Song: Carol Reading / Shortly before 8:30pm
Viewed: 80 - Published at: a year ago
Artist: Lady Maisery
Year: 2020Viewed: 80 - Published at: a year ago
Shortly before 8:30 pm, as the Sportsman Inn at Lodge Moor on the western edge of Sheffield is beginning to fill up with animated winter drinkers, someone arrives with a small electronic keyboard and sets it down on a table near the bay window.
"What's that strange contraption?" jokes one of the regulars near the front.
"Don't worry," he's reassured. "No one's going to play it. It's just to give the first note if it's needed."
"Oh, good. You had me worried thеre."
The carols at Lodge Moor arе unaccompanied.
Everyone knows that.
They might use an organ in Dungworth a few miles away, across the Rivelin Valley, or the pubs a bit further afield might have occasional brass or even string accompaniment, but here in a handful of villages across a tiny stretch of countryside west of Sheffield, the festive caroling, fuelled by pints of ale, is to the sound of the human voice alone.
Despite their religious themes, it's a long time since these songs have had much to do with the church.
Most of the carols that are sung in the Sportsman originated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where they were performed in the west galleries of village churches by local musicians.
As the Victorians tidied up church worship, however, folksy hymns, some with questionable doctrine or disconcertingly exuberant choruses, were pushed out into the pubs and homes of local people,
who, canonical or not, still loved to sing them.
"What's that strange contraption?" jokes one of the regulars near the front.
"Don't worry," he's reassured. "No one's going to play it. It's just to give the first note if it's needed."
"Oh, good. You had me worried thеre."
The carols at Lodge Moor arе unaccompanied.
Everyone knows that.
They might use an organ in Dungworth a few miles away, across the Rivelin Valley, or the pubs a bit further afield might have occasional brass or even string accompaniment, but here in a handful of villages across a tiny stretch of countryside west of Sheffield, the festive caroling, fuelled by pints of ale, is to the sound of the human voice alone.
Despite their religious themes, it's a long time since these songs have had much to do with the church.
Most of the carols that are sung in the Sportsman originated in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where they were performed in the west galleries of village churches by local musicians.
As the Victorians tidied up church worship, however, folksy hymns, some with questionable doctrine or disconcertingly exuberant choruses, were pushed out into the pubs and homes of local people,
who, canonical or not, still loved to sing them.
( Lady Maisery )
www.ChordsAZ.com