December 6th – Worchepe thee seynt Nicolas

Although we now recognise good ole’ St Nick as the jolly rotund fellow in red, who brings gifts to nice children on the 25^th of December, it was the 6^th of December which was traditionally celebrated as the Feast of St Nicholas. This tradition continues in many parts of the world, with gifts left in shoes, lantern-processions and a feast of goose.

The carol featured today is the first of several medieval carols transcribed by Thomas Wright in his 1856 “Songs and carols from a manuscript in the British Museum of the Fifteenth Century”. Wright’s edition is of an anonymous fifteenth-century manuscript, Sloane ms 2593, then held at the British Museum and now part of the archival collections of the British Library. More recent research by Kathleen Rose Palti (UCL, 2008) suggests that that these songs had an East-Anglian origin.

This carol, named “Alle maydenis for Godes grace, Worchepe thee seynt Nicolas” tells the story of St Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, providing dowries for the three daughters of a poor man, so that they would not have to be sold into slavery:

Seynt Nicholas was of gret poste,

For he worchepid maydenis thre,

That we sent in fer cuntre

Common wommen for to be.  (1)

Here fader was man in power array,

Onto his dowteres he gan say,

“Dowteres, thee must away,

Non longer keep you I may.” (2)

Saynt Nicholas, at the townys ende,

Consoylid tho maydenis hom to wynde,

And throw Godes Grace he xulde hem synde

Husbondes thre good and kind. (7)

This saintly tale of Nicholas of Myra inspired later lyricists, too, with Benjamin Britten using the work of Eric Crozier to compose his Saint Nicholas Cantata between 1947 – 1948, an ambitious piece tackled in St Andrews on the 9th December 1970, and conducted Cedric Thorpe Davie. But, on the 6^th of December the Holy Trinity Augmented choir looked further back, instead, taking on Handel’s “The King shall Rejoice” and Pergolesi, “Stabat Mater”. Here we have a snippet of the choir performing the rousing introduction to Handel’s joyous celebration at Holy Trinity Church, St Andrews, on the 6^th December 1970.

References:

Palti, K.R.; (2008) ‘Synge we now alle and sum’, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/15578/

Wright, Thomas, ‘Songs and Carols from a manuscript’: https://archive.org/details/songscarolsfromm00wrigrich/page/4/mode/2up