A Ukrainian Christmas carol: Shchedryk (a.k.a. Carol of the Bells)

[Emrys]

Based on a traditional Ukranian shchedrivka, a seasonal folk song originally celebrating the solstice or New Year, and still more commonly sung in Ukraine on January 13 (the old Julian New Year's Eve) than at Christmas, this piece was arranged in the form familiar worldwide by Mykola Leontovych, a trained priest as well as a teacher, composer, conductor, chorist and multi-instrumentalist, who was murdered by a Soviet assassin in 1921 as a troublesome member of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, which led to his becoming a martyr of the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian Church. In 2018, he was honoured with the erection of a statue in Pokrovsk, which has been in the news recently, where he spent a productive period of his career as a teacher.

This remarkable performance from a concert in Maastricht, the Netherlands on November 17 was prompted when soloist Anna Reker asked Dutch conductor and violinist André Rieu if they could perform the song as a tribute to her countrypeople in their time of war. Rieu immediately agreed.

"Shchedryk" means the bird the swallow, and the lyrics of the widely known English-language "Carol of the Bells" have nothing in common with those of the Ukrainian one, which can be translated as:

Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,
A swallow has flown,

It began to twitter,
And call the master:

“Come out, come out, O Master,
Take a look at the sheep pen,

There the ewes have given birth,
And the lambkins have been born,

All your goods are great,
And you will be rich

Though not money, it is chaff —
You have a dark-eyebrowed wife

Shchedryk, shchedryk, shchedrivochka,
A swallow has flown.

X-Posted in The DU Lounge - https://www.democraticunderground.com/10182255945