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Saturday, December 20, 2014

Carol history. . .Angels we have heard on high!

Well, I had a lot of fun with the voting! "Carol of the bells" and "Angels we have heard on high" were by far the most popular, but "Angels we have heard on high" won by one vote. So here's the history behind this poplar carol!

"Angels We Have Heard on High" is a Christmas carol of French origin in the public domain. The song commemorates the story of the birth  of Jesus Christ found in the Gospel of Luke which shepherds outside Bethlehem encounter a multitude of angels singing and praising the newborn child.

The words of the song are based on a traditional French carol known as Les Anges dans nos campagnes (literally, "Angels in our countryside") composed by an unknown author in Languedoc, France. That song has received many adjustments or alignments including its most common English version that was translated in 1862 by James Chadwick, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle northeast England. The carol quickly became popular in the West country, where it was described as 'Cornish' by R.R. Chope, and featured in Pickard-Cambridge's  Collection of Dorset Carols.
There is also a Scottish Gaelic (Gaidhlig)  translation of the carol which is known as Ainglean chuala sinn gu h-ard (literally, "Angels We Have Heard on High"). This was translated into Gaelic by Iain MacMilan from James Chadwick's English translation.

Well I hope you all had as much fun as I did! Finding the history for the carol was moderately easy (Thanks Wikipedia!) And I had fun learning about it!

*Update*  The Christmas giveaway ends at 8:00pm tomorrow night!

1 comment:

  1. Interesting! Wow, you learn something new everyday! Thanks for the post Jesseca! :)

    ReplyDelete