Canada's First Christmas Carol: The Huron Carol

(upbeat music) - Hi and welcome to Maple History. I'm Christina Austin and I have my husband, Simon, here again. - Hello. - We're doing a Christmas special episode. But if you would like to support the show to keep it going, please consider signing up for the sub stack, which is new, or the Patreon, which has been around for a little bit. The content is gonna be the same on both platforms. I decided to do this sub stack. The interface is more user friendly. And the way it goes directly into your email is just a little bit more accessible for people. Patreon is finicky, but some people prefer it. So we'll just do both. - Nice. - So there's some free stuff on there and there's paid level for a bonus episode. - Sweet. - So what you like and check the show notes for those links. It is full on Christmas time here, but we are dealing with a great deal of sadness, which I'm sure many listeners may have experienced or are experiencing over the holidays. Our beloved dog, Henry, passed away suddenly last Sunday. He was almost seven years old and we're really heartbroken, which I'm sure you can hear in my voice, but I'm gonna pull myself together. It has been really difficult to listen to Jolly Christmas Carols lately. I'm more feeling the in the bleak midwinter one, which was written by a woman with chronic illness and depression, so. (laughs) Yeah. More that one than "Joy to the World." - Yeah. - Another one, if you really wanna get the tears going, is "Song for Winter's Night." - Yeah. - That's not really Christmas song, but I don't know, it has a winter solstice feel to it. - Okay. - So speaking of Christmas carols, Canada's first Christmas carol is the subject of today's episode, "The Here on Carol." Many of you may be familiar with this one, but it's not a hot number on Christmas radio playlists. I wish I were talented enough to sing it for you, but I am not, so I'm not gonna subject you to that. So I will be reading the lyrics later, but I am gonna play the tune and I found royalty-free piece that I can play on this. Otherwise, you're gonna have to jump out of the episode and listen to the full song if you want to kind of follow along, 'cause there's different versions here that we're gonna be talking about. - And I think we found some really beautiful versions of this. - Really, really good ones. I will put those in the show notes as well, so you can jump and play those, or you can just listen about the end, dealer's choice. I'm gonna play the royalty-free clip so you can get the melody just to kind of jog your memory if you're like, "What is here on Carol?" I haven't heard that one, so this is it. (gentle music) (gentle music) - It repeats for the different verses, but that's the melody and getting to the kind of crescendo of the refrain. So the basic lore of the song is that it was written by the Jesuit priest, Jean de Bre'Beuf, who we have talked about several times, already. He wrote it around 1642, 43, when he was in Quebec for a while, because he was being threatened by some windup back at the village where he was staying. It was a tense time. - Okay, yeah. - And it continued to be a tense time. So he just bounced for a little bit, and went back to Quebec, and he goes back. If you did Google it, you would read that the tune is based off of a French folk tune called "Ungeun Pussell," so which is a young maid. This is more or less true, but it's more complicated and much more interesting than just that. So "The Hero on Carol" is a collaborative expression of the Christmas story that Bre'Beuf wrote, supported by Wendat Converts, who created the words to explain Christian theology so that their Wendat brethren could join them in the Christian community using music to build their early church in Canada. Just this little recap there, Jean de Bre'Beuf arrived in New France in 1625, and he did struggle to learn Wendat. There is a previous episode discussing his early days in Canada, so he hasn't listened to it. It will fill you in on some details that I won't bore you with here. He did go back to France in 1629, but was back again in 1633, and then he was here for good for the rest of his life. - And he did learn Wendat. - He did, yep. - It's pretty amazing actually. - Yeah, so after 1633 is when he began to really learn the Wendat language in earnest, he really buckled down and was all in. There was no getting rid of him, basically, (laughing) until there was a way to get rid of him, but not by the Wendat. So Bre'Beuf worked really hard to learn the language and made great progress, but it was still a struggle for him to make much headway in his evangelizing goals. - I speak English, I speak a tiny bit of French, but it'd be like me trying to learn Thai, or Chinese, totally foreign language. Very different, very difficult. - Yeah, and I do think that if we did go to China, they wouldn't be as hostile. - Yes, true, that is true. - Anyways, Bre'Beuf, he was quick to understand how integral music was to the lives of the Wendat people. From birth to death, singing was always a part of that world. Singing was medicine when people were sick. It was part of any celebration. It was part of the death rituals if they were captured. You would sing your way to captivity. - Wow. - You would sing your death song. You were already tortured, but you would sing your kind of life story as you were being marched to your capture, and then you would sing through your torture. - Wow, that's amazing. - You would try too, anyways. - Yes, I'm sure, I'm sure. - But it was just always part of the world. - No, Bre'Beuf was intelligent, and he found ways to learn the language and use his creativity to devise ways to introduce Christianity to the people. He knew that he needed to adapt the typical explanations of Christianity that were used on children in Europe in ways that the Wendat people could understand. The reclet priests had wanted to force their way through, but it was not working at all with the Wendat. So a key principle of Jesuit missionaries here is something that's translated as the gentle way. - Okay. - The principle was, do not force the people you are proselytizing to change any of their culture if it does not offend the Christian moral teaching. - Okay. - So if they're doing a ritual dance, if they're doing a feast, if they're doing, if it's fine, don't interfere. - Yeah. - And they were able to kind of get their way in. - Okay. - This is a principle that he's gonna use to integrate Christianity within the culture of the people as he tries to convert them. So when it comes to language, one challenge was that Wendat was a verb-focused language whereas French and English is a lot heavier on the nouns. So when they're trying to talk about God, the father didn't make sense linguistically, so he needed help. He needed to first learn the language inside and out, which was very difficult. But what he really did was he got help from the other Wendat people. - 'Cause songs are poetry. - Yes. - And to write poetry in a language, you have to know that language. - You do. - I've written songs poorly, but I couldn't even imagine trying to write a song or a poem. - Even one in French. - In French. - And you know the culture of French, but this is like-- - It'd be so hard. - The worldviews are different. - Yes, yeah. - Little turns of phrases in idioms and little things, it just doesn't make sense. It would make it so hard. - There were not easy ways to translate concepts of Christianity into the Wendat worldview. So another issue was that speaking of the dead was a major faux pas in Wendat. You do not speak their name again, they're dead. So if your father died, you would not speak his name, which makes it really difficult to discuss the death of Jesus if you're not supposed to speak of the dead. - Really, wow. - Yeah. - If your father died, don't speak of him again. That's really interesting. Like it's a memory thing, right? - Yeah, it's not that you didn't honor them 'cause you would still honor them at the feast of the dead. Like there's deeply personal ways. - Oh, sure. - You mourned but you're not speaking their name. I don't have to talk to them. So of course, since Jesus rose again, let that help. So he wasn't actually dead. - Oh, okay. - But all of these concepts that we take for granted with Christianity would be completely new and some were opposite to what was the understanding about the world in Wendat culture. So an example of this would be the concept of good and evil. - Okay. - In Christian world, Jesus is purely good. - Yeah. - Nobody is purely good or purely evil in Wendat culture. - Okay. - There is always the tension amongst objects, people, animals. It's all there. In their stories, they would just be like, no, no, well, it just doesn't make sense to them. - Yeah. - And to be honest, I kind of get where they're coming from. - Yeah. - But that's for a theological episode. I'm not gonna get into the origins of the concept of good and evil and the Zoroastrians and all that stuff. - Okay. - We don't need to go there. - Yes. - So with the help of two Wendat converts, Brevoof was able to find ways to explain Christianity to other Wendat people. So Ementaccia, who had been given the name Louis Saint-Fois at his baptism when he went to France in 1626, he learned French really well and fully converted to Christianity. If you remember the episode about a Jambourlei and the episode on the English privateers, Roman Toches in that. - Then he was one of the ones that went back, obviously. - He got captured by the English and taken to England and he can go back and learn a little more of history. But one can never really know the level of another spiritual devotion, in reference to Ementaccia, who was a convert. But Brevoof did note in the Jesuit relations, I'm gonna quote, "I took pleasure in hearing Louis explain our mysteries "to his relatives. "He did it with grace and showed that he had understood them "and made them his own. "Ah, how I wish I could speak here on as well as he does. "For indeed, in comparison with him, I only stutter. "And yet the way of saying a thing gives it "an entirely different meaning. "Sadly, Ementaccia was killed in 1636 "in a battle against the Seneca, "but he was helpful because he spoke French." - Oh, of course, yeah. - He was a convert. - Yeah. - So the other person that was integral to helping Brevoof learn how to connect to the Wendat culture and language in pursuit of his goal was Joseph Chihu-1-10-Hua. I'm gonna just call him Joseph. - Okay. - So Joseph was fiercely devout and was almost certainly killed because of his faith, making him the first martyr in Canada. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, I'll talk about him more when we get to the episode on the religious conflict that will rip through the Wendat nation in the 1640s. - Yeah. - So he was killed in, I think it was 1640. And then there's some controversy about whether it was the Seneca or whether it was Wendat. You might, anyhow, get into that. - So anyhow, Joseph was able to develop words that allowed him and Brevoof to be able to explain Christian concepts in a theologically sound way. So again, the turn of phrase really matters. - Oh, of course. - It's like hearing German idioms in English. They sound ridiculous. - Yeah, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense. - And same with ours explaining to my German roommates, like, reigning cats and dogs. - Yeah. - I was like, I don't, I'm sorry, I don't know. (laughs) - Yes. - It just is, is ridiculous. - So the words were clearly an important aspect to teaching Christianity, but setting things like the Apostles Creed to music in Wendat so that it can be integrated into the community life of the early church in Wendaki was equally important. Music in Wendat culture had a structure, it had like three sections and repetitions and vocalizations interspersed with words and were performed in familiar ways. So just like music in our culture, you have certain expectations of how songs will go and courses, innovations and individual personalities, but you know that there's gonna be the verse and the chorus and then the chorus is gonna be repeated and you go to a country music concert, you're gonna know what kind of music you're gonna hear. - Yeah. - If you turn on the radio, you know what you're gonna hear. So because it's part of our culture. So Breboof would have become very familiar with the Wendat musical style. He was hearing it all day, everyday, basically. - Yeah. - Just constantly. So it would be really hard to get it out of your head. If you're immersed in a culture, you're going to absorb some of that. - Yeah. - He very likely integrated that into the melody for here on Carol. So Raymond Joseph Sanborn wrote a doctoral thesis here on Carol. He very thoroughly goes through the origins of how Breboof wrote the lyrics, but also a detailed discussion on the melody part of it. His doctoral thesis was for a doctorate of sacred music. So when I say details, I really mean it. - Yeah. - Sanborn explains that there were many inspirations for the music of the Carol. They included the music brought by the female religious orders that had arrived in Quebec in 1639. They had a strong tradition of music and their worship life. And Breboof would have been around that when he returned to Quebec in 1640. - Okay. - The second European inspiration would have been the French folk songs that the other colonists would sing and that he would be familiar with back in France. Not that he was going out to the taverns and things like that 'cause he was a very serious person. (laughing) I don't think he was a lot of fun. - No, yeah. - Yeah. - That's fair. - But he wouldn't maybe heard some. As I mentioned above, it's frequently cited that Ingen Pussell is the folk song that is a melody for the Huron Carol in the same way that Green Sleeves, which is a 16th century English song, is the music for the Carol, what child is this? But Sanborn did a comparison of the two songs and I'm gonna take him for his word 'cause he knows music. Huron Carol and Ingen Pussell compared those two. And he said that there were really only a couple of bars that are the same. - Okay. - But they are not really the same songs. - Okay. - So, it's Sanborn's belief that Breboof was the composer of the melody and used French folk music, liturgical music, and Wendat music as the basis for his tune and did not strictly use Ingen Pussell, which is, if you look on Wikipedia, that's what it's gonna say. - Yeah. - Sure, I'll take your word for it. We don't actually get the Huron Carol through Breboof's own writings. We do have a mention of it in a much later Jesuit relation from 1689 from Father La Mercier, who was a priest at the Wendat mission in Quebec long after the Wendat in Simcoe County, Ontario had been dispersed by the Haudenosaunee. So he tells a story of a young girl who was dying on Christmas Day in 1688 named Therese. He was 14. Father La Mercier wrote, "During her illness, she often asked her mother when it is that Jesus will be born at length being told on Christmas Eve that he would be born that night. She began to sing, "Jesus is going to be born," which is an heir sung by the Huron's on Christmas festivals. So not a lot to go on in the written record, that close to Breboof, but there is a very strong oral history of the song among the Wendat, and they carried that song into the 18th century. We get the actual song recorded by another priest, Father Etienne Thomas de Villeneuve Guiro in the 18th century before all the Jesuits were turfed out by the English after 1773. - Okay. - So now I'm going to read the English translation. - Sorry, is recorded? - No, not recorded, written down. - Okay, written down. - Okay. - I was like, hold up. - It's a time traveler. - Don't know, written down. So a person with a better singing voice would sing this to you now, but this is not me. So it's going to sound so clunky 'cause it's translated from Wendat, and it does not have a good poetry flow here. Like it was like Wendat to French to English. It feels like a mouthful here. - Yeah. - All right, so the English translation of the Wendat. Have courage, you who are humans, Jesus, he is born. Behold, it has fled the spirit who had us as prisoner. Do not listen to it as it corrupts our minds, the spirit of our thoughts. They are spirits coming with a message for us, the sky people. They are coming to say, come on, be on top of life, rejoice. Mary has just given birth, come on, rejoice. Three have left for such a place. They are men of great matter. The star that has just appeared over the horizon leads them there. He will seize the path, a star that leads them there. As they arrive there where he was born, Jesus, the star was at the top at the point of stopping. He was not far past it. Having found someone for them, he says, come here. Behold, they have arrived there and have seen Jesus. They praised a name many times saying, hooray, he is good in nature. They greeted him with respect, greasing his scalp many times saying, hooray, we will give him praise, honor to his name, let us show reverence to him. As he comes to be compassionate with us, it is providential that you love us and think I should make them part of my family. - It's a little stiff. - It's a little stiff. - Yeah, but I also get-- - It's a song in Wendat. - Yes, but, and we were kind of talking about this a little earlier in that there is really no such thing as a proper direct translation. Because it doesn't work. Because even things as simple as my name is. Like we all learned when we were growing up, my name is like, how do you say my name is in French? You say, Jimapal, Jimapal Simon, or Jimapal Cristina. That's not my name is. That is, I am called, which is very different, but I am called, Simon, is like weird in English. - Yeah, it's awkward. - Right? - Yeah. - But it's what it is in French. So you can't directly translate anything. - Mm-hmm. - It's gonna be awkward any time. So the song continued to be part of the Wendat culture, but it did start to wane as the years went by. And Wendat was spoken less and less as colonization took hold and took more devastating effect. So in the 19th century, several people took steps to revive the song. Paul Picard was a Wendat chief who was one of the last people to be able to speak Wendat at the time. So he translated the Wendat version into French so that it could be included in a book by Ernest Myrond called Noelle Aussion de la Nouvelle France, published in 1899. So there was another kind of folk music, history of music book written by another guy around the same time. I think it included that as well, here on Carol. So the version that most people are familiar with is the one written in 1927 by Jesse Milton. So Milton was the son of a Methodist minister, born and raised in like Southern Ontario, like I think near London-ish. He did not grow up part of any indigenous culture. And when he wrote his version, he came at it from the perspective of a historian and a poet. He was a learned man. - Mm-hmm. - You know, he was a good historian. - Okay. - But he was also a man of his time. - Yeah. - In his article, here on Carol, a Canadian cultural chameleon. Historian John Steckley notes that Milton was working in an era when one of the most oppressive federal ministers of Indian affairs, Duncan Campbell Scott, was in power. - Mm-hmm. - So this was also the time when residential schools were on the rise. - Yeah. - But also the romanticized notion of the noble savage was becoming popular. - Yes. This is where the translation gets problematic. - Well, it's not quite private. It's not even say problematic in that. It's just awkward. It's clunky. All quote from Steckley with his explanation of how Middleton came to write his version of the Huron-Carol. Steckley writes, "It would be more accurate to say that having learned something of the theme and the content of the French translation and having a romanticized sense of Aboriginal people typical of many non-Aboriginal Canadians at the time, Middleton composed new words in English for the Huron-Carol." I don't think he even had the original words. He just kind of heard about it. He just like, "No, this is, yeah, let's write a Christmas story based on indigenous culture." And he wrote it as he knew as a white guy in-- - In the 20s. - He wasn't even the translation. He just had the melody. - Yeah. - Oh, wow. Okay, so not even close. - So now is a great time to pause and listen to the kind of the well-known version. Just to refresh your memory if you like. But if you don't want to do that and you just want to listen to it later, I'll read out the lyrics, but it is better to listen to it as a song. "Twas in the moon of winter time when all the birds had fled that mighty Gichimanatu sent angel choirs instead. Before their light, the stars grew dim and wandering hunters heard the hymn. Jesus, your king is born. Jesus is born. In excelsis gloria. Within a lodge of broken bark, the tender babe was found, a ragged robe of rabbit skin and wrapped his beauty round. And as the hunter braves through nigh, the angel's song ring loud and high, the earliest moon of wintertime is not so round and fair, as was the ring of glory on the helpless infant there, the chiefs from far beyond him knelt with gifts of fox and beaver pelt. O children of the forest free, O sons of Manitude, the holy child of earth and heaven is born today for you. Come kneel before the radiant boy who brings you beauty, peace, and joy." And all honestly, it trips off the tongue a lot easier than the Wendat translation. He was a historian and a poet, so he had skill. And it is a lovely song, but basically it's a hamfisted version of the original here on Carol that uses Anishinaabe terms for their spiritual stories, like Gucci Manitude, but that is not Wendat, that is Anishinaabe. It's just a little awkward. - Yeah. - And like many Christmas stories, it tells the story of Jesus' birth, which is telling listeners a story they already knew. Milton's version gives the impression that is telling the listener the story for the first time, whereas the original one was more of a way to integrate the story into the liturgical life of the Wendat people. So I'm not actually really trying to slag on the song at all. I actually think it's really quite beautiful, and I like the imagery of baby Jesus being born in Wendat Ducky and the moonlight, you know. I like all that. I do think it's lovely. And getting the animals and the gifts that we're given are appropriate for what gifts would be given. - Yeah. - You know, at the time, like for in the culture. - The Gucci Manitude part, it's not really anachronistic because it's time appropriate, but it's not people, cultural. - Cultural, cultural. - And I'm sure I don't know enough about Anishinaabe spiritual stories and their religion. - Yeah. - But if they're using it right, like I don't know, I don't know. So it's just a bit awkward. - Yes. - So if you've never heard anything about indigenous people and that there's different nations with different beliefs, you would say, oh, how wonderful. But in the time, it was completely normal to kind of group them together. - Yes. - And not have an understanding of the different nations that were all across Canada. - It's almost like saying the German culture is the same as the French culture. Like it's just totally different. - Yeah. So it's just so awkward. But I do like the song, it's lovely. - They're not totally different. - Yeah, I know what you mean. So the song is just weird. It's like it's watery, like it's through a smudged lens or something like that. Like it just doesn't quite work. So it did make it into the hymnals in the 1950s or so for the Anglican Church of Canada and the United Church. If you really want to learn more about that, you can go to that thesis. Now it became popular during that time and it remained so over the years. It did eventually get picked up by the Catholic Church as well but it did go into the Protestant Church as first. Probably because Middleton was probably united. - Okay, yeah. - Because he was the son of a Methodist minister. - Yeah. - And then it got into the Anglican hymnal and then the Anglican Church and the United Church that I think they collaborated on some stuff. - Mm-hmm, it is really interesting though that it was united in Anglican before Catholic because it's like, obviously, Brabuf wrote it. - Yeah, and the song got into the awareness of the world is when Brabuf was canonized, when Martyr Shrine was there. So it's just his story is being known more. That's part of how it got picked up. - Okay. - And Canadians across the board, not just Catholic Canadians. - Yes. - And hymns are part of the Catholic Church but especially earlier in the 19th century church services were different. - Yeah. - And hymns were more for different things, so. But they're still used. Vanessa can tell me how wrong I am. - I don't know much about Catholic services other than I know that they used to be in Latin. - That's a long time ago now. The only ones that I've been to is baptisms, weddings, and first communion. - Yeah, and I've been to a funeral. - Oh yes, I've been to a funeral. In recent years, there have been efforts made to re-indigenize the year on Carol. So people have been working to bring it back to his roots. In the 1990s, Declie worked with Bruce Cockburn. He's a singer, songwriter, guitarist. Pretty famous Canadian. Because Cockburn wanted to perform the song in the original Wendat. And he did, it's on one of his albums. - Nice. - So people have continued to record English translations and Wendat versions. And you can find many beautiful ones online. So like I said, I'll post some links in the show notes to a couple examples of it. And some indigenous people, they do have a complicated relationship with the Carol, particularly the Middleton version because of its inaccuracies related to the Wendat versus Anishinaabe culture. Because it kind of speaks to that time period where the shift of the residential schools, kind of this steam roller of colonization, really, really got going, a heightened period of erasure. - Yeah. - So people can feel their feelings about that. - Oh, 100%. - They don't wanna hear it. - Yeah. - So because perhaps it brings up feelings or ideas of their complicated relationship to the religion that they may still be part of or that they may not want anything to do with. So there are many Anglican priests who are indigenous and Catholic priests as well. Certain parts of Canada have very strong connections still within the indigenous communities. Like the Magma people tend to be Catholic. - Hmm. - And a lot of parts of Quebec, the nations in the communities there, but also religious church attendance is dropping. For rapidly, but that's kind of across the board, but more marked in indigenous communities. - Yeah. Well, I remember that there was that Magma version, that the version that was translated into Magma that I felt like-- - Oh, that you listened to. It was beautiful. - It was beautiful. We'll link to you in the show notes. And I don't wanna butcher the translation of the name, but there was a trio. It was absolutely fantastic. - So the fallout for the spiritual injury caused by residential schools is a big factor of why some people don't want this hymn song in their church today. - Mm-hmm. - So I will still play the Middleton version personally, now and then, mainly because it's on one of Ceramical Auckland's Christmas albums. - Mm-hmm. - And I like the imagery as well as the melody. But I will be seeking out other versions to add to my Christmas playlist that are in Wendat and the English translation of the original Brebo version, because it's also beautiful, but in a way it connects me to the history of the song. And the other day we were talking that it's a simple way to incorporate the principles of truth and reconciliation is to be like, "Oh, yeah, that version is a little awkward." I'm gonna listen to this one too. - Yeah. - The Wendat version. 'Cause it's more true and more authentic to the one that was a true collaboration between Breboof and early Wendat Christians. - Yeah. - I think that's just a way to honor that history. - And as we were going through this, we found some really beautiful versions that we wouldn't have found otherwise. - No. - The Sultan's of String version. - Yep. - With Chantau. - No, it was Crystal and I forget her last name, but I'll list it. But it was a full orchestra with this woman singing. She's a recording artist from Manitoulin Island and I was like, "Oh, that's lovely." So I'm gonna put that on my Spotify playlist for Christmas. - Mm-hmm. - Like this one 'cause it does have this mournful melody, which is my Christmas mood right now. - Yeah. - Anyways, that's all I have. So listen to Christmas music that speak to you right now, whether they're happy fun songs, throw on the Michael Buble, put on the sad Sarah McLachlan song for Winter's Night. - Yeah. (laughs) - And in the bleak mid winter, if that's your vibe, you know, God love you. (laughs) So Merry Christmas and yeah, I hope you listen to these songs.