Angels and shepherds together

Let’s return to Czechia for today’s Advent carol. “Nesem Vám novíny” translates to “We Bring You News”, which makes it perhaps a tad premature for Advent. (Interesting aside: if you type Nesem Vám novíny into Google Translate, it returns “I bring you newspaper.” That would be an entirely different carol.) The lyrics describe how Mary has given birth, and angels and shepherds are in attendance.

So it’s a done deed.

An American scholar, Mari R. Hofer, translated Nesem Vám novíny into an English carol in 1912. She kept the same Bohemian folk tune. In Hofer’s version, the shepherds and angels are being invited to the stable. I cannot attest to how loose either translation might be; I don’t judge.

Here it is in Czech:

And here’s an English version: