Morning Has Broken: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

The melody behind "Morning Has Broken" is a Scottish Gaelic air, known in hymnals as BUNESSAN after the village on the Isle of Mull where the Gaelic poet Mary Macdonald (1789–1872) was born.[1][2] It was first printed, as a single melody line, in Lachlan Macbean's Songs and Hymns of the Gael (1888), where it served as the setting for Macdonald's nativity carol "Child in the Manger."[1][2] That carol and tune were still paired in the Revised Church Hymnary of 1927.[2]

Painting of a forest clearing with a slender birch tree in early morning light

Théodore Rousseau, An Early Summer Morning in the Forest of Fontainebleau, oil on wood, probably 1861. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Percy Dearmer, who was editing an enlarged edition of Songs of Praise, asked the London-born writer Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) for a thanksgiving text that would fit the tune.[2] An account drawing on Oxford University Press correspondence says Martin Shaw, one of the hymnal's music editors, had come across the air while gathering carols and put it aside for the book.[3] Farjeon then reshaped a poem she had written in 1925 to suit the tune's uncommon metre.[3] The hymn was printed in Songs of Praise Enlarged in 1931.[3][4] In the United States it first appeared in the Presbyterian Hymnbook of 1955.[2]

Cat Stevens came across the hymn in Songs of Praise and, by the same account, assumed it was Victorian.[3] He recorded it for his 1971 album Teaser and the Firecat, with Rick Wakeman playing the piano part, though the album credits left Wakeman out.[2][5] Issued as a single on Island, it reached number 9 on the British chart early in 1972.[6] The record made the hymn widely known, and since then it has been included in most hymnals.[2]

Find books with Morning Has Broken for sale →

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "BUNESSAN".
  2. Discipleship Ministries (United Methodist Church): "History of Hymns: Morning Has Broken".
  3. Martin Shaw Music: "Morning Has Broken".
  4. Hymnary.org: "Morning Has Broken".
  5. The Korea Times: "Before and after 'Morning Has Broken'".
  6. Official Charts: "Morning Has Broken" (Cat Stevens).