Grinch Corner

Here is a carol, local to my area here, written in about 1500 and still sung in the village of Castleton. The words always put a shiver down my spine. Sung here by the wonderful Alfred Deller, who just adds an extra twist to the creepiness of it.

 

Does it actually ever snow in Bethlehem?

 

To change the Grinchyness, just gone to order my usual Christmas Sage Derby from Belton farm and it's sold out.
Hurrumph.
Christmas will not be the same
First world problems, eh?

 

A fold was just a stone, earth or wooden corral no roof.
Also the author of that part of the bible was referring to Palestine not Britain, Keats wrote about England not Palestine. Also 2000 years ago no TV.
Also no grass? so what were the biblical sheep fed on then. No sheep pellets or silage back then; so they grazed in the fields.

Apparently yes "The average snowfall in Bethlehem, Israel is around 530mm every year."

 

When I was growing up Alfred Deller was the only counter tenor you heard and I must say I prefer the more modern ones such as Andreas Scholl. However the counter tenor voice has had a big comeback in my life time.

 

Do they grind to a halt, like we do?
Bet they don't.

 

It still is in France. No such thing as Boxing Day, either! Straight back to work on the 26th unless it's a Sunday...

 

I like them both. I like the simplicity of the sound. Can’t be doing with all that vibrato stuff (or whatever it’s called in the trade) that most singers go in for.

 

With that amount they surely have ski resorts and snow ploughs.
They could even host the winter Olympics.

 

Quite right too, far too many days lost to holidays.
Remember, I'm retired now.

 

I'm saying that if "earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone, snow had fallen snow on snow, snow o-on snow", the grass would be covered in snow, wouldn't it?
So no grass to eat.
And I do know what a fold is. And when TV was invented.
Anything else you'd like to mansplain?

 

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold.
I remember that bit from school.
The fold was just a pound or place to keep animals short term I believe.

Good king whenselas and all that, on the feast of Stephen, it was all crisp and even, obviously climate change.
Someone hit in on the snout and made it all uneven,
Brightly shone his nose that night, though the pain was cruueel.
Till a poor man came in sight riding on a muueel.

 

From a friend who is very into opera that vibrato stuff has dropped out of fashion again.

 

Except in the poem Christina Rossetti does not make it clear which country she is referring to, a fairly reasonable assumption would be that she based it on the English winters she had seen.
Even if as you say the grass was covered in snow and unreachable by the sheep; you still have to feed them something. Given that "The coldest month of the year in Bethlehem is January, with an average low of 41°F and high of 54°F" it is unlikely that the ground would have frozen solid as the poet implies.

 

The wonders of t'interweb. I think it has the wrong Bethlehem, despite saying "Bethlehem, Israel". That really is artificial intelligence at its most artificial.