"Away in a Manger" is a Christmas carol first published in the late nineteenth century and used widely throughout the English-speaking world. In Britain, it is one of the most popular carols; a 1996 Gallup Poll ranked it joint second. Although it was long claimed to be the work of German religious reformer Martin Luther, the carol is now thought to be wholly American in origin.
- Verse 1, line 3: The earliest sources have "[t]he stars in the sky looked down where he lay",
- Verse 2, line 4: This line has a multitude of variants:
- "And stay by my crib watching my lullaby" (Christian Cynosure, 1882)
- "And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh" (Herbert, 1891)
- "And stay by my side until morning is nigh" (1905)
- Verse 3 is absent from the earliest publications. It first appears in Gabriel's Vineyard Songs (1892).
- Verse 3, line 4: Instead of "take us to heaven", one popular variant found from 1899 has "fit us for heaven".
History
thumb|right|The Christian Cynosure (2 March 1882)
thumb|right|Little Pilgrim Songs (1883)
First and second verses
The origin of the words is obscure. An early appearance was on 2 March 1882, in the "<!-- punctuation is original; please don't "correct" --> Corner" section of the anti-Masonic journal The Christian Cynosure. Under the heading "Luther's Cradle Song", an anonymous author contributed the first two verses, writing:
Since this story dates the composition of the stanza to 1904–1908, over a decade after its first known appearance, Hill judges that "the 1892 publication [of Gabriel's Vineyard Songs] renders the Bishop's story suspect, and additional evidence must be found before McFarland can be safely credited with the writing of the third stanza."
Popularity
By Christmas of 1883, "Luther's Cradle Song" was already being performed as a recitation as part of a Sunday School celebration in a church in Nashville. The early popularity of the hymn may also be reflected in a report (published in 1885, but covering the year 1884) from an American mission in Maharashtra, India, stating: By 1891, Hill writes, "the carol was sweeping the country [the United States]", with at least four musical settings published that year. The claim of Luther's authorship continued to be made well into the 20th century, but it is now rejected as spurious for the following reasons:
Murray included a claim that the hymn was "[c]omposed by Martin Luther for his children". Hill writes: and this attribution was repeated several times in other publications.
Kirkpatrick's melody was later published in numerous hymnbooks, and was the setting that, in Hill's words, "first carried the words beyond the confines of the United States", being included in collections such as Carey Bonner's Sunday School Hymnary (1905). Richard Hill treated 41 of the nearly 200 different musical settings of this text.
The first music mentioned in connection with "Away in a Manger" was a pre-existing composition: Home! Sweet Home! (also known as "There's No Place Like Home"). This was suggested as a musical setting in Little Pilgrim Songs (1883) and The Myrtle (1884), and continued to be mentioned as an appropriate melody for decades to come. A musical arrangement was published in the early 1920s.
The first known musical setting specifically published with the words appeared in an Evangelical Lutheran Sunday school collection, Little Children's Book for Schools and Families (1885; preface dated Christmas 1884), where it simply bore the title "Away in a Manger". It was set to a tune called "St. Kilda", credited to J.E. Clark. The tune, according to Hill, "gives every appearance of being a standard melody used elsewhere for other hymns", but Hill adds that "no information on J. E. Clark or any other printing of his tune, previous or later, has been located." (first published in 1891), is identified by Hill as among the most popular.
Charles H. Gabriel, already mentioned as being the first to publish the third verse in 1892, is also notable for having published more different musical arrangements of the hymn than any other known composer. His 1896 setting, reprinted in many different collections, is based on his 1892 melody but adds a chorus at the end of each verse, with the word "asleep" sung antiphonally. sets the words to Jonathan E. Spilman's 1838 melody "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton". Hill, writing in 1941, found Spilman's musical setting to be the second-most published, after Murray's.
|File:Away in a manger St Kilda.png|First known musical setting to be published with the carol, from "Little children's book" (1885).
|File:Away in a manger Spilman ed Rowland.png|Set to the melody "Flow gently, Sweet Afton" by Spilman (from an 1898 collection).
|File:Away in a manger Spilmen ed hutchins.png|A more expansive arrangement of Spilman's melody (1916).
|File:Away in a manger normandy carol.png|Set to an "Old Normandy carol" (1911).
See also
- List of Christmas carols
- Nativity scene