Christians, awake! Salute the happy morn

Like the very different 367, and perhaps even more so, this hymn is a classic celebration of Christmas morning. Pastors and churches with scruples about keeping the festival at all can bypass it, or announce it with a careful (but not dismissive) introduction.But ‘this alone is worth getting up for on Christmas morning’ – Jonathan Idle. Like 350, it is also a seasonal favourite with great textual variation; it is not practicable to sing the full original, written as a poem in 26 couplets with no division into stzs. Editors have all felt free to make their own selection, making sure that their own favourite single lines appeared (3.5–6? 4.3–4?), and then emending what had survived.

The devout but eccentric John Byrom allegedly wrote the ‘ode’ for his equally unusual young daughter Dorothy (Dolly). Probably uniquely, she had requested a poem as her Christmas present for 1749, and this is what she found on her breakfast table. A year later, the author’s diary records ‘Xmas 1750: the singing men and boys, with Mr Wainwright, came here and sang “Christians awake��?’. Like 379, the text follows the story told in Luke 2; unlike that earlier hymn, this one relates it to the purpose of Christ’s coming and makes an application: ‘Let us …’. Textual changes began with the author; a slightly shortened form came in his posthumous Miscellaneous Poems (1773), and Cotterill’s 1819 Selection (cf 350) was the first book to divide it into six 6-line stzs under the hand of James Montgomery. But though the 1750 open-air rendition in front of the author’s Manchester front door must have had some musical shape. 5 stzs are included here; it is best to avoid the need to hurry the singing, to draw it out at too great length, or (worst?) to destroy the narrative flow by omitting some central lines. 4 of the stzs here are virtually those chosen for the Jubilate version, but stz 4 is also retained from the original. The first 12 lines are close to Byrom; the original then has 4 lines which no hymnal includes, followed by 6 which some do: ‘He spake, and straightway the celestial quire …’ Stz 3 represents lines 23–32 (2 lines omitted); the remaining two show more variation, and the familiar 4.5–6 have no equivalent in 1749. In 2009 Pete Broadbent, Bp of Willesden, revealed this as his favourite ‘carol’; ‘One of the few carols that expresses the daytime celebration of Christ’s birth. A simple tune, triumphant…The incarnation and the cross are linked…A good retelling of the core Christmas story’ – Church Music Quarterly Dec 2009.
YORKSHIRE is the original tune by John Wainwright, arranged for Praise! by Linda Mawson. It was published c1760 in Caleb Ashworth’s Collection of Tunes, whose 2nd edn named it MORTRAM, a misprint for the local placename Mottram. In 1766 a new arrangement appeared, with the words, in the composer’s own Collection of Psalm Tunes … , but only since the 1861 A&M did the hymn become known beyond N England. There it received its present usual name, though STOCKPORT (so called by Ralph Harrison c1784 from the composer’s Lancs home) is also used as, less frequently, are at least 7 other names. Whatever we call it, Routley calls it ‘magnificent’.

b Kersall (Kersal), nr Manchester, Feb 1691/92, d Manchester 1763. Merchant Taylor’s Sch, N London, and Trinity Coll Cambridge (BA/MA), of which he became a Fellow in 1714. In 1719 he studied medicine at the Univ of Montpellier, S France, but did not complete his qualification, or have it ratified sufficiently to practise in England; he was elected FRS in 1724. He was noted for his new shorthand system (‘tychygraphy’) which he taught to Gibbon and Walpole among others; in an adapted form Charles and (especially) John Wesley (qv) found it invaluable for their hymns, diaries and subsequent journals. In 1742 he established in law his sole right to teach it.

A friend of the Wesleys, he retained his respect for Wm Law (parts of whose Serious Call he rendered in verse) longer than they did, but JW spoke highly of his learning, wit (wisdom and humour) and poetic gifts. The Spectator published his verse under the name of ‘John Shadow’. He inherited the family property in Manchester where his theology, tinged with mysticism, came to the fore in a gifted, slightly eccentric and essentially English public life. His political sympathies, expressed in at least one neat and much anthologised epigram, were Jacobite and cool towards the monarchy. His 2 surviving hymns (including the brief and unique My spirit longs [longeth] for thee) afford a small glimpse into his varied styles and achievements. An early user of the umbrella, he invented the names later immortalised by Lewis Carroll, ‘Tweedledum and Tweedledee’ (in a comic verse about Handel), and his tall long-legged figure won him the nickname of ‘the genial giant’. His Private Journals and Literary Remains were published between 1854 and 1857, suggesting ‘a light-hearted and good-natured man paradoxically attracted to… mysticism’ (Drabble). His verse was collected in 2 posthumous vols (1773) and brought together in one book in 1814. No.352.