Lyrics
Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Lully, lullay, Thou little tiny Child,
By, by, lully, lullay.
O sisters too, how may we do,
For to preserve this day;
This poor youngling for whom we do sing,
By, by, lully, lullay?
Herod the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day;
His men of might, in his own sight,
All young children to slay.
That woe is me, poor Child for Thee,
And ever mourn and say;
For Thy parting neither say nor sing,
By, by, lully, lullay.
Public domain hymn text (16th century). Traditional English carol, author unknown.
The Story Behind the Hymn
The Coventry Carol survives from the Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, one of a series of mystery plays performed by trade guilds in the English city of Coventry, dramatizing biblical stories for public audiences in the streets during the late medieval and early Tudor periods.
The play containing this carol dramatized the Massacre of the Innocents, Matthew 2's account of King Herod ordering the killing of young children in and around Bethlehem after learning of Jesus's birth, and the carol itself is sung by the mothers of Bethlehem as a lullaby and lament combined.
Its haunting refrain, 'lully, lullay,' is an old lullaby phrase used to soothe a child to sleep, but here it is sung with the full knowledge that the children being addressed are about to be killed, giving an ordinary, tender phrase a devastating double meaning.
Unlike almost every other carol still sung at Christmas, this one contains no joy, no announcement of good news, and no angels; it exists entirely within the grief of Bethlehem's mothers, making it one of the only widely performed Christmas songs written from the perspective of the Nativity story's collateral victims rather than its central figures.
The surviving text and melody date to the mid-sixteenth century, with the earliest known manuscript copy from 1591, though the pageant itself is believed to be considerably older, and the play text was destroyed along with most of Coventry's guild records in later centuries, leaving the carol as one of the play's only substantial surviving fragments.
Its minor-key melody, unusual among carols, deepens its sorrowful character, and the carol has remained a fixture of English cathedral and choral Christmas services, particularly Lessons and Carols services, where its darker tone is often placed deliberately alongside more joyful carols.
That willingness to let Christmas include grief as well as joy, rather than resolving every carol into celebration, is part of what has kept the Coventry Carol in continuous use for well over four centuries, offering a place within the Christmas season for loss that other carols do not make room for.
