It's a haunting melody in a minor key, more "We Three Kings" than "Joy to the World." But it is lovely and soft, a light snowfall on a still night. And ... it was written by a Kentuckian, John Jacob Niles, a noted balladeer who collected Appalachian tunes later popularized by folk singers in the 1950s and '60s.
I met John Jacob Niles several times at a Christmas Eve gathering hosted annually by my kindergarten teacher, Grace Cramer Webber, who became a friend of my mother's. Like Niles, Webber was both behind and ahead of her time.
It isn't easy to have your carol enter the Christmas canon — but Niles' song has done just that. As I listen I wonder, too. Not just about the birth of the baby Jesus, but about the power of music to take us places we otherwise couldn't go.