"This Endris Night" (also "Thys Endris Night", "Thys Ender Night" or "The Virgin and Child"[1]) is a 15th-century English Christmas carol.[2] It has also appeared under various other spellings.[1] Two versions from the 15th-century survive, one republished in Thomas Wright, Songs and Carols Now First Printed, From a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (London: The Percy Society, 1847), and the other in the possession of the Advocates' Library in Edinburgh, Scotland,[3] a legal deposit belonging to the Faculty of Advocates, a role which was assumed by the National Library of Scotland from 1925 onwards. All non-legal collections were given to the National Library.
It has been praised for the unusual delicacy and lyrical flourish for a poem of the period.The opening lyrics, in the Wright edition, are:[4]
Thys endris nyȝth
I saw a syȝth,
A stare as bryȝt as day;
And ever among
A mayden song
Lullay, by by, lullay.