Deck the Halls

About this arrangement

The Welsh New Year tune with its fa-la-las, in F major, one flat (B flat), all four lines of verse 1. The right hand starts with finger 5 on the C above middle C and mostly stays around F to C, with a few moves marked in the fingering. Line three climbs higher and borrows a B natural, which sends the tune briefly towards C major before it comes home. In the last line the tune has a second note a third below it in places. The left hand changes style as you go: a striding bass in crotchets, then running quavers, then a walking bass that steps down F, E, D, C under “Troll the ancient Yuletide carol”.

Practice tip: Make the dotted crotchet and quaver at the start of each line (“Deck the”, “Don we”) really dotted: long then short, with a bounce. Keep the quaver fa-la-las light and even, and save your loudest playing for the last line.

The words

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la. ’Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la. Don we now our gay apparel, Fa la la, la la la, la la la. Troll the ancient Yuletide carol, Fa la la la la, la la la la.

A short history

The tune is Welsh: “Nos Galan”, a carol for New Year’s Eve. It was in the repertoire of Welsh harpers in the 18th century, turns up in a manuscript of the harpist John Parry, and was printed in Edward Jones’s collection of Welsh music in 1794. Haydn later made his own arrangement of it, in 1803.

The English words are by the Scottish songwriter Thomas Oliphant, who wrote them for the second volume of John Thomas’s Welsh Melodies in 1862. They were not a translation of the Welsh words, which are about New Year, but a new song about Christmas merry-making; his title was singular, “Deck the Hall”.

Oliphant’s third line was about drinking. The version almost everyone sings now, with “Don we now our gay apparel”, appeared in an American school journal in 1877 and spread through American song books.

Quick facts

Tune

Welsh traditional, “Nos Galan”, 18th century

Words

Thomas Oliphant, 1862 (third line as printed in America, 1877)

Level

Intermediate (full verses, a moving left hand)

Key

F major

Time signature

4/4

Length

16 bars

Tempo

Merrily, crotchet = 112

Hands

Both hands on the grand staff: right hand on the treble staff, left hand on the bass staff

Copyright

Public domain tune and words; arrangement by Digital Greenhouse, free for personal, church and classroom use

Questions and answers