How much did the beloved worms cost you?

Silly me though: not le vermi but l'avermi. The words of a carol I'm singing on Saturday...

<plug>

</plug>

... are Quanto te costó l'avermi amato (=What did it cost you to love me?)

We'll also be singing, amongst other things, Ding dong merrily on high, which I pondered about here (on the occasion of our second-most-recent carol service, 3 years ago):

<pre_script>
The first thing that strikes me is its structure – which is pretty neat. The first verse is about something happening in Heaven. The second verse draws a conclusion (E'en so) about what should, as a result, happen down here: let steeple bells be swungen. And the third verse goes into specifics, specifying what should happen at Prime...

<brickbat_dodging>
I know, I know, this isn't a majority view. Still, it's what I think: Pray you Prime is a command about singing a particular office. An early editor, and ignoramus – a benighted heathen no doubt, who was not conversant with the format <utterance_word>+<office_name>, as in  for example "say Mass" – stuck a meaning-wrenching comma after you, making prime a ([n] improbable, it seems to me) verb. 

<inline_PPS> 

It just occurred to me that "chime Matins" fits the same pattern (although "chime" makes the format <utterance_word>+<office_name> a little over-specific [suggesting speech rather than just noise-making].)

</inline_PPS>

</brickbat_dodging>

... and at Matins; and then at the evetime song. In between. the praising etc. goes on, presumably.

But why sing io? There are people who sing /ɑɪ.əʊ/ (which led my correspondent [HD 2021: who had invited this speculation] to suspect a connection with Io). But the Oxford Book of Carols is insistent (to the extent of a footnote) that the pronunciation is "ee-oh"  (they don't trust readers with IPA symbols, but they must mean /i:.əʊ/).

Some years ago this question was raised in this forum,  As usual, comments should be weighed in the balance and some will be found wanting;  but they are fairly brief and not very numerous. There are many, often conflicting views:  

1. "i-o" is a corruption of the Latin "in excelsis Deo"
2. I-o is a contraction or corruption of "ideo," Latin for "therefore." The implied thought is "ideo... gloria in excelsis deo,".
3. "io" is a Latin interjection (usually an exclamation of joy)

I imagine the truth is a mixture of the last two. (The first sounds to me like the distinctive blend of fanatically Christian sanctimoniousness and inventive improbability so familiar to survivors of a God-fearing education.) But monks in a scriptorium fought off RSI by abbreviating anything they could; and the pre-existing Latin interjection gave them an off-the-shelf solution.
</pre_script>

We'll also be singing a new arrangement (by our MD) of  The Seven Joys of Mary, which I wrote about (5 years ago) here:

<pre_script>
We will be singing several pieces new to the choir, among them Joys Seven – which is, in jazz terms, a paraphrase of The Lincolnshire poacher.

<digression>
That's something they don't seem  to do in  Primary Schools any more  – communal singing of  what were known as "Folk Songs" before the Revival of  the late '50s–early '60s.. I remember at St Gregory's RC Primary School singing with gusto

When me and my companions were
    setting of a snare
'Twas then we spied a gamekeeper
For him we did not care
For we can wrestle and fight,
    me boys,
And jump o'er anywhere...

A one-time colleague of mine, who already played the piano and the violin, during her teacher-training was required to learn the guitar so that she could maintain eye-contact with her pupils. As a consequence of this sort of thinking, today's schoolchildren can sing Kumbaya but not Sweet Lass of Richmond Hill.
</digression>

The interjection "me boys" in that extract are significant in a mistake I am always tempted to make in Joys Seven, because the two-word interjection at the equivalent place is "good man" – and I find it hard to avoid the less devout version.
.
.

And while we're on the subject of the words to Joys Seven, the sixth verse (which needs a rhyme for six) evokes in me another conditioned reflex from my old  St Gregory's days, provoked by the words "To see her own son Jesus Christ upon the crucifix".

A cross is a cross; an image of someone on one (there have been thousands of people tortured to death that way, if not  millions, but Christ is usually the one depicted) is a crucifix. I thought I'd better confirm this bit of pedantry, and it seems that dictionaries tend to agree:

Cambridge

Macmillan

Cobuild

Still, they needed a rhyme for six, and there aren't too many. Besides, the Collins English Dictonary is more forgiving:

</pre_script>

Words though (as I regularly say before a concert); they won't learn themselves. 

Do come!

 

b