This Carol was originally based on a pre-Christian Pagan folk chant associated with the coming of the new year in Ukraine. Magical properties were attributed to the language of the chant.

On New Year’s Eve, traditionally in Ukraine, young girls went from house to house singing well wishing chants like this one to the occupants of the home, promising them good things in the year about to begin. In return they were given edible treats, a bit like ‘trick or treaters’ today. New Year’s Eve there then, however was not on December 31st as here, but on January 13th as they followed the Julian calendar.

I have chosen this carol very deliberately this year, although in fact it was on a list of carols which we made at the end of last year’s Advent calendar as one we had in mind for this year. History has made this carol especially significant now in a way which we could not have anticipated then.

The original chant was called ‘Shchedryk’ deriving from the Ukrainian word ‘shchedryj’, meaning ‘bountiful’. The young girls going to homes on New Year’s Eve paralleled the song which told of a swallow which flew into a home proclaiming that the man of the house would during that year gain lots of money, a beautiful wife and healthy livestock – in other words, bounty.

Leontovytch was commissioned to write the song in 1916 at a time when there was political unrest and struggle in Ukraine and he found the chant which he chose to set in a book of Ukrainian folk melodies. Eventually the setting spread across much of the Western world, becoming especially popular and different lyrics accrued in different places and contexts. The lyrics given below are those by an American choir director and arranger called Peter Wilhousky who wrote them in the 1930s but you may well hear other words to this music.