Fold to thy heart thy brother
Oct. 6th, 2010 10:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaOver 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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?
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?
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Follow the Gleam
Date: 2010-10-06 03:54 pm (UTC)#Over the valley, in early summer
Over the moutain on human faces
And all around me, moving to melody
Floated the Gleam.
Down from the mountain and over the level,
And streaming, and shining, on silent river,
Silvery willows, pastures and ploughlands,
Slided the Gleam.
(Then a change of tune, tempo and pace)
And bolder, and brighter, the Gleam flying onward,
Wed to the melody, sang through the world.
(I forget a verse! Shame! We had to practice the next bit until we had perfected a mighty crescendo.)
Not of the sunlight, not of the moonlight, not of the starlight.
(Back to the first tune, but more insanity in the lyrics)
O young mariner, down to the haven.
Call your companions and launch your vessel,
And fold your canvas, and ere it vanishes,
Over the margin,
After it, follow it.
(Final change of tune, we all know the end is coming, and we are glad.)
Follow the Gleam.
Follow the Gleam.
Follow the Gleam.#
We were never told what the 'Gleam' was. All we knew was we hated it because it meant we had to practice singing about the bloody thing in the sweaty fly infested marquee in the middle of a field at the height of summer, over and over again until Mrs German the insane music teacher was satisfied with our performance. The Gleam can go f*ck itself.
Re: Follow the Gleam
Date: 2010-10-06 05:38 pm (UTC)To be honest, that sounds like a dreadful prophecy in a third-rate fantasy novel. Did your headmaster/headmistress/insane music teacher secretly have a great sense humour?