CAROLS CORRECTION
Alexander Larman (“Sacred Cows”, Dec/Jan) is quite wrong to date “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night” and “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” to the Tudor period. The former first appeared in 1700 and the latter is not found in any printed source earlier than the 1830s.
While it is true that there were a significant number of carols written in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, including “Adam lay ybounden” and “Lullay, lulla, my little tiny
