The Cyber Hymnal's Star in the East is not the same as the shapenote tunes by that name used for Brightest and Best of the Sons of the Morning. Not at all. There are two different tunes "Star in the East" in the US shapenote tunebooks, for that matter, and they are as far as I can tell unrelated (though both are used for Brightest and Best). The one from the Southern Harmony is twice as long as the one from the Sacred Harp; the Southern Harmony tune is usually set either so you sing the "Brightest and Best" stanza as a refrain (as in An Online Christmas Songbook's rendition, or else two stanzas of the text are sung to one stanza of the tune, often with the anonymous first (half-)stanza "Hail the blest morn" (also found in Sacred Harp) or with "Brightest and Best" repeated as a final half-stanza. MIDIs of both (as well as six other tunes, one of them the shapenote tune "Walker") are available in my Esperanto hymnal (go to the Esperanto version of Brightest and Best, Filo plej hela, and scroll down below the text to get to the MIDI links. The background music is Thrupp's Epiphany Hymn. The most common "mainstream [i.e. Northern, roundnote] Protestant" US setting is Harding's Morning Star, though in the last 20 years or so one often sees shapenote tunes (albeit not actually in shape notes!) in Yankee hymnals. I'd never heard of setting it to Lime Street before; the tune I am missing (if anybody has it, by all means send it or post it) is Epiphany (Hopkins). The Cyber Hymnal (which, linkers be warned, changed its URL last week; it was at tch.simplenet.com, now it's at www.wordnic.com/~tch) has another tune named "Epiphany (Filby)" which with a bit of judicious editing can also be made to fit this text quite well.

Liland