O Little Town of Bethlehem is a popular
Christmas carol. The text was written by
Phillips Brooks (1835–1893), an
Episcopal priest, rector of the
Church of the Holy Trinity, Philadelphia. He was inspired by visiting the village of
Bethlehem in the
Sanjak of Jerusalem in 1865. Three years later, he wrote the poem for his church and his organist,
Lewis Redner, added the music. Redner's tune, simply titled "
St. Louis", is the tune used most often for this carol in the United States. Redner recounted the story of his composition in 1924:
In the
British Commonwealth, and sometimes in the U.S. (especially in the
Episcopal Church), the English hymn tune "
Forest Green" is used instead. "Forest Green" was adapted by
Ralph Vaughan Williams from an English
folk ballad called "The Ploughboy's Dream" which he had collected from a Mr. Garman of Forest Green, Surrey in 1903. Henry Garman was born in 1830 in
Sussex, and in the
1901 census was living in
Ockley, Surrey; Vaughan Williams' manuscript notes he was a "labourer of Forest Green near Ockley - Surrey. (Aged about 60?)", although Mr Garman would have been nearer 73 when he recited the tune. The tune has a
strophic verse structure and is in the form A-A-B-A. Adapted into a hymn tune harmonised by Vaughan Williams, it was first published in the
English Hymnal of 1906.