About the WonderCafe Advent Calendar.

Two takes on a beloved Aboriginal Christmas Carol.

Tom Jackson – “Huron Carole” / Bruce Cockburn – “Iesus Ahatonnia”
 

For me one of the strangest, spookiest and downright beautiful Christmas carols is “The Huron Carol”. The history of this song is somewhat tragic. It was written by Jean de Brébeuf, a French Jesuit missionary who from 1644 to 1647 set out to convert the indigenous Huron tribe to Christianity. One of the ways he did this was to take the tune of French folk song “Une Jeune Pucelle” and add lyrics in Huronian about the nativity story, telling the story in the Huron context.

The story does not have a happy ending. The Hurons were eventually wiped out from a combination of European diseases and attacks from the rival Iroquois tribe (who were, in turn, backed by the English). Brébeuf himself was tortured to death by the Iroquois and was later declared a martyr.

The version that is in the United Church and Anglican Church hymnals was translated by a poet, music critic and choirmaster named Jesse Edgar Middleton. Middleton, it is said, took his version from a French translation of the Carol Brébeuf wrote. It begins:

Twas in the moon of wintertime when all the birds had fled
That mighty Gitchi Manitou sent angel choirs instead

Before their light the stars grew dim

And wandering hunters heard the hymn,

Jesus your King is born

Jesus is born, in excelsis gloria.

It’s both daring and ridiculously quaint at the same time. It’s ridiculously quaint in that it’s a sentimentalized view of aboriginal life. "Mighty Gitchi Manitou", or the "great spirit" as we’re told in the footnotes, doesn't actually appear in the original—I don't even think he's Huronian in origin—but he's been transliterated here into the "modern" version. And yet it’s daring in the respect that it honours the carol's original intent of transplanting the Christmas story into another culture should be applauded, even if it's all references to beaver pelt, broken bark, and Gitchi Manitou.

Sentimental or not, there’s also a beautiful, haunting, simplicity to the lyrics. I’m not the only one who thinks so. Tom Jackson, probably Canada’s finest First Nations actor/musician, performed a stunning version of this song as the title track of his Huron Carole Christmas album.

Listen to the track now:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Huron_Carole/6832546

Meanwhile, another Canadian musician has done his own version of “The Huron Carol”. Bruce Cockburn, on his brilliant Christmas album from 1993, sang a version in the original Huronian.

Listen to the track now:

 http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/song/Jesus_Ahatonnia_The_Huron_Carol_/10596629

Cockburn went to a lot of work to sing the song in what is effectively now a dead language but the beauty of it—and credit goes to Cockburn, Colin Linden (on electric guitar), Hugh Marsh (on violin), John Dymond (on bass), Gary Craig (on drums) and Richard Bell (on organ) is that it sounds vital and contemporary.

Cockburn’s version brought to light the original Huronian version of the song, which when translated into English is something altogether stranger and even more haunting than the popular one:

Have courage, you who are human beings: Jesus, he is born

The okie spirit who enslaved us has fled

Don't listen to him for he corrupts the spirits of our thoughts

Jesus, he is born

The okie spirits who live in the sky are coming with a message

They're coming to say, "Rejoice!

Mary has given birth. Rejoice!"

Jesus, he is born

Three men of great authority have left for the place of his birth

Tiscient, the star appearing over the horizon leads them there

That star will walk first on the bath to guide them

Jesus, he is born

The star stopped not far from where Jesus was born

Having found the place it said,

"Come this way"

Jesus, he is born

As they entered and saw Jesus they praised his name

They oiled his scalp many times, anointing his head

with the oil of the sunflower

Jesus, he is born

They say, "Let us place his name in a position of honour

Let us act reverently towards him for he comes to show us mercy

It is the will of the spirits that you love us, Jesus,

and we wish that we may be adopted into your family

Jesus, he is born

How we get from this to what Jesse Edgar Middleton gave English audiences in 1926 is probably one of the greatest games of broken telephone ever invented. And yet, as you can tell by the talented people performing this song, both the original Huronian version and the more popular Anglicized version have their inherent strengths. Both versions are, in their way, beautiful and compelling.

In the end we have the same song, both tied to a moment in Canada’s past that is different and yet lovely all the same. How very Canadian.