The Gateway Concert Band


One of Enumclaw, Washington's premier musical organizations



An Olde English Christmas





This arrangement was written in 2002 by John Moss (see below).





The medley is entitled An Olde English Christmas because it includes four Christmas carols which have been popular in England since the middle ages. The first song in the medley is “The Boar’s Head Carol”, a 15th century English Christmas carol that describes the ancient tradition of sacrificing a boar and presenting its head at a Yuletide feast. Of the several extant versions of the carol, the one most usually performed today is based on a version published in 1521 in Wynkyn de Worde’s Christmasse Carolles.


The carol is a “macaronic” song, in that it combines verses in English and Latin. The verses speak of bearing in a boar's head “bedeck'd with bays and rosemary”.


The chorus is in latin:

Caput apri defero (Translation: The boar's head I bear)

Reddens laudes Domino (Translation: Rendering praises to the Lord)





The second song in the medley, “What Child Is This?” is a Christmas carol with lyrics written by William Chatterton Dix (1837 – 1898) in 1865 and set to the tune of “Greensleeves”, a traditional English folk song, in 1871. Although written in Great Britain, the carol today is more popular in the United States than its country of origin. The context of the carol centers around the adoration of the shepherds who visit during the nativity of Jesus. The questions posed in the lyrics reflect what the shepherds were possibly pondering to themselves when they encountered Jesus, with the rest of the carol providing a response to their questions.


Of course, our band arrangement actually quotes “Greensleeves”, a traditional English folk song, originally a broadside ballad by the name “A Newe Northen Dittye of ye Ladye Greene Sleves”. It was registered by Richard Jones at the London Stationers' Company in September 1580, and the tune is found in several late 16th-century and early 17th-century sources, such as Ballet's MS Lute Book and Het Luitboek van Thysius, as well as various manuscripts preserved in the Seeley Historical Library in the University of Cambridge.


“Coventry Carol”, the third song in the medley, is an English Christmas carol dating from the 16th century. The carol was traditionally performed in Coventry in England as part of a mystery play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Christmas story from chapter two in the Gospel of Matthew: the carol itself refers to the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod ordered all male infants under the age of two in Bethlehem to be killed, and takes the form of a lullaby sung by mothers of the doomed children.




The final song of the medley is “Somerset Wassail”. Wassail is a beverage made from hot mulled cider, ale, or wine and spices, drunk traditionally as an integral part of wassailing, an ancient English Yuletide drinking ritual and salutation either involved in door-to-door charity-giving or used to ensure a good harvest the following year.





By no means the only Wassail song to have been collected in Somerset (a county in South West England) once included in the Oxford Book of Carols, this tune became forevermore the “Somerset Wassail” (also titled the “Gloucestershire Wassail”). The notes in the book say that the song was noted by Cecil Sharp (1859 – 1924) “about twenty years ago” (September 1903 in fact) from the Drayton Wassailers in Somerset. Actually he collected several other versions in the county where the words included either the verse about a farmer who didn’t know how to look after his cow (more cider is the answer!) and/or the verse about the “Girt Dog of Langport”.





Arranger John Moss (1948-2010) was active nationwide as a composer, arranger, and orchestrator in a wide variety of musical styles and formats. As a composer, he had an extensive background creating original music for documentary, educational, and promotional films. As an arranger, he provided music for many live large-scale musical revues and production shows. John created the arrangements for Speak Low, a CD featuring Las Vegas trombonist John Haig with a 46-piece studio orchestra.


John's educational background included undergraduate study in instrumental music at Central Michigan University and graduate work in theory and composition at Michigan State University. He taught at both public school (band and choir) and university (theory) levels in Michigan. John's music is a major contribution to the band and orchestra catalog of educational music publisher Hal Leonard Corporation and he has several hundred published works to his credit.


He also served as arranger for the Disney educational project “Magic Music Days”, where young performing musicians are introduced to the film scoring/recording process. He accepted numerous school band and orchestra commissions, and enjoyed writing for the Detroit Symphony Pops, the Canadian Brass, and the Detroit Chamber Winds. In 2004, John and three fellow orchestrators transcribed approximately 90 minutes of orchestral music by film composer John Williams for a Kennedy Center concert featuring the United States Marine Band, with Mr. Williams conducting.


The music for An Olde Christmas Christmas was provided for the band

by Jack and Kathy Datin.



Contact info@gatewayconcertband.org for more information

The Gateway Concert Band
718 Griffin Avenue, PMB 12
Enumclaw, WA 98022



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