Talk:God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

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Contents 1 Improving the Article 2 "Ye" vs. "You" 3 Cover version 4 "Rest" 5 Lyrics

[edit] Improving the Article

No one who has attempted to read ten lines of John Skelton or William Caxton could imagine that "The lyrics are reputed to date back to the 15th century, and are written in Early Modern English". Some notes for an improved article are to be found at this page. --Wetman 02:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC).

I'd like to see some proof of the contention that "merry" should be construed as "strong" in the sense of "mighty." I can't find any evidence of it in my Concise Oxford. Unless proof is forthcoming, I'm inclined to suggest that the statements questioned by Wetman and myself should be excised. pmr 19:34, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I have today deleted the above-mentioned material, having waited 10 months for proof of its veracity and having found none myself. I have also deleted the following weak, unattributed and unsupported assertion: "It is believed that the song was sung to the gentry by town watchmen who earned additional money during the Christmas season."pmr 10:54, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

That may be nice, but in the missalette, there are changes in the final verse, replacing "brotherhood" with "charity", and "This holytide of Christmas / All others doth deface" is changed to "This holytide of Chistmas / Is filled with heavenly grace". It seems there's something missing here. --Angeldeb82 16:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree about "Wetman"'s comment. This has no strong claim to being one of the earliest Christmas carols, so I have removed some words from the first sentence. Sorry I forgot to sign in. Ogg 19:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Ye" vs. "You"

Any comment about how Catholic missalettes are replacing the "Ye" with "You"?Delmlsfan 03:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cover version

God Rest Ye, Deadly Gentlemen from Rise of the Triad. j.engelh 11:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Rest"

Surely when it says "God rest ye merry gentlemen", it isn't saying "Quiet down, all you people who are having a merry party", but "I hope you continue to be merry after Christmas". Not "God rest ye, merry gentlemen" but "God rest ye merry, gentlemen." -- God KEEP you merry? Andrew Rilstone (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 00:14, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Lyrics

A recent set of edits to the "Lyrics" section seems to combine some incorrect emendations with some variants which I don't ever recall having come across before. So I'm reverting that set of edits.

But it does highlight a more general problem. For an encyclopaedic article, which ought to use citable sources for acceptable scholarly research, the current "Lyrics" section seems haphazard, and the more so when one considers that this particular carol has existed in many different forms.

We should consider agreeing on one version, and then having alongside, but separate, an index of known variants, each one of which which should be cited. See the current What Child Is This? article for an example.

Given that this is an English carol (see the various researches at various websites), I propose using the "Carols for Choirs" variant as the basis, as this is what has underpinned Christmas services across the UK for the last few decades.

Feline Hymnic (talk) 23:55, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I see that those recently reverted edits are now being re-entered, still without attribution. I still propose the idea above, but with a different detail.

Earlier versions of the carol seem to have more verses (do a web search), and later versions (e.g. New English Hymnal, Hymns and Psalms, Carols for Choirs) have fewer. The Wikipedia version should probably carry as many verses as reasonably possible, and then indicate which ones are omitted in which books. The reasonably current version [1] has seven verses, but my earlier proposal (for Carols for Choirs) would have reduced that to five. So I instead propose to use the UK "Anglican Hymn Book" as the basic version, which (I have just discovered) has the same seven verses as the current Wikipedia version.

Assuming no indications to the contrary, I shall try to get this done soon.

Feline Hymnic (talk) 22:47, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

It's been about three weeks since my proposal; no objections. So I have prepared the above change and intend to apply it shortly. Feline Hymnic (talk) 23:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)