This time of year draws us towards wispy images of snow-covered hamlets, fragrant scents, and old melodies. Fitting such a seasonal atmosphere well is John Jacob Nile’s haunting song I Wonder as I Wander. It may sound like what we can call an ”antique” melody—a tune dating back to medieval times or a folk song springing from an anonymous past. Yet it is a relatively new composition, and the details of its origin are noteworthy.

American folklorist Niles (1892-1980), a composer and balladeer who collected and performed old songs to keep them alive, had an unexpected experience in 1933 while traveling through the westernmost part of North Carolina (a little town called Murphy). According to his recollections, a young girl, with hair mussed and clothing dirty and torn, stepped outside and repeatedly sang an unfamiliar melodic fragment. Her musical phrase had such a distinctive outline that Niles latched onto it, as any good musician would. Soon this phrase sparked the whole song in his mind. In this respect, Niles was doing what composers long have done, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: absorbing and reimagining the indigenous music of an old world rapidly being erased by modernism.

In part because I Wonder As I Wander seems to have arisen as a folk song, Niles had to fight various legal battles to protect his copyright when the song became popular commercially. Such a costly, legal difficulty is not what comes into our minds when we hear the beauty of I Wander as I Wander, is it? Yet, Niles succeeded in his quest. Not surprisingly I Wonder as I Wander entered into the canon of our most beloved Christmas Classics.

A classic song is marked by its timelessness and its ability to absorb, respond to, and express different artistic treatments. Think of it as a classic recipe in an old edition of The Joy of Cooking where the basic cake recipe is followed by several pages of formulas for cakes as different as German Chocolate and Red Velvet.

In this recording, the group Vocore presents the song in an arrangement by English composer John Rutter (b 1945) that yields what I like to call a “cathedral” effect, the melodies soaring with a polished sound into a tall acoustical space like the high-vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. You will also find arrangements of this tune that recreate it its homespun origins as well as operatic renditions, jazz versions, squarely rhythmic renditions that belong in a hymnal, and naïve settings perfect for a children’s choir.

As a side note, I was surprised to learn that the powerful American poet Langston Hughes used I Wonder as I Wander as the title for Part Two of his autobiography chronicling his travels in the 1930s. Hughes’s “wanderings” took him not to the placid hills of the Appalachian Mountains (as the title might suggest), but into political hot spots of the day, including Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, and Spain (then caught up in a Civil War). So even the title of this lovely song can stretch itself to accommodate vastly disparate meanings.

For most of us, though, I Wander as I Wander will evoke Nile’s haunting tune whose musical phrases and simple, powerful text transcend the details of its history. From that first phrase that caught Nile’s heart, the song glows like a single candle in the dark. It may be performed as a delicate flower, or tossed about like a rough shepherd’s staff, but either way, it draws us towards the Nativity.