December 13: "Past Three O'Clock"

Today is a milestone in the short history of this blog: as of this post, I've officially made it past the halfway mark in my list of obscure Christmas songs. It's the small victories that mean the most. I don't have any plans for running out of steam on these, but I am going to keep this one fairly brief, as there's not a ton to say about it. "Past Three O'Clock" is a nice, jolly, carol born out of that carol-manufacturing plant of jolly old England.

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The exact date of origin is a little unclear, as far as when the carol was written. It was for sure published in the 1924 collection A Cabridge Carol Book, co-edited by the same man who wrote the lyrics, George Ratcliffe Woodward. Woodward was also responsible for the more widely popular "Ding, Dong, Merrily on High," which I think bears some musical resemblance to "Past Three O'Clock." Both carols obviously predate the publishing date of said collection, but by how much is unknown. Since he was born in 1848 I like to imagine this being the product of the Victorian era, whose Christmases are forever preserved in miniature towns set up on coffee tables throughout the world, without a single outhouse or chamber pot in sight, I might add.

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But I digress. And I'm allowed to, it's my blog, but I promised to keep this brief. The refrain and the tune both date back to sometime in the mid-17th century. The name of the tune is "London Waits;" Woodward adapted the lyrics to fit it. Evidence of the refrain in the lyrics can be found in a 1665 poem, and are often re-quoted, in that the refrain is an adaptation of a nightwatchman's call at the top of the hour:

Past three o'clock,

And a cold frosty morning,

Past three o'clock,

Good morrow, masters all!

The rest of the lyrics are really fun to read, and follow the same format as the refrain, but there's upwards of 8 verses, so I'm not going to dig into them. Listen to the song, look up the lyrics for yourself if you want to, and enjoy!