Dunster's Unique Traditional Christmas Carol

The picturesque village of Dunster as seen from the castle roof

Carols are an important part of Christmas, but there was a time when they dominated seasonal proceedings. Almost every community would have had its own festive song which would have been performed again and again each December around the parish. 

Alas, most of these have now been lost or forgotten, but there is one Somerset village which is fighting hard to pass down its own unique carol for future generations.

The Dunster Carol is a joyous, melodic, song performed each year around the village’s famous medieval streets - as well as in the magnificent church - and it has always been sung in the crowded bar of the ancient Luttrell Arms on the last Sunday before Christmas for as long as anyone can remember…

But the Dunster Carol would have been consigned to the history books like so many others had one local man not been determined to keep it as an audible jewel for the community. 

“I was born here in the village and as soon as you were able to walk years ago, you were in the choir at Dunster Church,” I was told by retired garage owner Steve Bowden. “The men in the church choir used to go around singing carols and the boys were dragged in to sing as well.”

After World War Two Mr Bowden moved away from the village for a few years but eventually returned in the early 1960s to find that carol-singing had almost died out in the village. 

“There were no carols being sung at all - so I went around and got a few of the older chaps together and we started singing again,” said Mr Bowden. “I got some little books printed out with the words - because none of the carols we knew were written down. 

“I got them from the old fellas who were still around - and now we’ve been through songbook after songbook as they’ve worn out over the years.”

Mr Bowden believes the Dunster Carol may first have been sung during, or just after, World War One. The melody is identical to the music of an ancient French folk tune and the hypothesises is that one of Dunster’s men serving in the trenches would have heard it, memorised the melody, and then brought it home.

After that someone adapted a poem (I Hear Along Our Street) by the British poet Longfellow to suit the music - and so a carol was born.

“Actually, we do have another carol which is unique to this village,” said Mr Bowden, leafing through his old homemade book of carols. “Christ The Lord Is Born This Day is really more of a Dunster Carol than the other one in some ways because it is older. But I know nothing whatsoever as to how that carol came here.”

But Mr Bowden, who is in his eighties, now fears there’s a danger the old carols could be lost sometime in the near future.

“When I was a boy there were no televisions or radios much, so as you went around the village people were more interested in listening to you. These days they open the door and say, ‘Sorry, we’re watching the telly.’

“And of course, a lot of our members nowadays are ‘going up to see Our Maker’ and our numbers are dwindling - but we are still trying to recruit some younger people. And we have some in their 50s and 60s which, as far as I am concerned, is young,” said Mr Bowden, who is delighted that staff at the local school are now teaching the village carol to the children.  

“It is very important to keep it going and I hope we will manage to do that over the years. For all I know it might well be the only village carol still being sung in a small community like this each year,” he said.

Many towns and villages used to have their own distinctive repertoire of carols in times gone by. In fact, carols have been part of Britain’s festive tradition since the Middle Ages.

Gallox Bridge leads to the famous Dunster Deer Park - carollers would have sung to these lonely cottages

Today the word 'carol' tends to be attached to any non-pop or commercial song connected to Christmas, but originally ‘to carole’, meant ‘to dance’. Then, through the Middle Ages the special festive songs began to be connected with the nativity story and were often featured in plays and church processions.

But it seems that local carols did not travel far. Certainly, Mr Bowden remembers how the Dunster Carol would only ever be sung in and around his West Somerset village - with one exception…

“The only place we used to go to outside the village of Dunster was the Butcher’s Arms in Carhampton,” he recalled. “This was in World War Two and there were no lights or head-lights or anything - you weren’t even allowed to use a torch. So the only way we could get there in the pitch dark was to follow the white line in the middle of the main road.”

At least the men and boys walking in the dark would have had their spirits lifted by the following words as they sang the Dunster Carol…

I hear along our street

Pass the minstrel throngs

Hark! They play so sweet

On their hautboys Christmas songs.

(Chorus)

Let us by the fire 

Ever higher, ever higher,

Sing until the night expire

Sing until the night expire

In December ring

Every day the chimes

Loud the gleemen sing

In the street their merry rhymes.

Who by the fireside stands

Stamps his feet and sings

But he who blows his hands

Not so gay a carol rings.

Shepherds at the grange

Where the Babe was born

Sing with many a change

Christmas carols until morn.