Teh Binks on the Wexford Carol

Binksy does all mankind a favor by posting this gem from Alison Krauss and Yo Yo Ma:

He writes:

First thought: here is a taste of the sweetness and power of the Good News, that God’s Son was born for us. The original Irish carol arose in the 1100s in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, and is considered the oldest Christmas carol out of Europe. Thank God for that soul 900 years ago who captured the thought, and set it to Gaelic and music.

Second, just how cranky would the 16th- and 17th-century wrecker-haters be (the Protesters and the later Talibanist Puritanizers) to know this relic of ancient Catholic Christianity survived, and is still touching souls and preaching Christ and reminding us of 2000 years of God’s love across the years? Muwahahahaha! Despite the smashing of glass and marble, the burning of books and roods, the desecration of relics and graves and churches and history, the truth will out, even if by fragile threads and secret ways… and long memories.

Part of what was smashed in the English ‘Reformation’ was the focus on real communities, feasts and fasts, the local versus the state, and cottage/ monastery industry versus taxation and bigger government. The tremendous creativity and dazzling diversity of what later sneerers called ‘The Middle Ages’ is a living gift to the world, to art, music, architecture, literature, philosophy, science, theology, and – well – everything else besides.

So enjoy the Wexford Carol – for the beauty, for the talent of the musicians and arrangers, and for those of you who are Christians, as an abiding gift of praise unto the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, three persons and one God, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.

Please keep Binksy in your prayers, both for his health and that the Soft Totalitarians of the Great Brownshirt North do not smother him but rather that he fight on for the gospel and for freedom of speech.

Merry Christmas, Binks!