I've always heard it the first way you've shown it, Martin.

Martin, I have checked it in a couple of music/carol books and Oh morning star, together . . . is shown as the first line of the second verse.
Are the remaining verses different?

Martin,

I've always sung it and heard it sung the way you have and as Vee has found it.

Dido

I'm posting this from work, so I don't have any hymn-books available - but from memory, it looks like it's only the second verse that has that strange reversal.

Odd. According to Wikipedia, people in the US generally use a different tune to ours. Maybe it just seemed better to someone when they set it to the UK tune.

I can't imagine it being sung the first way. It just sounds wrong! But I guess we have to admit that we in the UK have changed it, so I guess we're really the ones in the wrong.

Can't see us changing back, though.

For anyone interested, Phillips Brooks was an extraordinarily interesting man. He has a long list of achievements and many called him the greatest preacher of the 19c here in the US. I'm sure he'd be amused to know that today he is remembered by most (if they remember him at all) as the author of this simple Christmas hymn. He is worth a check on Google.

If you go to the site below and click on 'O Little Town' you should get the first couple of lines of the carol. Is this the tune you use in the US?

Here is a link that might be useful: O Little Town of Bethlehem

not even close.

I had no idea that the US and the UK used music for this song. What a surprise! Vee and Martin, if you go to this listing on Amazon you can listen to a choir singing the US version.

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: O Little Town - click to listen

Just click on the song on the linked page to get a bit of how we sing it (I wish!).

Here is a link that might be useful: Vince Gill clip of O Little Town....

The DVD I mentioned on another thread, Carols for Christmas, uses the US music despite being recorded in the UK with British musicians. The DVD, Carols from Kings, uses the British music. I didn't realize they were the same words because the BBC didn't subtitle the carols on the latter disc. I have to say I like both.

I played and sang in many churches for many years.....The Baptist, Methodist and Episcopals hymnals (I should admit they are all over 20 years old and printed in the USA) all have the second verse written as your first example.

The Episcopal has five verses, the others, only four. It's one of my favorites.
A.

I have a cd from the Chapel Choir of the Duke of York's Royal Military School-have had it for years, friend's daughter was in the choir-and didn't realize for the longest time that track 8 was "O Little Town"....and it sounds like it is in German.

Here is the thing in full from my Service Book and Hymnal received for confirmation in 1970. There are actually two versions here with what must be two different arrangements, the first being by Lewis Henry Redner, 1831-1908 (the one I'm most familiar with) and the second by Henry Walford Davies, 1869-1941.

O little town of Bethlehem, How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee to-night.

For Christ is born of Mary And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together Proclaim the holy birth
And praises sing to God the King, And Peace to men on earth!

How silently, how silently, The wondrous Gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts The blessings of his heaven,
No ear may hear his coming, But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, Be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Immanuel! Amen.

The first guy was from Pennsylvania and the second one from London, perhaps this explains the different versions. I've added a link to info on the second one because he seemed more interesting to me.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sir Henry Walford Davies

The correct information is easy enough to find. Phillips Brooks wrote the words, inspired by his trip to the Holy Land and the sight of Bethlehem. He was rector of Trinity Church, the world-famous architectural star of the city of Boston MA. Redner, the organist of Trinity Church, was promptly inspired to set the Brooks' words to music. I think this was Christmas 1868 or 9. So the American version is the original version.

Google sources say a British version of the music, and minus a stanza, was later arranged for choirs. King's College includes it in their Lessons and Carols. Perhaps that is the version to which Martin is referring.

One of my hymnals also has it set to an old English tune called "Forrest Green" as arranged by Ralph Vaughn Williams. We once had a choir director that thought it was the better song, and it may have been, but singing those words to another melody just didn't seem right. We did it anyway, and everyone complained!!

The old familiar songs are old familiar memories. You don't mess around with THAT!

"Forrest Green" arranged by Vaughn Williams is the normal English tune.

Just had a look through our three (!) carol books (this is what happens when you're married to a clergyman's daughter) and two of them have "O morning stars" first - but one does indeed have "For Christ is born" first.

I don't think there's any argument about which is "right" - in the sense of which is the original - it must be "For Christ is born" first. What I'm curious about is when it got switched and why.

Just one of those things, I suppose.

Regarding different tunes but somewhat off-topic! Has anyone felt that some Christmas songs are not as cheerful as they should be? I had to sit through a most doleful and slow rendering of "Have yourself a merry little Christmas" recently. I thought that "And here it is Merry Christmas" was bad enough and always fled from shops who had it on their intercom! RP'ers who have musical training will probably say that the music is in a minor key or something! All I know is that these tunes make me feel depressed.

Some of the popular Christmas songs from the WW2 years, or immediately afterwards, as people adjusted to the terrible losses in their lives, are very sad indeed, no matter what the tempo. And once you've reached 40 or so, most people have had enough losses in their lives to make almost any Christmas music quite poignant.

I think it might have been Judy Garland who sang that doleful arrangement of "Have yourself a merry little Christmas".

If you listen to the words of some of the traditional carols, though, they are quite downbeat too:

From "We Three Kings": Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume
Breathes a life of gathering gloom;
Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
Sealed in the stone cold tomb

From "The Coventry Carol": Herod the king, in his raging,
Charged he hath this day
His men of might, in his own sight,
All children young to slay.

And from "The Cherry Tree Carol": O then bespoke Mary
So meek and so mild:
"Pluck me one cherry, Joseph,
For I am with child.

O then bespoke Joseph,
With words most unkind:
"Let him pick the cherry
That brought you with child".

It was Judy Garland. Here's more info: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. Love that Wikipedia.

They have been playing carols and Christmas songs in our main shopping street for the last couple of weeks. The carols are fine, I like them, but it does seem incongruous to be playing 'White Christmas' and "sleigh bells jingling' and 'may all your Christmases be white' when the temperature is 37°C outside. There are a couple of Australian Christmas songs, but probably most people wouldn't recognise them.