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Everybody's heard of Great Big Sea, right? Legendary Newfoundland band, they've been around for 20 years, Alan Doyle was in that terrible Robin Hood movie with his buddy Russell Crowe, I don't need to introduce them, right? Good. I'm fond of them.

For videos today, we have the option of good sound quality with boring album cover visuals, but I think instead we'll go with crappier sound quality and a live show:



You could call this a standard. I have versions by the McGarrigles, Maddy Prior and June Tabor, and Loreena McKennitt (as the Seven Rejoices of Mary), and there are many more. I've sung it in choir as well, although my fave version probably remains the one my choir director and two friends did (with bodhran) - heavily based on this version, but with women instead of men.

Mainly Norfolk doesn't have a lot to say about it:

June Tabor and Maddy Prior sang this English Christmas traditional in 1976 on their album Silly Sisters. The album's sleeve notes commented:

Learned from Vic Legge of Bodmin. Arrangement by John Gillaspie, folklorist of this parish, who informs us that verse six is an interpolation from the Seven Dolours of Mary.

(Incidentally, I came across a used copy of Silly Sisters for cheap quite by accident two years ago in Montreal. It's great.)

I love all the versions. I confess I partly used GBS's version to get a little more male-female balance onto this mix, but it's also a really striking arrangement, and again, harmony vocals!

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Another day, another confession. Until this time last year, I had never seen A Charlie Brown Christmas. No, it's true! (I have many pop-cultural blind spots.)

Then my choir sang a version of Christmastime Is Here and, after some rough spots at first, I discovered it was good. Then the movie came on TV and I watched it and, as you might expect, loved it. Here's a video of the relevant part (spoiler warning in case anyone else is as out of it as I am):



It's just heartwarming, dammit. *sniffle*

Apparently the words are Methodist (by Charles Wesley, 1739) and the tune is adapted from Mendelssohn (1840ish). I wonder if they sang it in the intervening 101 years, and if so, to what?

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From Monkey See: Ten Glass-Half-Empty Holiday Songs For The Grinch Within Us All

1. "I'll Be Home For Christmas." A beautiful song, it nevertheless salutes being very far away from everyone you love. You can plan on me, but your plans will be dashed. Dashed, I tell you.

Prepare to be embittered, yet amused.

Apologies, Grooveshark doesn't have this one and I'm scared of their TOS. However, here's a live version from the Royal Albert Hall:



This site has abundant notes on this carol:

Concerning this carol, Joshua Sylvestre observed in 1861 that

As is the case of some of the preceding [Dives and Lazarus], there are, doubtless, expressions in this simple effusion at which it is difficult to abstain from smiling. The perfect earnestness of these carols, however, and the charm they have long held over the people, are sufficient apologies for inserting them here. Often they are the sole vehicles of ancient religious stories that have come down to us in this form when they have perished in the more dignified chronicles.

Douglas Brice, in The Folk Carol of England, describes this song as a "carolite" sung by town folk as a kind of "luck-visit." He writes that a copy of the song, with the good wishes of the Town Crier inscribed, would be pushed under the front door by visitors — who would return later to collect a Christmas offering for the bellman or night watch-man. In rural areas, the same function was performed by The Wassail Song.

But if any carol can claim a case of mistaken identity, it's this one.  It's known by at least four different titles.  Sandys (1833) and Sharp (1911) gives it the title of The Moon Shines Bright. Bramley and Stainer (1871) give it the title of The Waits' Song, or "The Waits Carol" (Ian Bradley) or "The Old Waits Carol" (Dunstan). And the Oxford Book of Carols (1928) gives it the title of "The Bellman's Song" or also "The Bellman's Carol" (The Oxford Book of Carols and Eric Routley). It can also be found with the subtitle of "The Moon Shone Bright" as found in Husk (1868) and Chope (1894), both with ten verses.... Edith Rickert, in the notes to her version, also observed that verses 3 through 6, inclusive, are sometimes found as a separate poem under the title "O Fair Jerusalem!"

If you're not Canadian, you probably know Kate and Anna McGarrigle (if you know them at all) as the mother and aunt, respectively, of Rufus and Martha Wainwright. If you are Canadian and roughly of my vintage, you might know them best from the classic NFB short The Log Driver's Waltz. Or you might know them as the legendary folk duo they are. This particular song appears on The McGarrigle Christmas Hour, which I had made a vague mental note of but found this year while searching for a choral version of Rebel Jesus, which you may remember from Day 2 of this Advent calendar. (Still with me?) It's full of great guests and great music.

Sadly, Kate died last year, but the family continues to perform, often in aid of the Kate McGarrigle Fund for Sarcoma Research.

(Oh man, speaking of classic NFB shorts...)

Happy Monday, everyone! How's your December going so far?

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All right, time to get a little more traditional! For me Loreena McKennit is one of those artists who's always balancing right on the edge of cheesy and overdone without ever falling over it. Her Christmas albums (this is from A Midwinter Night's Dream) are particularly lovely. This is a comparatively well-known song but she has many more obscure ones as well. And she does know how to rock a simple yet powerful arrangement, doesn't she?

Mainly Norfolk, a great resource for traditional and folk music, quotes A.L. Lloyd on the Watersons' version and the history of the song:

Smashing tune, baffling words. A bit before the ninth century a set of antiphons used to be sung for the week before Christmas. About the thirteenth century an anonymous author made a Latin metrical hymn out of five of these antiphons, and this hymn was translated by J.M. Neale (1818-66), the author of Good King Wenceslas. Most modern hymnbooks prefer the later translation by T.A. Lacey but the Methodist Hymnbook and the Salvation Army stick to Neale, and it's his words - more or less - that the Watersons offer here. The tune, first printed in 1856, is credited as “adapted by T. Helmore from a French missal in the National Library, Lisbon.” No-one has been able to find it there. Quite likely it's a mock-medieval confection of Victorian times. But a good 'un.

Here's a video:



Trivia: this is the longest track in this Advent calendar, but if you add yesterday's two together it's only the second longest. Enjoy!

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I thought we'd kick off with a song about the True Meaning of Christmas. It comes late on Thea Gilmore's unconventional but excellent holiday album Strange Communion, which I discovered around this time last year. There, it acts as a shock to the system, a soft-spoken and lethal counterpoint to the eight songs that precede it. I think it works equally well as an opener, although I must admit that it is currently more than a week to Christmas.

I actually came across Thea Gilmore thanks to an inaccuracy on an iTunes Canada staff playlist, of which more later. I'm glad I did. As you can tell from this, she's a terrific lyricist. I personally am delighted by any lyrics that include the words "gimcracks", "Gordian knot", "equipoise", and "Saturnalia". According to this article in The Mag, the lyrics reference Louis MacNeice, with whose poetry I'm not familiar; if anyone knows the reference, please speak up!

The opening reminds me a little of A Child's Christmas in Wales, which is something of a holiday tradition around these parts. (We'll be having readings from it at my choir's concert.)

In future installments I'll be including videos if I can find them; in this case there doesn't seem to be one. Get on that, somebody.

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Happy December! It snowed here yesterday, although I don't believe it stayed on the ground anywhere.

Christmas has continued. Last night I went to my parents' for stockings and remaining Christmas prezzies. Despite stern instructions to the contrary, my dad had got LOTS of stocking stuff (as usual). So I have a tin of Vienna sausage and a tin of water chestnuts and two extremely goofy-looking anthropomorphic pens with koosh hair. And soap and stuff. In non-stocking presents, they gave me many tools (as mine were lost in the move from Montreal, grr) and some kitchen stuff and a... thing from Lee Valley that was promptly dubbed < Ah-nold > The Propagatah < /Ah-nold >. I don't think I'll be keeping that one, although I do appreciate my mother's confidence that I might be able to use such a thing.

And today there was a package from jenlev -- most exciting! Thank you so much! Actually, for all I know it's been waiting at the post office for ages, as Canada Post didn't see fit to tell me about it until they dropped a scary red Final Notice in the mailbox.

Christmas chez nous went very well -- we had brunch in Jen's dining room and presents in my living room, which nine people could actually get into thanks to the efforts of (1) my mother who came and helped me unpack four boxes of my grandmother's stuff on Saturday and (2) crankygrrl who came over and was a wrapping machine on Sunday. Both things were a little scary. The four boxes were, of course, professionally packed, so we ended up with more paper and bubble wrap than seemed altogether reasonable. But we also found all sorts of things that I'd forgotten I'd claimed from Granny's stuff. Some were things that I've been having nagging feelings that I need, or at least would really like, recently -- including a slotted spoon (which has vanished again for some reason), a nutmeg grater, and a set of Copco casserole dishes. Most exciting. Some are things that are just nice to have, like a little silver-plated jug that Granny used for hot water when serving tea, and that used to belong to my great-grandmother. I've been having quite the rush of memories. One of these days I'll start hanging pictures and then the nostalgia will really start.

And now, the resolution. I refreshed until I got one I liked (and that was grammatical):

In the year 2007 I resolve to: Learn how to dismantle land mines. Get your resolution here.

Given that I'm meant to be working from home, I should probably start.

I have been forced to revise my earlier opinion of Staples' current marketing campaign. I did not believe it was possible to buy Great Unexpected Gifts from Staples. Great gifts, possibly.* Unexpected gifts, certainly. Great unexpected gifts? Not so much. Except Cousin Jen yesterday referred to her labelmaker (which I got her from Staples as a birthday gift last year) as the Best Gift Ever. Making it both great and unexpected. I suppose they can't really put that in the ads, though, as the number of people whose hearts go pitter-pat over a labelmaker is probably vanishingly small.

Weekend: got nothing done on the house, again. Finished some penguins. Went to the Sing-Along Messiah and had a fantabulous time (my mum and I shared a score, and managed to stay on track even during the Amen, always a problem for me -- next time maybe I should actually practice ahead of time or something). Read. Christmas exploded all over my living room (making it an excellent companion piece to the dining room), but I did manage to wrap and mail parcels for friends out West (they may get there a bit late, but they'll get there).

Lots to do this week, ohboy.

*ETA: In the commercial I saw, the gift they used to illustrate the concept of Great Unexpected Gifts was A Laptop. Which: bwuh? In my family, that counts as a major purchase. I don't think I know anyone who'd be in Staples browsing for ideas and would think "Hey! A laptop! What a great idea for a stocking stuffer!"

Friday's house report from my aunt:

Today for lunch, Gill, John, Robin, Dan and I had tuna fish casserole with salad, and bread and cheese. At The House. Cooked in Jen's kitchen. Why would anyone keep the salt and pepper in a cupboard six feet from the ground?

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Friday evening we had our choir recital -- went pretty well, except we were horribly off-key on one of the songs (that one is a problem for us). And it was LONG. There were more kids than last year, I think, mainly piano but some violin; they were all incredibly adorable, but it's a bit of a marathon even when they're doing really short pieces.

Saturday I had a civilized morning lolling about on my pariah_ink's sofa drinking coffee and doing Sudoku and ignoring the piles of boxes scattered all around. Then went and did some Christmas shopping. Then went to my parents' neighbourhood open house -- wasn't really in the party spirit, unfortunately, because I was later than I said I'd be and felt guilty, but it was still fun to catch up with a few people. Wandered home and made another penguin while crankygrrl attempted to make sense of Jen's tax homework.

Around quarter to 10 we all headed west (gotta love taxis) to the TUIAS show at Cameron House, which I've passed but never been into. Fantastic, fantastic show. I would say this even if Panthea wasn't raithen's little sister. ;) Note to self, however: do not drink oatmeal stout, it gives you a crappy hangover.

Sunday I lay in bed and read for ages, then went for brunch, then a marathon of shopping on Queen Street -- it's surprising how much you can get done if you put your mind to it. I am now mostly done. Weird. Also bought groceries and made chicken tikka out of a bottle for dinner.

Did not make it to the gym.

Did not do any work on the house, aside from unpacking the odd box.

A good weekend, though.