury’s out and the judgement's pending
Maybe things are different from what you thought you saw
It isn't quite an axiom it isn't quite a law
Fortunes often rise often they will fall
But somehow there will be a balance in it all
If you wait for a turn of the wheel
Wait for a turn of the wheel (x5)
Turn Ye Seasons The word Yule comes from the Germanic and Norse word for wheel. (They must have had an earlier name for midwinter before that invention was introduced to northern Europe sometime around 3000 BCE.) Celebration of the winter solstice represents the beginning of a new cycle in the turning of the wheel of the year. The Celts, Franks, Goths, Saxons and Norse, and most other northern European peoples, celebrated holidays at each of the solstices and equinoxes, representing the middle of their respective seasons: Cross-quarter holidays, at about halfway between each solstice and equinox, represented the changing of the seasons.
Here in Victoria, Mother Nature follows that old calendar and seasons change with the cross-quarters. Springtime clearly begins by Imbolc (whose descendants include Groundhog Day and Mardi Gras) with the reliable appearance of early springtime flowers. The transition to summer is pretty gradual, but the weather is generally warm after Beltane (May 1.) Autumn comes in a bit late usually beginning at about the Labour Day weekend, a full month after Lammas. But one can feel that winter is beginning by Samain (Halloween), and the solstice holiday Yule is very correctly placed in the middle of our winter season, just six weeks before the cycle returns to Imbolc.
This song was written by Andy Barnes, who is primarily known for his song The Last Leviathan (aka The Last of the Great Whales.) Turn Ye Seasons is sung here by the now-disbanded trio Straw into Gold, a group formed by Nadine Sanders, a trained singer whose interests turned to weaving. She says that there is an inherent music in that craft – the rhythm, the whoosh of the thrown shuttle, the pulse of the beater, the accents of the harnesses moving up and down. She formed Straw Into Gold with two friends to perform for her weaving thesis show.
Solstice is the time for chanting
Song to welcome back the light.
Then our Yuletide brings rejoicing
For the spotless rose delight.Chorus:
Turn, turn, ye seasons turn
Summer dies and autumn follows.
Turn, turn ye seasons turn
And spring comes after winter.Springtime brings on all the greening
Tilling, planting, sowing, chants.
Mayday brings the celebration
Turn around and join the dance.
ChorusSummer is the season of growing
Green fields turn to gold in the sun.
Autumn is the time for harvest
Praise and song when work's all done.The tenth month brings the Eve of All Hallows
And ghosts that are gone do walk the Earth.
Then once again we're around to Yuletide
Praise and song to the baby's birth.Oh there's a song for every season
Sing it; sing it from your heart.
There is none without a reason
Each one playing its own part.
Chorus
Carol for the New Year The romantic movement in early 19th century England affected all of the arts. One manifestation was that it led musicians and historians to scour rural areas and archives looking for songs they believed to be remnants of medieval music.
This song uses the melody Greensleeves. That tune and its lyrics are often attributed to King Henry VIII as a courting song to woo Anne Boleyne but here is ample evidence that is not the case. The 1580 records of the London’s Worshipful Company of Stationers, 33 years after the death of that monarch, refer to it as “"A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves".
But there is no doubt about its instant popularity at that time, and since the late 17th century the melody has also been associated with Christmas. According to Nowell Sing We Clear’s songbook, in Victorian times it was a rare collection of carols that did not include a version of it as a setting for seasonal lyrics. Today the most popular one is the Christmas song What Child Is This? written by William Chatterton Dix in 1856.
This rather obscure one, Carol for the New Year, was collected by William Chappell and published in his 1859 songbook Popular Music of Ancient Times. Cecil Sharp collected it again from singing in Shropshire in the early 20th century. He believed it to have been created from a patchwork of lines and verses from 17th and 18th century chapbooks and claimed that it is related to the more widespread Christmas carol The Moon Shines Bright. This was a longstanding favourite midwinter song for Nowell Sing We Clear. I got it this version of it, followed by an unidentified dance tune, from their 1989 album The Best of Nowell Sing We Clear. (Does anyone know what this tune is?)
[Update: Thank you to Eric Oscar and Graham Baldwin for answering my question. It is a dance tune known as the The Bacca Pipes Jig and it is basically a sped up and jiggified version of Greensleeves. I did a bit of further research. In 1909 the noted English folk song, tune and dance collector Cecil Sharp and Herbert MacIlwaine collected it from the Cotswalds as the tune that accompanied a variation on a Morris sword dancing that uses long-stemmed clay tobacco pipes (sometimes called 'churchwarden' pipes.) Two such fragile pipes are placed on the ground crossed and and a jig is danced around them to this tune. Here is a 2 minute YouTube video of the dance.]
The old year now away is fled, the new year it is entered,
Then let us now our sins down-tread, and joyfully all appear;
Let’s merry be this holiday, and let us run with sport and play,
Hang sorrow, let’s cast care away—God send us a Happy New Year.And now with new year’s gifts, each friend unto each other they do send;
God grant we may our lives amend, so that the truth may appear.
Now like the snake cast off your skin of evil thoughts and wicked sin,
And to amend this new year begin—God send us a Happy New Year.And now let all the company in friendly manner all agree,
For we are here welcome, all may see, unto this jolly good cheer.
I thank my master and my dame, the which are founders of the same,
To eat and drink now is no shame—God send us a Happy New Year.Come lads and lasses, everyone, Jack, Tom, Dick, Beth, Mary and Joan,
We’ll cut the meat unto the bone, for welcome you need not fear.
And here for good liquor we shall not lack,
it will whet my brain and strengthen my back,
This jolly good cheer must not go to wrack—God send us a Happy New Year.Come, give us more liquor when I do call, I’ll drink to each one in this hall,
I hope that so loud I must not bawl, but unto me lend an ear.
Good fortune to my master send, and to my dame, which is our friend,
God bless us all, and so I end—God send us a Happy New Year.
An Dro Nevez This old tune survived in the mountains of Brittany, where people still dance in the New Year to its strains. An “an dro” is a traditional Breton line dance in which people hook their little fingers, and then swinging their arms to and fro take a short step to the right, a longer step to the left, so they drift steadily leftwards. It is traditionally danced on on the New Year to this tune, which was brought out of Brittainy and popularized in the 1970s by the Gaelic folk-rock musician Alan Stivell.
It is played here by The O'Reilly Consort, which seems to have been a one-time offshoot of The Buddy O'Reilly Band, a Irish and American roots music group based in Atlanta, Georgia. I got it from a 1998 Intersound album called A Celtic Christmas: Carols for Celtic Ensemble.
Oublions l’an passé This isn’t an old song but it was written by the members of the group La Bouttine Souriante in a traditional Quebecois folk song format. They are a popular band that specializes in traditional Québécois music, often with a modern twist. The group's name means "the smiling boot", which refers to the appearance of a work boot with worn-out soles.
The song’s title translates as “Forget last year” and it describes getting together on New Year's Day with one's family. It comes from their Canadian-platinum 1987 album Tout Comme au Jour de l'An. The lyrics are:
C'est à la maison paternelle, qu'on s'rencontre tous au jour de l'an
C'est à la maison paternelle, qu'on s'rencontre tous au jour de l'an
Pour célébrer l'année nouvelle, avec nos aimables parentsChorus:
Levons les verres ensemble, en chantant divertissant
Oublions l'an passé, la nouvelle est arrivée
Levons les verres ensemble, en chantant divertissant
Oublions l'an passé, la nouvelle est arrivéePour célébrer l'année nouvelle, avec nos aimables parents
Pour célébrer l'année nouvelle, avec nos aimables parents
En oubliant si les querelles, il y en a eu durant ce temps
ChorusEn oubliant si les querelles, il y en a eu durant ce temps
En oubliant si les querelles, il y en a eu durant ce temps
Ça dépend souvent d'la bouteille, si on la vide trop souvent
ChorusÇa dépend souvent d'la bouteille, si on la vide trop souvent
Ça dépend souvent d'la bouteille, si on la vide trop souvent
Mais tout de même on reste fidèle, puis on l'avoue en s'écriant
ChorusMais tout de même on reste fidèle, puis on l'avoue en s'écriant
Mais tout de même on reste fidèle, puis on l'avoue en s'écriant
Que notre amour est immortel, envers nos très chers parents
Chorus x 2
The translation without all the repetitions is:
At my father's house that we all meet on New Year's Day (everyone repeat)
To celebrate the new year, with our kind parentsEveryone repeat the Chorus:
Let's raise glasses together, singing joyously
Let's forget last year, the new one has arrivedForgetting if there were quarrels during this time
It often depends on the bottle, if we empty it too oftenBut all the same we remain faithful, then we admit it by crying out
That our love is immortal, towards our dearest parentsLet's forget last year, the new one has arrived
Touch it Not and Drink, Drink Drinking alcoholic beverages is something of a recurring theme in songs about New Year’s Eve. After that last song, and the Carol for the New Year’s frequent references to “good liquor,” I balance that perspective with this advice in these two songs. They both come from Temperance Chimes, a choral songbook published in 1867 by the National Temperance Society based in New York.
Temperance organizations used many kinds of music as a strategic weapon to attract people into “the cold water army.” Away, Away with Rum, by Gum is the only temperance song that most people are familiar with today, with its many parody verses, but is not clear whether it ever actually existed as a real temperance song. The earliest documentation of it that anyone on the Mudcat Discussion Forum has found of is a 1882 parody. Most likely it began as a music hall song mocking lively temperance songs like these.
Both of them come from The Elastic Millennium Choir’s last album, Touch it Not: Songs of Temperance and Indulgence released in 2001. These songs were in my Nov 27 posting in 2021, where they followed a song that urged listeners to begin drinking the winter away in November. That posting also had a brief essay I wrote about ancient post-harvest festivities.
The End of Another Year Bob Zentz, of Norfolk, Virginia, wrote this song in 1995. Bob is at least as much a traditional folk singer as he is a songwriter; he plays dozens of instruments and has a from-memory repertoire of over 2000 songs. I got this from his 2005 Horizons album. The lyrics and chords are available here.
Auld Lang Syne I really dithered over whether or not to include Auld Lang Syne in today’s set despite the fact that it is an old folk song whose collection is attributed to the Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns (1759-1796.) On the one hand, you will be hearing the song a lot today and tomorrow, and the frequently-heard seasonal songs are kind that I usually try to avoid. Also, The End of Another Year is such a perfect closing song, and closing with Auld Lang Syne has become something of a Christmas album cliché.
On the other hand you will only be hearing one of the five verses; in my opinion the alternate old melody is better than the now-traditional one, and: people commonly sing it in its English translation (except for the words auld, lang and syne, which would translate as “old”, “long” and “since”) instead of the original Scot’s dialect which, not surprisingly, sounds much more exotic to my ears.
BTW, the proper Scots’ pronunciation of “syne” is syne, not zyne. Wikipedia has a general pronunciation guide for the original Scottish version as well as a phonetic alphabet rendering of it in Burns’ own Ayrshire dialect.
What won me over to including it was the realization that closing it with this song would therefore be very appropriate because my whole series this year has been, for me, a stroll down 30 years of memory lane. And it is undoubtedly good to remember and learn from the past.
And despite my cantankerous ways, I am also something of a traditionalist and am secretly rather happy that this anthem sung all around the world for the turning of a new year is an evolved version of as song that is at least nearly 240 years old. And truth be told, even in its abbreviated and altered way it is a darn good folk song. Unless something is downright harmful, it is good to respect tradition.
There are six manuscript versions of the song from the Scottish poet’s hand, all slightly different from each other, as well as comments about the song in his correspondence. He first heard at least one verse and the chorus “from an old man’s singin.” In 1788, he wrote to a friend:
Is not the Scotch phrase 'auld lang syne' exceedingly expressive? There is an old song and tune which has often thrilled through my soul. You know I am an enthusiast in old Scotch songs. . . Light be the turf on the breast of the heaven-inspired poet who composed this glorious fragment! There is more of the fire of native genius in it than in half a dozen of modern English Bacchanalians.
Burns later sent the old song, along with some new verses that he wrote (verses 3 and 4 for sure, and maybe most of verses 2 and 5 as well) to James Johnson, who was publishing a series of songbooks called Scots Musical Museum. Only the verse beginning “Should auld acquaintance be forgot . . .” is believed to be intact from what he collected.
The song (perhaps with this tune) might date back to at least the 16th century. He later sent it to George Thompson who was also compiling Scottish folk songs for his book A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs that was published in 1799. In the cover letter Burns recommended the song’s lyrics but he expressed the opinion that “the air [melody] is but mediocre”.
That publisher replaced the tune with one that might have been more based on an English folk song than a Scottish one, and that is the tune with which we are familiar today. Music historians are divided on the origin of that melody, but that is the one that survived for auld lang syne through the traditional folk process mix & matching of tunes with words.
However, it wasn't Burns who turned the song into a New Year's tradition. That would be the Canadian band leader Guy Lombardo. He knew the song from his childhood in London, Ontario. For nearly fifty years, beginning in 1929, he played it as the New Year's song on his very popular radio and TV broadcasts from the Waldorf Astoria Ballroom.
This version of the earlier melody, which may or may not be the “air’ that Burns heard the old man singing, is performed by Lucy MacNeill & The Barra MacNeills, and is from their 1999 The Christmas Album.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
for auld lang syne?Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my jo, for auld lang syne,
We’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.And surely ye’ll be your pint-stoup,
and surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak’ a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
ChorusWe twa hae run about the braes,
and pou’d the gowans fine;
And we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin’ auld lang syne.
ChorusWe twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But the seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin’ auld lang syne.
ChorusAnd here’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
and gie’s a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak’ a right gude-willie waught,
for auld lang syne.
Chorus (x2)
Reminiscence and looking ahead
Looking back on my thirty years of this hobby I am quite proud of what have accomplished. Along the way I became knowledgeable to the point where I now consider myself an expert amateur historian, folklorist and collector in the rather specialized field of English-language Christmas and other midwinter seasonal songs, and to a lesser extent, their context in in the evolution of celebrating the midwinter holidays, and similar music of other cultures.
I am also proud of having been able to adapt over the years to two changes in media, from cassettes to CDs and then from CDs to these songs-of-the-day mailouts, and changing my way of selecting and organizing the music to take advantage of the differing opportunities they enable.
And hopefully, with this new online format these compilations and my notes about the music will live on after I am gone as a heritage resource for future generations.
This grew from an impulsive one-day project into a major year-round hobby, then it shrunk back into being mainly a seasonal six-week binge of selection, research and writing. For the past few years I have not been at all active on the collecting side of things. I stopped looking for Christmas and other seasonal albums in thrift stores in the Covid year 2000, and also haven’t been searching very much online for new releases since then.
I might someday return to shopping for them because I do very much enjoy the “treasure hunt” aspect of that activity, but for now I have about 100 albums on my shelves that I still haven’t finished reviewing to select and rip tracks into my candidates files. I don’t know if/when I will return to actively collecting more seasonal songs and tunes but I still have plenty of good music in my candidates files, and I fully expect to find more in those yet-to-be-scrutinized piles of CDs.
I do still enjoy the yearly selection, research and writing binge even in the years when I have made them somewhat stressful due to my own procrastination. I currently plan to continue next year, with a return to including more pictures with the write-ups.
Also, during my cassette and CD years I tried to avoid repeating the same recordings of songs (although I did slip up a few times.) But since 2001 and the beginning of this songs-of-the-day mailout format I have been willing to repeat ones from those previous years samplers since most people who subscribe here now do not have my cassettes or most of my CDs. I intend to accelerate doing that so that the great songs and tunes in my samplers will be available here online.
This year’s sampler-of-the-samplers project will undoubtedly be my peak year in terms of output. It was not my most ambitious project but it did result in the largest selection with 148 (yes, I counted them!) songs, tunes and readings adding up to about 8 or 9 hours of seasonal music.
My current plan for next year is to return to smaller daily mailouts of perhaps five to nine minutes of music. I don’t know whether I will send them as an “Advent calendar” leading up to Christmas or Solstice Day, or whether I should send them out all through December like I did this year. I would appreciate your feedback on that. I know that most people’s tolerance for Christmas music ends on Christmas Day, but I like to think that my selections are more timeless than the mainstream seasonal music.
When I switched to this new format, I had visions that these free midwinter songs-of-the-day and their backstories would “go viral” from word-of-mouth alone. My current mailing list is 251 people which is less than twice the number of people who received my samplers as a “Christmas card” or through my selling them as a charitable fund-raising project. Only seventeen new subscribers joined this year. Going viral obviously hasn’t happened, and frankly it is rather disappointing to put this much effort into a project that benefits relatively few people considering how much time I put into it.
But I do get some consolation from the fact that I get very generous feedback, both in the comments section and directly to me, from people who enjoy and appreciate these daily musical breaks during the holiday season. My current intention is to put more energy this year into self-promoting this series in order to get more subscribers. I have a few ideas how to do that but you can help me by forwarding today’s extra-long New Year’s set to any friends who you think might enjoy it, and encouraging them to sign up for next December’s mail-outs.
Last year I said that I might post my experimental test 2020 mailed-out series as a series of “Christmas in July” music. I didn’t do it last year but I still intend to do it someday. Perhaps this will be the year.
In closing, thank you for sharing this journey with me, and I hope that these postings have given you some midwinter season memories to cherish.
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