There is a happy land

There is a happy land. Andrew Young* (1807-1889). This children’s hymn was written in 1838, when Young was a headmaster at Niddry Street School, Edinburgh. There are two accounts of its composition. The first is that he was spending the evening with a Mrs Marshall, the mother of some of his pupils, when he heard her playing an Indian tune on the piano called ‘Happy Land’; the other is that he heard it while on holiday at Rothesay, on the Isle of Bute. The hymn was sung by the children at Niddry Street School, and published by James Gall in The Sacred Song Book (First Series, 1843). This was later published as Sacred Melodies for Children (1846), and then as Sacred Melodies for Sunday...