+The Text+ is taken from Sandys' _Christmas Carols_, where it is printed
from a broadside. The only alterations, in which I have followed
Professor Child, are the obvious correction of 'east' for 'west' (8.1),
and the insertion of one word in 16.2, where Child says 'perhaps a
preposition has been dropped.'
+The Story+ is compounded of popular legends connected with the life and
miracles of Christ. For the miracle of the cock, see _Saint Stephen and
King Herod_. The adoration of the beasts is derived from the _Historia
de Nativitate Mariæ_, and is repeated in many legends of the infancy of
Christ, but is not sufficiently remarkable in itself to be popular in
carols. The origin of the miracle of the harvest is unknown, though in a
Breton ballad it forms one of the class known as the miracles of the
Virgin (cp. _Brown Robyn's Confession_). Swedish, Provençal, Catalan,
Wendish, and Belgian folk-tales record similar legends.
It is much to be regretted that this ballad, which from internal
evidence (_e.g._ the use of the word 'renne,' 1.2) is to be attributed
to an early age, should have become so incoherent and corrupted by oral
tradition. No manuscript or printed copy is known earlier than about
1750, when it occurs in broadside form. The very word 'Carnal' has
lapsed from the dictionaries, though somewhere it may survive in speech.
Stanza 17 is obviously out of place; one may suspect gaps on either
side, for surely more beasts than the 'lovely lion' were enumerated, and
a new section begins at stanza 18.