The words to this old English carol date to at least the early 19th century, possibly the early 18th, and the concept it’s based on, using holly as a symbol of Jesus Christ, goes back to medieval times (the ivy, though given short shrift in the lyrics, represents Mary). Like most true folk songs, its authorship is lost to time.
But the tune we sing it to is a different story. Like many English folk songs, the same or similar words were attached to various melodies until Cecil Sharp, who in the early 20th century researched and collected the country’s folk songs much the way Alan Lomax did in mid-century America (minus the tape recorder, of course). In 1909, in the market town of Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, a woman named Mary Clayton sang it for Sharp with the melody we know today. Sharp published it in 1911.
Pianist George Winston was the top-selling artist on Windhall Hill Records, the label for acoustic music founded in the 1970s by guitarist William Ackerman. His variations on “The Holly and the Ivy” appeared on his “December” LP, released in 1982. That disc became the best-selling Windham Hill release in its history, going triple platinum. Windham Hill is now an all-but-defunct imprint of Sony, but Winston still records on his own Dancing Cat label.
If you want to know what “The Holly and the Ivy” sounded like before Mary Clayton, English folk Steeleye Span recorded a version in 1972.
