It's Christmas time. I am swamped with shopping, school programs, Christmas parties, making gifts, and all the other daily things that make us busy. And, this year, my business is growing, so thankfully I am busy from that as well.
Basically, my family history focus has been dimmed the past few months. I hate it when that happens. But, life goes on, and I fit it in where I can.
With Christmas comes music! I love Christmas carols! They are fun and uplifting and beautiful! I have several favorites! My mother has told me that at the hospital in Provo where I was born, they would broadcast the BYU games over the intercom. But, on the day I was born there was no games, so they were playing Christmas carols instead. "I Saw Three Ships" was playing as I was born, so as a default, it is one of my favorites. : ) And, how she had the presence of mind to remember that is beyond me!! Haha!! There are songs that my mother sang when I was a child that are special to me, "I Wonder As I Wander" and "The Coventry Carol". I love the carol "Angels from the Realms of Glory" that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing every year at their Christmas Concert. I love the "Carol of the Bells" (and I can play it pretty decently on the piano now!). I absolutely love "O Holy Night" and have sung it many times with a quartet of friends. I should stop now, or this post is going to be all about me.
One of my favorites is "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains." It is a Christmas Carol written by my 3rd great-grandfather, John Menzies Macfarlane. Over the years I have heard the story of how it was that he wrote this hymn.
John Menzies Macfarlane
"It was during the pre-holiday season of 1869 that John M. Macfarlane began to think about the approaching Christmas program. He didn't much care for the Christmas songs he had for the choir to sing. Why not make the highlight of the program a new song? Time passed and began to be pressing. Finally, in prayer, he spoke to God, but still his brain remained barren.
"The one night it came, suddenly, in a dream.
"John was awake instantly. He shook Ann into wakefulness, crying out, 'Ann, Ann, I have the words for a song, and I think I have the music too!'
"Together they got up. Ann lighted the bitch [a twisted piece of flannel in a dish of oil] and held it so he could see. He hummed, wrote, erased, and wrote again, quite oblivious to the chill in the room. Ann, clad only in her thin nightgown, looked longingly at her warm feather tick and thought aloud, 'Let it go for now, John, and finish in the morning.' But he, fired by the Muse, gave her only a wave of the hand in reply. At last, after what must have seemed to Ann a very long time, John leaned back, laid down his pencil, and pronounced the task finished.
"It would have been no surprise to the composer if the little Christmas carol he had composed had never been heard again after the Christmas program of 1869, but such was not to be the case. Its simplicity, its swinging rhythm, the workmanship evident in each measure all insured its appeal to those who heard it or sang it. But most importantly, it appealed to the highest good that resides in the human heart.
"At first, 'Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains' was sung occasionally, then again, and again. Finally it spilled out of Dixie to be sung at Christmas time throughout the Church, to become known and loved by every Latter-day Saint. Eventually it was destined to spread beyond the protecting mountains of Zion. It would be sung in far-off places and in other churches. It would become the possession of every soul who had ever thrilled over the story and message of Christmas.
"John never wrote both the words and music to another song. Music was his talent.
" 'Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains' was published for the first time into the Juvenile Instructor on December 15, 1889, twenty years after it was composed. It first found it's way into the L.D.S. Hymnal in the July 1, 1896 revision, four years after the death of the composer and twenty-seven years after it was written."
From Yours Sincerely, John M Macfarlane, pages 96-101
A copy of "Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains" as it originally appeared in the Juvenile Instructor.
A depiction of John Macfarlane writing the song.
From the notes in the book Yours Sincerely, John M Macfarlane it says: "On the cover of the Instructor of December, 1961, there is reproduced a picture of Grandfather Macfarlane composing 'Far, Far Away on Judea's Plains.' This picture, which without question was meant as a tribute to both him and his Christmas carol, contains the most remarkable errors; but then, that is poetic license. It shows John M. Macfarlane clothed in his Sunday best, seated at an ornate parlor organ, recording the notes with a quill pen. The light by which is writing comes from a beautiful kerosene lamp, and the inspiration for his composition emanates from the outline of the St. George Temple glowing through the window." The author goes on to say that he should have been in a nightshirt, no one used quills any more, and the St. George Temple was not completed until ten years after the song was written.
"Hasten the time, when from every clime,
Men shall unite in the strains sublime."
I am sure it still does his heart good to hear the generations that followed him, and people around the world, uniting in strains sublime to sing his beautiful Christmas carol.
Merry Christmas!!
Direct line ancestry: John Menzies Macfarlane --> Charlotte Ann Macfarlane --> Ruth McQuarrie --> Lulu Penrose --> Kathryn Bond --> Lora Marshall Nehring
