Hymns

Men and women of a certain age, on finding themselves at a Christian service or funeral, will instantly recognise most of the hymns. They are the privilege who attended the Grammar Schools before Comprehensive Education replaced it around 1970, and sang these hymns daily at morning assembly. They know the tunes and words almost by heart. As the Grammar Schools were modelled on the English Public Schools, they were sung there too. 

Many learned the hymns from an earlier age because, at least where I grew up, it was unicultural. It was Church of England or high Methodist. I knew of no Jews or other religions at school, and any Roman Catholic parents with strong views sent their children elsewhere.  

Morning assembly consisted of a hymn, a prayer, and a bible reading usually by a pupil, followed by the Headmaster’s notices. 

At the beginning of the First Year, we were presented with a copy of the school hymn book and bible, inscribed by the Headmaster with the date, your name and form number in Italic lettering. I still have my bible, but the obnoxious prat that sat in front of me in the Second Year, defaced mine by scribbling insults and obscenities on half the pages. The above is my dad’s copy. He went to the same school, but no longer had his, either. He bought this in a second hand book shop in the 1950s. 

I loved those hymns. We sat in the school hall, boys one side, girls the other, and sang together. Of course, we messed about a bit. You could get away with a changed word here and there, such as ‘To be a Grim Pill’. 

In the Senior Sixth Form, we sat above the body of the hall on the side balcony which on the boys’ side had the electric organ, a large and ancient beast of an instrument with pedals, the preserve of the crusty elderly music teacher. He had arrived in the 1930s as a dashing thirty something year old who the girls doted on when my aunt was at the school, but he was now regarded as a doddery old fool, no longer taken seriously. In music lessons, he had us singing ‘Who Is Sylvia’ and ‘Cargoes’, and writing out “memory tunes”, which did nothing to teach musical notation, and were meaningless squiggles to be endured. But, my, he was good on the organ. It sounded fantastic, and it was magic to watch him operate the pedals. I considered taking music at Ordinary Level, but was told no, you can’t take it with Chemistry; you have to choose one or the other. 

What were the hymns? There were some great ones. As always, I was drawn to the music rather than the words, of which I often took little notice. I suppose those I remember most readily are those I liked best: ‘Eternal Father’ (For Those In Peril On The Sea), ‘Dear Lord and Father Of Mankind’, ‘The Lord Is My Shepherd’ (the Twenty Third Psalm), and ‘Jerusalem’ which we sang faster than usual and is better. We always sang ‘Lord Dismiss Us With Thy Blessing’ at the end of the school year. There are so many as the hymn book contents show. Also, the BBC ‘Songs of Praise’ programme ranked viewers’ favourites, which to me seems rather perverse in places. 

To choose one, though, for me it would be John Bunyan’s ‘To Be A Pilgrim’  arrangement of Vaughn Williams’  Monksgate. Here it is as sung at Prince Phillip’s memorial service at Westminster Abbey in 2022. The Queen (she takes a while to appear) is clearly ailing and has only a few months of her own life remaining. 

https://youtu.be/jiJ8horsiyY