Sometimes when we learn a text by rote memorization at an early age, we continue to be oblivious to the text's meaning long after we're old enough to comprehend it. For me, one such text was the pledge of allegiance. I was well into my teens before I happened to think about what the words actually mean.

There aren't many spoken texts that young children routinely memorize, but there are plenty of songs. For people a few years younger than me, I wonder if the Schoolhouse Rock tunes aren't in this category. I was eight years old for "Conjunction Junction" and ten for "I'm Just a Bill", so they really did make me think about words that "hook up words and phrases and clauses" or a bill going "off to committee where it sits in a line". But what if you were five or six years old? How long do the syllables sit in your head unexamined for meaning?

That's not a failing of the series. Even it doesn't occur to you to think about the meanings of the words until ten years later, it's still nice to have memorized them. For that matter, even if it hasn't occurred to you till right now, it's still a good thing. If you're 37 years old and never once thought seriously about the preamble of the Constitution, but the text is still stuck in your head from hearing Lynn Ahrens sing it during Saturday morning cartoons, I'm glad it's there for you. (Go ahead, sing it and listen. They're listing the reasons why the people should come together to form a government.)

One morning earlier this week my idle brain was wandering, and I happened to think about the lyrics to "Silent Night". In my opera days I worked with many lyric translations, and even wrote a few, so I'm well familiar with the difference between a literal (or semi-literal) translation and a singing translation. I know that a good singing translation must often take liberties, and if the English lyric is not a literal rendering of the lyric in the original language, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I guess I was always vaguely aware that the words of "Silent Night" only approximate the meaning of the German lyric, but I never noticed how completely nonsensical some of them are. For the first line, "Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht", the English rendering is near literal. In the first half of the second line, "all is calm" doesn't quite match "Alles schläft", which means "everyone sleeps", but it at least conveys the right mood.

It's in the second half of the second line where things really go awry. In German that's "einsam wacht". Neither word translates easily to English. "Einsam" means "lonely", but here it's used like the "alone" in "Thou alone art God" or the "only" in "only you can prevent forest fires." "Wacht" is cognate with our verb "wake", but in German it can be used for the ongoing activity of being awake. In English, sometimes you are asleep and sometimes you are awake. During the former time, you sleep. During the latter time you are awake, but if we say you "wake", we're only talking about the moment you switch from one state to another, not the continuous action of being awake. In German, the whole time you are awake you wachen.

"Einsam wacht", then, is "alone is awake", which thus leads into the next section about mother Mary and baby Jesus. Everyone is asleep, but this pair alone is awake.

"All is bright" has nothing to do with this, which is forgivable, singing translations being what they are. What is not forgivable is that it doesn't make sense. What the heck does it mean that "all is bright"? It's night-time, why would it be bright? Even if you're trying to tell us that it was an unusually bright night (and I'm not sure why you'd even say that), it's still not true that all is bright. Maybe the one star, or possibly even baby Jesus's supernaturally glowing face, but that's about it.

Then there's "Round yon virgin". OK, I get that Mary is the virgin, but "round yon". What's that supposed to mean? I have no idea.

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