Hymn Story: Be Thou My Vision
Hill of Tara
Saint Dallan Forgaill, wrote the text “Rop tú mo Baile”, in the 6th Century.
Mary Elizabeth Byrne, founder of the Irish Text Society, translated the Old Irish Text into English in 1905.
Seven years later, in 1912, Eleanor Hull changed the text into verse. She published it in her Poem Book of the Gael that year as Be Thou My Vision.
Slane, an Irish folk tune, was the musical setting to the lyrics in 1919. The tune is said to be named for “a hill near Tara where St. Patrick challenged druid priests in lightening the paschal fire.”
