A Shaker Gift Song

A Shaker Gift Song is a separate publication of the third song from Simple Gifts: Four Shaker Songs. The idea for separately publishing this movement came from a middle school band director, who thought it ideal for Grade 2 bands. It is based on the Shaker lullaby, Here Take This Lovely Flower, found in Dorothy Berliner Commin's extraordinary collection, Lullabies of the World, and in Daniel W. Patterson's monumental collection, The Shaker Spiritual.

This song is an example of the phenomenon of the gift song, music received from spirits by Shaker mediums while in trance (see pp. 316 ff. in Patterson, op. cit., for a detailed account, and also Harold E. Cook's Shaker Music: A Manifestation of American Folk Culture, pp. 52 ff.). Although the Shakers practiced celibacy, there were many children in their communities, including the children of recent converts as well as orphans whom they took in. Like many Shaker songs, this lullaby embodies the Shakers' ideal of childlike simplicity.

Program Note from publisher