TALLY-HO CAROLS

1 THE HOLLY AND THE IVY / SANS DAY CAROL (ST DAY CAROL)

The iconic celebration of a winter feast with its references to the running of the deer. Villagers in Cornwall’s St Day are protective of its sister carol, which they believe goes back centuries, although only collected in the 20th century.

2 GOOD KING WENCESLAS

Taking place on Boxing Day, this carol from 1853 has come to sum up the way a whole community joins together to support as well as celebrate at Christmas time.

3 THE BOAR’S HEAD CAROL

Christmas and boar-hunting have always gone together. In the late 14th century, the winter tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight revolves around a deer and boar hunt. Also dating from the Middle Ages, The Boar’s Head Carol describes the traditional Christmas Boar’s Head Feast held at Queen’s College, Oxford, since 1340.

4 GOD REST YE MERRY GENTLEMEN

Although this carol has come to epitomise the Victorian Christmas as created by Charles Dickens in A Christmas Carol, its earliest version appears in a manuscript dating from the 1650s. With its thumping chorus, it is a great favourite for hunt carols.

5 DECK THE HALLS

A fairly recent carol from the 19th century, though with a much older melody, this is popular with American hunts in West Virginia.

6 THE SUSSEX CAROL

Originally published by Bishop Wadding in his Small Garland of Pious and Godly Songs in 1684, the version giving the carol its name was collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams from Harriet Verrall of Horsham, Sussex, in 1919.

7 A CAROL OF HUNTING

Printed by early Fleet Street newsman Wynkyn de Worde, in Christmasse Carolles Newly Enprinted (London in the fletestrete at the sygne of the sonne, 1521) and then collected by Edith Rickert in Ancient English Christmas Carols: 1400-1700 (London, Chatto & Windus, 1914), this very early carol tells a tale of deer hunting.

8 THE GLOUCESTERSHIRE WASSAIL

Though first published in the Oxford Book of Carols in 1928, the comical story of local farmers probably dates back to the Middle Ages.

9 COME LISTEN AWHILE

Collected by Annie Cairns in The Little Book of Hunting Songs and Christmas Carols, this isn’t strictly a carol but documents the oldest recorded foxhunt, the Charlton Hunt, begun by the Duke of Monmouth in 1675. Still sung today at the Charlton Hunt Club dinner.

10 WE WISH YOU A MERRY CHRISTMAS

A favourite carol everywhere for everyone – hunts included.