Bonfire Song

Here’s the happy birthday song to sing while standing around your St. John’s Eve bonfire smoking cigars tonight!

I like the second version – a mystical meditation.

Birthday song for St. John the Baptist – the origin of the Do-Re-Me song.

St. John the Baptist: Ut Queant Laxis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tmLARdqaIo

 "Hymn to St. John the Baptist" meditation

This hymn to "St. John the Baptist" was said to impart great spiritual blessing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVgWbLUkgY4

The first stanza is:

Ut queant laxis

resonare fibris,

Mira gestorum

famuli tuorum,

Solve polluti

labii reatum,

Sancte Iohannes.

It may be translated: So that your servants may, with loosened voices, resound the wonders of your deeds, clean the guilt from our stained lips, O Saint John.

A paraphrase by Cecile Gertken, OSB (1902-2001) preserves the key syllables and the meter:

Do let our voices

resonate most purely,

miracles telling,

far greater than many;

so let our tongues be

lavish in your praises,

Saint John the Baptist

Ut queant laxis or Hymnus in Ioannem is a Latin hymn in honour of John the Baptist written in Horatian Sapphics and traditionally attributed to Paulus Diaconus, the eighth-century Lombard historian.

It is famous for its part in the history of musical notation, in particular solmization. The hymn is sung to a Gregorian chant, the original do-re-mi music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ut_queant_laxis