Simple Gifts

Elder Joseph Brackett wrote this at the Shaker community in Alfred, Maine, in 1848. It is one verse long. That is the whole song, and for nearly a century almost nobody outside the Shakers had heard it.

Origins

Brackett was a Shaker elder, and the Shakers were a religious community known for celibacy, communal property, plain furniture, and worship that involved actual dancing. Songs like this one were not hymns to be sung sitting down. They were dance songs with movements built into the words.

The song stayed inside the Shaker tradition until the composer Aaron Copland used the melody in Appalachian Spring, his 1944 ballet score for Martha Graham. Copland wrote a set of variations on it for the final section. The ballet won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1945, and from there the tune entered general circulation, appearing in hymnals, school songbooks, and at presidential inaugurations.

Sydney Carter wrote a separate set of words to Brackett's melody in 1963, published as "Lord of the Dance". That is a different and much more recent song, still in copyright, and its words are not part of Simple Gifts.

Meaning & Interpretation

The "gifts" in the title are spiritual gifts rather than presents. Simplicity and freedom are treated as things given to you, not achievements you earn, which fits Shaker belief.

The second half describes physical movement. Bowing, bending, and turning were real actions performed during Shaker worship, so the lines are close to instructions. The last line contains a pun that carries the whole song: to "come round right" means both to complete the turn of the dance and to arrive at a correct state of mind. The dance and the moral lesson are described in the same words.

Was Simple Gifts written by Aaron Copland?

No. Elder Joseph Brackett, a Shaker in Alfred, Maine, wrote both words and melody in 1848. Copland used the existing tune in Appalachian Spring in 1944, nearly a century later. The confusion is common because Copland's setting is how most people first hear it.

Is Simple Gifts the same song as Lord of the Dance?

No, though they share a melody. Sydney Carter wrote "Lord of the Dance" in 1963 using Brackett's tune with entirely new words about the life of Jesus. Brackett's original single verse is the Shaker song; Carter's lyrics are a modern work.

What does "the valley of love and delight" mean?

It describes the state of contentment the singer reaches by giving up complication and pride. Shaker writing often used landscape as a picture of spiritual condition, so the valley is a place of mind rather than a place on a map.