Christmas Song Story: Gabriel’s Message

“Gabriel’s Message” is a Christmas folk carol that tells of Gabriel’s announcement to the Virgin Mary that she would become the mother of the Christ.

The song is also known as “The angel Gabriel from heaven came” from the first line and based on the passage from Luke 1:46-55. For this reason the text is known as “The Magnificat.”

The hymn is considered a Basque Christmas folk carol from the region of Basque, which is located between Northern Spain and South-West France.

Charles Bordes collected the carol from a 13th or 14th Century Latin Carol. The words were then paraphrased into English by Sabine Baring-Gould, who spent time in the Basque country as a boy.

The words are commonly performed to an arrangement by Edgar Pettman and were first published in 1892.