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Does This Carol Have a Hidden Meaning?
It’s what it doesn’t say….
OK, in answer to your first question, I know it’s Midsummer, so why am I writing about Christmas carols? Well, this particular hymn is not, in so far as I can see, directly connected to Christmas. At any rate, there is no mention of that specific festival in the lyric, though it is usually performed in the Advent/Christmas season.
However, it just happens that, during the course of some research for something else, I found a rabbit-hole and, as is my invariable practice, went down it! In this case I was looking up the composer Peter Warlock and found he was one of a number of people who had written musical settings for this hymn. I also recall it’s being performed at my old schools’ annual Carol Concert one year, along with Gaudete and The Boar’s Head Carol. So I followed the link, read the lyric, read it again, and thought “Wait! What?”
Now there are Christmas carols which are not all they seem, we know this. The Holly and the Ivy, with it’s references to “The rising of the sun/And the running of the deer” quite plainly harks back to the pre-Christian Midwinter rituals of Northern Europe. The hunting and sacrifice of the King (or later a human, and still later animal, surrogate) at the midwinter Solstice in order to feed and strengthen the sun at it’s weakest point and ensure the…
