Boar’s Head Carol Ceremony | Official Version | The Queen’s College Oxford

0:00 Trumpet fanfare and entrance of the Fellows 0:45 The Grace 1:02 The Boar’s Head Carol and Procession 2:38 The Boar’s Head is placed on High Table Filmed live at The Queen’s College on 17 December 2022. Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford Bass soloist: Ben Watkins Director: Owen Rees Filmed by Apple and Biscuit The Choir of The Queen’s College, Oxford, directed by Owen Rees, performs the Boar’s Head Carol at the Boar’s Head Ceremony held in the Hall of The Queen’s College in December 2022. The Boar’s Head Ceremony takes place at Queen’s each year, a week before Christmas. The Ceremony, originally held on Christmas Day, can be traced back to the fourteenth century (a payment for wild boar appears in the College accounts for 1395-1396). It commemorates the killing of a boar by a student of Queen’s, John Copcot, who, whilst reading Aristotle in Shotover Forest, is traditionally supposed to have been attacked by the animal. ’Swallow that if you can’, cried the student, thrusting the volume down the boar’s throat. ’Græcum est,’ [it is Greek] cried the boar, which expired, having found Aristotle too hard to digest. When Christmas came, remembering this legend, the College kept up an old pagan custom. After the trumpet sounds for dinner, and the Fellows have assembled alongside the High Table, the Boar’s Head is carried into the hall. A bass soloist leading the procession sings the carol, composed by an anonymous former member of the College: The Boar’s Head in hand bear I Bedecked with bays and rosemary: And I pray you my masters be merry Quot estis in convivio. [as many as are at this feast] The Boar’s head as I understand Is the bravest dish in all the land, When thus bedeck’d with a gay garland Let us servire cantico [with a song] Our steward hath provided this In honour of the King of Bliss, Which on this day to be served is In Reginensi Atrio. The refrain is sung by the choir after each of the three verses: Caput apri defero, Reddens laudes Domino. [I carry the boar’s head, giving praise to the Lord] The arrangement still sung today at Queen’s dates from 1901, although the melody and words are centuries older.