eir rounds at Christmastide to drink a cup and take a gift,
and bring good fortune upon the house"{27}--predecessors of those
carol-singers of rural England in the nineteenth century, whom Mr. Hardy
depicts so delightfully in "Under the Greenwood Tree." Carol-singing by a
band of men who go from house to house is probably a Christianization of
such heathen processions as we shall meet in less altered forms in Part
II.

It must not be supposed that the carols Awdlay gives are his own work;
and their exact date it is impossible to determine. Part of his book was
composed in 1426, but one at least of the carols was probably written in
the last half of the fourteenth century. They seem indeed to be the later
blossomings of the great springtime of English literature, the period
which produced Chaucer and Langland, an innumerable company of minstrels
and ballad-makers, and the mystical poet, Richard Rolle of Hampole.[23]

Through the fifteenth century and the first half of the sixteenth, the
flowering continued; and something like two hundred carols of this period
are known. It is impossible to attempt here anything like representative
quotation; I can only sketch in |49| roughest outline the main
characteristics of English carol literature, and refer the reader for
examples to Miss Edith Rickert's comprehensive collection, "Ancient
English Carols, MCCCC-MDCC," or to the smaller but fine selection in
Messrs. E. K. Chambers and F. Sidgwick's "Early English Lyrics." Many may
have been the work of _goliards_ or wandering scholars, and a common
feature is the interweaving of Latin with English words.

Some, like the exquisite "I sing of a maiden that is makeles,"{29} are
rather songs to or about the Virgin than strictly Christmas carols; the
Annunciation rather than the Nativity is their theme. Others again tell
the whole story of Christ's life. The feudal idea is strong in such lines
as these:--

"Mary is quene of alle thinge,
And her sone a lovely kinge.
God graunt us alle good endinge!
_Regnat dei gracia_."{30}

On the whole, in spite of some mystical exceptions, the mediaeval English
carol is somewhat external in its religion; there is little deep
individual feeling; the caroller sings as a member of the human race,
whose curse is done away, whose nature is exalted by the Incarnation,
rather than as one whose soul is athirst for God:--

"Now man is brighter than the sonne;
Now man in heven