The custom of celebrating the festivities of the season by the singing of carols in these islands, appears to have mingled with the Christmas observances from the earliest period. We have specimens of the carols themselves of a remote date, and have already given an extract from one, the manuscript of which, in the British Museum, is dated as far back as the thirteenth century. There are evidences of the universality of the practice in the fifteenth century; and the great popularity of these songs about this time is proved by the fact of a collection thereof having been printed in the early part of the following century by Wynkyn de Worde. It is to the Puritans that we appear to have been indebted for the introduction of the religious carol. Those enemies of all mirth, even in its most innocent or valuable forms, finding the practice of carol-singing at this festive time too general and rooted to be dealt with by interdiction, appear to have endeavored to effect their objects by directing it into a channel of their own, and probably retaining the ancient airs, to have adapted them to the strange religious ballads, of which we must give our readers a few specimens. The entire version of the Psalms of David made by Sternhold and Hopkins was published about the middle of the sixteenth century; and some time before the middle of the seventeenth a duodecimo volume appeared, under the title of "Psalmes or Songs of Zion, turned into the language and set to the tunes of a strange land, by W. S. [William Slatyr], intended for Christmas Carols and fitted to divers of the most noted and common but solemne tunes everywhere in this land familiarly used and knowne."