Good King Wenceslas


"Good King Wenceslas" is a Christmas carol that tells a story of a tenth-century king of Bohemia who goes on a journey, braving harsh winter weather, to give alms to a poor peasant on the Feast of Stephen. During the journey, his page is about to give up the struggle against the cold weather, but is enabled to continue by following the king's footprints, step for step, through the deep snow.
The legend is based on a story about Saint Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia.
In 1853, English hymnwriter John Mason Neale wrote the lyrics in collaboration with his music editor Thomas Helmore to fit the melody of the 13th-century spring carol "Tempus adest floridum", which they had found in the 1582 Finnish song collection Piae Cantiones. The carol first appeared in Carols for Christmas-Tide, published by Novello & Co the same year.

History

Authorship

Tempus adest floridum

The tune is that of "Tempus adest floridum", a 13th-century spring carol in 76 76 Doubled Trochaic metre, first published in the Finnish song book Piae Cantiones in 1582. Piae Cantiones is a collection of seventy-four songs compiled by Jacobus Finno, the Protestant headmaster of Turku Cathedral School, and published by Theodoric Petri, a young Catholic printer. The book is a unique document of European songs intended not only for use in church, but also schools, thus making the collection a unique record of the late medieval period.
A text beginning substantially the same as the 1582 "Piae" version is also found in the German manuscript collection Carmina Burana as CB 142, where it is substantially more carnal; CB 142 has clerics and virgins playing the "game of Venus" in the meadows, while in the Piae version they are praising the Lord from the bottom of their hearts. The tune has also been used for the Christmas hymn Mary Gently Laid Her Child, by Joseph S. Cook ; GIA Publications's hymnal Worship uses "Tempus Adest Floridum" only for Cook's hymn.

Neale's carol

In 1853, English hymnwriter John Mason Neale wrote the "Wenceslas" lyric, in collaboration with his music editor Thomas Helmore, and the carol first appeared in Carols for Christmas-Tide, published by Novello & Co the same year.
The text of Neale's carol bears no relation to the words of "Tempus Adest Floridum". In or around 1853, G. J. R. Gordon, the British envoy and minister in Stockholm, gave a rare copy of the 1582 edition of Piae Cantiones to Neale, who was Warden of Sackville College, East Grinstead, Sussex and to the Reverend Thomas Helmore.
The book was entirely unknown in England at that time. As a member of the Tractarian Oxford Movement, Neale was interested in restoring Catholic ceremony, saints days, and music back into the Anglican church. The gift from G. J. R. Gordon gave him the opportunity to use medieval Catholic melodies for Anglican hymn writing.
The background material for Neale's carol originated in a poem by the Czech author Václav Alois Svoboda, which was published in Prague in 1847 under the title “Sanct Wenceslaw und Podiwin. Legende in böhmischer, teutscher und lateinischer Sprache”.
In 1849 he had published Deeds of Faith: Stories for Children from Church History which recounted legends from Christian tradition in Romantic prose. One of the chapters told the legend of St Wenceslas and his footsteps melting the snow for his page:

"Seems it so much?" asked the King. "Was not His journey from Heaven a wearier and a colder way than this?"
"Follow me on still," said S. Wenceslaus. "Only tread in my footsteps, and you will proceed more easily."

For his 1853 publication Carols for Christmas-tide, he adapted his earlier prose story into a poem, and together with the music editor Thomas Helmore added the words to the melody in Piae Cantiones, adding a reference to Saint Stephen's Day, making it suitable for performance on that Saint's Day.
The hymn's lyrics take the form of five eight-line stanzas in four-stress lines. Each stanza has an ABABCDCD rhyme scheme. Lines 1, 3, 5, and 7 end in single-syllable rhymes, and lines 2, 4, 6, and 8 with two-syllable rhymes.
In the music the two-syllable rhymes in lines 2, 4, and 6 are set to two half-notes, but the final rhyme of each stanza is spread over two full measures, the first syllable as two half-notes and the second as a whole note —so "fuel" is set as "fu-" with two half-notes and "-el" with a whole-note. Thus, unusually, the final musical line differs from all the others in having not two but three measures of time.
Some academics are critical of Neale's textual substitution. H. J. L. J. Massé wrote in 1921:
Why, for instance, do we tolerate such impositions as "Good King Wenceslas?" The original was and is an Easter Hymn...it is marked in carol books as "traditional", a delightful word which often conceals ignorance. There is nothing traditional in it as a carol.

A similar sentiment is expressed by the editors in the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols, which is even more critical of Neale's carol:
This rather confused narrative owes its popularity to the delightful tune, which is that of a Spring carol.... Unfortunately Neale in 1853 substituted for the Spring carol this 'Good King Wenceslas', one of his less happy pieces, which E. Duncan goes so far as to call 'doggerel', and Bullen condemns as 'poor and commonplace to the last degree'. The time has not yet come for a comprehensive book to discard it; but we reprint the tune in its proper setting... not without hope that, with the present wealth of carols for Christmas, 'Good King Wenceslas' may gradually pass into disuse, and the tune be restored to spring-time.

Elizabeth Poston, in the Penguin Book of Christmas Carols, refers to the song as the "product of an unnatural marriage between Victorian whimsy and the thirteenth-century dance carol". She goes on to say that Neale's "ponderous moral doggerel" does not fit the lighthearted dance measure of the original tune, and that if performed in the correct manner it "sounds ridiculous to pseudo-religious words". A similar development has occurred with the song "O Christmas Tree," the tune of which has been used for "Maryland, My Maryland," "The Red Flag," and other unrelated songs.
By contrast, Brian Scott, quoting from The Oxford Book of Carols its criticism and hope that the carol would "pass into disuse", argues: "Thankfully, they were wrong", for the carol "still reminds us that the giving spirit of Christmas should not happen just on that day...." Jeremy Summerly and Nicolas Bell of the British Museum also strongly rebut Dearmer's 20th century criticism, noting: "it could have been awful, but it isn't, it's magical... you remember it because the verse just works".

Other versions

Literature

  • Scott, Brian. But Do You Recall? 25 Days of Christmas Carols and the Stories Behind Them, Anderson,