Drive The Cold Winter Away: A Song History

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"To Drive the Cold Winter Away" takes its name from the refrain of a Christmas broadside, "A pleasant Countrey new Ditty: Merrily shewing how To driue the cold Winter away," which was to be sung to the tune "When Phoebus did rest" and carries the imprint "Printed at London for H. G."[1] The English Broadside Ballad Archive tentatively dates the copy in Samuel Pepys's collection to about 1625 and places the Roxburghe copy, now in the British Library, somewhere between 1601 and 1640[1][2]. William Chappell, who cited both copies, identified "H. G." as Henry Gosson and characterised the ballad as a celebration of Christmas[3]. The Oxford Book of Carols later printed it as "The Praise of Christmas" and credited its first two verses to Thomas D'Urfey; the Traditional Ballad Index doubts that attribution, since the song was already in the Pepys collection before D'Urfey printed those stanzas[4].

Hand-colored lithograph after George Henry Durrie of a snowy farmyard with a house, barns, haystacks and bare trees

George Henry Durrie, The Farmer’s Home – Winter, hand-colored lithograph, 1863. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). An American winter scene, shown for its season; it has no connection to the song.

The melody appears under the same title in John Playford's first English Dancing Master of 1651, and an index of early dance sources finds it in every later edition through the eighteenth, of 1728, as well as in Walsh's country-dance collections of 1718, 1731 and 1754[5]. Chappell and the Traditional Tune Archive also note it in Playford's Musick's Delight on the Cithren (1666) and in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy[3][6]. Chappell grouped the tune with music of Elizabeth's reign and counted the song among those parodied in Andro Hart's Scottish Compendium of Godly Songs[3]; the Tune Archive cautions that his case for a sixteenth-century date rests on a melody in the 1567 Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs that resembles it only in part[6]. Chappell also lists other broadsides written to the tune, among them "Hang pinching" in the Roxburghe collection and "The father hath beguil'd the son" in the Pepys collection[3]. Playford's 1651 dance survives as well, and the Society of Folk Dance Historians suggests it works best in sets of four or five couples[7].

The Tune Archive gives the tune in D minor, and notes that editors have set out its form in different ways[6]. The Druids, who recorded it on their 1972 Argo album Pastime With Good Company, said in their sleeve note that the song came to them from Chappell's Popular Music of the Olden Time[8]. John Roberts, Tony Barrand and friends sang it as "The Praise of Christmas" on The Second Nowell (1981), taking it from the Oxford Book of Carols, and later versions listed by Mainly Norfolk include the York Waits' Old Christmas Return'd (1992), Kate Rusby's "Cold Winter" on The Frost Is All Over (2015) and Jackie Oates and John Spiers' A Midwinter's Night (2024)[8]. Robin Williamson recorded it on Winter's Turning for Flying Fish in 1986[6].

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Sources

  1. UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive: "EBBA 20083: A pleasant Countrey new Ditty: Merrily shewing how To driue the cold Winter away" (Pepys Ballads 1.186-187).
  2. UCSB English Broadside Ballad Archive: "EBBA 30024: A pleasant Countrey new Ditty: Merrily shewing how To driue the cold Winter away" (British Library, Roxburghe 1.24-25).
  3. Internet Archive: William Chappell, "Popular Music of the Olden Time," vol. 1, pp. 193-195.
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Drive the Cold Winter Away (In Praise of Christmas)".
  5. Country Dance and Song Society: "Early American Secular Music and Its European Sources, 1589-1839: Incipit Index: DRI".
  6. Traditional Tune Archive: "Drive the Cold Winter Away".
  7. Society of Folk Dance Historians: "Drive the Cold Winter Away".
  8. Mainly Norfolk: "Drive the Cold Winter Away / All Hail to the Days / In Praise of Christmas".