I do not know the origin of this tune used for While shepherds watched their flocks by night. It was written down by my great Grandfather, William Martin, the founder of St Keverne Band in about 1896. It was always sung in St Keverne Chapel for the annual carol service. He might have written it down for the Band but where he got it from remains a mystery. (Terry Moyle)

 

 

Subsequent comment by Kate Neale (November 2023)

I’ve identified a source for the St Keverne version of ‘While Shepherds’. While Shepherds to this tune was recorded by the Grass Valley Carol Singers in California in 1959, so as soon as I read the music I recognised the tune (actually one of my favourites!). The earliest publication I can find for this tune is William Eade in Robert Hainsworth Heath’s Second Book of Cornish Carols, but it appears there with the text What Melody. As you might expect, there was a fair amount of swapping tunes and texts as long as the metre was the same, and both While Shepherds and What Melody are 8.6.8.6. (syllables to a line) –

so it appears to be a straight swap. Who knows when the swap was made! But there is at least a source for the tune in any case.

 

Subsequent comment by Terry Moyle (November 2023)

I remember my father having and playing a tape very many years ago of the Grass Valley Choir singing Cornish carols – he had some sort of contact there as he was the secretary of St Keverne MVC at that time. Of course, it now rings a bell – my father called the tune What Melody.

My manuscript copy is definitely in my great grandfather’s handwriting – it was in a manuscript book with several other Cornish carols like Seraphic Minstrels and Star of Bethlehem so I reckon he copied them out from whatever book he was using with St Keverne Band. He founded the Band in 1896 so that might indicate a sort of time frame, although he started a band at Porthallow a few years before so we could possibly plump for the 1890s as a date for that swap.