Patrick Comerford
There are ten days to go to Christmas, and yesterday was the Third Sunday of Advent (Advent III, 14 December 2025) or Gaudete Sunday.
At noon each day this Advent, I am offering one image as part of my ‘Advent Calendar’ for 2025, and one Advent or Christmas carol, hymn or song.
My image for my Advent Calendar today is the four-light east window in the south aisle of Saint Laurence’s Church in Winslow, Buckinghamshire, which I visited once again at the weekend. This window by Heaton Butler & Bayne was made in 1908 and shows the Nativity, with the inscription: ‘And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1: 14).
For an Avent carol today I have chosen is ‘This is the Truth Sent from Above,’ or the Herefordshire Christmas Carol, one of several folk tunes preserved and popularised by Ralph Vaughan-Williams.
In 1909, he transcribed it from Ella Mary Leather, a collector of Herefordshire folk music, who had herself received it from a Mr W Jenkins, a folk singer from King’s Pyon.
This English folk carol was collected in the early 20th century by many English folk song collectors in Shropshire and Herefordshire and a number of variations on the tune exist, although the texts remains broadly similar.
Cecil Sharp collected an eight stanza version of the carol from Seth Vandrell and Samuel Bradley of Donninglon Wood in Shropshire, although Sharp notes that a longer version existed in a locally-printed carol book.
Vaughan Williams collected a different, Dorian mode version of the carol at King’s Pyon, Herefordshire, in July 1909 from Ella Mary Leather, a folk singer who learned the carol through the oral tradition. This version, which contains only four stanzas, is sometimes known as the Herefordshire Carol.
Vaughan Williams first published the melody in the Folk-Song Society Journal in 1909, but he credited it as being sung by a Mr W Jenkins of King’s Pyon.
Vaughan Williams later used the carol to open his Fantasia on Christmas Carols in 1912.Gerald Finzi, with permission from Vaughan Williams and Ella Leather, also used the melody as the basis of his 1925 choral work The Brightness of This Day, substituting the text for a poem by George Herbert.
The descant is by Sir Thomas Armstrong (1898-1994), who studied at the Royal College of Music with Gustav Holst and Vaughan Williams, who became a life-long friend. Later, he was the organist of Exeter Cathedral, the organist of Christ Church, Oxford, and the Principal of the Royal Academy of Music.
The text of this carol recalls the fall from grace of Adam, and the promise of redemption by Jesus. However, in almost all printed editions, several of the verses are missing. The missing text leads to a presumably unintended faux pas, with the second verse ending ‘Woman was made with man to dwell,’ and the next verse starting ‘Thus we were heirs to endless woes.’
Of course, man’s woes do not stem simply from dwelling with woman. The full version reads:
This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the God of love:
Therefore don’t turn me from your door,
But hearken all, both rich and poor.
The first thing which I do relate
Is that God did man create,
The next thing which to you I’ll tell,
Woman was made with man to dwell.
Then, after this, ’twas God’s own choice
To place them both in Paradise,
There to remain, from evil free,
Except they ate of such a tree.
But they did eat, which was a sin,
And thus their ruin did begin.
Ruined themselves, both you and me,
And all of their posterity.
Thus we were heirs to endless woes,
Till God the Lord did interpose,
And so a promise soon did run,
That he would redeem us by his Son.
And at this season of the year
Our blest Redeemer did appear,
Here he did live, and here did preach,
and many thousands he did teach.
Thus he in love to us behaved,
To show us how we must be saved;
And if you want to know the way,
Be pleased to hear what he did say:
‘Go preach the Gospel,’ now he said,
‘To all the nations that are made!
And he that does believe on me,
From all his sins I'll set him free.’
O seek! O seek of God above
That saving faith that works by love!
And, if he’s pleased to grant thee this,
Thou ’rt sure to have eternal bliss.
God grant to all within this place
True saving faith, that special grace
Which to his people doth belong:
And thus I close my Christmas song.
