182. Infant Holy, Infant Lowly

The Story Behind the Hymn

This carol’s original Polish text and melody, known in Polish as ‘W zlobie lezy,’ are of traditional, anonymous origin. They are believed to date from at least the seventeenth century, within Polish Catholic folk carol tradition.

That genre of carol singing, called koledy in Polish, has remained a particularly vibrant and continuously practiced part of Polish Christmas celebration for many centuries.

Edith M. G. Reed was an English music educator and editor who worked extensively on children’s music education in the early twentieth century. She translated and adapted the Polish text into the English version commonly sung today, publishing her translation in 1920 in a British music education periodical.

That was part of her broader career-long effort to introduce British schoolchildren to folk and carol traditions from beyond England’s own borders.

Reed’s translation is notable among carol translations for how closely it preserves the rhythmic and rhyming structure of the original Polish text within its English wording.

That was a considerable technical achievement, given the significant grammatical and phonetic differences between Polish and English. It required Reed to work carefully to fit English words into a melodic and rhythmic pattern originally shaped entirely around the sounds and stresses of Polish.

The carol’s continued use in English-speaking congregations represents one of relatively few widely sung Christmas carols in the English-language repertoire to trace its specific origins to Eastern European, rather than Western European or American, folk and hymn traditions.

Its Polish Catholic folk-carol roots give it a musical character — particularly its distinctive melodic shape — notably different from the English, German, and American carols that make up the greater part of the Christmas hymns found elsewhere throughout this collection.