The Wexford Carol—Murfin’s Carols for Corona and Winter Holiday Music Festival

                                                        The Wexford Carol by Yo Yo Ma with vocal by Alison Krauss.

Today is the last Sunday of the liturgical Christmas Season and so an apt time to dip into a really ancient Christian carol which covers the whole arc of the Nativity story from the arrival of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem through the visit of the Magi.  The Wexford Carol is a traditional Irish carol from Enniscorthy in County Wexford.

The Wexford Carol, sometimes known by the name of the town of Enniscorthy or by its first line “Good people all this Christmas time.”  It is sometimes ascribed to the be from the early Middle Ages, but musicologists and folklorists now believe that it likely was composed in the 15th or 16th Century based on its musical and lyrical style.

The Gaelic at the bottom is two titles for Wexford Carol in the Irish language.

The oldest recorded lyrics were in Gaelic. William Grattan Flood, the organist and musical director at St. Aidan's Cathedral in Enniscorthy, transcribed the carol from a local singer and it was published in The Oxford Book of Carols in 1928.  From that it was included in many of the carol books printed around the world as well as some denominational hymnals.

Yet it remained a rather obscure song seldom performed, perhaps because it was originally circulated with the admonition that only male voice could perform it.  It began to have new found popularity when female singers including Julie Andrews in 1966 and Loreena McKennitt in 1987 defied tradition and recorded solo versions.  Notable choral versions include those by the English boy choir Libera in 2013 and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir three years later.

This album help rekindle interest in The Wexford Carol in Irish music circles.

The Wexford Carol has lately become more popular in Irish and Celtic music circles. The Celtic Women included it on their 2006 Christmas album and it was title track on the 2014 collection of traditional Irish Carols by the Irish early-music singer Caitríona O’Leary, with Tom Jones,   Rosanne Cash, and Rhiannon Giddens. Irish folksinger Cara Dillon featured the song on her 2016 album Upon a Winter’s Night.

Yo Yo Ma's collaboration with Alison Krauss was featured on his Christmas album.

Today’s rendition is a collaboration by country and roots music star Alison Krauss and cellist  Yo Yo Ma recorded for Ma’s 2008 holiday album, Songs of Joy and Peace.  Krauss forgoes her fiddle to sing ethereally.  The arrangement includes traditional Irish instruments including bag pipe, bodhrán drum, and finger chimes.