THE TWO BEST CAROLS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21266, 21 February 1931, Page 16

THE TWO BEST CAROLS.

The two most popular Christmas carols in use in England to-daj .are probably “ Hark, the Herald Angels Sing ” and “ Christians, Awake! ” Doubtless Nahum Tate’s “ While Shepherd’s Watched Their Flacks by Night ” —a chastely beautiful word-picture — would run them close.

Charles Wesley’s great carol was written, not amid December snows and under winter skies in England, but amid the sun-burnt plantations of Georgia. As a young man Wesley went to Savannah as secretary to General Oglethorpe, the founder and Governor of the colony, whose bones have recently been the subject of controversy. A storm nearly overwhelmed the vessel on which Charles and his brother sailed, and they were so impressed by their Moravian fellowpassengers, who in dace of death calmly gathered together on deck and sang the hymns of their country, that they themselves turned hymn-writers when they landed in Georgia. John translated the Moravian hymns into English, but Charles drew inspiration from within his own heart, and thus it came about that from Georgia we got his famous carol.

It was not published in England until 1739, but he had. given a copy of it to the Governor’s wife. The opening lines in the original version were:—

Hark how all the welkin Tings, Glory to the King o£ Kings, and it is a pity they have been tampered with., , Thl tune, tells us, was originally set to a song in honour of the inventor of printing, and at the point where we take up the refrain, the original words were “ Gutenberg der grosser Mann ” —Gutenberg the mighty man. v

Tea years after the writing of “ Hark the herald” another great carol was given to the world. A few miles out of Manchester there is a fine old gabled house . known 'as “Kersall Gell.” It was once occupied by a community of Cluniae monks, and their small chapel or oratory is still to he seen. There, in 1692, John Byrom was born. When a mere youth, he became an ardent admirer of the Young Pretender, and earned for hiipself the sobriquet of “The Poet Laureate of the Jacobites.”

At Christmas, 1745, his little daughter Dolly made her father promise to write “ something nice for Christmas, and it was to be all for herself.” When the day came, there was a tiny sheet of notepaper on Dolly’s breakfast plate, containing the carol “Christians, Awake! Salute the Happy Morn.” A few years later a group of singers —they were members of Kersall Church Choir—came to Byrom’s house on Christmas Eve and sang his carol under the gabled windows to a tune specially written for it by their leader. The tune wonderfully preserves the old carol spirit, and is—as its composor’s epitaph in Stockport Church declares—- “ a heritage to the Church at large, whose sound has gone out into many lands.” —F. J. Gillman, editor of the Fellowship Hymn Book.