Dives and Lazarus

with
EARDISLEY
NOEL
KINGSFOLD

I. Text Background

This folk ballad, sometimes classified as an English carol, is based on the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16. Dives is Latin for rich; in England, the Latin term was taken into English as the rich man’s name. The story was adapted into an English ballad as early as 19 July 1557, when the registers of the Company of Stationers show “a ballett” “of the Ryche man and poore Lazarus” licensed to John Wallye and Mistress Toye.[1] For the period of 22 July 1570 to 22 July 1571, registers show payment by W. Pekerynge for “a ballett Dyves and Lazarus.”[2]

In 1639, it was named in the play Monsieur Thomas (London: Thomas Harper, 1639) by John Fletcher (1579–1625). In the play, the song is mentioned in dialogue between the characters Lancelot and a fiddler (Fig. 1). The fiddler says, “Under your mastership’s correction, I can sing ‘The Duke of Norfolke,’ or the merry ballad of ‘Diverus and Lazarus.’”

Anglican minister John Mason (ca. 1645–1694), longtime rector of Water-Stratford, published a poetic rendition of “Dives and Lazarus” together with the 2nd edition of his Spiritual Songs (London: Richard Northcott, 1685 | Fig. 2), a lengthy treatment in iambic pentameter, beginning “In Judah’s vale a man of wealth abode.” Although some of Mason’s hymns would go on to be preserved and sung for many generations, it does not seem as though his treatment of “Dives and Lazarus” belongs within the lineage of the ballad as it was known to compilers of the nineteenth century.

II. “As it fell out upon a day”

The version of “Dives and Lazarus” most widely recognized as the traditional English folk ballad, beginning “As it fell out upon a day,” emerged in the early years of the nineteenth century.

William Hone published a portion of the text in his Ancient Mysteries Described (London: William Hone, 1823 | Fig. 3). Hone had observed part of the carol being performed by a singer in Warwickshire, and he believed the song drew some of its inspiration from dramatic art depicting the biblical story. Hone’s account suggests a strong component of oral transmission, but he also listed the song among “Christmas carols now annually printed,” copies of which he claimed to possess.

Fig. 3. Ancient Mysteries Described (London: William Hone, 1823).

This same anecdote was repeated in Hone’s Every-Day Book, vol. 1 (London: William Hone, 1826), pp. 1598–1599, in part of a section called “Christmas carols,” in the readings for December 24.

On 23 January 1869, a correspondent identified as “F.S.L.,” published in Notes & Queries (Fig. 4), described hearing the song in Worcestershire, and “every village child knew it thirty to forty years ago.” The writer also claimed to have seen it circa 1833 “on a hawker’s broadsheet, but have never seen it since.” Included with the letter were 14 stanzas reproduced from memory, “As sung by carol singers at Christmas in Worcestershire, at Hagley and Hartlebury, 1829–1839.” In this account, the author noted, “‘Diverus’ always; never ‘Dives.’”

Both anecdotes, by Hone and F.S.L., mention the song was printed on broadsheets. The publication trail indeed traces back to a series of broadsheets printed in the first half of the nineteenth century. Possibly the oldest surviving edition, preserved in the British Library and Bodleian Library, is an undated broadside printed by T. Wood in Birmingham (Fig. 5). The British Library dates it ca. 1805, while the Bodleian Library dates it 1806–1827. This text includes 16 stanzas, without music. Stanzas 12–13 are nearly identical to Hone’s text. Similarly, stanzas 1–13 are consistent with F.S.L., except this sheet adds another 3 stanzas at the end and does not include F.S.L.’s stanza 2.

Other broadsheet copies of the song were common. Many are housed at the Bodleian Library, including:

1. Bod6261 / Douce adds. 137(57) / no date: online

2. Bod14089 / Harding B 11(906) / Birmingham: J. Taylor, no date: online

3. Bod19084 / Harding B 7(4) / Monmouth Court, London: J. Catnach, ca. 1813–1838: online

4. Bod19686 / Johnson Ballads 1969 / Newent: R.R. Hooper, no date: online

5. Bod24330 / Douce adds. 137(9) / Birmingham: W. Wright, ca. 1831–1837: online

6. Bod24351 / Douce adds. 137(34) / Birmingham: T. Bloomer, ca. 1821–1827: online

The first appearance of the song in a published collection was in A Good Christmas Box (Dudley: G. Walters, 1847 | Fig. 6). This version of the text contained only 15 stanzas, missing the response to Dives at the gate (stanza 7). In this version, the men with whips are described as “savage” rather than the more common “merry,” and it contains a substitution for sitting on the serpent’s knee, “From whence thou ne’er canst flee,” a reading consistent with several of the broadsides listed above.

Fig. 6. A Good Christmas Box (Dudley: G. Walters, 1847).

Following A Good Christmas Box, the next significant printing of the text was in Joshua Sylvester’s A Garland of Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (London: John Camden Hotten, 1861 | Fig. 7). This version was reprinted from “an old Birmingham broadside” and contained 16 stanzas. It is consistent with the Birmingham broadsides listed above, but the text does not match any of the Bodleian copies exactly. The omission of the serpent’s knee is especially notable.

Fig. 7. A Garland of Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern (London: John Camden Hotten, 1861).

One other printing of the text worth noting is in William Henry Husk’s Songs of the Nativity (London: John Camden Hotten, 1866 | Fig. 8). Husk claimed to have reprinted his from “a sheet copy printed at Worcester in the last century.”

The composition is much in the style of a sixteenth century ballad, but the last verse conveys an idea of greater antiquity, as it seems to give expression to the opinion that the devotion of worldly goods to pious or charitable uses sufficed to avert future punishment.

Husk was confident this was the song named in Monsieur Thomas (Fig. 1). Husk’s version, like most others, is 16 stanzas, and is consistent with the Birmingham broadside by T. Wood (Fig. 5).

Fig. 8. Songs of the Nativity (London: John Camden Hotten, 1866).

III. Tune: EARDISLEY / NOEL

In spite of the availability of the text in print for much of the nineteenth century, the song is not known to have been printed with music until it appeared in the Second Series of Christmas Carols New and Old, edited by John Stainer (London: Novello, 1870 | Fig. 9).

The origin of Stainer’s melody is unknown, but it was probably a folk tune rather than a new composition, because it appeared later in other sources in varied forms. For example, it appeared four years later in a form adapted by Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) for Church Hymns with Tunes (1874 | Fig. 10), where it was paired with the text “It came upon the midnight clear” by Edmund H. Sears (1810–1876). In this version of the tune, Sullivan borrowed and altered melodic ideas from the folk melody (“Traditional Air rearranged”) for his first, second, and fourth phrases, and he newly composed the third musical phrase (lines 5–6 of the text), yielding a new tune twice as long as the original. Sullivan’s adapted tune is known as NOEL.

Another variant of the folk tune appeared in the Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol. 2, no. 7 (1905 | Fig. 11), transcribed from an eighty-year-old woman named only as “Mrs. Harris,” of Eardisley, Herefordshire, who said she learned it from her father. In this instance, Harris had learned it as Diverus rather than Dives. The additional commentary by Lucy E. Broadwood refers to several of the other sources shown above and below.

This version of the tune was adopted into The English Hymnal (Oxford: University Press, 1906 | Fig. 12), named EARDISLEY, but set to “Lord, I would own thy tender care” by Jane Taylor (1783–1824), arranged by composer/editor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958).

IV. Tune: KINGSFOLD (LAZARUS)

In 1893, Lucy E. Broadwood and J.A. Fuller-Maitland published “Dives and Lazarus” with a different tune called LAZARUS in English County Songs (London: Leadenhall Press, 1893 | Fig. 13). In this case, the tune had been transcribed by A.J. Hipkins, with the stipulation, “Mr. Hipkins knew no words for the tune, but has known it for many years under the name ‘Lazarus.’”

The editors connected the tune with the text of “Dives and Lazarus” on the basis of “an old woman in Westminster” who said the LAZARUS tune belonged “to a song referring to the same subject.” For the text, they used the version given in Notes and Queries (Fig. 4). They believed the tune was closely related to two other folk tunes, “The Thresher” and “Cold blows the wind.” In their notes for the other songs, they felt “The Thresher” especially resembled an old Scottish tune called “Gilderoy’s last farewell,” published as early as 1707 in the third volume of Henry Playford’s Whit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy (London: William Pearson, 1707), p. 111.

About twelve years later, in a more detailed analysis of this tune’s predecessors and variants for the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol. 2, no. 7 (1905), p. 122, Broadwood admitted the association between this tune and “Dives and Lazarus” was an error:

The beautiful variant called “Lazarus” in English County Songs was noted by the late Mr. A.J. Hipkins, in the streets of Westminster and the Earl’s Court neighborhood, but unfortunately without words beyond the title of “Lazarus.” Later enquiries in Westminster having established the fact that many people there knew the tune to have been sung by street beggars “to a carol about the rich man and Lazarus,” I ventured to associate it in English County Songs with the old carol words of “Dives and Lazarus,” which exactly fitted the tune. However, in the face of recent collecting, I have now little doubt that the proper words should be those of “Come all you faithful Christians.”

The confusion seems to have stemmed from a stanza in “Come all you faithful Christians,” reading thus (p. 115):

Come all ye worthy Christians
That are so very poor,
Remember how poor Lazarus
Stood at the rich man’s door,
A begging for the crumbs of bread
That from his table fell;
The Scriptures doth inform us
He now in Heaven do dwell.

Nonetheless, the questionable pairing of the LAZARUS tune with “Dives and Lazarus” made a lasting impression on composer and hymnal editor Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). In his essay “A Musical Autobiography,” he recalled coming across the tune for the first time:

I must have made my first contact with English folk-songs when I was a boy in the [eighteen-]eighties, through Stainer and Bramley’s Christmas Carols New and Old. I remember clearly my reaction to the tune of the “Cherry Tree Carol,” which was more than simple admiration for a fine tune, though I did not then naturally realize the implications involved in that sense of intimacy. This sense came upon me more strongly in 1893 when I first discovered “Dives and Lazarus” in English County Songs. Here, as before with Wagner, I had that sense of recognition—“here’s something which I have known all my life—only I didn’t know it!”[3]

As Ralph Vaughan Williams became a folk song collector himself, he transcribed a variant of this tune, associated with the words “Maria Martin,” for the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol. 2, no. 7 (1905), said to have been “Sung by Mr. Booker at the Wheatsheaf, Kingsfold, Sussex, Dec. 23rd, 1904” (Fig. 14).[4]

R.V.W. would go on to publish this tune in The English Hymnal (Oxford: University Press, 1906 | Fig. 15), except he used a form of the melody most closely resembling the “Dives and Lazarus” version given in English County Songs (Fig. 13), while naming it KINGSFOLD after his 1904 transcription. He set the tune to “I heard the voice of Jesus say” by Horatius Bonar (1808–1889). Several years later, he also composed an orchestral treatment of the tune, Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus (1939).

R.V.W. was also involved in publishing a third melody for “Dives and Lazarus,” collected from “Mr. John Evans, Dilwyn,” arranged for Twelve Traditional Carols from Herefordshire (London: Stainer & Bell, 1920), no. 9, and included in the Oxford Book of Carols (1928), no. 57, of which he was co-editor, but this melody is lesser known and has not endured.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
15 January 2020

Footnotes:

1. Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640, vol. 1 (London: Privately Printed, 1875), pp. 75–76: Archive.org

2. Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640, vol. 1 (London: Privately Printed, 1875), p. 436: Archive.org

3. Ralph Vaughan Williams, “A Musical Autobiography,” National Music and Other Essays (Oxford: University Press, 1972), p. 189; originally printed in Hubert J. Foss, Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: 1950).

4. Lucy E. Broadwood, Cecil J. Sharp, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Come all ye faithful Christians,” Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol. 2, no. 7 (1905), p. 119: Archive.org

Related Resources:

John Fletcher, Monsieur Thomas: A Comedy (London: Thomas Harper, 1639): Archive.org ; see also W.F. Prideaux, “Ballads in Beaumont and Fletcher’s ‘Monsieur Thomas,’” Notes and Queries, ser. 10, vol. 6 (22 Sept. 1906), pp. 223–224: Google Books

William Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described (London: William Hone, 1823), pp. 95–96: Archive.org

William Hone, “Christmas carols,” Every-Day Book, vol. 1 (London: William Hone, 1826), pp. 1595–1599: Archive.org

Joshua Sylvester, “Dives and Lazarus,” A Garland of Christmas Carols (London: John Camden Hotten, 1861), pp. 50–54: Archive.org

William Henry Husk, “Dives and Lazarus,” Songs of the Nativity (London: John Camden Hotten, 1866), pp. 94–97: Archive.org

F.S.L., “A Worcestershire Carol,” Notes and Queries, 4th ser., vol. 3 (23 Jan. 1869), pp. 75–76: Archive.org

Francis Childs, “Dives and Lazarus,” English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Part III (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1885), pp. 10–12: Archive.org

Lucy E. Broadwood & J.A. Fuller-Maitland, “Lazarus,” English County Songs (London: Leadenhall Press, 1893), pp. 102–103: Google Books

Lucy E. Broadwood, Cecil J. Sharp, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, “Come all ye faithful Christians,” Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol. 2, no. 7 (1905), pp. 115–123: Archive.org

Lucy E. Broadwood, “Dives and Lazarus,” Journal of the Folk Song Society, vol. 2, no. 7 (1905), pp. 125–126: Archive.org

Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw, The Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford: University Press, 1928), nos. 57, 60.

Erik Routley, “KINGSFOLD,” Companion to Congregational Praise (London: Independent Press, 1953), p. 183.

Roy Palmer, “Dives and Lazarus,” Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1983), pp. 65–68, 191.

Alan Luff, “KINGSFOLD,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3A (NY: Church Hymnal Corp., 1994), pp. 563–564.

Joseph Herl, “KINGSFOLD,” Lutheran Service Book Companion, vol. 1 (St. Louis: Concordia, 2019), pp. 1302–1305.

“Dives and Lazarus,” Hymns and Carols of Christmas:
https://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/dives_and_lazarus.htm

“KINGSFOLD,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/tune/kingsfold_english