Selden Carol Book

The manuscript was part of the extensive bequest of the English jurist, polymath and antiquarian John Selden (1584–1654). Dr Richard L Greene in The Early English Carols and Thomas Gibson Duncan in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric associate the book with the priory at Worcester, now Worcester Cathedral. Greene states that Worcester was "a house where there was much carolling" and accounts for Christmas entertainments suggest new songs and carols introduced by visitors were written down for future performance, with the prior employing a scribe to perform this task on Christmas Day. Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400-1550 also suggests Worcester, but adds that it may have been copied there for St. Mary Newarke College, a now-lost collegiate church in Leicester. ==Description==

The Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music 1400-1550 estimates that the work was copied by two main scribes with additional material copied by eight to ten additional hands. In addition, the elaborate initials and line space decoration would suggest it was not used for performance purposes. The 'burdens', a type of refrain performed at the beginning of the song and between verses, are the earliest example of a carol manuscript explicitly directing what it now known as a 'chorus'. The incorporation of Latin phrases from the liturgy of the Catholic Church feature in many of the burdens – as all church services were conducted in Latin, even non-speakers would have been familiar with their meaning. ==Contents==

There are thirty carols and songs with music in the manuscript, plus a few marginalia fragments. ==See also==