While shepherds Watched

“While shepherds watched their flocks” is a traditional Christmas carol describing the Annunciation to the Shepherds, with words attributed to Irish hymnist, lyricist and England’s Poet Laureate Nahum Tate. The exact date of Tate’s composition is not known, but the words appeared in Tate and Nicholas Brady’s 1700 supplement to their New Version of the Psalms of David of 1696. It was the only Christmas hymn authorised to be sung by the Anglican Church; before 1700 only the Psalms of David were permitted to be sung. It is written in common metre and based on the Gospel of Luke 2:8–14. It is the only one of the sixteen works in the 1700 supplement to still be sung today. It was published by Davies Gilbert (London, 1822), and William B. Sandys (London, 1833). The carol is sung to a wide variety of tunes, the two most common ones being Winchester Old in the United Kingdom and a variation on a Handel aria arranged by Lowell Mason in the United States. Professor Jeremy Dibble of Durham University has noted that “While shepherds watched” was “the only Christmas hymn to be approved by the Church of England in the 18th century and this allowed it to be disseminated across the country with the Book of Common Prayer] This was because most carols, which had roots in folk music, were considered too secular and thus not used in church services until the end of the 18th century. As a result of its approved status, many tunes have been associated with this carol. The editors of the English Hymnal note that “it is impossible to print all the tunes which are traditionally sung to this hymn”.