Carols

According to BBC radio news, some professor has "just discovered" a rather amazing fact: many well-known carols and Christmas hymns used to be sung to different tunes. "While Shepherds Watched," he says, used to be sung to a wide variety of folk tunes, of which the most popular was the tune of Ilkley Moor. Wow! What an amazing and radical new discovery this is!

I possess several CDs in which various folk groups sing well-known Christmas words to their old traditional folk tunes. My mixed Morris side does the same. We sing "While Shepherds Watched" to a wide variety of folk tunes, of which the most popular is the tune of Ilkley Moor.

If only any of us had realised that any of this was actually news, we could all be rich and famous by now.