> Folk Music > Songs > Carol for New Year’s Day

Carol for New Year’s Day / Carol for the New Year

[ Roud - ; trad.

John Roberts, Tony Barrand, Fred Breunig and Steve Woodruff sang the Carol for New Year’s Day in 1985 on their Front Hall album Nowell Sing We Clear Vol. 3. This track was also include in 1989 on their Front Hall anthology The Best of Nowell Sing We Clear 1975-1986.

Nowell Sing We Clear recorded this again with the slightly changed title Carol for the New Year for their 1995 CD Hail Smiling Morn!. This track was also included in 2006 on the Free Reed anthology Midwinter. They noted on their album:

Old Christmas Return’d (or Hospitality Reviv’d) and Carol for the New Year are taken from William Chappell’s invaluable chronological study Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859, reprinted by Dover Publications, Inc., 1965).

Lyrics

Nowell Sing We Clear sing Carol for the New Year

The old year now away is fled, the new year it is entered,
Then let us now our sins downtread, and joyfully all appear;
Let’s merry be this holiday, and let us run with sport and play,
Hang sorrow, let’s cast care away—God send us a Happy New Year.

And now with new year’s gifts, each friend unto each other they do send;
God grant we may our lives amend, so that the truth may appear.
Now like the snake cast off your skin of evil thoughts and wicked sin,
And to amend this new year begin—God send us a Happy New Year.

And now let all the company in friendly manner all agree,
For we are here welcome, all may see, unto this jolly good cheer.
I thank my master and my dame, the which are founders of the same,
To eat and drink now is no shame—God send us a Happy New Year.

Come lads and lasses, everyone, Jack, Tom, Dick, Beth, Mary and Joan,
We’ll cut the meat unto the bone, for welcome you need not fear.
And here for good liquor we shall not lack, it will whet my brain and strengthen my back,
This jolly good cheer must not go to wrack—God send us a Happy New Year.

Come, give us more liquor when I do call, I’ll drink to each one in this hall,
I hope that so loud I must not bawl, but unto me lend an ear.
Good fortune to my master send, and to my dame, which is our friend,
God bless us all, and so I end—God send us a Happy New Year.