Angels we have heard on high,
Sweetly singing o’er the plains,
And the mountains in reply
Echoing their joyous strains.
Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Gloria, in excelsis Deo!
Shepherds, why this jubilee?
Why your joyous strains prolong?
What the gladsome tidings be
Which inspire your heavenly song?
Come to Bethlehem and see
Him whose birth the angels sing;
Come, adore on bended knee,
Christ the Lord, the newborn King.
See Him in a manger laid,
Whom the choirs of angels praise;
Mary, Joseph, lend your aid,
While our hearts in love we raise.
Public domain hymn text (1862 (English translation)). Words by James Chadwick, after a traditional French carol.
The Story Behind the Hymn
This hymn's ultimate origins trace back to a traditional French carol, 'Les Anges dans nos Campagnes,' whose original author and composer are both entirely unknown today, and which was reportedly sung informally for an uncertain but likely considerable period, quite possibly extending back at least to the eighteenth century, within the specific Languedoc region of southern France, well before the carol was ever formally written down or published in any surviving printed form.
James Chadwick, an English Roman Catholic bishop, subsequently translated and adapted the original French text into the specific English-language version most commonly sung in churches today, publishing his own completed translation in 1862, considerably more than a century after the carol itself likely first emerged within its original French rural folk context.
The hymn's now-familiar chorus, 'Gloria, in excelsis Deo,' is deliberately left entirely untranslated from its original Latin source, itself directly quoting Luke 2:14, in nearly every existing English-language version of the hymn, including Chadwick's own influential 1862 translation — a fairly unusual and deliberate choice among translated hymns generally, one that has the specific effect of preserving an actual fragment of the original biblical angelic announcement in its own ancient liturgical Latin form even within an otherwise fully English-language hymn text, allowing congregations to sing the exact same Latin words the Gospel of Luke records the angels themselves as having originally sung.
