“God Rest you Merry, Gentlemen“, now known as “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” is a traditional English Christmas Carol. It was written in the 1650s, and briefly became known as “Tidings of Comfort and Joy“. This famous song is listed in the Roxburghe Collection of Ballads (a collection of seventeenth-century musical broadsheets), and the earliest version of the printed musical sheet dates to 1760. But around 1775, something unusual happened to the opening line lyrics. A London street-caroler sang the song a bit differently, and this variant text was then printed in The Beauties of the Magazines, and Other Periodical Works, Selected for a Series of Years, 1975. That basically made the new lyrics a law.
So what was this change in lyrics? And why should any of us care? Because the well-meaning street caroler moved a comma. And that, in turn, changed the meaning of two small words. Most language students understand (hopefully) that grammar is hugely important and, when mis-used, can cause all sorts of misunderstandings. For example, “Let’s eat, Joe” versus “Lets eat Joe”. And when the street caroler changed the comma, it moved from “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” to “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen”. In the first case, Merry is a ditransitive form of an old Anglo-Saxon verb. In the second, Merry is an adjective. And we’ll get to the difference in a moment.
Next, let’s break down the word “rest”. In today’s English, it means to sleep or lie down or just stay still when one is tired. But “rest” comes from the Latin ‘restāre’ and since it’s found in all Romance languages, it’s ‘Rester’ in French and ‘restare’ in Italian. So in the case of this Christmas carol, it means to “keep”, “cause to remain”, or even “make”. But it does not mean to lie down and take a nap with the kids and dogs after eating and drinking too much. But when the comma changed, the meaning of the word “rest” also had to change for the new sentence to make sense.
The second word that has changed meaning is the word “Merry”. In older forms of English, Merry does NOT mean happy. It actually means “might” or “great”. Robin Hood’s men were described as “merry”, meaning strong and scary. Armies, especially Roman and Celtic armies, were also labeled as “merry” for their fearsome fighters. So when the street caroler changed the comma, and the modern ear changed the meaning of our words, the song we hear now is “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen”. Meaning, God let you happy men take a nap. But the true meaning of “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen” means May God make you great and mighty, men!
I hope you all have a Great and Mighty Christmas season and a wonderful New Year!
