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

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

We had kind of two. One had been written by a nun specifically for the school, and thus the chances of my running into anyone else who's even heard of 'Lady of Kilgraston' are kinda low.

The other was God Be With You Till We Meet Again, which was sung at the end of prize giving on the last day of the summer term. And on no other occasion, ever.

In the days running up to prize giving, we had to learn the words to both to ensure that we didn't need hymn sheets.

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

One of my friends taught at a school that had a school song to the tune of 'Something about a soldier' (changed to 'something about the [name of school]'). Deeply bizarre.

My school had a song (long abandoned, along with the houses when I went there though I understand houses have come back, but different ones) which contained the line
'Buckinghamshire's four mighty men - Challoner, Hampden, Milton and Penn'.
(which were the four houses), which sounds to me like a rather camp line from a musical set in the 20s.

Sadly I can't find the words on the web, though I believe this to be true, even though it is in Wikipedia.

[huskyteer.livejournal.com]

At prep skool it was He Who Would Valiant Be, which I've always loved. Boarding-school I don't think had a hymn - I can't remember - but, being located on the coast, we always used to sing For Those In Peril On The Sea during stormy weather.

[venta.livejournal.com]

I rather like He Who Would Valiant Be, too. It's always associated in my head with When A Knight Won His Spurs for some reason - possibly because I think I have recordings of both by Blyth Power.

[vicarage.livejournal.com]

Pueri Alleynienses, quotquot annos quotquot menses
Fertur principum memoria,
Vivit Fundatoris nomen, unicae virtutis omen
Detur soli Deo Gloria
Herne Hill, Brixton and Victoria

Boys of Alleyn, may our forefathers' memory
Endure through as many years and as many months as there may be,
The Founder's name lives on, a promise of unparalleled virtue to come,
Glory be given to God alone. 
(the stations into London from the nearest station to the school)

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

We had the same - only with the original words (and we called it 'To be a pilgrim'). I actually like them better, as they have hobgoblins and giants and stuff in:

Who would true valour see
Let him come hither
One here will constant be
Come wind come weather
There's no discouragement
Shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent
To be a pilgrim

Who so beset him round
With dismal stories
Do but themselves confound -
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright
He'll with a giant fight
But he will have the right
To be a pilgrim

Hobgoblin nor foul field
Can daunt his spirit
He knows he at the end
Shall life inherit
Then fancies fly away!
He'll fear not what men say
He'll labour night and day to be a pilgrim

As you can see, I still remember it very clearly, because those words were drummed into us again and again, right down to the details (eg 'can' before 'shall' in the 2nd verse).

The result of this is that I can't bear to listen to the modern version, because my OCD brain considers it wrong wrong wrong.

I just had a look on cyberhymnal - they have both sets of words, but the wrong tune. Must be an American site?

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

Yes, the two are connected in my brain, too. Only natural, I think, given the similar subject matter.

I *love* When A Knight Won His Spurs. It always made me cry, which was awkward at school

[pm215]

The comprehensive I went to definitely didn't have a school hymn, or indeed any singing of hymns at all. My primary school, being CofE, did have singing of hymns at assembly, but no school hymn.

(I just went and looked at the primary's homepage, and all the classes seem to be named after birds these days; I'm sure it was just numbers when I was there...)

[j4.livejournal.com]

We had a school hymn, which I can still sing & will reproduce in its entirety here without looking it up (honest!):

"Our Father, by whose servant this house was built of old,
Whose hand hath crowned her children with blessings manifold,
For thine unfailing mercy, far strewn along our way,
With all who passed before us we praise thy name today.

Four hundred years enduring[*] from age to following age,
A hundred generations have built our heritage.
Their names are long forgotten, long spent their hopes and fears,
Safe rest they in thy keeping, who changest not with years.

They reap not where they laboured, we reap what they have sown,
Our harvest may be garnered by ages yet unknown.
The days of old have dowered us with gifts beyond all praise;
Our Father, make us faithful to serve the coming days.

Before us and beside us, still holden in thine hand
A cloud unseen of witness our elder comrades stand.
One family unbroken we join with one acclaim,
One heart, one voice uplifted to glorify thy name."

It was a Victorian-ish hymn tune (maybe a bit unpredictable in places but fine once you got the hang of it), & the same for each verse, but with a nice descant on the last verse (the choir sang the descant at prizegivings and stuff). I was (and am) quite fond of our school hymn, & I confess I got very weepy when singing it at my last ever assembly. Thinking of it now I can almost feel those itchy grey school socks. :-D

Your description of your complicated school hymn with the difficult tune reminds me of the very rare occasions at school when we would sing ST PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE ("I bind unto myself today / the power of the Trinity..."), which is probably the most awesome hymn I know, but it is a bit of a complicated tune & then there's a bit in the middle where it goes into a different key and time-signature and nobody ever knows how it goes. Someone I knew had it at their wedding, & that was a disaster. :-}

Sorry for rambling on, but, hymns! I could talk forever about hymns. They are great.

[*] when our brother-school had its quincentenary they changed this line to "five hundred years enduring"[**], but it was "four hundred years" for my first 5 years or so at the school, so that's what I know best.

[**] the girls' school was nowhere near as old, but both high schools and the junior school that fed into them all had the same school hymn.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

I don't think we had a particular 'school hymn'. I do remember my primary school being rather fond of the more modern, happy-clappy sort, like singing The Lords Prayer to a calypso beat. Some teachers seemed to rather like a slightly petrochemical-obsessed one that exhorted us to be thankful for oily puddles and aeroplanes refuelling (as well as rather more bucolic things like horse chestnuts).

[venta.livejournal.com]

The beauty of the predictability of hymntune meter means it doesn't matter I don't know that one - the words fit perfectly well to the tune of Onward, Christian Soldiers in my head :)

I have a near-incurable habit of making hymns rhyme; Victorian hymns bring out the words in me because their homonyms were often quite approximate. I'd have had to sing "have built our herit-age" to make it rhyme with age. Possibly also "Trinitay" in your St Patrick example, though without the rest of the words that might be just a red herring.

I still maintain that you can always spot choir-trained singers of hymns, because they take notice of all the commans and little brackety ellision things which most people ignore. "Where meek souls will receive him, still" is a good one to catch at Christmas time.

There's a similar one I can't right now call to mind in a popular wedding hymn - several of us (who didn't know each other) bonded over it a wedding a few years back while those who hadn't been harangued on the topic by choirmasters at an impressionable age looked vaguely baffled by the whole business :)

[mrlloyd.livejournal.com]

Your schools had hymns? If mine did I didn't notice.

[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?

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

We had a custom school song, based on the town's (and consequently the school's) motto "Forward"¹.

I can't remember much other than the opening lines:

Let our voices make the rafters ring,
As the motto of our school we sing,
Forward, forward, forward,
To something something something something...

I don't fear much chance of running into too many others who know it.


--
[1] The motto comes from James Douglas who realising he was about to be killed by Moors while on a Crusade, and carrying the embalmed heart of Robert the Bruce about his neck, flung it ahead of him into the midst of the Moors, crying: "Forward, brave heart, as ever thou were wont to do, and Douglas will follow thee or die". Which he then did.

[venta.livejournal.com]

My junior school (C of E) and secondary school (not sure if it declared its offiliations, but it was of Quaker antecedents and had a definite religious bent) both had assembly every morning. Came with a free hymn. Two, I think, for the junior school.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Which he then did.

Both, presumably?

[secondhand-rick.livejournal.com]

Indeed. His or was not xor.

[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!

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

All the infant classes where the twins go are named after birds, but the juniors get numbers. The main consequence of this policy seems to be that the parents of the infants can never remember what classes their own kids are in!

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Oh, you went to Dr C's? My old next door neighbour did and I've heard the song, but I doubt he is still around to remember the words (he was in his 80s when I last saw him).

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

The houses had gone just before I went there, the school ties used to have a strip with the house colour on, then when they got rid of houses they standardised on blue, but a few boys had ties they had inherited from older brothers which had different coloured stripes on them.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Lots of hymn singing at primary school, but no school hymn; no hymns at all at secondary school apart from Christmas (and even then we wrote our own too).

Our primary school music teacher was a wonderful - if slightly dotty - elderly Chinese lady (with some fascinating stories - she knew Gladys Aylward well!) and this added a slightly surreal tone to the hymns I learned then. In my head most titles are said in Mrs A's voice: Aw Thees Brat A Byootafoo, etc.

My mum's school had a school hymn which is one of those specific to the school, but also her music teacher made up tunes for most well-known hymns, with the result that I learned them from her and then got very confused when encountering them in church later on. And I also know 'the wrong' tune for a number of hymns I learned in church because our Rector wrote and adapted some too. Altogether, it's been a life of confusion and not-quite-sure-about-this-bit-ness when it comes to singing hymns.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is a good place to note it in case I am not alone in this one:

for some reason whenever I sing 'Come Ye Thankful People Come' it turns into 'For Those In Peril On The Sea'. I cannot explain it, and it puzzles me. The same thing happens with 'When Lamps Are Lighted In The Town', which is at least about fishermen, so vaguely related, unlike the harvest one.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I'd have had to sing "have built our herit-age" to make it rhyme with age.

Yep, that's how we sang it (the nature of the tune meant that you did sort of land quite heavily on the '-age' of 'heritage' anyway so it was a bit unavoidable).

Possibly also "Trinitay" in your St Patrick example, though without the rest of the words that might be just a red herring.

Ah no, it it rhymes with "three" further on. Words here (and I think that page plays audio at you if you haven't bvggered up your plugins like wot I have). The "Christ be with me, Christ within me" bit is the bit that gets a completely different tune.

Totally know what you mean about the commas and things in hymns. There's another one that always irks me when people get it wrong, but I can't remember it, may well be the same one you're thinking of. :) When I say "people get it wrong" I generally mean "people look at me funny when I sing through the bit where they're all taking a big breath".

"Where meek souls will receive him, still" is a good one to catch at Christmas time.

And it is nearly Christmas time for singing purposes!! :) We have already started work on the Christmas stuff in choir, but I always want to do more carols, I just can't get enough.