Tag Archive: 0William Henry Husk

What better way to end our Christmas carol countdown than with a rousing round of ‘Here we come a wassailing‘? The words were first published in Husk’s book of carols in 1864 (which we blogged about this past Tuesday), whose sources included a Manchester chapbook and a broadside printed in Bradford, c.1850 (Keyte, p. 545). […]

Next on our Christmas carol countdown is ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. It turns out we have the eighteenth century to thank for this beloved carol and its delightful assemblage of festive feathered friends; according to Keyte, the words first appeared in ‘various forms in broadsides from the early eighteenth century onward’ (p. 469). Lucy […]