O Generous One! Origin of Carol of the Bells
Dec. 15th, 2025 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soniaO Generous One by Timothy Snyder, a Substack link with more history of Ukraine then and now. Excerpt below.
Excerpt from the article:
“Carol of the Bells” stands out because it arises from a different tradition: that of Ukrainian folk songs, and in particular ancient Ukrainian folk songs welcoming the new year, summoning the forces of nature to meet human labor and bring prosperity. These are called shchedrivky, “carols of cheer” or, a bit more literally, songs to the generous one. The word “magic” is used a good deal around Christmas; this song has its origins in rituals that were indeed magical. And perhaps this is exactly why it reaches us.
Before the advent of Christianity, and for that matter for centuries afterwards, these songs orchestrated and encounter with the forces that could bring what was sought, which was the bounty of spring after the cold of winter. The pagan new year began, reasonably, in February or March, with the arrival of the swallows or the equinox; the carols of cheer were pushed back towards January or December 31st by Christianity -- and one in particular was pushed deep into December by Americans, transformed into a Christmas carol.
The melody that I heard in St. Paul’s Cathedral in Toronto as “Carol of the Bells” is a Ukrainian folk song. It was arranged as “Shchedryk” by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in the middle of the First World War, likely on the basis of a folk song from the Ukrainian region of Podilia. The four ancient guiding notes of the melody sound like the dripping of icicles joined by the singing of birds. Leontovych’s lyrics capture the earthy directness and incantatory purpose of the ancient songs. My English translation is no doubt inadequate and a little free -- in Ukrainian, for example, a dark-browed woman is by definition a beautiful woman, and so I have rendered her.
( Ukrainian text and English translation )
Excerpt from the article:
“Carol of the Bells” stands out because it arises from a different tradition: that of Ukrainian folk songs, and in particular ancient Ukrainian folk songs welcoming the new year, summoning the forces of nature to meet human labor and bring prosperity. These are called shchedrivky, “carols of cheer” or, a bit more literally, songs to the generous one. The word “magic” is used a good deal around Christmas; this song has its origins in rituals that were indeed magical. And perhaps this is exactly why it reaches us.
Before the advent of Christianity, and for that matter for centuries afterwards, these songs orchestrated and encounter with the forces that could bring what was sought, which was the bounty of spring after the cold of winter. The pagan new year began, reasonably, in February or March, with the arrival of the swallows or the equinox; the carols of cheer were pushed back towards January or December 31st by Christianity -- and one in particular was pushed deep into December by Americans, transformed into a Christmas carol.
The melody that I heard in St. Paul’s Cathedral in Toronto as “Carol of the Bells” is a Ukrainian folk song. It was arranged as “Shchedryk” by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in the middle of the First World War, likely on the basis of a folk song from the Ukrainian region of Podilia. The four ancient guiding notes of the melody sound like the dripping of icicles joined by the singing of birds. Leontovych’s lyrics capture the earthy directness and incantatory purpose of the ancient songs. My English translation is no doubt inadequate and a little free -- in Ukrainian, for example, a dark-browed woman is by definition a beautiful woman, and so I have rendered her.
( Ukrainian text and English translation )
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