Ready or not, here I come…..
Credit: Andrew Smith, CC BY-SA 2.0
A very Merry Christmas to you! A time for games! And jollity! And awful awful tragedy!
Get in the mood for the season with a narrative version of a wildly popular Victorian Christmas song with a distinctly gothic twist (which is also the name a dance I’ve been known to do on occasion).
Can be enjoyed all year round, any time you fancy a game of hide and seek.
“The mistletoe hung in the castle hall; The holly branch shone on the old oak wall.”
– Thomas H. Bayly, “The Mistletoe Bough”
The 1904 Film
The full version of the 1904 film mentioned is linked below or you can watch the whole one here: BFI Mistleone Bough, and I really do recommend it, there are some exceptional moments in it, all throughout but particularly at the end.
“You can’t hide. Gonna find you and keep you happy”
– The Delfonics
Another version of the song
So for reasons to do with copyright I could only include the old very scratchy version of the song in the episode but if you want a modern cover Kate Rusby’s is damn good, and has a very different feel to it.
In Victorian times the song was “solmenly chanted” as a “national occurrence at Christmas” which has a wonderful dark menacing air to it but I do also like this lighter sounding version – though equally sombre in subject matter.
I can’t speak for everyone but I know for me it really gets me in the mood for Christmas!
Illustrations of the tale (SPOILERS!)
Spoiler warnings are obviously very important on a tale that’s a few hundred years old. But this one really is all in the ending.
Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
Selected Sources
- Mistletoe Bough lyrics – describes the song as “Stately, delicate, and positively creepy” which I really like
- Burials and Beyond, the Mistletoe Bride – lots of background and detail
Musical credits for Episode 22: The Mistletoe Bride
Intro and outro theme from the incredibly talented Alice Nicholls Music
Other music, used under various Creative Commons licenses:
Lionell Schmitt
Winter Land
Goddess of the moon
Hide and seek (yes I am pleased with the appropriateness of this one)
Aaron Kenny
Yonder hill and dale
Kevin Macleod
Holiday Weasel
Deck the halls
Doug Maxwell
Church Bell Celebration
“It’s the mistletoe bride! The mistletoe bride is feeling rough, in her home-made sarcophagus, the sturdiest box, the heaviest lid..”
[…] were recording traditions from a widespread oral story independently – see for instance the Mistletoe Bride.Many versions of this story exist and were written down by people at various different times, and […]
[…] A literary Cornish legend which somehow grew into the first (and likely only) 3 part story.Episode 21: Part 1 – Dastardly Deeds starts the story off. There is no Enchanter but magic, marriage, murder and mayhem abound, in a story packed with more folkloric elements than you can shake an enchanted stick at.Episode 23: Part 2 – Plots and Schemes has plots and schemes: there’s poison, there are ghosts, there’s pirates! “An Enchanter” you ask? Did I mention the pirates?Episode 24: Part 3 – feat an Enchanter features destinies fulfilled, wizard school, magical battles, renovations and, just in the nick of time, an Enchanter.(If you’re wondering what happened to episode 22 it was this special Christmas story: The Mistletoe Bride) […]