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A Child of the Snows comes from a set of carols by Samuel Pegg, collectively called “The House of Christmas”, including three settings of poems by G.K. Chesterton.

Duration: 4 mins 15s.

G.K.C. was a great traveller and on his wanderings a friend to everyone he met. In his own house, he was famed for his warmth and hospitality. It is not surprising, then that The Inn was for him almost a spiritual symbol. In all of my settings of his poems I have tried to convey the sense of a yearning journey of life coupled with the joy of finding something thought lost forever: we travel to a place that, if we are truthful, we never really left.

In A Child of the Snows I have tried to suggest the wandering, wondering journey to the next staging post, ‘the Inn at the end of the world’.

A four track EP of new christmas carols is now released on Air Edel Records. It features SATB settings of three texts by GK Chesterton (The House of Christmas, The Wise Men, A Child of the Snows) and a new setting of the 16th Century Scottish carol Balulalow. The carols, each receiving their first public performances during December 2016 are produced and mixed by Abbey Road engineer Jonathan Allen and performed by a virtuoso quartet of Eloise Irving, Amy Lyddon, Benedict Hymas and Simon Whiteley, accompanied by pianist Mark Dowd. The EP is available across a number of digital platforms including iTunes, Amazon, and Spotify!

Text

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.