Boar's Head Carol: A Song History

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The “Boar’s Head Carol” is among the oldest printed Christmas songs in English. Its standard text comes from Christmasse Carolles, printed in London’s Fleet Street by Wynkyn de Worde in 1521. Only one leaf of the book survives, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and no other copy has been found.[1][2] The song was probably not new in 1521: several distinct boar’s-head carols survive in early manuscripts and prints, some from the fifteenth century, and they treat the head and the hunt in varied ways.[3][4]

Colored drawing of a crowded, merry feast where an old man in a paper crown raises his glass while others drink and play music

Jacob Jordaens, The King Drinks, red chalk with brush and colored inks and washes, ca. 1645–50. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). A festive feast, not the boar’s-head procession itself.

The carol is macaronic, setting English verses against a Latin refrain.[1][4] It appears in modern choral collections such as Carols for Choirs.[2] Folk-revival singers took it up as well: the Young Tradition recorded it, and Steeleye Span issued it as their 1977 Christmas single.[4]

The carol is closely tied to the Queen’s College, Oxford, where a boar’s head is still carried ceremonially into Hall at a feast shortly before Christmas, with the choir singing the carol.[4][5] The antiquary Anthony Wood described the college custom in 1660 and recorded the words then sung there.[3] College tradition explains the feast with a story: a student named John Copcot, reading Aristotle as he walked through Shotover, was charged by a boar and saved himself by thrusting the book down its throat. The college owns a portrait of Copcot, given to it in 1754, but the sources present the tale as legend.[3][6]

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Sources

  1. Hymns and Carols of Christmas: "The bores heed in hande bring I — de Worde, 1521".
  2. Hymnary.org: "The boar’s head in hand bear I".
  3. Hymns and Carols of Christmas: "Notes on the Boar’s Head Carols".
  4. Mainly Norfolk: "The Boar’s Head Carol (Roud 22229)".
  5. The Queen’s College, Oxford: "Boar’s Head Gaudy".
  6. Art UK: "Copcot, a Mediaeval Student of Queen’s".