Among the best-loved carols in English, ‘On Christmas Night’ was collected by Vaughan Williams in 1904 at Monk’s Gate, near Horsham, Sussex, from Harriet Verrall, one of his most trusted folk singers. While both the music and words were newly discovered, several variants of the text had been in circulation since the seventeenth century, being founded on a ‘short caroll for Christmas Day’ published in Ghent in 1684, in Luke Wadding’s Smale Garland of Pious and Godly Songs.

The present arrangem...