To Drive the Cold Winter Away - Folk from the Boat - Episode 57

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This week Anna is joined by singer/recorder player Emily Baines and lutenist Arngeir Hauksson of Wilde Roses to play To Drive the Cold Winter Away, an Elizabethan folk song about partying with friends through the long cold nights. They recorded the song on their new album 'Woven'.
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All hail to the days that merit more praise
Than all the rest of the year,
And welcome the nights that double delights
As well for the poor as the peer!
Good fortune attend each merry man's friend,
That doth but the best that he may;
Forgetting old wrongs, with carols and songs,
To drive the cold winter away.

'Tis ill for a mind to anger inclined
To ruminate injuries now;
If wrath be to seek do not lend her thy cheek
Nor let her inhabit thy brow.
Cross out of thy books malevolent looks,
Both beauty and youth's decay,
And spend the long night in honest delight
To drive the cold winter away.

Thus none will allow of solitude now
But merrily greets the time,
To make it appear of all the whole year
That this is accounted the prime:
December is seen apparel'd in green,
And January fresh as May
Comes dancing along with a cup and a song
To drive the cold winter away.

To mask and to mum kind neighbours have come
With wassails of nut-brown ale,
To drink and carouse, and may all in this house
Be as merry as buck in the pale;
Where cake, bread, and cheese is brought for your fees
To make you the longer stay;
The fire to warm, 'twill do you no harm,
To drive the cold winter away.

When white-bearded frost hath threatened his worse,
And fallen from branch and briar,
Then time away calls from husbandry halls
And from the good countryfolk's fire,
Together to go, to plough and to sow
To get us both food and array,
And thus with content the time we have spent
To drive the cold winter away.