"This Endris Night" (also "Thys Endris Night", "Thys Ender Night" or "The Virgin and Child"[1]) is a 15th-century English Christmas carol.[2] It has also appeared under various other spellings.[1] Two versions from the 15th-century survive, one republished in Thomas Wright, Songs and Carols Now First Printed, From a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (London: The Percy Society, 1847), and the other in the possession of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, Scotland,[3] a legal deposit belonging to the Faculty of Advocates, a role which was assumed by the National Library of Scotland from 1925 onwards. All non-legal collections were given to the National Library.
It has been praised for the unusual delicacy and lyrical flourish for a poem of the period.[3] The opening lyrics, in the Wright edition, are:[4]
- Thys endris nyȝth
- I saw a syȝth,
- A stare as bryȝt as day;
- And ever among
- A mayden song
- Lullay, by by, lullay.
- ^ a b Hymns and Carols of Christmas. "This Endris Night". Retrieved 2011-03-08.
- ^ Margaret Louise Kuhl (1976). "On Performing Wolf: Problems Inherent in the "Geistliche Lieder" from the Spanisches Liederbuch" (PDF). University of British Columbia, Department of Music. Retrieved 2011-03-08.
- ^ a b Hymns and Carols of Christmas. "Thys endrys nygth - Thomas Wright". Retrieved 2011-03-08.
- ^ Scan of original from archive.org