When morning gilds the skies

The number of stzs (up to at least 10, in Woodward’s Songs of Syon) varies from book to book; it can afford to, since this is a different kind of construction from that of its predecessor. But the double refrain is both insistent and unmistakable, setting out its stall as a litany of worship: ‘May Jesus Christ be praised!’ Although the first line plants it in the ‘Morning’ section (though not for all hymnals) it is deliberately and specifically a hymn for all moods and seasons; the 1925 edition of Golden Bells made it no.1. Its 14 German stzs Beim fruhen Morgenlicht are from an unknown 19th-c pen, and were published in a 667 667 metre in 1828 and 1855, in two different forms. Edward Caswall may have used yet another version in rendering it in the present metre, in Roman Catholic collections of 1854 (shorter version) and 1858 (the full text). To Caswall we owe the key to it all in the 6-syllable lines 3 and 6, translating Gelobt sei Jesus Christus! Subsequent arrangements have proved surprisingly varied and complex, as editors clearly felt free to be eclectic in their phrasing and selection of stzs. Free Churches have usually dispensed with ‘the sweet church bell’ and ‘chanting with the choir’; the text here values the Jubilate adaptation of stzs 1 and 3–6, losing ‘to Jesus I repair’ (1.5) and ‘a solace here’ (5.2), though it has regrettably also lost the distinctive ‘canticle’ from the final lines. Stzs 2 and 3, missing from the Jubilate version, provide both a wider vision and a richer quality to the whole, while not approaching the full scope of its long original.

Joseph Barnby’s LAUDES DOMINI (‘Praises of the Lord’) was composed for these words and came in the 1868 Appendix to the first edition of A&M, marked ‘in quick time’. While Eric Sharpe regarded this as a strong tune, Erik Routley discerned its similarity to the composer’s secular style.

b Yateley, Hants 1814, d Edgbaston (nr Birmingham), Warwicks 1878. 4th son of the Vicar of Yateley; Chigwell Grammar Sch, Essex; Marlborough Coll, Wilts; Brasenose Coll Oxford (BA 1836, MA). As a student he issued a witty academic pamphlet ‘after the fashion of Aristotle’. He was ordained (CofE) in 1838; served in the parishes of Bishop’s Norton nr Gloucester; Milverton nr Warwick; and from 1840 at Stratford-sub-Castle, nr Salisbury. But in 1846, in his early 30s, he resigned his living, and a few months later became a Roman Catholic, Jan 1847. From then on his work of translating Lat hymns, already well advanced, gathered momentum; he published nearly 200 in Lyra Catholica (etc) in 1848, and ten years later The Masque of Mary and other poems. Other books of verse and drama followed. Widowed in 1849, he moved to J H Newman’s ‘Oratory’ in Birmingham, where in 1852 he was ordained as an RC. He remained there for the rest of his life; his collected hymns and poems were published posthumously, with a biographical preface, in 1908. He became one of those Roman converts of whom Ellerton, possibly a little biased, judged that ‘it can scarcely be said that they contributed much to the strength of the church of their adoption’. Of the 250 English hymn texts in The Westminster Hymnal of 1912, more than 50 are by Caswall, mostly translations. He is often the best-represented RC author in protestant hymn-books (5 in CH2004, 12 in The BBC Hymn Book of 1951, 9 in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book and 13 in Common Praise 2000). As a Victorian hymntranslator he has been praised for the ‘great spirit and facility’ of his work; he ranks second only to the masterly and generally more accurate J M Neale, qv. Nos.217, 337, 347, 376, 421, 741.