Suggested tune: NUN LASST UNS DEN LEIB
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Nun lasst uns den Leib begraben. M. Weisse. [Burial of the Dead.] First published in Ein New Geseng buchlen, Jung Bunzlau, 1531, in 7 stanzas of 4 lines, and thence in Wackernagel, iii. p. 332. This has been called a translation from the Latin of A. C. Prudentius , but has really very little resemblance to it. Mr. Müller is of opinion that it is an expansion of a Bohemian hymn by Lucas of Prag which seems to have been in-cluded in the lost Brethren's Hymn Bookof 1519, and is in the Utraquist Hymn Book of 1559. The hymn by Lucas has only 4 stanzas, but is of the same tenor as Weisse's, has the same title, and is in the same metre. In the Magdeburg Gesang-Buch of 1540 it is considerably altered, and an 8th stanza added. This form (sometimes ascribed to M. Luther) passed, with alterations, into V. Babst's Gesang-Buch, Leipzig, 1545, and is found in Porst's Gesang-Buch, edition 1855, No. 874.
In L. Erk's Choral-Bach, 1863, No. 199, the tune generally set to it is given from G. Rhau's Newe Deudsche geistliche Gesenge , Wittenberg, 1544. This tune is in the Bohemian Hymn Book of 1560, but not in the edition of 1541, nor in the New Geseng buchlen of 1531. In Allon's Congregational Psalmist it is named Bohemia. The hymn is not in the Riga Gesang-Buch. of 1530, but is added in the edition of 1548.
Translation in common use:—
Now lay we calmly in the grave. A good and full translation by Miss Winkworth, in her Lyra Germanica, 2nd Ser., 1858, p. 117, and her Chorale Book for England , 1863, No. 96. Repeated in the Ohio Lutheran Hymnal, 1880, and in the 1884 Appendix to the Scottish Hymnal.
Other translations are:—
“Our brother let us put in grave," in the Gude and Godly Ballates, edition 1568, folio 83 (1868, p. 143). (2) "Let us this present corpse inter," in the Moravian Hymn Book, 1754, pt. i., No. 295. (3) "We give this body to the dust," by Dr. H. Mills, 1845 (1856, p. 267). (4) “The corpse we now inter, and give," by Dr. G. Walker, 1860, p. 111. (5) "We lay this body in the grave," by Dr. H. Harbaugh, in the (German Reformed) Guardian, Nov., 1863, p. 351. [Rev. James Mearns, M.A.]
--John Julian, Dictionary of Hymnology (1907)
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