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In medieval times before 1550, carols are songs on any subject, composed of uniform stanzas and provided with a burden. The stanzas are mostly tail-rhyme stanzas (aaab, cccb etc.), but other rhyme schemes are possible.

The burden; is a repeated element which does not form any part of the stanza, but stands wholly outside the stanza pattern and is frequently linked to the stanza by rhyme. Its omission would change the carol into a simple song or poem.

Medieval authors like Chaucer, Gower, or Lydgate and manuscript illuminations give us the carol not only as a song, but also as a dance. The dancers would join hands and form an open chain or a closed ring and dance to the music of a singer or leader, or one or more musicians. The leader would sing the stanzas, and the whole company would respond with the burden. This was a very popular form of entertainment throughout Europe, and everywhere the essential elements were circular motion and the division into leader and chorus.

Medieval records on the expenses for feasts show, that royal or clerical houses did not only pay for wine and food consumed during a festive season like Christmas, but also for minstrels and singers of carols.

The most famous of the c.500 medieval carols that we know is the so-called Agincourt-Carol, celebrating the victory of Henry V at Agincourt in 1415.