SONGS OF PRAISE: VOICES FROM THE PAST
Peter Douglas writes:
 I
suppose I should have handed it in before I left school, but I
didn't. I still have the hymnbook that I carried for years to
morning assembly. The hymnal has come with me from place to place,
country to country, so clearly it meant something to me, though it's
hard to remember the impulse that made me keep it. This, of all the
meaningful mementos from my school days that I could have hung onto,
seems the least likely to have appealed to me, then, in 1963, and
now. I was not and am not religious, and I hardly took seriously all
the words of praise and adulation that our little voices sang or
mouthed to God back then. Attendance at assembly was obligatory, so
I went, and put up with the religion. I even managed to persuade
Gunner to let me get out of reading the lesson because I felt so
hypocritical spouting all those biblical verses. So what was I
doing, then, slipping this little book into my pocket and walking
out with it?
It's a slim volume with a hard blue cover with "Songs of Praise"
embossed on it, along with a circular image of what look like two
deer, their necks lowered and entwined, grazing, or drinking from a
stream. It contains 703 numbered hymns divided into sections
such as Times and Seasons, The Church's Year, The Communion of
Saints, Special Occasions, and General. The book is well used*the
spine is split, showing the binding beneath that leaks a fine dust
of old paper; the cover is frayed and coming loose; and the three
staples that hold it together are brown with rust. On the spotty
endpaper, in a hand I hardly recognize, I've written my name and
form, "P.A. Douglas, 6LA," which puts it at 1960. Above this is an
oval stamp containing the words "Technical High School," putting the
book's first use to before "THS" stood for Trinity High School.
In the front, I've jotted down several numbers, obviously those of
hymns. A quick check shows these to be some good old favourites:
No.75, "In the bleak midwinter frosty winds made moan," No.131,
"There is a green hill far away, without a city wall," No.444, "All
things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small," No.446,
"And did those feet in ancient time walk upon England's mountains
green?" And here I spy a special favourite, No.319, "I vow to thee,
my country, all earthly things above," which is both an Anglican
hymn and a patriotic song. The words date from 1918, and were set to
the music from Gustav Holst's "Jupiter" from the Planets Suite in
1921. It was sung at Princess Diana's wedding, and I last heard it
at her funeral.
I flick through the other pages and see several hymns marked with a
pencil, indicating those that I needed to remember for
long-forgotten reasons. I remember them: No.249, "The Church's one
foundation in Jesus Christ, her Lord," No.565, "Lord of all
hopefulness, Lord of all joy," No.618, "O worship the King all
glorious above." No.623, "Praise my soul the King of heaven." There
are many more. Even stripped of their religious significance, the
words somehow raise the hairs on my arms in a way I hardly
understand.
For a long time, the hymnbook has been on a high bookshelf,
temporarily ignored and almost forgotten. Finding it again and
looking through its well-thumbed pages, it becomes clear to me now
why I kept it. I knew myself well enough in 1963 to judge my needs
yet to come, for in keeping this little book I was anticipating my
nostalgia, and in this small way was providing my future self with
the means to indulge and satisfy it. And, clearly, I was quite
correct and prescient in that expectation! I can take pleasure still
in the little memory nuggets and associations that I find when I
read the lines of this or that hymn. From the words, the tune
instantly flows into my head, and the clarity of the recollection
amazes me. The music has remained untouched and intact somewhere in
my brain for all these years! I hear again our voices raised and Mr.
Chesters thumping away at the piano, a kaleidoscopic mental picture
that helps me find a foothold on the steep and glassy slope of
memory.
What stand out above all in my recollection, and what stirs up
deeper memories, are the Christmas carols, for these carry
associations beyond the annual event they commemorate. For me the
carols aren't religious, but the music, especially, is fixed forever
in my head, inducing that easily recognizable and inescapable
wistfulness of this sentimental season, now made more melancholy by
the evocation of these Christmases long ago, along with the
irrecoverable era they inhabit. In the Advent and Christmas section
I read the first lines of a few carols: No.66, "O come, O come
Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, " No.74, "Hark, the herald
angels sing, glory to the newborn King," No.82, "While shepherds
watch their flocks by night, all seated on the ground." The imagined
music transports me to that stuffy assembly hall on a cold winter
morning 45 years ago.
The air is warm, and heavy with the scent of damp blazers and
second-day shirts. Beyond the steamy window a grey sky drops sleet,
making even this big space feel cozy under its high yellow lights.
Feet shuffle and chairs scrape. Boys laugh and cough, and there's
the general murmur of voices, fading now as the teachers file onto
the stage, the sleeves of their black gowns flapping. Buzzer stands
there and gazes sternly at us, his spectacles catching the light as
he peers down at the assembled pupils, who slowly become silent as
his stillness gains our attention. Buzzer announces today's hymn:
"No.78, O come all ye faithful." On this cue, the piano begins the
first few bars to remind us of how the tune goes as we fumble for
our hymnbooks and rustle to find the page. A pause, the tune
repeats, and we start to mumble and sing raggedly, the first form
tenors in the front standing out from the deeper voices in the back.
From the stage come the orotund tones of the teachers belting forth
the familiar carol.
It's strange yet comfortable, being back at school, back in a time
that now appears in our history books, a time when Harold Macmillan
was PM, and Kennedy was alive, and no one had yet stepped onto the
moon. It was no golden age, but seems so now simply because it's
lost in the past. It was a time before almost everything that has
happened to me had happened, when I didn't know almost everyone I
now know. For some reason, I still reach for it, and in some way, I
can still recover it. In the words of John Milton, appearing in hymn
No.634, "Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold."
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