Christ Was Born In Bethlehem: A Song History

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"Christ Was Born in Bethlehem" is a traditional religious folk song, Roud 1122, whose eight-line stanzas, heavy with repetition, carry the story from the Nativity through Jesus' ministry, betrayal, death and resurrection.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index gives 1906 as its earliest date, for a Lincolnshire version, and reports it from England, the Appalachians and Southeast of the United States, the Canadian Maritimes, Newfoundland and Australia.[1] American collections have printed it under other names as well, among them "Jesus Born in Bethlehem" in the Frank C. Brown collection from North Carolina and "Jesus Walked in Galilee" in Richard Chase's American Folk Tales and Songs, while Cecil Sharp included it in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians.[1][2]

Engraving of Mary kneeling before the infant Jesus inside an elaborate Gothic building, with Joseph at a doorway

Mair von Landshut, The Nativity, engraving, 1499. Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

Jean Ritchie printed a version as "Down Came an Angel" in her Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians.[1] The Association for Cultural Equity's archive lists "Christ Was Born in Bethlehem" in a session she sang in New York City on 18 March 1949, made up mostly of hymns and carols and including Primitive Baptist hymns from the Kentucky mountains that she had learned from her mother.[3] She later recorded it with Kate Corrigan and Pamela Schall on the 1980 Greenhays album Kentucky Christmas Old and New.[4] Maureen Sellers includes it, under Ritchie's title "Down Came An Angel," in Simply Gospel, Book Two, a book of tunes arranged for solo mountain dulcimer with lyrics included, set in DAD tuning and published by Fingers Of Steel.[5][1]

Our books that contain the song "Christ Was Born In Bethlehem"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Christ Was Born in Bethlehem".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Bibliography".
  3. Association for Cultural Equity: "Jean Ritchie 3/49".
  4. The American Folk Song Collection (Kodály Center): "Christ Was Born in Bethlehem".
  5. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Gospel, Book Two".
  6. Image: Mair von Landshut, The Nativity, engraving, 1499. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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