This joyful Eastertide


"This joyful Eastertide" is an 1894 Easter carol. The words are by George Ratcliffe Woodward, the tune is from the Netherlands, and the 1894 harmonisation is by Charles Wood.

Publication

The original carol was published in 1894 in Carols for Easter and Ascensiontide, a publication put together by Woodward and Wood; and again in 1902 in The Cowley Carol Book. They used a Dutch tune first published in 1624 by Dirk Rafaelsz Camphuysen and republished in 1685 by Joachim Oudaen with an Easter text of his own.
The music has been republished many times, often under choral arrangements. It appears in the Carols for Choirs collection under Wood's original arrangement. Some of the arrangements published include that of William Llewellyn published by Oxford University Press, and that of Philip Ledger. More recently, Oxford University Press published the text set to a completely new tune composed by Matthew Owens in 2015 in the form of a choral anthem.

Text

Many versions exist of the three original verses; but in its original form as written by George Ratcliffe Woodward and published in 1894, it is as follows:
Two additional verses were penned by Basilian Father M. Owen Lee: