The past couple of years, we have concluded our “Faith Kids Nativity Sing-along” Sunday at Faith Church Beecher by singing “Go, Tell It on the Mountain.” We picked this song as it has an upbeat, joyful feel and is a great reminder for us to share the good news we have heard with others (even if we might lack mountains here in the American Midwest). As I researched and reflected upon the song, I came to recognize that song can point us to having this joy and sharing this good news in any and all circumstances.
Story
We can’t pinpoint a particular author or a particular date in which this song was written, but we do have a sense of the circumstances in which it originated and also how it came to become more widely known. The song is an African-American spiritual and thus song written and sung on plantations by those who had been enslaved and experienced much suffering and oppression. The person often credited with bringing this song to a wider audience is a man named John Wesley Work (1871-1925), but there are also a number of other individuals who should receive credit for sharing this song.
In addition to being named after John Wesley, the brother of one who brought us songs like “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” as well as other well-known hymns still sung today (Charles Wesley), Work was also named after his father and is thus known as John Wesley Work II or John Wesley Work Jr. The elder Work had been born into slavery and would eventually become a choir director in Nashville, where Fisk University would be established in 1866 to help educate freedmen. Some members of Work’s choir were in a musical group at the college called the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, a group that would go on tour to help raise funds for the college as it was in financial struggles. These tours led to choral arrangements of various spirituals and also making these songs known to wider groups of people. After attending Fisk University and studying at Harvard, John Wesley Work II would return to Fisk University to teach Greek and Latin. He also followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a choir director, specifically directing the Fisk University Jubilee Singers from 1899–1923 (his wife Agnes also helped lead the choir). This group would be the first to record many spirituals (e.g., “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”) and would publish various arrangements of these songs in the New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, (of which Work’s brother, Frederick Jerome Work, who was a composer, served as an editor – this really was a family operation!).
While I found some notes on the internet that claimed that “Go, Tell It on the Mountain” appeared in one of the volumes of that work, the digital editions of it that I was able to track down did not feature it. Other histories of this song noted that the first appearance of it in print was in the 1909 Religious Folk Songs of the Negro, as Sung on the Plantation edited by Thomas P. Fenner, in which it was also called “A Christmas Plantation Song.” While featuring the familiar chorus, the verses of the song in this volume are different than the ones we typically sing. They were:
Verse 1: “When I was a seeker, I sought both night and day. I asked the Lord to help me, and he showed me the way.”
Verse 2: “He made me a watchman Upon a city wall, And if I am a Christian, I am the least of all.”
A third verse, also different from what we usually sing, appears in a 1921 publication by the Hampton Institute (another African-American college, known today as Hampton University): In de town of David, some call Him a King, Ef ever a chile was true redeem, Christ Jesus heah him sing.”
Different verses for the song appear in the 1940 work American Negro Songs and Spirituals, which was edited by John Wesley Work III, the son of John Wesley Work II who now served as the director of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers. Work III claims that he heard the song growing up at Fisk University, pointing to its association with that school even if there are no recordings or earlier arrangements of it tied to Fisk and that his father wrote three verses to it because the original verses had been lost. The different versions of this song might actually be a reminder of its origins as something sung by groups of people; it was not written down for some time and could have circulated in various versions over the years.
While I have heard the verses found in the 1909 edition sung at times (and they are interesting, especially in that they are not tied to Christmas), the verses we have sung in our singalong have been those attributed to John Wesley Work II so we’ll examine those words in more detail.
Song
The song focuses on the experience of the shepherds on the night of Jesus’s birth, as recorded in Luke 2. These shepherds were just going about their daily business as they “kept their watching o’er silent flocks by night.” This is a good reminder of how ordinary the night seemed and how God often works in the midst of our ordinary experiences. The night and the song quickly moves from ordinary to extraordinary, as we sing “behold throughout the heavens, there shone a holy light.” While the appearance of the angels is something we think about every Christmas, this song reminds us of how shocking seeing this light (which Luke notes is the glory of the Lord in 2:9) must have been for these ordinary guys. Not only were they shocked, but they were likely scared, as reflected in the words “The shepherds feared and trembled” in the second verse that alludes to the words of the angels not to be afraid (Luke 2:10). Just like Luke 2, the song then turns to the great number of angels proclaiming the birth of the Savior (Luke 2:11): “when lo! above the earth, rang out the angel chorus that hailed the Savior’s birth.” The final verse reminds us what they proclaim to the shepherds is that the sign of this occurrence is something that is both ordinary but also remarkable: “Down in a lowly manger, the humble Christ was born.” The concluding words point to the significance of this event, as “God sent us salvation that blessed Christmas morn.” I find it interesting that this song discusses these events as if they occur in the morning, while many other songs reflect the setting in the evening (e.g., “Holy Night,” “Silent Night”). This song actually begins by talking about night, but then moves to the morning, as it would take some time for the shepherds to get there. It is also a good reminder that the Jewish culture at the time of Jesus measured days as night and then day (as opposed to our day and then night), so that both the events in the evening and the morning would be the same day (so what we would call Christmas Eve and Christmas Day would just be Christmas).
I walked through the verses but not the chorus from which we know the song: “Go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go, tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is born.” What I find interesting is that these words are not found in Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth. We do find that the shepherds go about proclaiming what they saw and heard, but there is no reference to hills or mountains. The imagery of sharing this good news on a mountain seems to be an allusion to Isaiah 52:17, “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the herald, who proclaims peace, who brings news of good things, who proclaims salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” (CSB). The angelic announcement does allude back to this verse in a way in that it speaks about proclaiming “good news.” The Apostle Paul quotes that verse from Isaiah in Romans 10:14-15, pointing to the necessity of the proclamation of the gospel for people to believe.
This song thus is a reminder not just of what happened at Christmas but also how we should respond, as we should share this good news. Thus, it might even be helpful for us to sing the verses found in the other version of this song, as finding our way through becoming a Christian makes us like watchmen who are called to proclaim this good news, not because we are great but because we are the least of all. This song is loved even by those who don’t have mountains around them, and it can be lived out in flat territory as we tell others about why Jesus was born no matter our circumstances.
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