December 11

"Angels from the Realms of Glory"

performed by The Choir of King's College, Cambridge

The words of this carol were written by English poet James Montgomery in 1816, and it was first published in his newspaper, The Sheffield "Iris", on December 24th of that year. Interestingly, it reads very much like an early nineteenth-century translation of the opening verses of "Les anges dans nos campagnes", an old French carol from which the original tune of the carol derived. "Angels from the Realms of Glory" only began being sung in churches after its reprinting in "The Christmas Box", which was the first complete book of the Religious Tract Society, published in 1825.

These words have been sung to a wide variety of different tunes, the most popular being the tune of "Angels We Have Heard on High". It is because of this that Montgomery's original refrain of "Come and worship Christ, the new-born king!" is omitted, and the notoriously well-known "Gloria in excelsis Deo!" is substituted.