Under The Greenwood Tree -Thomas Hardy

                                                       A Minor Masterpiece 

 Recently heard the carol  Remember Oh Thou Man performed by Eliza Carthy and Jon Boden during their excellent concert at Worthing Assembly Rooms on 13th December 2025.  The audience were reminded that the carol singers in the opening chapters of  Thomas Hardy's Under The Greenwood Tree or The Mellstock Quire A Rural Painting of the Dutch School  trudge through the snow on Christmas Eve night  to Farmer Shiner's house. They serenade the old grump with the carol Remember Oh Thou Man accompanied by some loud instrument playing.  

Also appears on the duos's CD Glad Christmas Comes (2023) with notes by Jon Boden, who advises "It is this song that is selected as their preferred weapon for waking up a particularly Scrooge-life farmer." The words and music credit goes to Thomas Ravencroft 1611.

Lyrics

Remember O Thou Man

Remember, O thou man,
O thou man, O thou man,
Remember O thou man,
    Thy time is spent.
Remember, O thou man,
How thou cams’t to me then,
And I did what I can,
    Therefore repent.

Remember Adam’s fall,
O thou man, O thou man!
Remember Adam’s fall
    From heaven to hell!
Remember Adam’s fall,
How we were condemned all
To hell perpetual,
    There for to dwell.

Remember God’s goodness,
O thou man, O thou man!
Remember God’s goodness,
    And promise made!
Remember God’s goodness,
How His only Son He sent
Our sins for to redress,
    Be not afraid.........

Full Carol Text

Under the Greenwood Tree  described by the Thomas Hardy Society as " the most cheerful and unproblematic" of his novels. First published in 1872, and the difficult second novel, the first being the sensational  Desperate Remedies. Set in the fictional Wessex village of Mellstock. Two story lines emerge, young villager Dick Dewey competes for the hand of the new school mistress, Miss Fancy Day. But there is competition with two other suitors, Farmer Shiner and Reverend Mayflower. Secondly, the choir and posse of musicians are informed by Reverend Mayflower that they are to be disbanded, to be replaced by Fancy Day playing the harmonium at church. Hardy sold the copyright to Under The Greenwood Tree for £30, and tried to buy them back in 1875 after sales were quite successful. The publisher tried to charge him £300 to do so, and Hardy declined. MALLETT

The first song referred to in Under The Greeenwood Tree is when 21 year old Dick Dewey sings the refrain 'The lads and lasses do sheep shearing go' from the folk song The Rosebud in June . The full lyrics might have been too racy for the sensibilities of the time. Of course we don't know if this was the version that Hardy had in mind, but the lyrics celebrate nature at its peak with a celebration of sensual pleasure:  

"It's a rosebud in June and the violets in full bloom,
And the small birds are singing love songs on each spray.

We'll pipe and we'll sing love,
We'll dance in a ring love,
When each lad takes his lass
All on the green grass,
And it's oh to plough where the fat oxen graze low
And the lads and the lasses do sheep shearing go.

When we have all sheared all our jolly, jolly sheep,
What joy can be greater than to talk of their increase.

We'll pipe and we'll sing love,"

The famous master collector of folk song,Cecil Sharp, first heard the song in a Somerset pub in 1904. MAINLY NORFOLK  The novel ends with Dick Dewy marrying Fancy Day at Mid-Summer, albeit not  with a few setbacks . The Greenwood Tree itself, which dominates the final chapter is a symbol of tradition and continuity. Unlike so many doomed Hardy figures, Dick and Fancy's marriage crosses social boundaries but the community is reconciled and eventually celebrates their marriage. And the question of the harmonium usurping church musicians, is resolved. Perhaps too easily. And even the local witch -Mrs Endorfield -is friendly and benign. Nothing like the cursing hag featured in The Return of the Native. 

Claire Tomalin, in her classic biography of Hardy noted that in this novel "You are charmed on condition that you accept Hardy's condescension towards his characters. His villagers are drawn sympathetically but as simpletons." Indeed, one gets the impression that Mellstock has more than its fair share of dunces. Part of the awkwardness in this respect is that Hardy appeared to set the novel in the 1840's, but without the social tensions of the time.As he was born in 1840, the comical account of the 'Quire' may have been drawn from his own family history and vaguely remembered local 'characters'. PINION And as a school mistresses, Fancy Day, appears to belong to a later era. The 1870 Education Act, introducing compulsory education, created a great need for teachers, leading to more  women being recruited. Though some women had already started in this field, Fancy Day doesn't quite belong to 1840's rural society. HOLMES

Yet for all its drawbacks, Under The Greenwood Tree has its charm. Hardy seemed to find delight in the cycle of rural village life. There is a strong emphasis on dialect, kinship and community. There is hardship but little malice between people. The bee keeping chapter, and other depictions of rural life, particularly at Christmas time, have their own sense of wonder. And the ancient tree itself emerges from Yalbury Wood at the end of the novel, symbolising renewal and optimism

" Many hundreds of birds had been born amidst the boughs of this single tree; tribes of rabbits and hares had nibbled at its bark from year to year; quaint tufts of fungi had sprung from the cavities of its forks; and countless families of moles and earthworms had crept about its roots. Beneath and beyond its shade spread a carefully-tended grass-plot, its purpose being to supply a healthy exercise-ground for young chickens and pheasants; the hens, their mothers, being enclosed in coops placed upon the same green flooring." 

Under the Greenwood Tree TEXT

Picture Credit 

The Red Kerchief by Claude Monet, in the public domain, Courtesy of Wikipedia 

Books consulted 

Under the  Greenwood Tree, Thomas Hardy , Edited by Simon GATRELL /Introduction and Notes by Philip MALLETT , Oxford World Classics edition, Oxford University, 1985 

A Hardy Companion- A guide to the works of Thomas Hardy and their background, F B PINION, The Macmillan Press, 1968

Thomas Hardy The Time-Torn Man, Claire TOMALIN, Viking via Penguin Books 2006.

On Line 

Bee Keeping in Thomas Hardy's Youth   from Chris Slade's Bee Blog

History of Education web article Clever but Underbred : Mid Victorian Women Qualified to Teach by Johanna HOLMES

Mainly Norfolk Entry for A Rosebud in June/ Sheep Shearing song. 

Victorian Web Entry for 'Under the Greenwood Tree' 

Other Thomas Hardy Posts from this Blog 

Bonfire Night as featured in 'The Return of the Native'

Egdon Heath as featured in 'The Return of the Native' 

A Laodicean'- A Story of today

Wishing all visitors to this blog a Happy Christmas and a most excellent 2026. So grateful for your interest. 

Michael Bully
Worthing
West Sussex
England 

24th December 2025.