The oldest surviving transcript of the mystery play The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors was copied in 1534 by Robert Croo, but the pageant itself, and the songs it contains, come from significantly earlier. Overall, the Coventry pageants date back to at least 1392; we do not know, however, how far back in the sequence Shearmen and Tailors shows up: presumably, some time in the 1400s.

The Coventry pageants were “mystery plays.” Unlike a modern mystery story, where some sort of crime puzzle must be solved by a detective, the medieval mystery plays expressed a religious lesson of some kind, thus making the mystery of the gospel available to the common people. The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors tells the story of the birth of Jesus, and focuses especially on the Slaughter of the Innocents, from the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. King Herod, in paranoia over the idea that a new king had been born, ordered the killing of the baby boys of Bethlehem, age 2 or younger. Assuming a population of perhaps a thousand in the village of Bethlehem, and perhaps another thousand in the surrounding countryside, this might have been 20 or 30 children. Later embellishments would set the number at 14,000, or 64,000, or even 144,000 – these are wildly unrealistic figures.

The Coventry Carol itself, the second of three songs in Shearmen and Tailors, is not a glad Christmas song about singing angels and rejoicing shepherds. Instead, it is a deep lament, expressing the anguish of one of the mothers of Bethlehem over the loss of her son. In the first stanza she sings a lullaby to her baby, and in the second she asks her friends how they might save the life of her child. Only in the third stanza do we find out that these deaths have been ordered by Herod, but nothing about why. And the final stanza is simply the mourning over her child, for whom she will never again sing a lullaby. Thus the song is an intensely personal look into the soul of one bereaved individual. She has no concern about the theological or political issues here: her heart knows only that her son is taken away.

1. Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child, Bye bye, lully, lullay.
Lully, lullay, thou little tiny child, Bye bye, lully, lullay

2. O sisters too, how may we do For to preserve this day
This poor youngling for whom we sing, “Bye bye, lully, lullay”?

3. Herod the king, in his raging, Chargèd he hath this day
His men of might in his own sight All young children to slay.

4. Then woe is me, poor child, for thee And ever mourn and may
For thy parting neither say nor sing, “Bye bye, lully, lullay.”

Joan Baez conveys so well the pain in this carol:
https://youtu.be/QfYHhGGfjZs