There is a definite British slant to this book, which is understandable, given that the author is a church musician in Oxford. While only "Personent hodie" was absolutely unfamiliar to me as an American, my supposition is that "Good King Wenceslas" and "Here We Come a-Wassailing" are more familiar in the UK than on this side of the Atlantic. On the flip side, however, you can't get much more American than "I Wonder as I Wander" and "Jingle Bells," which are also included.
Are the stories really "surprising?" Well, I suppose the revelation that the term "carol" wasn't originally synonymous with Christmas but referred to non-religious songs that were too lively or ribald to be sung within church walls counts. (At which point, I cock a doubtful eyebrow at "Personent hodie.") And "I Wonder as I Wander" was a fragment of an Appalachian folk melody sung at the price of twenty-five cents per performance by the teenage daughter of a family of vagrant evangelists for a folk-music researcher. Apart from that, there's nothing very unexpected about the backgrounds of these songs, but I suppose Surprising Stories make for better cover copy than just Stories.
Gant's accounts are rather technical to a musical neophyte; he uses unfamiliar terms and quotes French and Latin without offering a translation. I'd wager he is used to conversing with scholars at Oxford and breezes over points which he doesn't realize he has to explain to the layman. The book was mildly enjoyable, however, and I did learn some things I didn't know about various carols.
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