Fold to thy heart thy brother

[venta]

Over on someone else's LJ, I've just been reading a comment about someone's school hymn. Which has just reminded me to muse what a bloody odd choice my school made.

At the end of every term, and on various high days and holidays, we would churn out O Brother Man, which always struck me as a singularly odd choice for a girls school.

Worse, we didn't sing it to any kind of regular hymn tune; oh no. The middle verse went to a different tune from the first and third, both were full of weird runs and unsingable intervals, and the whole was rounded off with a vaguely apocalyptic piano accompaniment.

(Yikes. A brief quest on youtube to see if I could find a recording of it revealed this, which is bloody odd. Wrong tune, of course, but it's basically hymn-karaoke. Ah well, each to their own.)

A quick test has just revealed that I do actually still know all the words (and I bet marjory does too). I have a vague idea it was dinned into us so we could sing it at school functions without the tiresome intervention of hymnbooks. My rendering of the tune was very poor, mind. Did I mention? Really quite a difficult tune.

(Anyone hugely curious can find the words here: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/o/b/obrother.htm. We missed out the second verse they give altogether. That site will play (the wrong) audio at you, be warned. In fact, I mainly include the link so people can marvel at what a fabulous URL cyberhymnal.org is. Cyberhymnal! Isn't that a brilliant word?)

On the plus side, the sheer unwieldiness of the school tune means that no one else uses it. I'm extremely unlikely to bump into it anywhere else, and thus I avoid the pitfalls of being mentally displaced back to bottle-green-clad adolescence without warning.

The junior school (which I didn't attend) attached to my secondary school lucked out and got the jolly Lord of All Hopefulness instead. My junior school didn't go in for such exotica as a school hymn, as far as I can remember. In fact, I've no idea how common the concept of a school hymn is. Did you have one? Can you remember it?

Comments

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

I love it too! I want it at my funeral! (Yes, I have thought extensively about the playlist for my funeral.)

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Heh, me too! Probably because I never plan to get married. Though, actually, I'm also very unlikely to want a christian funeral...

Still, would definitely have Immortal, Invisible - my all-time favourite hymn since I was a kid (I'm generally a big fan of any Welsh hymn tune). Maybe Eternal Ruler of the Ceaseless Round. It makes me really sad that I never get to sing hymns. Funerals do seem to be the one place you get to do that after leaving school, if you're not a church-goer.

What would you have?

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

It makes me really sad that I never get to sing hymns.

I reckon you should go for it right now - give your builder's radio a bit of competition!

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Oh, I do! But it's not the same as singing with other people.

The builder has now gone, btw, and sanity is restored.

[venta.livejournal.com]

The builder has now gone, btw, and sanity is restored.

He must have done a good job then, can you send him round? The sanity round here is crumbling and very much in need of some work :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

What would you have?

I think I've thought more about what I would *not* want. My family practically has a policy of threatening to haunt descendants who cause the Crimmond version of The Lord's My Shepherd to be sung at their funerals.

Immortal, Invisible sounds like a good choice, though.

Presumably you're allowed to sing hymns at others' weddings, though? Depends how many of your friends are likely to go in for church weddings, really.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Me too. In fact, I have two different plans, depending on whether two choirs and full orchestra can be mustered, in which case it's the Verdi Requiem for me. Plans are on LJ, should you be interested.

We sang'When a Knight Won His Spurs' at wedding once, it was very odd, but not as odd as the church where weddings often had a hymn to the tune of the Dambusters (and the vicar always gave the same sermon).

As for my school hymn, well, neither school had one, but at secondary we did sing Give Me Batteries in My Bloody Torch (or something like that) twice a week for five years. I figured they made you sing crap hymns at school because overexposure would ruin them for you anyway, so thisway the nice hymns stay nice.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Blimey. Your funeral is well planned! I feel vaguely guilty for having given no thought to mine.

I know what you mean about "without our aid he did us make" making you laugh. I always really struggle with the line in Abide With Me about "...and point me to the skies". It would be very embarassing to one day be thrown out of a funeral for giggling.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

A lot of it is lifted straight from our wedding, so not as much thought as it might seem - only one of the readings is changed, for example.

I'm glad it's not just me with the giggling. One opf my friends had a hymn he really hated at his, and I could just hear him ranting in the background, I found it very hard to keep a straight face.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

We sang the Dambusters hymn at school! The music teacher made 'eeeeeeooooww, kapow!' noises during hymn practice!

Did yours go 'There is a flowing river, within God's holy city, God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved'?

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

That does sound familiar. I think there was something marriage-specific in our version, but I don't really remember.