The story behind The Seven Joys of Mary
The Seven Joys of Mary is an English folk carol that counts. The first joy is almost always the joy of one, to see the blessed child when he was newly born. Further joys number the life of Christ: healing, teaching, suffering, rising, glory, in an order that depends on who is singing. It is a counting song used to teach that life, not a single official list locked in one book.
Medieval devotion already knew a sequence called the seven joys of Mary, cherished especially in Franciscan prayer. The folk carol is related to that devotion and is not identical with any one liturgical roster. Texts collected in England and texts collected in the Appalachian mountains differ. Some regions count a different total. The honest description is a family of songs with a stable idea and an unstable list.
History and origins
Devotion to the joys of Mary took shape in the Middle Ages as a companion to devotion to her sorrows. A widely used Franciscan set of seven joys names the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the adoration of the magi, the finding of the child Jesus in the temple, the resurrection appearance to his mother in pious tradition, and her assumption or coronation. That list is a prayer list. It is orderly, theological, and not what every folk singer produced when asked for the seven joys. The carol tradition borrowed the idea of numbered joys and then did what oral poetry does. It taught the story people wanted to remember, in the meter of a counting song.
In English folk versions the first joy is the birth. That stability matters. Whatever else a county adds, the song starts at Christmas. A second joy might be making the lame walk. A third might be making the blind see. A fourth might be reading in the temple, or reading the Bible in the anachronism folk religion allows. Later numbers may raise the dead, bear the cross, rise, or wear the crown of heaven. Some singers include a joy that is really a sorrow, such as seeing her son upon the cross, because the word joy in the formula has become the word for an episode. Scholars should not tidy that oddity out of existence. It shows the list is mnemonic, not a canon law.
Collectors found the carol often enough to prove it was a standard of popular religious memory. It turns up in English country singing and, very strongly, in the Appalachian South, where British ballads and religious songs persisted in family repertory. Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles met mountain versions in the 1910s. Later American collectors and singers, including tradition bearers such as Jean Ritchie of Kentucky, kept mountain forms in earshot in the mid twentieth century. The tune is not one tune. A sturdy repeating melody, easy to hang another number on, is the musical fact. When the Oxford Book of Carols and school books printed a version, they necessarily froze one list. The freeze is useful for a choir and misleading if it is treated as the only true seven.
Because the song teaches by accumulation, it belonged to homes and to informal devotion as much as to choir stalls. A leader could stop at five if the night was late, or push on to seven, or, in some places, wander toward twelve. The number in the title is traditional and approximate. Christmas programs usually want the early joys, especially the birth, and may add one miracle so the count is felt. Passion and resurrection joys make the song a whole life of Christ in miniature, which is its deepest folk purpose. Printed broadsides and oral variants fed each other for generations. None of them cancelled the first joy.
Full lyrics
Joy 1
The first good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of one,
To see the blessed Jesus Christ
When he was first her son.
When he was first her son, good man,
And blessed may he be,
Both Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
To all eternity.
Joy 2
The next good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of two,
To see her own son Jesus Christ
Making the lame to go.
Making the lame to go, good man,
And blessed may he be,
Both Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
To all eternity.
Joy 3
The next good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of three,
To see her own son Jesus Christ
Making the blind to see.
Joy 4
The next good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of four,
To see her own son Jesus Christ
Reading the Bible o'er.
Joy 5
The next good joy that Mary had,
It was the joy of five,
To see her own son Jesus Christ
Raising the dead to life.
The text above follows a standard public domain version. Singers will meet small changes from book to book, especially in folk carols.
Lyrics presented for educational and personal use. Sing along responsibly this holiday season!
Meaning and symbolism
Counting is the symbol. One, two, three, the child learns a sequence and, with it, a gospel outline. The first joy anchors everything in the birth, so Mary’s joy is first a mother’s joy at seeing her son. Later joys are her joy at what the son does and at what is done in him. The carol’s eye is Marian in the frame and Christ centered in the content. That double focus is why the song could live among people with very different degrees of formal doctrine. You can enter at the baby and be led, number by number, to healing and glory.
Variation is not a defect to be apologized for in a footnote and then ignored. It is part of the meaning. Communities numbered the mighty works they most needed to remember. A mountain singer who stresses healing and a bookish editor who restores the Franciscan Annunciation and Assumption are both reaching for a life that exceeds one night in Bethlehem. The cross appearing inside a list of joys is the folk way of saying that even that hour is held inside a story that ends in life. If a given text cannot bear that paradox, it will have chosen a different seventh joy. The song allows the choice. What it does not allow is a Christmas with no child at the start.
Fun facts and statistics
- The first joy in the folk carol is almost always the birth of the child.
- Later joys commonly include healing, teaching or reading, the cross, the rising, or heavenly glory, depending on the singer.
- The list is not fixed. England and Appalachia preserve different counts and episodes.
- A medieval devotional list of seven joys, important in Franciscan prayer, is related but not identical.
- That devotional list includes scenes such as the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Assumption.
- The folk song sometimes calls an episode a joy even when the episode is the cross.
- Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles collected mountain versions in the 1910s.
- The carol is a counting song meant to teach the life of Christ.
- No one tune and no one official set of seven stanzas should be treated as the only original.
Top 5 most popular renditions
English country singers
traditional
In English oral tradition the joys were a household and community counting carol, led by someone who knew how many episodes the local text carried and answered by a chorus of blessing. The birth came first. Miracles and glory followed according to county habit. This rendition did not consult a Franciscan manual before each stanza, though the devotional culture of numbered joys stood somewhere behind it. Collectors later wrote down single nights of that practice and accidentally made them look final. The country singing itself was more flexible, which is why equally traditional lists disagree without anyone having corrupted a master score.
English country singers
Appalachian singers
1910s
Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles collected The Seven Joys of Mary in the Appalachian mountains in the 1910s, from singers who treated it as family religion and family music. Mountain lists emphasize the birth and the mighty works in plain language, with tunes that can absorb another verse without new composition. This American rendition is evidence of British song living on in a new geography, not a different carol invented on the frontier. It belongs in the history beside English country versions. A performance that uses a Kentucky text should feel free to say so, and should not correct it into a textbook seven it never claimed to be.
Appalachian singers
Jean Ritchie
mid 20th century
Jean Ritchie of Kentucky, a tradition bearer from a singing family in the Cumberland mountains, helped mid twentieth century listeners hear Appalachian religious folk song, including counting carols of Mary's joys, in her own inherited style. Her rendition is not a composer’s arrangement imposed on a museum piece. It is a family line of singing meeting a recording microphone. The pace is storyteller clear, the numbers are a teacher’s device, and the birth remains joy number one. Urban folk audiences learned from her that mountain Christmas repertory was larger than a single imported English hymn. Credit her as a singer of tradition, not as the author of the joys.
Jean Ritchie
Oxford Book of Carols
1928
When the Oxford Book of Carols printed a version in 1928, it did what a good choir book must do. It chose a text, a tune, and a stop point. Parish choirs gained a usable seven joys and lost the visible fact of variation unless they read the notes. That editorial rendition spread a dignified English form into churches that had never met a mountain variant. It is a legitimate branch. Directors who use it can add one sentence: other traditional lists differ. The book did not end the oral song. It gave the counting carol a second life in four part practice and in Christmas educational programs.
Oxford Book of Carols
Family and parish teaching
present
The present rendition that most honors the form is any leader who teaches the joy of one, then lets a group add traditional joys until the count feels complete, with the chorus of blessing sung by everyone. Sunday schools, folk services, and home caroling still do this. The practice needs no famous soloist. It needs honesty about the moving list and a refusal to sneak in newly written doctrinal stanzas without saying they are new. Children remember the numbers. Adults remember that the first joy was a birth. That is the carol doing the work it was made for, on both sides of the Atlantic.
Family and parish teaching
Sheet music
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Notes for singers
If you place The Seven Joys of Mary in a December service, a school program, or a living room sing, teach Traditional before you add harmony. A confident melody lets guests enter on the refrain. Say the names when you introduce it. The words are credited to Traditional, and the music to Traditional. The year to remember is traditional, and the place to name is England and Appalachia.
This sits in the library as a folk carol. Let that tradition set the tempo. A lullaby loses its point if it is hurried. A dance carol loses its point if every syllable is precious. Leave a breath at the end of the verse so the next line feels chosen rather than chased.
The first joy in the folk carol is almost always the birth of the child. Hold that fact in the introduction you speak, not only in a program note. Later joys commonly include healing, teaching or reading, the cross, the rising, or heavenly glory, depending on the singer. Those two details give a listener a reason to hear the song as a made thing, not as wallpaper.
When the group is small, one voice can carry the verse and everyone can take the refrain. When the group is a choir, decide in advance whether you are telling a story or painting a picture. Story songs want clear words. Picture songs can bloom. The Seven Joys of Mary will tell you which it is after a single unaccompanied read through.
Questions readers ask
No. The first joy is almost always the birth of Jesus. After that, English and Appalachian singers list different episodes, such as healing the lame and the blind, reading or teaching, the cross, the rising, or heavenly glory. Some count a number other than seven. A medieval Franciscan prayer list of seven joys is related and is not the same as the folk song's moving canon.
Because it starts from Mary's joy at the birth and uses Christmas as the door into the whole life of Christ. Folk teaching songs often begin at the manger and walk on. A liturgy can sing only the early joys. The fuller count shows why the birth mattered to the singers: it was the first of a sequence, not an isolated picture.
No single author is known. It is a traditional English counting carol, also deeply rooted in Appalachian singing. Collectors such as Cecil Sharp wrote down versions in the 1910s. Choir books later chose single texts. The formula of numbered joys is medieval in devotion and oral in its folk shape. Credit tradition, and credit a specific singer if you are following one recorded family version.
In some traditional texts the word joy has become the name for each episode in the sequence, so a sorrowful scene can be numbered beside the birth and the rising. That is a folk habit, not a claim that the crucifixion felt joyful to Mary in a simple sense. Other versions choose only wonders and glory. Both habits should be described rather than corrected into one official theology.
Why this song endures
Counting songs last because memory likes a number. People who cannot quote a gospel harmony can remember that the first joy was the birth and that more joys followed. The carol has trained that memory for a long time, in England and in the American mountains, without needing a famous composer. Its lack of a single canon is a survival strategy. A frozen text can die when fashion changes. A formula that accepts another faithful stanza can travel.
It endures beside more famous Marian carols because it is active. Mary is not only a still figure by a manger. She sees a life unfold, joy by joy. Communities that want to honor her by telling her son’s story have a ready made form. Keep the first joy, admit the moving list, and the seven, or the however many, remain a good way to teach Christmas as the beginning of a longer good.