I am compiling a series for Advent and Christmas. This is the fourth post. ************************************************************************************** Recovering the Tradition #4: “The Holly and the Ivy” This anonymously attributed carol may have evolved from the medieval custom of singing contests. In the forest, ivy vines sometimes grow around holly trees, as if the two are vying for supremacy. The latter plant was considered masculine, likely because it is more rigid, whereas the former was deemed feminine, probably since it is softer. As captured in the early 15th-century song “The Contest of the Ivy and the Holly”, the holy is like a hunter, fair to behold, while the ivy is like a weeping maiden, having caught nothing but a cold. Both the holly and the ivy had acquired Christian symbolism as well (an evolution from England’s pre-Christian era, in which the evergreen hollies and ivies were considered sacred by the Celts), as seen in the ritual of decorating houses and churches with these evergreens during Christmas. In the second verse of The Holly and the Ivy, the whiteness of the holly’s flower is an allusion to the purity of Christ’s birth from Mary. Further on, the redness of the plants berries becomes an image of the blood Christ shed on the cross, while the sharpness of the thorns befits a comparison to the crown of thorns forced on Him. By the fourth stanza, the bitterness of the holly’s bark is compared with the gall wine offered to Him at crucifixion. In contrast to the earlier medieval custom, the ivy is barely mentioned (the holly “bears the crown”, as said in the first verse), a consequence perhaps of the dominance of the “male” holly in the tradition. The historical melody and a modernized text were published by English musicologist Cecil Sharp by 1911. The most popular arrangement came from English composer Henry Walford Davies in 1913. Here the 2010 Quire Cleveland sings the Davies version.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 14:40:15 +0000
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