Songfacts®:

• One of the earliest appearances of the popular carol "Away In A Manger" with its first two verses was in the anti-Masonic journal The Christian Cynosure in 1882 with the title "Luther's Cradle Song." While the author and the music's composer is unknown, the most common variant in the US is James R. Murray's "Mueller" melody, which was first published in an 1887 Lutheran Sunday School Book (in the UK, the most popular version is William J. Kirkpatrick's 1895 "Cradle Song"). Despite claims that Dr. John T. McFarland added the third stanza in 1904, it actually first appeared in Charles H. Gabriel's 1892 collection, Gabriel's Vineyard Songs, but it's uncertain if Gabriel was the author of the verse.
• Some have attributed the song to the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. The confusion may have began because Murray, among others, published it with the subtitle "Luther's Cradle Hymn (Composed by Martin Luther for his children and still sung by German mothers to their little ones)."
• Mannheim Steamroller's rendering of the traditional carol is a soft lullaby that balances out the heavier rock stylings of other Christmas classics in their catalog. The song appears on 2001's Christmas Extraordinaire, the group's fourth holiday studio album. Aside from topping the New Age and Holiday Albums chart, the release went to #5 on the all-genre Billboard 200. In 2004, it earned a triple Platinum certification for sales of 3 million copies in the US.