A few days ago I received the following email, sparked by "Leland's Webb Site", an old hymn page in La Lilandejo:

I came across Leland's Webb site as a result of a search for "stand up" and "morning light is breaking".

The reason for the search was an attempt to locate the words of a song that was sung at a grade school Christmas play in the early 1950's. From information on this site, it would appear that the melody used for "Stand up, Stand up for Jesus" and "The Morning Light is Breaking" has been used and reused.

I attended school in a one-room school house, out on the prairie, beginning in 1947. The teacher was quite in to producing good Christmas shows, with whatever can be done with eighteen students in grades one through eight. She died last year, which caused all sorts of memmories to come to the fore again - items that had not been recollected for over fifty years.

One of these memories was a song that was sung for one of the annual Christmas plays. I could remember two stanzas, but I do not remember if there were more. So, a search of the internet was made. This located the cyberhymnal site, as well as the webb site. The specific words using the Webb melody, however, was not present (or my memory has lost enough of the words and phrases so that the words are not locatable).

Anyway, regarding the webb site, there is at least one more adaption of Webb's melody, to a Christmas song of at least two verses (that I can remember).

There is a star that shineth, oer mountain, plain, and sea
It shines with silent message, it shines on you and me
With golden light of Christmas, it shineth from afar
It shines with silent message, the wondrous Christmas star

To Bethlehem in Judah, the star with brilliant rays
Led wisemen to the manger, where the baby Jesus lays
With golden light of Christmas, it shineth from afar
It shines with silent message, the wondrous Christmas star

I don't know if an unsollicitated piece of information is of any interest to you, but here it is.

Regards,

[Russell Haugen]

In supersearching and powersearching and whatnot I was unable to locate a Mudcat thread dealing with this tune, which has accreted quite a few texts, sacred and parodic alike, since its first appearance in the mid-1800s. So I thought I would start a thread with precisely that in view, beginning with Mr. Haugen's query.

Thus is the tune that is commonly called "Stand Up for Jesus", but was first associated with the missions hymn "The Morning Light Is Breaking", by Samuel Francis Smith, better known in the USA as the author of "My country, 'tis of thee" aka "America". The tune is usually called, in my experience, "Morning Light" (after its first text's incipit) in British hymnals and "Webb" (after its composer, George James Webb) in American hymnals.

If anyone is familiar with the Christmas text Mr. Haugen quoted and can add stanzas or correct details (I have a feeling there may be two missing lines in the stanzas he quoted; the repetition of the last two doesn't "feel right" somehow) please supply what you can. And feel free to add additional texts to this thread. I am sure I have previously posted some Webb texts here (e.g. my "Fremont Hymn" and the MCC ballad "Our God Is Like an Eagle"), so I will look for them and link, or repost if necessary.

Haruo