Away in a Manger

Lyrics

Away in a manger, no crib for a bed,
The little Lord Jesus laid down His sweet head.
The stars in the sky looked down where He lay,
The little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.

The cattle are lowing, the Baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes;
I love Thee, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky
And stay by my cradle till morning is nigh.

Be near me, Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me, I pray;
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care,
And fit us for Heaven to live with Thee there.

History

"Away in a Manger" is one of the best-loved Christmas carols, yet its first two stanzas were written by nobody in particular: they are anonymous. Hymnary.org records the earliest secure publication of the two-stanza text as Little Children's Book for Schools and Families, a Sunday school collection issued in Philadelphia in 1885. Hymnologists have traced variant printings back further still into American periodicals of the early 1880s (Hymnology Archive cites Sailor's Magazine, 1883, and The Myrtle, 1884; Wikipedia cites The Christian Cynosure, 1882), but sources disagree on which was truly first, so the carol's exact origin remains an open question among specialists. What is well established is that it emerged from American Sunday school circles, most likely Lutheran ones, in the mid-1880s.

The carol's most persistent myth is that Martin Luther wrote it for his own children and that German mothers had long sung it before it crossed into English. This claim took hold around 1887, when editor James R. Murray printed the text under the heading "Luther's Cradle Hymn" in Dainty Songs for Little Lads and Lasses - conveniently close to the 400th anniversary of Luther's birth in 1883. No German version predating the English text has ever surfaced, the carol appears nowhere in Luther's own writings, and hymnologists regard the attribution as fabrication rather than lost tradition.

The familiar third stanza, "Be near me, Lord Jesus," first appeared unattributed (credited only to the initial "C.") in Charles H. Gabriel's Vineyard Songs (1892). Decades later, in 1937, Bishop William F. Anderson claimed Dr John T. McFarland had written it around 1904-08 at his request; since the verse was already in print in 1892, this story does not hold up, and its true author is unknown. Two tunes carry the words today: MUELLER, composed by James R. Murray in 1887 (later misattributed in print to a "Carl Mueller"), generally sung in the United States; and CRADLE SONG, composed by William J. Kirkpatrick in 1895, the standard setting in Britain, Ireland and Canada. Both the text and both tunes are long out of copyright.

Performance

This recording, uploaded to YouTube in 2022 under the title "Away in a Manger - Traditional Christmas Carol | Multiple Authors | Christmas Season", runs 2 minutes 17 seconds - a brief, straightforward setting of the carol suited to quiet listening during the Christmas season.

Sources: hymnary.org · hymnologyarchive.com · en.wikipedia.org · hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com · lawleyoverdale-pc.gov.uk