"The Touch of the Master's Hand", also sometimes called ''The Old Violin'', is a Christian poem written in 1921 by

Myra Brooks Welch Myra Brooks Welch (October 12, 1877 – August 11, 1959 Los Angeles, California) was a poet that is known for her Christian poem ''The Touch of the Master's Hand'', which was also adapted into a film. Personal life Myra Brooks was born on October ...

. The poem tells of a battered old

violin The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...

that is about to be sold as the last item at an

auction An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bids, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition ex ...

for a pittance, until a violinist steps out of the audience and plays the instrument, demonstrating its beauty and true value. The violin then sells for $3,000 instead of a mere $3. The poem ends by comparing this instrument touched by the hand of a master musician to the life of a sinner that is touched by the hand of God.

Biblical Allusions

Mess of pottage A mess of pottage is something immediately attractive but of little value taken foolishly and carelessly in exchange for something more distant and perhaps less tangible but immensely more valuable. The phrase alludes to Esau's sale of his birthr ...

is used to describe that for which a sinner might sell his or her soul. This term was first coined by

John Capgrave John Capgrave (21 April 1393 – 12 August 1464) was an English historian, hagiographer and scholastic theologian, remembered chiefly for ''Nova Legenda Angliae'' (New Reading from England). This was the first comprehensive collection of lives o ...

in reference to the Biblical story of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for lentil stew, found in .

Legacy

Welch's famous poem inspired other works. The poem was adapted into song lyrics and set to music by John Kramp in 1974 while a freshman at

Baylor University Baylor University is a private Baptist Christian research university in Waco, Texas. Baylor was chartered in 1845 by the last Congress of the Republic of Texas. Baylor is the oldest continuously operating university in Texas and one of the fir ...

. The song was recorded by

Contemporary Christian Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is o ...

artist

Wayne Watson Wayne may refer to: People with the given name and surname * Wayne (given name) * Wayne (surname) Geographical Places with name ''Wayne'' may take their name from a person with that surname; the most famous such person was Gen. "Mad" Antho ...

for his first album ''Workin' In The Final Hour'' in 1980 and re-recorded 12 years later on his ''How Time Flies'' compilation project. A short film also titled ''The Touch of the Master's Hand'' won the Short Film Jury Award – U.S. Fiction at the

2021 Sundance Film Festival The 2021 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 28 to February 3, 2021. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 15, 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Utah, the festival combined in-person screenings at the Ray ...

Adaptations

The poem has been adapted into three films: * ''Touch of the Master's Hand'' (1980) directed by Jimmy Murphy * ''The Touch of the Master's Hand'' (1987) directed by T.C. Christensen * ''The Touch of the Master's Hand'' (2021) directed by Gregory Willis Barnes

About the author

Myra Brooks Welch was born in 1877 and died in 1959. While she authored many other

poems Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings in a ...

, she is best known for this work.

References

{{reflist Christian poetry