Mary Lundie was born on April 26, 1814, at Kelso, in Roxburgh, Scotland. Her father was the minister of the church there, and in 1836 she married another minister, William Wallace Duncan, taking up married life at Cleish, in Kinross. In the latter half of 1839 Duncan wrote 23 hymns, mostly for her children, Mary and Harry, this little hymn being one of them. In December 1839 she caught a chill, which turned to a fever, and she died on January 5, 1840, at Cleish. Her mother published her memoirs in 1841, which included the hymn. Her younger sister, Catherine, married Horatius Bonar (see SDAH 79).

The tune SHIPSTON is named after the town of Shipston-on-Stour in Warwickshire, 10 miles south of Stratford-on-Avon. It was at the nearby village of Holford that Lucy Broadwood (?-1929) collected a folk song called “Bedlam City,” a ballad telling of the lament of a maiden for her lover Billy, who had been killed in the war. The song appears in English County Songs, 1893, edited by Broadwood and J.A. Fuller-Maitland. The first half of this tune has been harmonized by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958; see Biographies) for the English Hymnal, 1906. SHIPSTON is also used for SDAH 544, “Jesus, Son of Blessed Mary’; there it is transported down a half step.