Coventry Carol

This traditional carol tells of one of the darker parts of the Christmas story, the slaughter of the innocents, from the perspective of the mothers whose children are torn from their arms. The arrangement takes the haunting, plaintive melody, and turns the 'lully-lullay' of a lullaby into the tolling of a bell. The order to slay the children wrenches the music into a new key, and the final verse is bare, halting, desolate.