A Special Carol

Like quite a few of us in our Anglican community here in Bucharest, I grew up in a different Christian tradition, which automatically means growing up with different Christmas carols. Thanks to singing in the choir led by Andrew Noble, I’ve become familiar with quite a few beautiful English carols and carols commonly sung in England. “Once in Royal David’s City” and “Gabriel’s Message” are now among my favorites. I’ve also come to a deep appreciation of the Anglican Nine Lessons and Carols service in which Jesus’s full story, not only his birth, is shared in the form of readings from the Bible and different songs.

This year I decided to see if we could incorporate something from my tradition. I grew up in a Romanian Baptist community in the U.S. Those of us who arrived in the U.S. before the fall of communism, including our family, were refugees from a totalitarian regime which, at best, paid only lip service to religious freedom. Celebrating Christmas was discouraged, more strongly in certain places and times than others. At worst, the regime persecuted people for their beliefs.

My grandfather Simion Cure, a Baptist pastor, was imprisoned for his faith in the early years of the Romanian communist regime, along with many other Christian leaders from other denominations, perhaps most notably Greek-Catholic priests, and those belonging to the charismatic branch of the Romanian Orthodox church called the Lord’s Army.

Nicolae Moldoveanu was a well-known composer of religious music in the Lord’s Army and he was imprisoned during the same years as my grandfather, from 1959-1964. Though they never met in prison, years later Moldoveanu adapted and set to music a poem my grandfather had written. It became a popular Christmas carol in several traditions. The song has a melancholic beauty that stems from the deeper understanding of faith that can come with suffering. It makes me think of the several Christmases that they spent in prison and how their faith sustained them. 

I decided to translate the song into English so that we could sing it with the choir for the Nine Lessons and Carols service this year. Adapting the lyrics to maintain the rhyme and meter was a new challenge for me and I went through many versions over the course of several months. Here is the original poem that Simion Cure wrote in Romanian, followed by my translation of the song lyrics:

La iesle

Lasă-mă să-mi plec genunchii
Înaintea ieslei Tale,
Copilaş din altă lume   
Obosit de frig şi cale.

Lasă-mă să-mi plec genunchii
Să-ţi sărut cămaşa-albastră,
Copilaş din altă lume
Peregrin prin lumea noastră.

Nu am smirnă ca şi magii,
Nici tămâie şi nici aur.
Lacrimile pocăinţei
Îmi sunt singurul tezaur

Ţi le-aduc acum 'nainte
Cu sfială şi ruşine,
Copilaş venit din ceruri
Să porţi crucea pentru mine.  

At the Manger

Let me come to kneel before you,          
See you laid within the manger— 
Baby from a world so different
Now exposed to cold and danger.

You I worship, little baby,    
You that heaven did inhabit,
Lost in humble adoration,              
Traveler to our lowly planet.

Magi brought you gifts of fine myrrh,
Frankincense and precious gold,
But the tears of true repentance
Are the only treasure (that) I hold.

Now I bring them here before you,
Full of awe and sorely sorry,
Little child come down from heaven,
Come for me, the cross to carry.    

In translating the lyrics into English, I focused on preserving the mood of the story that is told in the poem. “At the Manger” is a spiritual encounter with the Christ child in which the speaker marvels at the baby’s cosmic arrival, from the bliss of heaven to the vulnerability of life on earth for the sake of humanity. The final two lines of the poem jolt the listener through the juxtaposition of opposites: the smallness, vulnerability, and innocence of the Christ child, with the heaviness and brutality of the cross. But it is this jolt that creates the culmination of the mystery, humility, and gratitude woven throughout the poem.

With this aim in mind, I felt at liberty to adapt the English-language version of Moldoveanu’s adaptation of the poem. I kept the original rhyme scheme, but for two of the verses used half-rhymes, since it is more difficult to rhyme in English than in Romanian. I was also fortunate to get input from musicologist Joe Cadagin who suggested a couple changes that would make the words easier to sing. 

I’m also grateful to him for creating the sheet music for the new English-language lyrics, to Andrew Noble for agreeing to include the song in the program and expertly conducting it, and to the entire choir for putting heart into their beautiful rendition. It truly was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Please enjoy a recording of the performance by clicking here.