Advent Calendar – 1st December, 2020
Merry Christmas!
Danielle and Dave’s Advent Calendar
This is the Truth Sent from Above
1st December, 2020
This is the Truth Sent from Above
Arrangement by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872 – 1958)
Adapted for guitar and harp by David Gough and Danielle Perrett
This was originally an anonymous English folk carol. It was collected in Herefordshire by Ralph Vaughan Williams and thus is sometimes known as the Herefordshire Carol. He took it down at the invitation of a lady called Ella Mary Leather who had herself collected it orally at a place called King’s Pyon about 12 miles from Hereford where it was sung by a Mr W Jenkins. The melody which is in the Dorian mode was first published by RVW in the Folk Song Society Journal in 1909 (vol IV, p 17) but it became most famous when RVW used it as the first movement of his ‘Fantasia on Christmas Carols’ in 1912.
Finzi also borrowed the melody for his own ‘The Brightness of the Day’ whilst Sharp collected a slightly different version of the carol with more verses in Shropshire and a version with as many as sixteen verses also exists.
This version is that found in RVW’s Eight Traditional English Carols published in 1920. You might notice the predominance of five beats in a bar.
1. This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the God of love;
Therefore don’t turn me from your door,
But hearken all, both rich and poor.
2. The first thing, which I do relate,
That God at first did man create
The next thing, which to you I tell,
Woman was made with him to dwell.
3. Then after this, ’twas God’s own choice
To place them both in Paradise,
There to remain from evil free
Except they ate of such a tree.
4. But they did eat, which was a sin,
And thus their ruin did begin;
Ruined themselves, both you and me,
And all of their posterity.
5. Thus we were heirs to endless woes,
Till God the Lord did interpose
For so a promise soon did run
That He’d redeem us with a Son.
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Erat Grecian harp from 1830s & Ortega classical guitar
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_Folk-Carols/The_truth_sent_from_above
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_truth_sent_from_above
https://mainlynorfolk.info/peter.bellamy/songs/thetruthsentfromabove.html