Lyrics
O sons and daughters, let us sing!
The King of Heaven, the glorious King,
Over death today rose triumphing.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
That Easter morn, at break of day,
The faithful women went their way
To seek the tomb where Jesus lay.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
An angel clad in white they see,
Who sat, and spake unto the three,
"Your Lord doth go to Galilee."
Alleluia! Alleluia!
That night th'apostles met in fear;
Amidst them came their Lord most dear,
And said, "My peace be on all here."
Alleluia! Alleluia!
When Thomas first the tidings heard,
How they had seen the risen Lord,
He doubted the disciples' word.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
"My piercèd side, O Thomas, see;
My hands, My feet, I show to thee;
Not faithless but believing be."
Alleluia! Alleluia!
No longer Thomas then denied;
He saw the feet, the hands, the side;
"Thou art my Lord and God," he cried.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
How blessed are they who have not seen,
And yet whose faith has constant been;
For they eternal life shall win.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
On this most holy day of days
Our hearts and voices, Lord, we raise
To Thee, in jubilee and praise.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Public domain hymn text (Latin, 15th century; English translation 1851), based on John 20.
The Story Behind the Hymn
"O Sons and Daughters, Let Us Sing" began as a Latin text, "O filii et filiae," written by Jean Tisserand, a Franciscan friar who died in 1494. It first appeared in print in an untitled booklet published in Paris sometime between 1518 and 1536, after Tisserand's death, originally composed as a "Salut" — a devotional greeting to the Sacrament — intended for Easter Day. Beyond his hymn writing, Tisserand was also known as a popular preacher who founded a religious order dedicated to penitent women in Paris.
The English translation used today comes from John Mason Neale, one of the most significant nineteenth-century translators of ancient and medieval hymnody, who rendered the text into twelve English stanzas in his 1851 collection Mediæval Hymns and Sequences. A somewhat altered form of Neale's translation was picked up ten years later by the influential Hymns Ancient and Modern, which helped establish it as a standard Easter hymn across English-speaking congregations.
The hymn tells the Easter story in a sequence of scenes drawn directly from the Gospel accounts: the women arriving at the empty tomb, the angel's announcement, Christ's appearance to the frightened apostles, and finally the extended episode of Thomas's doubt and its resolution — "my piercèd side, O Thomas, see" — giving the hymn an unusually narrative, almost dramatic structure compared to many hymns of praise or petition.
The repeated "Alleluia" that closes every stanza, carried over from the original French melody's own fifteenth-century use, gives the hymn a processional quality well suited to its origins as an Easter "Salut" — a greeting repeated again and again as the full resurrection story unfolds, verse by verse.
