"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)
“The almost universal bareness and smoothness of the landscape were as agreeable as novel, making it so much more like the deck of a vessel.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I’ve tried to open the door. My knock isn’t that big a sound. But it is like the knock in “The Wizard of Oz.” It set up this echo through the halls until it was heard by everyone.”
—Shannon Faulkner (b. c. 1975)