Hands Down My Favourite New Christmas CD This Year…

…was Megson’s brilliant ‘A Yuletide Carol’!

The blurb says: ‘It features a sparkling mix of traditional carols, Elizabethan yuletide songs as well as two Megson original tracks all arranged for mandolas, guitars, banjos and Megson’s trademark soaring vocal harmonies.’ And sparkling is truly the right word!

Here‘s the link to the page about it on their website. Here’s the link to the CD in their shop. OR you can get it from Bandcamp and get both the CD and digital downloads (which is what I did).

Find out more about Megson on their website here.

Franz family: ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’

This is an Advent tradition here at ‘Faith, Folk, and Charity’!

‘Nowell Sing We’

This is beautiful:

 

Here are the lyrics (close enough):

Nowell sing we now all and some,
For Rex pacificus is come.

In Bethlehem, in that fair city,
A child was born of a maiden free,
That shall a lord and prince be,
A solis ortus cardine.

Children were slain in full great plenty,
Jesu, for the love of thee;
Wherefore their souls saved be,
Hostis Herodis impie.

As the sun shineth through the glass,
So Jesu in his mother was;
Thee to serve now grant us grace,
O lux beata Trinitas.

Now God is come to worship us;
Now of Mary is born Jesus;
Make we merry amongst us;
Exultet caelum laudibus.

Nowell sing we now all and some,
For Rex pacificus is come.

For background information about this fifteenth century carol and its meaning and story, see this really interesting post by Eleanor Parker, the ‘Clerk of Oxford’.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Here is my 2017 Christmas song, my version of the old traditional Christmas carol ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’. There are several versions of this carol. I found one I liked in an old edition of the ‘Oxford Book of Carols’; the notes say it came from a broadside ballad printed by J & C Evans, Long Lane, London in about 1797. I’ve changed the words very slightly, but what you get is mostly what I found in the book! There were two different tunes but I chose the familiar one. The guitar arrangement is my own.

So – this comes to you all with my best wishes for a joyful Christmas and lots of ‘Tidings of Comfort and Joy’.

P.S. This is a free download on my Reverbnation site, so if you like it, head over there and help yourself!

The Franz Family’s wonderful take on ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’

This is an Advent tradition for me. I love the Franz Family’s version of ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’; it’s far and away my favourite version of this Advent hymn.

The Franz Family website appears to be no more, but their Facebook page is here, and their iTunes site here.

A lovely version of ‘He Shall Feed His Flock’ from Handel’s Messiah

This is one of my favourite arias from the Messiah, and i think these kids do a wonderful job of it!

The Franz Family’s wonderful take on ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’

This is an Advent tradition for me. I love the Franz Family’s version of ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’; it’s far and away my favourite version of this Advent hymn.

The Franz Family website appears to be no more, but their Facebook page is here, and their iTunes site here.