What is "Round yon virgin"?
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Don't say I never start interesting topics hor.
From the ST forum today:Discredit Singaporeans' English? Think again
So the correct word should be "yon" .. not "your".
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Local teachers who have the task of teaching English are hardly equipped for the position. I have witnessed handouts for the lyrics to Silent Night being written as 'round your virgin, mother and chid" and 'cheek' spelled as 'cheak'.
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So may I know what is round yon virgin? -
Icey,
you also wrong, extra comma
the correct line is
"Round yon Virgin Mother and Child"
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Silent night, holy nightOriginally posted by Icemoon:So the correct word should be "yon" .. not "your".
So may I know what is round yon virgin?
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace.....
I take it to mean things are calm and bright by that virgin mother over there. -
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=9252
The NEW OXFORD Dictionary
OF ENGLISH
yon poetic/literary or dialect
determiner & adverb yonder; that: [as DETERMINER] there's some big ranches yon side of the Sierra.
pronoun yonder person or thing: what do you make of yon?
PHRASES
hither and yon another term for HITHER AND THITHER.
ORIGIN Old English geon, of Germanic origin; related to German jener ‘that one’.
Definition
yonder [Show phonetics]
determiner, adverb (ALSO yon) OLD USE
in the place or direction shown; over there
Silent night, holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
'Round yon virgin mother and child.
...meaning that all is calm and all is bright around that virgin over there--the mother and her baby (mother and child forming a plural appositive for virgin). -
wah lau.... this topic... as my son would say - LAME UNTIL CANNOT WALK.
Christmas carols were all written in old English style......
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actually are we discussing "old English" or "lack of standard of English teachers?" -
damn .. unker eng insulted my topic!
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so fast christmas already ah
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Originally posted by Icemoon:damn .. unker eng insulted my topic!
I am sure her name is Yon
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aiyah, actually not bad lah. I always sing round yon virgins w/o knowing the meaning. now i can 'hao lian' to my friendsOriginally posted by Chin Eng:wah lau.... this topic... as my son would say - LAME UNTIL CANNOT WALK.
Christmas carols were all written in old English style......
.... actually are we discussing "old English" or "lack of standard of English teachers?" -
one of the many versions on how this Christmas fav came abt (might be fictional):
How the world's most famous Christmas carol came to be written
While we were serving as missionaries in Europe we visited a small little church in Austria. That church was the birthplace of "Silent Night." Here's the story how this most famous of Christmas carols came to be written:
In 1818, a roving band of actors was performing in towns throughout the Austrian Alps. On December 23 they arrived at Oberndorf, a village near Salzburg. There they were scheduled to perform the story of Christ's birth in the Church of St. Nicholas.
Unfortunately, the St. Nicholas' church organ wasn't working and would not be repaired before Christmas. (Note: some versions of the story point to mice as the problem; others say rust was the culprit) Because the church organ was out of commission, the actors presented their Christmas drama in a private home. That Christmas presentation put assistant pastor Josef Mohr in a meditative mood. So, instead of walking straight to his house, Mohr took a longer way home. The longer path took him up over a hill overlooking the village.
From that hilltop, Mohr looked down on the peaceful snow-covered village. Reveling in the wintry night's majestic silence, he gazed down at the glowing scene. His thoughts about the Christmas play caused him to remember a poem he had written a couple of years earlier. That poem was about the night when angels announced the birth of the long-awaited Messiah to shepherds on a hillside.
Mohr decided those words would make a good carol for his congregation the following evening at their Christmas eve service. However, he didn't have any music to which that poem could be sung. So, the next day Mohr went to see the church organist, Franz Xaver Gruber. Gruber only had a few hours to come up with a melody which could be sung with a guitar. However, by that evening, Gruber had managed to compose a simple musical setting for Mohr's poem. It didn't matter that the organ was broken. They now had a Christmas carol they could sing without it.
On Christmas Eve, the little Oberndorf congregation heard Gruber and Mohr sing their new composition to the accompaniment of Gruber's guitar.
Weeks later, well-known organ builder Karl Mauracher arrived to fix the St. Nicholas church organ. When he finished, Mauracher stepped back to let Gruber test the instrument. When Gruber sat down, his fingers began playing the simple melody he had written for Mohr's Christmas poem. Deeply impressed, Mauracher took the music and words of "Silent Night" back to his own Alpine village, Kapfing. There, two well-known families of singers -- the Rainers and the Strassers -- heard it. Captivated by "Silent Night," both groups put the new song into their Christmas season repertoire.
Silent night! holy night!
All is calm, all is bright,
'Round yon virgin mother and Child!
Holy Infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.
The Strasser sisters spread the carol throughout northern Europe. In 1834, after they had performed "Silent Night" for King Frederick William IV of Prussia, that king ordered his cathedral choir to sing it every Christmas eve.
The Rainers brought the song to the United States in 1839, singing it (in German) at the Alexander Hamilton Monument located outside New York City's Trinity Church.
In 1863, nearly fifty years after being first sung in German, "Silent Night" was translated into English (by either Jane Campbell or John Young). In 1871 the English version was published in an American hymnal: Charles Hutchins' Sunday School Hymnal. -
I always tot it is "round up your virgins"
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now we knowOriginally posted by laoda99:I always tot it is "round up your virgins" -
I wonder any one else got any other version or notOriginally posted by ben1xy:now we know