The Christ Child Lullaby (Tàladh Chrìosda) - a Christmas Eve Special

Handed Down

This song is traditionally sung on Christmas Eve in the Outer Hebrides. Here, we have the full text of this long outpouring of Christmas joy, of which only three or four verses are usually sung today.

The introduction is a variant of the tune, a lovely version of which can be found here.
For the long reading of the full text, I've made some stylistic edits to the English translation found on Wikipedia, the original being in Scottish Gaelic. The harp music that accompanies it is mainly noodling, but I have included a version of Soay from The Lost Songs of St Kilda. If you've not heard of this, do yourself a favour and head over to the website. What an amazing story it is!
For the version of the song at the end of the show I've edited the usual text, pulling in some of the middle section from the original to make a new English verse.
Scottish waves and seabirds by inchadney on Freesounds.
Have a wonderful festive season, see you in 2022.
Jenny xxx