'The Darkest Midnight in December' is an Irish traditional folk carol for Christmas night, after Fr William Devereux, 1728. It is from Fr Devereux's collection of Kilmore Christmas carols, called 'A New Garland'. These Christmas Carols are much more like folk songs.
I used to consider this beautiful Carol, as MY Christmas Carol. I have sung it as a solo during several Christmas concerts when I sang with the choir, 'Tonalis Company of Singers' and the choir 'Choros'. I have also sung it in folk clubs etc.
There are actually quite a few verses, but here I only sing verse 1, first solo acapella and then as a duet with myself with a movable drone and third time as a canon with drones.
This Christmas carol can be found in many Carol books with all the many ornaments actually written into the sheet music, true to the sean noes style from the West of Ireland.

The Kilmore Carols are found only in Wexford, and date back more than 300 years. In 1684 Luke Waddinge, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Ferns, published A Smale Garland of Pious and Godly Songs. The cover inscription continues: "Composed by a devout Man/ For the Solace of his Friends and/ neighbours in their afflictions." The book contained 11 Christmas songs, two of which are still sung in Kilmore today. The texts were new, while the melodies were drawn from various traditional sources.
Waddinge died shortly after his book appeared, but interest in the subject was revived by a Father William Devereux, parish priest of Drinagh, Wexford from 1730-1771 (the current Devereuxes in Kilmore are almost certainly related to this priest). Devereux published A New Garland Containing Songs for Christmas. This included some of his own carols along with a few from Waddinge's collection.

Father R. Ranson, who published an edition of the Devereux book in 1949, claims that "the carols were first sung in a little chapel at Killiane, and tradition seems to indicate that the choir consisted of six men." The chapel in question was "no more than a mud hut".

The carols proved very popular, and manuscript copies quickly spread to neighbouring parishes, including Kilmore. Diarmaid O Muirithe, who has assembled and edited a collection of all the Wexford Carols (The Wexford Carols, Dolmen Press, 1982) observes: "They were sung in most of the churches of south Wexford in the 18th century, and even well into the 19th century. I think it's a great pity that they're now no longer sung outside Kilmore." O Muirithe considers that the church hierarchy in Wexford is to some extent responsible for the carols' decline. "For centuries they had been regarded by the church with a kind of benign tolerance, no more than that."

One priest in Kilmore Quay in the 19th century decided to get rid of the carols altogether and replace them with Victorian hymnody. "But the people in Kilmore decided they wouldn't be banished. The priest was banished instead, because nobody came into the church the next year. The bishop had to transfer him."

The Darkest Midnight in December

The Darkest Midnight in December | Irish Traditional Folk Carol | Marianne Lihannah

Elyssia (Paul Landry and Marianne Lihannah), an Anglo - Danish duo creating new age music, ambient music and progressive rock with beautiful female vocals.
This channel also features songs by Marianne Lihannah in various genres