Deck the Halls

In early October 2020 I started thinking about playing holiday music on my mountain dulcimer. It was a bit of an early start, but 2020 was a rough year, and I needed something to look forward to. I thought I’d give the Christmas classic “Deck the Halls” a try. I wanted to find an old version to play that I knew was in the public domain to avoid copyright violations, so I started looking into the history of the song. I had no idea the adventure I was beginning.

Right away it was clear that “Deck the Halls” evolved from an earlier Welsh song called “Nos Galan.” In Welsh, nos means night, and galan means first day, so nos galan translates to New Year’s Eve. Galan can also be written with the “g” transmuted to a “c,” calan. This is related the English words “call” and “calendar,” both stemming from the Latin “calendae/kalendae,” meaning the first day of the month. “Calendae” comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *kele- meaning “to shout,” as Roman priests would proclaim the new moon as the start of the month. When the Celtic new year actually started is a matter of some debate, but whenever it was celebrated, this song seems to be related to the new year, which partly explains how it came to be associated with our modern winter holidays.

Looking for a tune called a variety of names, including:

Nos Galan,
Nos Calan,
Nos Galen,
Nos Calen,
New Year’s Eve,
New Year’s Night,
The Mountain Fires,
Fal lal la,
Favourite Welch Air,
A Piper O’er the Meadow Straying,
and sometimes even “Deck the Hall,”

I found myself careening down a hole filled with misinformation, missing pages, and mystery. I couldn’t let it go – I needed to get to the bottom of it. I wanted real answers and evidence, but every new discovery seemed to raise more questions than it answered. Now I’m sharing what I found to set the record straight.

SPOILERS:

We don’t see lyrics with “Deck the Hall” until 1862: Nos Galan. New Year’s Eve. – Welsh Melodies, With Welsh and English Poetry, arranged by John Thomas.
All the references to drinking were bowdlerized and replaced with the lyrics we know today when published in 1877: Deck the Hall with Boughs of Holly – “The Pennsylvania School Journal”. The final “fa la la” chorus is also altered to the form we are most familiar with today, but the B part is mutilated, with the chorus completely removed.
In 1917: Deck the Hall – Father Finn’s Carol Book, Father Finn restores the B part to make the song the one we recognize today as “Deck the Halls”.

I think this is the most comprehensive collection of “Nos Galan” and “Deck the Hall” variations ever compiled. I have traced the tune from the earliest known written record in 1752 all the way through modern versions. I keep finding new versions, though, so these pages are a work in progress.

In the pages below you’ll find links to and/or images of the originals. I also transcribed the melody from many sources into ABC notation and used a plugin to create modern notation with the ability to play back the arrangement. I hope this brings new life to the music.

You’ll learn about the history of Welsh music and the evolution of Welsh folk song collecting, and even a little music theory. And many other interesting facts along the way.

When I originally posted the article, everything (including some massive PDF files) were bogged down on one page. I broke everything up into several pages to keep things loading smoothly. Here is the index:

Part 1: 1700s

Part 2: 1800-1850

Part 3: 1850-1900

Part 4: 1900 – Present