December 6: "The Huron Carol"

The earliest moon of wintertime is not so round and fair

As was the ring of glory on the helpless infant there

The chiefs from far before him knelt with gifts of fox and beaver pelt

Jesus your king is born, Jesus is born, in excelsis gloria

So far every song and carol that I've presented has been one that I knew about before I started this blog. Today's entry breaks that cycle, in that I discovered it for myself when I started hunting for songs that I felt would fit the bill for this project of mine. As soon as I heard this one it went high on the list, and I knew that this was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I'm not above admitting that I'm really excited to share it here. If you clicked the link above you've already noted that this song is not in a language that the average person would recognize off the bat. The original version of "The Huron Carol" is written in Wyandot, the language of the Huron-Wendat tribes of modern Canada. Not only is today's carol one of the few you'll find written in any Native American language, it's date of origin, 1642, makes it the oldest carol known to have been written in North America.

Jean de Brebeuf, author of "The Huron Carol," was a French Jesuit priest and later missionary who was one of very few Europeans to live among the Huron/Wendat, much less evangelize them. Born in 1593 in Normandy, France, Brebeuf joined the "Society of Jesus" (Jesuits) when he was 24 and began studying for the priesthood and teaching at the College of Rouen. Three years into his studies he contracted tuberculosis and was given last rights and hastily ordained so that he could die a Jesuit priest. He recovered, however, and believing himself unworthy of the priesthood, he took it upon himself to travel to the newly-established city of Quebec, and from there to work as a missionary among the natives. His initial efforts were cut short by an English attack on Quebec in 1620, and after the city's surrender the protestant English ordered all the Jesuit missionaries to return to France. They returned just four years later, and for Brebeuf it was for good. Originally one of three priests who established the missionary Sainte-Marie among the Huron (on the eastern side of Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, in modern Ontario), he soon found himself the lone permanent European resident. He was a skilled linguist, and while the Huron were initially wary of him, he became fluent in their language and made the first serious effort to make an ethnographic record of their way of life. His efforts at converting them were slow, however: after 3 years of living permanently among them, he claimed just 14 converts. 

This was the reason that Brebeuf, through his knowledge of not only the Wyandot language, but also of their culture and traditions, made efforts to describe Christianity to them in terms they could understand. It's evident in the English translation of "The Huron Carol," (though admittedly that translation dates from the early 20th century and may not be all that true to the original Wyandot meanings). Fate also intervened to put some weight behind Brebeuf's teachings: by 1640 the Huron had been decimated by smallpox, and watching their loved ones die around them drove many more of them to convert. It didn't hurt that whites, like Brebeuf, having already been exposed to smallpox in Europe, appeared to be immune to it.

"Yeah, uh, no idea why everyone's sick all the time. Sending thoughts and prayers though, love you."

 By the time he penned his carol Brebeuf had no lack of spiritual pull among the Huron. However, at what should have been the height of his missionary work, Brebeuf broke his collar bone and was sent by his superior to recover in Quebec. That's where he wrote "The Huron Carol," intent on bringing it back to the Huron as a tool for relating Christian themes to them. Since Brebeuf was not in any way a musician, he took the French folk tune "Une Jeune Pucelle" as the music for his carol. The melody doesn't span a very wide range of pitches, and he considered it well suited to Huron instruments and vocal ranges. In the lyrics Brebeuf made parallels from the Nativity to Huron culture: shepherds became "hunters," the three kings became "chiefs from afar," the manger became "a lodge of broken bark." Brebeuf also included beaver pelt as one substitute for the gifts of the Magi. In the absence of the promised gold of the new world, the French had turned to trapping beaver to feed the ever-increasing fashion needs of Europe, and were becoming quite good at it. The fur trade was the reason that the French were invested in the conversion of natives to Catholicism: they needed them on their side to help find fresh trapping grounds.

The fur trade would ultimately be Brebeuf's doom. The Iroqouis, longtime enemies of the Huron-Wendat, grew resentful of their enemy's more favored position among the French trappers and traders. Emboldened by a large conquest-fueled populace and muskets acquired from the Dutch (enemies of the French), in 1648 the Irioqouis began a war of extermination against the Huron. Early the next spring they captured the town of Saint-Louis (near modern Victoria Harbour, Ontario) and with it Brebeuf and another Jesuit missionary, along with many Huron converts. All of them were tortured and eventually killed; Jean de Brebeuf died on March 16, 1649. Martyrdom was central to Jesuit beliefs, and most Jesuit missionaries in New France believed they would die in the name of God. Brebeuf's bones were recovered and kept in Quebec until his beatification at the Vatican in 1925. He was among eight Jesuits canonized by Pope Pius XI on June 29, 1930, and is considered one of the patron saints of Canada.

"The Huron Carol" remains a popular Christmas song in Canada, which is why it surprises me that, in the age of the internet, I'd never heard it before last week. It would be one thing if it were super obscure, but apparently for our neighbors up north, it's not. I could also understand if it just held great historical significance but wasn't a very good song. In my opinion, that couldn't be further from the truth. Spare me the mandatory merriment of your modern carols; winter is the darkest time of the year, I want some darkness in my Christmas! The tune of "The Huron Carol" gives that to me, and the melody conveys a lot of the mystery of both Christmas and the winter solstice that I think make this time of year so special. Sorry I dragged on for so long on this one, but if you made it far enough to read this, I guess you don't need an apology--you could have quit any time you wanted. This one, though, really deserves some resurgence in a typical Christmas playlist, and you can bet it's going to be on mine this year. One more version (entirely in English) for the road: