Anglican Commemoration
Hymn-Writer & Poet
October 12 · d. 1895
also known as Cecil Frances Humphreys, Fanny Alexander
Cecil Frances Alexander was an Irish poet and hymn-writer who taught the church's children to sing their faith. To explain the Apostles' Creed to the young, she wrote a book of hymns, each expounding one clause, three of them sung the world over: "All things bright and beautiful," "Once in royal David's city," and "There is a green hill far away." Wife of the future Archbishop of Armagh, she gave the profits of her verse to the poor. Her feast is October 12.
Cecil Frances Alexander was an Irish poet, born Cecil Frances Humphreys in 1818 and known all her life as Fanny. She began writing verses as a girl, and set her gift to one humble purpose: to teach children the faith of the church in words they could carry in their mouths and never forget.
She saw how hard the great truths were for a child. The Apostles' Creed is a chain of high mysteries, and a child could recite its words and understand none of them. So Fanny took the Creed clause by clause and made each into a hymn, plain enough for a small voice and true enough for a bishop, gathered into a little book, Hymns for Little Children (1848). Under "Maker of heaven and earth" she wrote of the little flowers and the little birds. Under "born of the Virgin Mary," of the lowly cattle shed in royal David's city. Under "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried" she wrote the tenderest of them all, teaching children why the Lord had died:
There is a green hill far away,Without a city wall,Where the dear Lord was crucified,Who died to save us all.
The book was carried into nursery and Sunday school across the English-speaking world and went through edition after edition, and the profits she gave away.
For that was the other half of the woman who wrote the hymns. In 1850 she married William Alexander, a young clergyman, and went with him to the north of Ireland, where she spent herself on the poor. She was tireless in visiting the sick and the needy, traveling many miles to bring them food and warm clothes and medicine. The money her hymns earned did not stay in her house; it helped build an institution for deaf children, and she gave herself to women the world had cast off.
She died in 1895, and her husband, by then a bishop, laid her in the earth at Derry under a plain white cross. But she is not silent. Every Christmas, when a choir opens with a boy's solitary voice singing of the cattle shed in royal David's city, and every time a child learns that a green hill was where the dear Lord was crucified for us all, Cecil Frances Alexander is still teaching the church's children their Creed, one clause at a time.
How we know Cecil Frances Alexander rests on unusually firm ground for a nineteenth-century woman. Her books survive in dated printings, so the growth of her work can be followed edition by edition; her most famous hymns can be read in their first published form in the 1848 Hymns for Little Children. The details of her life were gathered by her husband, William Alexander, who after her death edited Poems of the late Mrs Alexander (Macmillan, 1896) and prefaced it with a memoir; the entry on her in the Dictionary of National Biography draws on the same near-contemporary knowledge.
Born Cecil Frances Humphreys in 1818, daughter of Major John Humphreys, she was raised in Ireland and began writing verse in childhood. (The sources disagree on her exact birthplace: the older biographical tradition places it at Redcross in County Wicklow, while more recent research points to Dublin.) By the 1830s the family had settled at Milltown House near Strabane in County Tyrone, and it was there, still unmarried, that she wrote the hymns that made her name. Her religious work was shaped by the Oxford Movement then reforming the Church of England, and in particular by John Keble, author of The Christian Year, who edited Hymns for Little Children and commended it in a preface. The book was catechetical by design, its hymns arranged under the articles of the Apostles' Creed and the other parts of the church catechism; it was an immense and lasting success, reaching some sixty-nine editions by the end of the century.
In 1850 she married William Alexander, six years her junior, who rose through the Irish church to become Bishop of Derry and Raphoe in 1867 and, the year after her death, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. She wrote some four hundred hymns and poems in all, among them "Jesus calls us; o'er the tumult," composed in 1852 for St. Andrew's Day. She died on October 12, 1895, at the bishop's palace in Derry, and was buried in the city cemetery. The standard modern life is Valerie Wallace's Mrs Alexander: A Life of the Hymn-Writer (1995), the first full biography, setting her hymns and her charity in the Ireland she served.
Cecil Frances Alexander is commemorated on October 12, the day of her death, as a hymn-writer and teacher of the faith. Her monument is the church's own singing. "All things bright and beautiful," "Once in royal David's city," and "There is a green hill far away," all written to teach children a clause of the Creed, have long since passed into the common worship of the whole English-speaking church, and "Once in royal David's city" opens the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College, Cambridge, each Christmas Eve. Commontide holds her Jesus calls us; o'er the tumult, the hymn she wrote for St. Andrew's Day. She is remembered too in the north of Ireland she loved, at Strabane where she wrote and at Derry and Armagh where her husband served, for the charity that gave her hymns' profits to the poor.
Hymns for Little Children(English, 1848)
The book that made her name: hymns arranged clause by clause under the Apostles' Creed, including "All things bright and beautiful," "Once in royal David's city," and "There is a green hill far away." Some sixty-nine editions by 1897.
Public domain: 1848 first edition, Internet Archive
Verses for Holy Seasons(English, 1846)
Her earlier collection of devotional verse for children, a companion to the Christian year; the seedbed of the catechetical method she perfected in Hymns for Little Children.
Public domain: Indexed at Hymnary.org
Poems of the late Mrs Alexander(English, 1896)
The fullest posthumous gathering of her verse, edited and prefaced with a memoir by her husband, then Archbishop of Armagh.
Public domain: Macmillan, 1896, Internet Archive
Mrs Alexander: A Life of the Hymn-Writer(English, 1995)
The first full biography and the standard modern life, attentive to both the hymns and the Irish world that shaped them; out of print, borrowable at the Internet Archive.
Public domain: Internet Archive (borrow)
Primary sources. Hymns for Little Children (1848), the book on which her fame rests, arranges its hymns clause by clause under the Apostles' Creed; the first edition is freely readable in scanned facsimile at the Internet Archive. Her earlier Verses for Holy Seasons (1846) preceded it, and the fullest gathering of her verse is Poems of the late Mrs Alexander (1896), edited with a memoir by her husband.
Principal biography. Valerie Wallace, Mrs Alexander: A Life of the Hymn-Writer (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1995), is the first full-length life and the standard modern account, attentive to the hymns and the Ireland that formed them; out of print, borrowable at archive.org.
Further reading. The entry in the Dictionary of National Biography (Wikisource) is a compact, reliable account of her life; the Hymnology Archive gathers the textual history of her best-known hymns, with the creed-heading under which each first appeared.
Online resources. Hymnary.org indexes her hymns with their tunes and editions; the Internet Archive carries the scanned first edition and Poems.
Almighty God, you gave your servant Cecil Frances Alexander special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth revealed in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Readings for a Teacher of the Faith
Proverbs 3:13–26Psalm 119:89–1061 John 1:1–10Matthew 13:47–52