Welcome Yule, 15th Century Carol-Air from Deuteromelia, 1609

Here are the Christmas Songs, sung by John Coates, a favourite artist, certain of a warm welcome. John Coates has written to us about tonight's programme. This is what he says: 'The words of the first song are from a Sloane MS. in the British Museum, and Mr. Edmondstoune Duncan dates them time of Henry VI, before we had any printing. This fifteenth-century carol brings in all the saints' days that make a red-letter cluster round Christmas Day, and goes on to the New Year, Twelfth Day, and Candelmas, with a "Welcum Yol" at the end of each verse; I think I shall say "Welcome Yule" (but, of course, you needn't) and each time I sing that refrain there will be good time for you to echo it in chorus. The air is from a collection called "Deuteromelia" which Thomas Ravenscroft published in 1609; the title is evidently coined from the Greek, signifying that it was the "Second Part of Musick's Melodie (he had published an earlier one the same year which he called "Pammelia-Musick's Miscellanie, etc."). These collections were not contemporary songs; Ravenscroft's research was in the past, and he may be described as our first musical antiquary. As a boy he was a chorister at St. Paul's (the old Cathedral, of course, which was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666).'