THE designs of this year's Christmas stamps are based on

well known carols. Here UVEDALE TRISTRAM describes how the carol tradition developed.
Happy in a round of the carol
THERE WAS once an old tramp known as Happy. To the late Hubert Foss, music critic of the Morning Post in the early thirties, he said: "I know a singer who can sing you old songs some from the time of Jesus Clirist and some older than that from the time of God Almighty."
Some medieval carols indeed have a ring of time before the hour of the "herald angels." They hark back through the clouds and the lightenings of prophecy to the moment of creation.
Their rhythms are surely heard at the mysterious festivals of paganism prefiguring the incarnation, then as now their simplicity and their natual joy in worship striking a chord deep within the human heart.
The word "carol" is derived from the French "carole" a dance in a ring with a song. That is the meaning it held for Chaucer when he wrote in the Romaunt of the Rose: Come, and if it lyke you To dauncen, dauncith with us now And I, withoute tarrying, Went into the Karrelving.
Carole in its turn came from the Latin Choraulee, a flute player and Chorea, a round dance.
In later or vulgar Latin, Choraules became Coraula which in the twelfth century meant a circle or circular dance or in one context a minstrel.
Chorea became Choreola and then Carolle a round dance to a song with many people taking part.
A seventeenth century FrenchEnglish dictionary gives Carolle as "A kind of dance wherein many people dance together; also a Caroll or Christmas song."
The Carol has both pagan and Christian roots. Pagans in Britain celebrated December 25 long before Christianity.
The Roman saturnalia also came at that season and our own festivities owe much to those pagan revels prefigurations now Christianised. Traces of pre-Christian legend and custom, happily baptised, still linger in our carols: The holly and the ivy, when they are both full grown, Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown; The rising of the sun and the running of the deer, The playing of the merry organ, sweet singing in the choir. In pagan symbolism, holly is the Bacchus plant and masculine whereas ivy represents woman. Christianity has made holly the crown of thorns, implicit at the moment of Christ's birth.
The old folk songs were used by Christianity to make people feel they were upon familiar ground. Then from the music and hymns of the Church, the tropes and sequences of the Mass, came popular carols.
Others came from Nativity plays and the half popular, half religious celebrations of the Middle Ages such as the Festival of Fools and the Fete de L'Ane.
These often lost much of their religious character and took on a more secular tone both in words and music. The Festival of Fools sometimes burlesqued religious ritual and the carols derived from it were regarded with suspicion by the Church.
Latin Christmas hymns, some with the characteristic dancing lilt of the true carol, were sung as early as the fifth century in which Sedulius wrote A Solis Ortus Cardine.
In the twelfth century, there flourished the marvellous lyric gifts of Adam de St Victor who wrote In Matale Salvatoris Splendor Patris.
For two centuries after Cromwell seized power, carols were never heard in church and carol singing came to be regarded as a not quite respectable pastime of the lower classes.
In Henry Bourne's Antiquities, published in 1725, we find the declaration: "It is customary for the common people to sing a Carol."
The gradual return of the Carol as an important part of Christmas celebrations was largely due to two men Bishop Percy and Cecil Sharp.
Carols figured prominently in Bishop Percy's collection of folk songs and music and Cecil Sharp gave them pride of place in his English Folks Song revival.
In the early nineteenth century, it was thought that carols were dying out. In 1825, Home wrote in his Everyday Book: "Carols begin to be spoken of as not belonging to this century . . . These ditties which now enliven the industrious servant maid and the humble labourer gladdened the festivities of royalty in ancient times."
Yet by the middle of the century, some of the loveliest of the ancient carols were being rescued from dusty libraries.
In mid-Victorian times, the old custom of itinerant carol singing was also revived though by the twenties of this century, it had degenerated into a raucous or feeble attempt at profitmaking on the lines of children's 'penny for the guy' scrounging in November.
It was the Churches who did most to return the Carol to a prominent place in our Christmas life.
The broadcasting of the exquisite Service of Nine Lessons and Nine Carols from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, has stimulated similar services elsewhere.
Year by year, more choirs sing again in our towns and villages with their torches and lanterns often collecting funds for charities.
Some years ago, early one Christmas morning, I stood upon a hillside beneath a starstudded African sky. From a round stone hut, higher up the hill, came the sound of a man singing in English: Joseph and Mary walked Through an orchard good Where was cherries and berries So red as any blood.
In the distance, there glowed the shepherd boys' fires and I thought of those other shepherds beneath the great star in the East.
I could almost hear the beating of the angels' wings above half forgotten Bethlehem. And out of the mists of paganism old and new rang again the eternal praise and promise.
Uvedale Tristram