Hither - as in "Come hither" or "Hither page, and stand by me" - To or toward this place
Thither - a bit rare than hither - "When we bear them thither" - To or toward that place - see the difference.
Whither - " Pray, wither sailed those ships all three" - To which place - getting the pattern now?
Oblations - "We to the Christ-child, bring our hearts' oblations" - A thing presented or offered to God or a god - we are offering Jesus our hearts
Wassail/wassailing - "Here we come a-wassailing, among the leaves so green" or "And to you, your wassail too" - the practice of going round to your neighbours and toasting them good health and possibly begging for scraps.
Troll - "Troll the ancient Yule tide carol" - not the internet kind. To sing loudly, freely or in a carefree way.
Cloven - "Still through the cloven skies they come," - split or divided (like the Devil's hooves)
Lo - "For lo! the days are hastening on" - Look, see, behold
Exultation - "Sing in exultation" - The act of exulting; lively joy at success or victory, or at any advantage gained; rapturous delight; triumph
And here's a picture of us all caroling at my parent's house, with all our friends and relations - it's a yearly tradition.
P.S. If I get to 50 readers, I'm going to do something super special. If you can't wait, you could create 2 phony blogger accounts and give me a bump. *wink*
4 comments:
Isn't it funny how you may sing these words for years without even know what some of them mean.I knew what a lot of those mean but there were a few i only had a vague or confused notion of so thanks for the informative post :)
When i was a child we always went to midnight mass & sang carols & sometimes we would all go out as a congregation & sing door to door but that was a long time ago.I remember our priest liked us to sing happy birthday to Jesus :D
What a great tradition! I personally hardly ever understand the words in songs but I loved seeing them with their definitions in this post
PS - I would have sworn on my life that it was Here we come a sailing
:D
Here we come a-sailing works to although it's a little hard to sail in a forest
I really loved this post. It's so funny how we just accept music and don't really READ what we're saying!
Many is the time that I have hummed the tunes and had no idea what the title of a song is.
(Off to create an alternate identity because I want to see what 50 followers will bring forth. Oh, you were just kidding? Shoot.)
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