"Masters in This Hall" (alternative title:"Nowell, Sing We Clear") is aChristmas carol with words written around 1860 by the English poet and artistWilliam Morris to an old French dance tune. The carol is moderately popular around the world but has not entered the canon of most popular carols.
The French composerMarin Marais composed the tune as a dance for his operaAlcyone of 1706, with the titleMarche pour les Matelots.[1][2]
The tune was subsequently included inRaoul Auger Feuillet's 1706Recueil de contredanse along with a longwaysproper dance,La Matelotte, which Feuillet had himself written to go with the tune.[3]
In 1710John Essex (d. 1744) published an English translation of Feuillet's work called,For the Further Improvement of Dancing, in which the dance is given asThe Female Saylor.[3]
The words were written around 1860 while William Morris, then 26, was working as an apprentice in the office of the architect,Edmund Street, presumably under the persuasion of his fellow students who at that time had a taste forpart-song.[4]
The architect and musicianEdmund Sedding had at one point also been in the office of G. E. Street and he had discovered the tune at a meeting with the organist atChartres Cathedral.[5] It was included in Sedding's collection ofNine Antient and Goodly Carols for the Merry Tide of Christmas (1860). In 1884 the poetAlgernon Charles Swinburne described this carol as "one of the co-equal three finest ... in the language." According to Swinburne, the carol was also included, at his suggestion, in the publisherArthur Bullen'sA Christmas Garland: Carols and Poems from the Fifteenth Century to the Present (1885).[6]
Gustav Holst incorporated the carol into his workThree Carols (1916–17) along with "Christmas Song: On this Day" and "I Saw Three Ships". Holst wrote theThree Carols for amateurs singing in hisThaxted festivals. The carols are all forunison choir with orchestral or organ accompaniment.[7]
"Masters in This Hall" is said to have a sixteenth-century feel, harking back to a simpler society, in line with Morris's ownromanticism.[5] It also has elements of Morris'ssocialist beliefs, with the poor bringing news of Christ's birth to the "Masters in this Hall" and a warning to the proud.[8]
The image of raising up the poor and casting down the proud is also contained in the song of theVirgin Mary, often referred to as theMagnificat, sung upon the occasion of her visit toSaint Elizabeth, a relative of hers and the mother ofJohn the Baptist, that is referenced inLuke 1:51.
In Morris's original version there are twelve verses but today only four or five are sung.[3]
The carol describes a poor man, emphasised by his rural dialect, drawing his master's attention to the birth of Christ by describing how he had met shepherds travelling to Bethlehem in solemn mood where, joining them, he had seen the Christ child in his mother's arms. The chorus repeats how the birth of Christ has raised up the poor and cast down the proud.[3]
Masters in this Hall,
Hear ye news to-day
Brought from over sea,
And ever I you pray:
Chorus
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we clear!
Holpen are all folk on earth,
Born is God's son so dear:
Nowell! Nowell! Nowell!
Nowell, sing we loud!
God to-day hath poor folk raised
And cast a-down the proud.[9]— Stanza 1 &Chorus