Be Thou My Vision
Composer: arr. Debra Morton; tune SLANE, an Irish melody
Text: Irish, eighth century or earlier; translated by Mary E. Byrne (1905) and versified by Eleanor Hull (1912)
Season: Sung September 14, 2025, Beverly Heights Women’s Chorale
The words are a thousand years old and were a prayer long before they were a hymn. “Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart” comes from an Old Irish poem, “Rop tú mo baile,” written by a monk whose name is lost; the manuscripts are medieval, and the poem may be older still. It stayed in Irish until 1905, when Mary Byrne translated it into English prose for a scholarly journal. Seven years later Eleanor Hull put the prose into verse, and in 1919 it was matched to SLANE, a folk melody named for the hill where Patrick is said to have lit the Easter fire in defiance of the high king.
The prayer asks for one thing from several directions: that God be the thing the singer sees, thinks, fights for, inherits, and loves, “whatever befall.” Debra Morton’s arrangement for women’s voices keeps the melody intact and lets the text do the work. The Women’s Chorale sang it to open the 2025 season.
Scripture: Psalm 27:4; Psalm 73:25 and 26