In my English school our hymns were mostly in Latin which, despite years of instruction, rendered them sufficiently opaque to be appropriate. What few hymns we sang in English seemed rather weepy, which didn’t appeal.
Therefore, emerging from that place into a wider England, it was a surprise to discover there was a culture of hymns in good English, some with marvellous tunes, and almost a lingua franca derived from them among those who had dutifully bellowed those tunes and words when young. Nor was this only middle-class — think of the Salvation Army. This little book is a selection of the best of them: 52 hymns, 15 carols, each with a punchy introduction and a few necessary bars of the tune, and that tune’s provenance.
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Anne Le Rougetel
November 11th, 2007 1:52amAt the rather high church English girls' boarding school I went to in the 1940s we had to attend chapel morning and evening every day of the week and three times on Sunday. So I heard a lot of hymns. As the only girl never in the school choir (I couldn't then, and can't now, carry a tune) I was put to hand-pumping the ancient organ. This was boring. So I had a lot of time to consider what the rest of the school was singing about. Many of the hymns were probably as stirring, beautiful and poetic as P.J. Kavanagh describes. Sadly, the only lines that linger in my mind today are somewhat less than sublime: 'Kings for harps their crowns resign, crying as they strike the chords, "Take my kingdom, it is thine."
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