The tune for "Good King Wenceslas" comes from which spring carol?

The tune for “Good King Wenceslas” comes from the spring carol “Tempus adest floridum.” Its Latin title means “The flowering time is here” or “The blooming time is here,” making its original seasonal setting very different from the snowy Christmas story now sung to it.

The melody is associated with a thirteenth-century carol and was published in the Finnish song collection Piae Cantiones in 1582. That book preserved a large body of medieval songs for church and school use, helping bring the melody to the attention of nineteenth-century English musicians.

In 1853, John Mason Neale wrote the English words about Saint Wenceslas, working with Thomas Helmore to fit them to the old tune. The new text has no narrative or verbal connection with “Tempus adest floridum”; only the melody was reused. Saint Wenceslas was based on Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, who lived from 907 to 935, while the carol’s action takes place on the Feast of Stephen, December 26.