New Year’s carols are traditional folk songs created by the people, with roots dating back to Ancient Greece. Over time, they ...

"The Wassail Bowl," printed in The Illustrated London News on Dec. 22, 1860. Going door to door and offering a song or performance in exchange for a drink or money is a centuries-old English custom.

For hundreds of years, the words were put to various tunes as the carol circulated by mouth, until in the early 1900s ...

As we learn from the surprising journeys of several holiday classics, the term defies easy definition. One Christmas I found myself on London’s Oxford Street, admiring the twinkly decorations and ...

Elizabethan songs. Man is for the woman made ; Come again, sweet love doth now invite ; Never weather-beaten saile ; I care not for these ladies ; Willow song ; The cypress curtaine of the night ; ...

Gearing up for Christmas, the Virgin Consort shares two carols in a folk tradition. The first is the English carol "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day" and the second is the Spanish carol "Riu, riu, ...

Carthy wears his considerable history lightly. His album was reflective without being nostalgic or complacent, building on a lifetime’s commitment to the performance and interpretation of traditional ...

He was both the longtime archivist of folk music at the Library of Congress and a widely respected singer and songwriter. By Clay Risen Joe Hickerson, a singer and songwriter who as the lead archivist ...