The race that long in darkness pined  

John Morison (1750-1798), educated at King’s College, Aberdeen (now part of the University of Aberdeen), wrote this hymn.  Morison was a private tutor and then, for a short while, Master of a school.  In the mid 1770s Morison studied to improve his Greek; he also published some poems under the pseudonym Musaeus in an Edinburgh journal, and about this time he was licensed to preach.   He submitted 24 hymns to the committee compiling Scottish Paraphrases and Translations, a book of hymns based on biblical texts which the Kirk approved For a limited period of time as an alternative to singing only psalms.  This hymn,  one of seven of Morison’s that the committee accepted, is based on Isaiah 9:2-8.  It may have been stimulated in part by Isaac Watts’ “The lands that long in darkness lay.”  Morison’s text has been altered by later hymn book editors.  It appears in Hymns Ancient and Modern in 1861 and successive editions as “The people that in darkness sat,” and in The Hymnal of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. as “The people that in darkness walked.”  In 1780 Morison was granted the living of Canisbay in Caithness. He was appointed to the committee for the revision of the Scottish Translations and Paraphrases the next year, and in 1792 he received the degree of D.D. from the University of Edinburgh.  He ministered in Canisbay until he died in 1798.

 

The tune commonly associated with this text is “Dundee.”  It first appeared in English in The CL psalmes of David, in prose and meeter: with their whole usuall tunes, newly corrected and amended With: A Catechisme of Christian religion. Appointed to be printed for the use of the Kirke of Edinburgh, 1615. There it is called “French toone,” and it is sometimes called “French” in modern hymnals.  Some early form of the tune may have been composed by Guillaume Franc, a musician associated with the Geneva Psalter.  He died in 1570.  Modern hymnals use the tune as harmonized by Thomas Ravenscroft (c. 1588-1635), setting psalms 36 and 90 with the melody in the Tenor line in his Whole Booke of Psalms, 1621 (where it is called “Dundy tune”).  Ravenscroft, who may have sung as a treble at St Paul’s, graduated B.Mus. from Pembroke College, Cambridge and was later music master in Christ’s Hospital in Sussex.  He was a noted composer of glees, catches and rounds, including “Three Blind Mice.”  The Scottish town of Dundee was a noted centre of Reformation thought and was sometimes called “the Scottish Geneva.”