Fairest Lord Jesus

There are no greater themes for wondering praise than the lovely gift of God’s creation, and the even lovelier gift of his Son. An earlier comment on this hymn has made the point more eloquently, but we have been unable to trace it. The hymn’s origins are in the 1677 Münster Gesangbuch, with the anonymous text Schönster Herr Jesu, Herrscher aller Enden. Some have claimed that this comes from a Lat hymn translated into German by 1662. A different form of it came in an 1842 book part-edited by A H Hoffman van Fallersleben, who said it was based on a Silesian haymaking song he heard in 1839. But this is but a fraction of the complex story set out by Wesley Milgate in Songs of the People of God, and in the Companion to Rejoice and Sing which adds further thoughts on ‘fair/fairer/fairest’. The 1924 text ascribed to Lilian Stevenson is a light revision of a translation, again anonymous, published by R S Willis in Church Chorals [sic] and Choir Studies (New York 1850); so that ‘the work of “others

1677. A collection belonging to what in Julian is called the ‘Third Period’ of German hymnody, seen with hindsight as coming between the great Reformation hymns and the beginnings of Pietism with the advance of the Moravians. No.295.

b Rathgar, Co Dublin, Ireland 1870 or 71, d Beaconsfield, Bucks 1960. Raised in a Presbyterian manse, after studies at the Slade Sch of Art in London she worked with Temple Gairdner of Cairo in forming the Art Students’ Christian Union, which merged with the new Student Christian Movement. She edited the SCM’s journals (the Student Volunteer and Student Movement) at various times between 1896 and 1903. Latterly she was active in the Fellowship of Reconciliation (of Christian pacifists, founded in 1914) and loved to welcome overseas students in her home. Her later years were spent partly at Gerrards Cross, Bucks. No.295.