In The Valley: A Song History

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"In The Valley" is a traditional American religious song about the early life of Jesus, of unknown authorship, which the Traditional Ballad Index reports from the Appalachians and the Southeast.[1] Most of its early verses draw on the Nativity stories in Matthew and Luke, but the Index's editor sees no obvious scriptural source for its valley, suggesting the Jordan valley, the setting of John the Baptist's ministry, as one possibility.[1] The earliest date the Index gives for the song is a Library of Congress recording of 1936.[1]

Painting of Mary kneeling over the infant Jesus in a manger while shepherds lean in to look and an angel floats above.

Bernardo Cavallino, Adoration of the Shepherds, oil on canvas, c. 1650. The Nativity, shown for the song's subject.

The Index lists three printed sources: a text and a tune appear under number 534 in the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, and Wells's The Ballad Tree prints another version.[1] The I. G. Greer folksong collection at Appalachian State University, gathered mainly in Ashe, Wilkes and Watauga counties, holds a copy, classified by the Brown collection's numbering as religious song 534.[2] Under the title "Juda's Land," the carol was printed in Elizabeth Poston's Second Penguin Book of Christmas Carols, with a note tracing it to the folk song collection of the Hutchins Library at Berea College in Kentucky.[3] The singer Jean Ritchie knew the song from childhood but, having forgotten most of the words, wrote new ones of her own.[1]

Maureen Sellers includes "In The Valley," in DAD tuning, in Simply Christmas, a 60-page book of dulcimer tablature in her "Simply" style of plain melodies and harmonies, published by Fingers Of Steel.[4]

Our book that contains the song "In The Valley"

Browse more tunes like this: Christmas Dulcimer Tab

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "In the Valley".
  2. Appalachian State University, W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection: "In the Valley" (I. G. Greer Folksong Collection).
  3. Folkinfo (Mainly Norfolk): "Juda's Land".
  4. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, Simply Christmas".
  5. Image: Bernardo Cavallino, Adoration of the Shepherds, oil on canvas, c. 1650. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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