All Things Bright and Beautiful is an Anglican hymn, also popular with other Christian denominations.
The piece can be sung to several melodies, in particular the 17th-century English melody "Royal Oak", adapted by Martin Shaw, and "Bright and Beautiful" by William Henry Monk (1823–1889). There have also been other adaptations, such as a full choral piece by John Rutter.
Contents |
The text has been claimed to have been written at two locations, both Govilon, Monmouthshire which sits in the beautiful valley of the river Usk and Minehead in 1848 by Mrs. Cecil F. Alexander (from Dublin, Ireland) in the village of Dunster, and may have been inspired by a verse from S. T. Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - "He prayeth best, who loveth best; All things great and small; For the dear God who loveth us; He made and loveth all."
Alternatively, inspiration may have come from William Paley's Natural Theology published in 1802 which sets out his argument for God as the designer of the Natural World. For example verse 2 makes reference to wings and verse 7 refers to eyes. Wings and eyes were two major examples of complexity of design that Paley used to support his famous analogy with a watch and God as the Divine Watchmaker.
The hymn was first published in Alexander's Hymns for Little Children. It forms a series of poems expanding on articles of the Apostles' Creed.
The words of the song are:[1]
Cecil Francis Alexander wrote her "All things Bright and Beautiful" whilst staying at the Govilon manor house and inspired by her surroundings. The refrain "The purple headed mountains, The river running by," referring to the Sugar Loaf and Blorenge mountains and the River Usk.
The purple headed mountain refers to Grabbist Hill at Dunster and the river to the River Avill.[2]
In more modern times, due to its endorsement of the class system, verse three is mostly omitted.[3][4][5]
The United Church of Canada includes a fourth verse, which seems particularly appropriate to Canadian geography:
"The rocky mountain splendour, / the lone wolf's haunting call, / the great lakes and the prairies, / the forest in the fall.[6]
The second line was used as the title to James Herriot's book All Creatures Great and Small, which subsequently became the title of the film and television series. Later Herriot used the rest of the lines of the refrain for the books that followed: "All Things Bright and Beautiful", "All Things Wise and Wonderful," and "The Lord God Made Them All."
In the 1970 film Beneath the Planet of the Apes, a congregation of mutated humans sing a hymn adapted from All Things Bright and Beautiful. Script-writer Paul Dehn specifically wanted his new lyrics to be used not as a parody, but to emphasise that the mutants genuinely regarded themselves as beautiful.
The hymn was parodied by The Goodies on their 1978 The Goodies Beastly Record as "I'm a Carnivore". They had previously recorded a cover of it on their 1973 The Goodies Sing Songs from The Goodies and an earlier version was heard on the BBC Radio show I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again, of whose cast all three Goodies were part, in 1966. It was also parodied by the Monty Python song "All Things Dull and Ugly", included on their 1980 album Monty Python's Contractual Obligation Album and on the 1989 collection Monty Python Sings.
It was also recently announced through Twitter that the title of the poem will be used as the title for third studio album by the Synthpop act Owl City.
http://history.govilon.com/trail/green/