Grammar girl here, back in episode 31, I answered a listener's question about some confusing

lyrics in the Christmas Carol joy to the world.

She wondered why the lyrics went, the Lord is come instead of the Lord has come.

In fact, traditional Christmas carols are full of archaic or confusing language like this.

So today we're going to untangle some more of that Christmas Carol syntax that you may

have been wondering about.

The Christmas Carol we're going to tackle today is What Child Is This, written in 1865

by William Chatterton Dicks, and sung to the tune of the traditional English folk song

Green Sleeves.

It starts out like this.

What child is this who laid to rest on Mary's lap is sleeping.

Oh.

Well, forgive that bad singing, but you get the idea.

Simple enough at first, what child is this?

So let's move on, who laid to rest on Mary's lap.

It looks like we have a clause that describes this child.

The subject of the clause is the relative pronoun who.

The predicate seems to be laid to rest on Mary's lap.

But wait, if you're a longtime grammar girl listener, you know that something's funny

about laid to rest.

Back in 2009, I talked about the verbs lay and lie, and joked that Eric Clapton's song

lay down Sally really should be lie down Sally.

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