The Appalachian carol Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head was collected John Jacob Niles in Hardin County, central Kentucky in the early 20th century. Like so many other folk carols and hymns, the song’s origins predate by many decades its collection and publication. This gentle lullaby is sometimes titled alternatively The Manger Cradle Song, as the lyrics of the refrain take the form a soothing serenade to the sleeping Christ Child on that first Christmas night. (notes thanks to PBS)
Refrain
Jesus, Jesus, rest your head.
You has got a manger bed.
All the evil folk on earth
Sleep in feathers at their birth.
Jesus, Jesus, rest your head.
You has got a manger bed.
Have you heard about our Jesus?
Have you heard about his fate?
How his mammy went to the stable
On that Christmas Eve so late?
Winds were blowing, cows were lowing,
Stars were glowing, glowing, glowing. Refrain
To the manger came the Wise Men.
Bringing gifts from hin and yon,
For the mother and the father,
And the blessed little Son.
Milkmaids left their fields and flocks
And sat beside the ass and ox. Refrain
Jesus, Jesus Rest Your Head - John Jacob Niles, voice & dulcimer
Jesus, Jesus Rest Your Head - Seraphic Fire (arr. by Patrick Dupré Quigley)
Jesus, Jesus Rest Your Head - The Westminster Choir
Jesus, Jesus Rest Your Head - Worcester Cathedral Choir (arr. by A. Warrell)
Day 7 . . . While in the Appalachian town of Murphy, North Carolina, John Jacob Niles - composer, singer and collector of traditional music - attended a fundraising meeting held by evangelicals who had been ordered out of town by the police. In his unpublished autobiography, he wrote of hearing the song I Wonder As I Wander: "A girl had stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to the automobile. She began to sing. Her clothes were unbelievably dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins. She was beautiful, and in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang only a single line of a song." The girl, named Annie Morgan, repeated the fragment seven times in exchange for a quarter per performance, and Niles left with "three lines of verse, a garbled fragment of melodic material - and a magnificent idea." Based on this fragment, Niles composed the version of I Wonder as I Wander that is known today, extending the melody to four lines and the lyrics to three stanzas. He completed the song on October 4, 1933, and first performed it on December 19, 1933 at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. He published it in his 1934 book Songs of the Hill Folk. Niles's "folk composition" process caused confusion among singers and listeners, many of whom believed this song to be anonymous in origin. In the 1934 collection, Niles describes the work as a traditional folk-carol. But decades later, in his 1975 collection The Songs of John Jacob Niles, and in his unpublished autobiography, Niles admitted that he composed the work in July 1933 based upon that small melodic fragment sung to him by Annie Morgan. The work is not really an American folk song, but a new composition partly based on possible traditional material.
I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus, the Saviour, did come for to die.
For poor, ornery people like you and like I
I wonder as I wander
Out under the sky.
When Mary birthed Jesus, 'twas in a cows' stall,
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all.
But high from God's heaven a star's light did fall,
And the promise of ages
It did then recall.
If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing:
A star in the sky, or a bird on the wing;
Or all of God's angels in heaven to sing,
He surely could have had it,
'Cause He was the King!
Whatever the origins of this haunting song, it has become a staple of the Christmas season. And it's a personal favorite of mine - especially in the lovely piano arrangement by Fred Bock as performed by John Pahlow.
I Wonder As I Wander - Mark Padmore (tenor) (arr. by Benjamin Britten)
I Wonder As I Wander - performed by John Pahlow (arr. by Fred Bock)
I Wonder As I Wander - performed by Vocore (arr. by J. Rutter)
I Wonder As I Wander - Heather Mills (harp)
I Wonder As I Wander - arranged for chorus by Jennaya Robison
I Wonder As I Wander - performed by La harpe de melodie, with soprano Amelia Tobiason
I Wonder as I Wander - performed by John Jacob Niles
