The truth appears to be that certain bars of music which might easily happen to be similar, or even identical, when plain-song was the common style, were produced at different times and places, and one man finally harmonized the wandering strains into a complete tune. It is now generally conceded that the man was Henry Carey, a popular English composer and dramatist of the first half of the 18th century, who sang the melody as it now is, in 1740, at a public dinner given in honor of Admiral Vernon after his capture of Porto Bello (Brazil). This antedates any authenticated use of the tune _ipsissima forma_ in England or continental Europe.
The American history of it simply is that Woodbridge gave it to Mason and Mason gave it to Smith--and Smith gave it "My Country 'Tis of Thee."
This genuinely American poem, written by Ralph Waldo Emerson and called usually the "Concord Hymn," was prepared for the dedication of the Battle-monument in Concord, April 19, 1836, and sung there to the tune of "Old Hundred." Apparently no change has been made in the original except of a single word in the first line.
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set today a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heroes dare To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and Thee.
This does not appear in the hymnals and owns no special tune. Its niche of honor is in the temple of anthology, but it will always be called the "Concord Hymn"--and the fourth line of its first stanza is a perennial quotation.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, LL.D., the renowned American essayist and poet, was born in Boston, 1803. He graduated at Harvard in 1821, and was ordained to the Unitarian ministry, but turned his attention to literature, writing and lecturing on ethical and philosophical themes, and winning universal fame by his original and suggestive prose and verse. He died April 27, 1882.