Jubilation or Bunessan is a song that we've probably all tackled at one time or another. It's also known as "Morning Is Broken" and some of us even remember when Cat Stevens had a big hit with it. Heidi has known the song since, well forever, and did up an arrangement quite a while back ... recently, I had occasion to teach the tune in a dulcimer class as an exercise in how to do your own tablature. Students were given the tune and the guitar chords and were asked to make their own version of the TAB. Along the way, we ended up re-harmonizing much of the tune and changing the guitar chord accompaniment. The dulcimer TAB here is what we ended up with ... the autoharp arrangement is designed to match. I did some research on the web to find out more about the song and came across this nice description at a blog site called "Aliens in This World." I've taken the liberty of quoting some of the author's research ... there's lots more including some Scots lyrics that some of you may find interesting. I'm not giving you the Eleanor Farjeon lyrics since those are most definitely copywritten but I'm sure you can find them on the web also with a little patience.

The lyrics of “Morning Is Broken” (which, by the way, I like — you don’t have to sing the song syrupy, you know!) are of course by Eleanor Farjeon, a very gifted minor mid-century American poet. She was also the author of some very good fantasy books, mostly for children. I don’t know whether or not Farjeon was Catholic, but our parochial school library certainly included both her books and poems.

The music to which the lyrics are set is a 19th century Highland tune. Its composer is unknown, but it was used as the setting for “Leanabh an Aigh” (Child of Wonder), a Gaelic Christmas carol written by a poet from the island of Mull, Mary Macdonald, or to give her her full Gaelic name, “Mairi Dhughallach NicLucais, bean Neil Dhomhnullaich ann an Ard Tunna”. Which means, Mairi Dhughallach (Dhugallach’s her nickname, distinguishing her from all the other Marys), daughter of Lucas, wife of Neil Dhomhnullaich, from Ard Tunna. She would have been one of the clan of the MacDonalds, but she wouldn’t use that as a last name. (And not much point, really, given that practically everybody else thereabouts was a MacDonald, too!) The tune is called “Bunessan” (or Bun Easain for the Gaelic-ly correct) after a nearby village on Mull.

(UPDATE: Here’s a gorgeous picture of sunset at Bunessan.)

“Leanabh an Aigh” is apparently found in English hymnbooks in a translation called “Child in a Manger” and done by Lachlan MacBean (for his 1888 book Songs and Hymns of the Scottish Highlands) . This is apparently where Cat Stevens heard the tune.

As with most folk hymns, there are at least two slightly different versions of the Gaelic lyrics to “Leanabh an Aigh”. This one is online at Let’s Sing and is more complete, but also more “grammatically correct”. Which way Mairi actually sang it is anybody’s guess. There’s a shorter version online at this Esperanto site, believe it or not! The English translation is not by me and is not the same as “Child in a Manger”. I found two online translations called “Infant of Wonder”. One is by Hilda Leslie and was done in 1978. The other I found in the church history of Cambuslang Baptist Church. It was done by a former minister of the church, the Rev. D. Gunn Sutherland, back in the late 19th century. (Unfortunately, the church transcription left out the last line of the song!) Anyway, I’m doing a baaaad thing and combining the translations to better fit the Gaelic verses we have here, as well as making picky little changes which I’ve asterisked.

Click Here for an Adobe Acrobat version of the Mountain Dulcimer TAB. 
Click Here for an Adobe Acrobat version of the Autoharp TAB.
Click Here to listen to a midi file.