Gentle Mary laid her child

Gentle Mary laid her child. Joseph Simpson Cook* (1859-1933). Cook penned the ‘The Xmas Child’ in an accounts ledger dated 1917 which he used as a notebook for his poetry. The text in his personal papers opens with ‘Gentle Mary wrapped her child/ Lowly in a manger’. It seems to have been adopted quickly by United Church of Canada congregations. Alexander MacMillan, editor of The Hymnary (1930) could comment within five years on the fact that ‘this lyric is already welcomed and sung at the Christmas season throughout the Dominion’ (MacMillan, 1935, p. 300). It was published in the Christian Guardian in 1919 under the title ‘The Manger Carol’. The text acquired an additional quatrain for The...