Good King Wenceslas

with TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM

I. Background

Wenceslas (Václav) was a duke of Bohemia who was assassinated in 935, and after his death was “promoted” to kingly status by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I (912–973). Wenceslas was legendary for his charitable deeds. According to the mid-thirteenth century Legend of Saint Wenceslas (Oriente iam sole), the duke “visited the sick, clothed the naked, received wayfarers in his home, and fed the hungry,” and, “rising during the night, he would carry wood on his shoulders and place it at the doors of the poor.”[1] Because of his charity, his promotion of Christianity, and the miracles that were said to occur after his death, he was quickly recognized as a saint.

The background material for the carol by John Mason Neale (1818–1866) originated in a poem by the Czech author Václav Alois Svoboda (1791–1849), which was published in Prague in 1847 under the title “Sanct Wenceslaw und Podiwin. Legende in böhmischer, teutscher und lateinischer Sprache” (“Saint Wenceslas and Podiwin. Legend in Bohemian, German, and Latin languages”). The content of Svoboda’s work was summarized by the Czech scholar Joseph Kalousek: 

I. On a clear winter night, Prince Wenceslas got up as usual to pray, to which he was bound by his promise, and looked out of the castle window at the countryside and the city of Prague, thought of the poor people living in the huts, and resolved to go and give them help. II. He wakes up his servant Podivin to go with him and help carry food and firewood. Ignoring the storm of the night (in which the moon and the stars gaze upon us), they go from house to house, and lay wood on the threshold of the needy, and what else they need, both Christians and pagans. When their walk back and forth is repeated several times, Podivin shivers with cold. Wenceslas feels sorry for him, but at the same time he wants to continue to distribute to the poor; wherefore he shall pray unto God for the servant, and shall counsel him to walk in his footsteps; which, when Podivin did, his feet were warm. Moral Teaching: Whoever fulfills the law of Christian love, God gives him miraculous power; for this is praised by God.[2]

Neale must have obtained a copy of Svoboda’s poem soon after it was published, for some two years later he included a children’s story about Wenceslas, apparently based on Svoboda’s work, in his Deeds of Faith: Stories for Children from Church History (1850). The following extracts demonstrate the close relationship between the children’s story and the content of Svoboda’s poem, though the name of the servant was changed from Podivin to Otto.

The ground sloped down from the castle towards the forest. Here and there on the side of the hill, a few bushes, gray with moss, broke the unvaried sheet of white. And, as the King [Wenceslas] turned his eyes in that direction, a poor man—and the moonshine was bright enough to show his misery and his rags—came up to these bushes, and seemed to pull somewhat from them.

. . .

“This way, good Otto,” said the King. “You see that poor man on the hill side. Step down to him and learn who he is, and where he dwells, and what he is doing; and bring me word again.”

Otto went forth on his errand, and the King watched him down the hill. . . .

“Well, and who is it?” inquired King Wenceslaus.

“My liege,” said Otto, “it is Rudolph the swineherd, he that lives down by the Brunweiss. Fire he has none, nor food neither: and he was gathering a few sticks where he might find them, lest, as he says, all his family perish with cold. It is a most bitter night, sire.”

“. . . Go to the ewery, Otto, and fetch some provisions, of the best; and then come forth, and meet me at the wood-stacks by S. Mary’s Chapel.”

. . .

But in the midst of that freezing night, the King of Bohemia went forth. . . . On his shoulder he bore a heap of logs for the swineherd’s fire; and stepped briskly on, while Otto followed with the provisions. . . .

. . . But when they came forth on the white, bleak moor, his [Otto’s] courage failed.

“My liege,” he said, “I cannot go on. The wind freezes my very blood. Pray you, let us return.”

. . .

“Follow me on still,” said S. Wenceslaus. “Only tread in my footsteps, and you will proceed more easily.”

The servant knew that his master spoke not at random. He carefully looked for the footsteps of the King: he set his own feet in the print of his Lord’s feet.

And so great was the virtue of this Saint of the Most High, such was the fire of love that was kindled in him, that, as he trod in those steps, Otto gained life and heat. He felt not the wind; he heeded not the frost; the footprints glowed as with a holy fire, and zealously he followed the King on his errand of mercy.[3]

II. The Carol: Text

Neale used the material from the story above to write the five stanzas of “Good King Wenceslas looked out,” though in the latter, he transferred the timing of the tale from Advent to St. Stephen’s Day (December 26) and omitted the name of the servant in favor of the more generic “page.” Neale’s poem was first published in a collection of twelve Carols for Christmas-tide (London: J. Alfred Novello, 1853) in open score, co-edited by Thomas Helmore (1811–1890). The following year, Neale and Helmore reissued Carols for Christmas-tide in a closed-score edition as The Condensed Vocal Parts to the Carols for Christmas-tide (London: J. Alfred Novello, 1854).

III. Textual Assessment

The medieval legends about Wenceslas, the poem by Svoboda, the story by Neale, and the latter’s carol text are, of course, all apocryphal accounts of a non-biblical (though historically real) figure. For that reason, Neale’s lyrics have been published infrequently in hymnals, though they often appear in collections designed specifically for Christmas or in choral arrangements. The words of the carol have also been characterized as “horrible,” and “have even received negative epithets such as ‘doggerel.’”[7] The editor of the Penguin Book of Latin Verse (1962), in describing the prevalence of this textual meter in Latin poetry, offered a special mention of “Good King Wenceslas” as “that most hackneyed of all Christmas carols,”[8] even though Neale’s text has no basis in Latin. British hymnal editor Percy Dearmer (1867–1936) once decried Neale’s provision of a Christmas text for a tune that was originally associated with spring.[9]

While care must obviously be taken with a song like this, being based on legend, the text does contain a scriptural message of Christian charity and responsibility for those who are less fortunate, no matter how difficult the circumstances may be, as well as the teaching of these duties to those who are younger or weaker in the faith. In the background can be heard Jesus’ contrast of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:32–46; an even more apt comparison is with James 2:15–17, especially in its use of the same elements of need as in the carol—food and warmth.

If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled,” notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone (KJV).

Neale’s text is in the form of a ballad, and, if it is not great literature, its characterization as “horrible” and “doggerel” is surely undeserved, since—like most ballads—it is in a story-telling idiom. Also, as with the essay by Neale on which it is based, the song was probably intended to appeal primarily to children and thus is written in simple terms. As for the link with TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM, whatever may be the perceived dissonance of joining a Christmas text with a spring carol tune, the cheery nature of the melody certainly fits the thrust of “Good King Wenceslas.” Together, the words and music paint a vivid picture of the saintly “king,” making the song a staple of the Christmas season. So long as the story is understood to be no more than it claims to be—a pious and instructive fable with a moral point—the piece can find an appropriate place as a reminder that those “who now will bless the poor, / Shall yourselves find blessing.”

IV. The Carol: Tune

The tune employed by Neale and Helmore was TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM, a bar-form (AAB) melody, first printed in Theodoric Petri’s Piæ Cantiones Ecclesiasticæ et Schola Veterum Episcoporum (Greifswald: Augustini Ferberi, 1582), a collection of 74 Latin songs from the medieval tradition that were popular in Scandinavia.[4] Neale and Helmore borrowed the tune directly from Piæ Cantiones, as they are known to have had access to a copy.[5] TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM was the last tune in the book and was set to a four-stanza text about spring (Fig. 2). The first stanza and a literal translation of it are given below. For a full metrical translation, see The Oxford Book of Carols (1928), no. 99.[6]

This text-tune pairing was later included in Christmas Carols New and Old, First Series (1868), edited by John Stainer (1840–1901) and Henry Bramley, using an arrangement by Stainer (Fig. 3). Stainer’s arrangement has been repeated in other collections.

Starting in 1930, in The Hymnary of the United Church of Canada (1930), TEMPUS ADEST FLORIDUM has also been closely linked with the carol “Gentle Mary laid her child,” and the harmonization there by Ernest C. MacMillan (1893–1973), has been repeated in other collections.

by DAVID W. MUSIC
for Hymnology Archive
7 May 2024

Footnotes:

1. “The Legend of Saint Wenceslas,” translated in Marvin Kantor, The Origins of Christianity in Bohemia: Sources and Commentary (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1990), p. 220. The same source also discusses Wenceslas’s servant Podiven (Podivin), of whom more below (pp. 222, 242–244).

2. J. Kalousek, “Ještě dodavek o anglické pisni: ‘Dobrý král Václav,’” Časopis Musea Království Českého, vol. 74, no. 5 (1900), p. 558.

3. Quoted from J.M. Neale, Deeds of Faith: Stories for Children from Church History (London: John and Charles Mozley, and Joseph Masters, 1850 [preface dated “Michaelmas Eve, 1849,” i.e., 28 September]), pp. 93–98. In the story, Neale gave the name of the saint-king as Wenceslaus but in the carol his name is spelled Wenceslas.

4. For more information about Piæ Cantiones, see DIVINUM MYSTERIUM.

5. G.R. Woodward, Piae Cantiones (1910), p. xviii–xix: HathiTrust; Woodward gave the chain of possession from G.J.R. Gordon, who brought it to England, to J.M. Neale, to Thomas Helmore, to son Arthur Helmore, to the Plainsong and Medieval Music Society of London.

6. “Spring has now unwrapped the flowers,” The Oxford Book of Carols, Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw, eds. (Oxford: University Press, 1928), no. 99.

7. William Studwell, The Christmas Carol Reader (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995), pp. 118, 146.

8. Frederick Brittain, Penguin Book of Latin Verse (NY: Penguin Books, 1962), p. lx.

9. Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw, The Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford: University Press, 1928), p. 207.

Related Resources:

Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw, eds., The Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford: University Press, 1928), no. 99.

Andrew Parrott & Hugh Keyte, eds., The New Oxford Book of Carols (Oxford: University Press, 1992), no. 97.

“Good King Wenceslas looked out,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: CDH

“Good King Wenceslas,” Hymnary.org