"Deck the Halls" or "Deck the Hall" (which is the original title) is a traditional Yuletide/Christmas and New Years' carol. The melody is Welsh dating back to the sixteenth century, and belongs to a winter carol, Nos Galan.
The lyrics first appeared in Welsh Melodies, a set of four volumes authored by John Thomas with Welsh words by John Jones (Talhaiarn) and English words by Thomas Oliphant, although the repeated "fa la la" goes back to the original Welsh Nos Galan and may originate from medieval ballads. The song is in AABA form. The series Welsh Melodies appears in four volumes, the first two in 1862, the third in 1870 and the final volume in 1874. As can be seen from the translation of Nos Galan below, Deck the Hall(s) is not a translation but new words to an old song.
Read more about Deck The Halls: Nos Galan, Lyrics, History, SHeDAISY Version, Other
Famous quotes containing the words deck the, deck and/or halls:
“And deck the bananas in leaves
Plucked from the Carib trees,
Fibrous and dangling down,
Oozing cantankerous gum
Out of their purple maws....”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I sang as one
Who on a tilting deck sings
To keep men’s courage up, though the wake hangs
That shall cut off their sun.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)
“Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)