"The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came"

Basque Folk Carol; translated by Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould

The man who translated our Hymn of the Week could only have lived in the nineteenth century. Certainly we don’t produce anybody like Sabine Baring-Gould anymore. You must imagine an Anglican priest, happily married, with 15 children. Already I doubt if there’s anybody in the world who qualifies. Then he must be a prolific novelist and writer of short stories; he must be an archaeologist and antiquarian of international repute; he must be a tireless collector of folklore and a publisher and arranger of folk music; he must be a biographer (of Napoleon, of all people, but also of many saints), a writer and publisher of sermons, an amateur painter and ironworker, and an aficionado of many languages, ancient and medieval and modern. Whew! Then imagine the following conversation:

“They say there’s an excellent hymn on the Annunciation that we ought to be singing in English, but nobody’s translated it.”

“Nobody? Why not?”

“It’s in Basque.”

“Oh dear. Basque.” (For Basque, as you may know, i…