Sabine Baring-Gould is usually credited only as the translator of a Basque carol, but the historical record names him as author of the English text outright: the original Basque poem, Birjina gaztettobat zegoen, states plainly that an angel came down from heaven, while the vivid picture of Gabriel with “wings as drifted snow, with eyes as flame” is Baring-Gould’s own invention, and its fourth stanza is entirely his. He passed the carol to Edgar Pettman, music editor of The University Carol Book, who published it under the title “Gabriel’s Message,” the name the tune still carries. That tune is itself a nineteenth-century Basque folk melody, collected in France by Charles Bordes and printed around 1897. Later hymnal committees softened two of Baring-Gould’s own lines to avoid masculine pronouns for Gabriel and for God, so the version in Lutheran Service Book differs slightly from his 1916 original. Grounded in Luke 1:26–38, the Annunciation itself, it serves as the Hymn of the Day for Rorate Coeli by placing the whole congregation at Mary’s side to hear Gabriel’s own greeting.
Sung at Our Saviour
2025