The enchanting Wexford Carol is one of our oldest Catholic Christmas carols, dating to at least the 15th or 16th centuries. Its melody is mesmerizing and evocative of a Catholic Christmas season.

Also known as the Enniscorthy Carol (Carúl Inis Chárthaigh), this beautiful Christmas song has been recorded by Julie Andrews, Nancy Griffiths and The Chieftains, Alison Krauss and Yo-Yo Ma, Tom Jones, Caitriona O’Leary and Rosanne Cash. Choirs have also performed it, including the U.S. Navy Band, and as a haunting slow lament on pipes, it is a staple in traditional Irish music sessions at Christmastime in Ireland. 

A deeper look into the origins of the carol also illuminates several unexpected departures that go to the heart of Catholic Ireland in the Penal Era. These departures unveil a Carol-singing tradition in County Wexford that endures. 

Familiarity with the carol pivots on a telling intervention by William Henry Grattan Flood, a devout Catholic cathedral organist.

The late Liam Gaul, a Wexford historian and author who writes on the traditional Irish music website TheSession.org, details The Wexford Carol’s origins. 

“Known in County Wexford as the Enniscorthy Christmas Carol, it was collected c. 1911 by Dr William Henry Grattan Flood in the Coolamain area of Oylgate just approx seven miles from Enniscorthy.“

Although it is not known who wrote the carol, it came to prominence in the 19th century. 

“Dr. Flood transcribed the melody and the lyrics from an elderly lady living in the area and added it to the repertoire played in the cathedral.“

From then, its popularity spread locally and abroad through Enniscorthy missionary priests.

In structure and melody, the carol is medieval in origin and simple in construction. The lyrics tell the Nativity story. Despite its name, there is no reference to Wexford in the lyrics.

When he collected The Wexford Carol, Flood was an organist at St. Aidan’s Cathedral in Enniscorthy. Oral tradition is a feature of Irish folk music; songs and tunes pass from musician to musician. It is thanks to Flood that The Wexford Carol as we know it survives.

Flood was born in 1859 and initially considered the priesthood before embarking upon a career as a musician and resident organist in several Catholic cathedrals before settling in at St. Aidan’s from September 1895 until he died in 1928.

He was given an honorary doctor of music from the Royal University of Ireland in 1907. In 1917, Pope Benedict XV awarded Flood the Papal Cross, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, for his contribution to Catholic liturgical music. In 1922, Pope Leo XIII elevated him to the Order of St. Gregory. Married with six children, Flood died in August 1928 as a lifelong devout Catholic. 

Ironically, The Wexford Carol does not form part of a historically significant canon of carols known as the Wexford Carols written in the 16th century by Catholic Bishop Luke Waddinge of Ferns  and the significant 17th-century supplementary volume by Father William Devereaux, who wrote carols when studying for the priesthood in the Irish College in Salamanca, Spain. Indeed, Father Devereaux’s contribution to the Wexford Carol tradition is considered of extreme historic value, given they were composed in post-Cromwellian Ireland, a time of harsh religious persecution and severe hardship, and formed the basis of a long-standing tradition of carol singing in County Wexford based in the parish of Kilmore that still exists to this day. 

The carols express religious, metaphysical, social and political ideas used to tell the story of Christmas and document Penal Law's hardships. They have to be understood in this context with their hidden resonances. It is in this collective company that the beautiful Wexford Carol is often found. 

When The Wexford Carol is sung by some of the most familiar names in contemporary music, the beautiful melody flows directly from a profound Catholic faith wellspring and a strong tradition of worship and belief that the harshest of Penal Laws could not extinguish in Ireland. 

The Wexford Carol, from Enniscorthy, is a song for Christmas and also part of a centuries-old Catholic soundtrack that can still be heard. 

1. Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending His beloved Son
With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born.

2. The night before that happy tide,
The noble virgin and her guide
Were long time seeking up and down
To find a lodging in the town.
But mark how all things came to pass
From every door repelled, alas,
As was foretold, their refuge all
Was but a humble ox’s stall.

3. Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God’s angels did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear
Prepare and go, the angels said
To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you’ll find, this happy morn
A princely Babe, sweet Jesus, born.

4. With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went the babe to find
And as God's angel had foretold
They did our Saviour Christ behold
Within a manger He was laid
And by his side the virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of Life
Who came on earth to end all strife.

5. There were three wise men from afar
Directed by a glorious star
And on they wandered night and day
Until they came where Jesus lay
And when they came unto that place
Where our beloved Messiah lay
They humbly cast them at His feet
With gifts of gold and incense sweet.