Back to: The Twelve Days of Christmas Carols
The author of this text, Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895), was born Cecil Humphreys in Dublin, Ireland, and began writing in verse from an early age. She became so adept that by the age of 22, several of her hymn texts made it into the hymnbook of the Church of Ireland.
Humphreys married William Alexander in 1850, both a clergyman and a poet in his own right who later became the bishop of the Church of Ireland in Derry and later archbishop. Aside from her prolific hymn-writing (she is also remembered for writing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’), Mrs. Alexander gave much of her life to charitable work and social causes but she wrote over 400 hymns!
“Once in Royal David’s City” first appeared in her collection, Hymns for Little Children (1848), in six stanzas. This particular text was included with others as a means to musically and poetically teach the catechism. It is based on the words of the Apostles’ Creed, “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary.” and is in six stanzas of six lines each. Even though this text is included in the Christmas liturgical sections of most hymnals, the narrative painted by Alexander truly relates to the entire “youth” of Christ and not just his birth.
The first time the text appeared with its most popular tune pairing, IRBY, composed by Henry John Gauntlett (1805-1876), was in the Appendix to the First Edition of Hymns Ancient and Modern (1868). Gauntlett, born in Wellington, Shropshire, England, was trained in the fields of law and music and is said to have composed over 10,000 hymn tunes. IRBY is the primary tune for which he is known in the United States. Gauntlett read the poem and liked it prompting him to write a melody. The city, of course, is Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus and His ancestor King David.