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Awful school hymns — which ones did you loathe?

354 replies

DumboHimalayan · 26/10/2023 12:09

This is for those of you who had to sing hymns every morning in assembly at school — which were the ones you hated, that made you groan inside when they came up, and why?

For me it was a toss-up between One More Step Along The World I Go and Who Put The Colours In The Rainbow. Both of them toe-curlingly banal both musically and lyrically, both of them cringily childish in that way that's particularly objectionable to children who are just that little bit too old for something, and the former also having that nasty shoehorned mismatched meter that forces the emphasis on to all THE wrong words and syllABles. (Thankfully both were ditched by senior school, where the worst one musically was probably an alternative tune for All Things Bright And Beautiful. No, not the one you're thinking of. No, not that one either. A different tune , one that I've never been able to find corroborating evidence for online, which appeared to have been composed using note selection by dice-throw, in a hurry, and which they gave up on after the first disastrous all-school attempt.)

BTW I'm coming at this from a purely aesthetic perspective — I'm not and never have been a Christian, just had to sing the songs for a decade or so, some of which I enjoyed from a musical perspective, and others not .

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SammyScrounge · 02/11/2023 00:34

Give me oil in my lamp
Keep me burning
Give me oil in my lamp , I pray
Give me oil in my lamp
Keep me burning
Keep me burning till the break of day.

Chorus: sing Hosanna sing Hosanna etc

School Assembly in the.hall.
Teacher at the piano, singing the hymn to encourage the children to singalong as we marched, class by class, out of the hall ,upstairs, and round the balcony, still singing.,

PersephonePomegranate23 · 02/11/2023 06:07

So we sang:

Give me joy in my heart, keep me praising,
Give me joy in my heart, I pray,
Give me joy in my heart, keep me praising,
Keep me praising 'till the break of day.

Sing hosanna, sing hosanna,
Sing hosanna to the King of kings!
Sing hosanna, sing hosanna,
Sing hosanna to the King.

No mention of oil! Is this a Catholic vs CofE variation, I wonder?

We sang a lot more of the traditional hymns (mid to late 80s), no shining going on at my school ha ha.

InMySpareTime · 02/11/2023 06:47

Those are just different verses of the same song.
There were loads of verses:
Give me love in my heart, keep me serving
Give me fire in my heart, keep me yearning
Give me Peace in my heart, keep me resting

I'm sure there were others, in my memory of that song, once you'd embarked on it you were in for the long haul. It was a good 20-minutes long at least.

Interested in this thread?

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CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 02/11/2023 09:51

@HuntingoftheSnark I’ve lost track of whether I’ve posted this on this thread, but our school song, which was in Latin, was all about our mother, the school, and had a verse which translated to something like “when the day comes that our limbs are dragged protestingly from the palace [yep, that’s palace] we shall remain as the limbs of our mother, a living community”. Spoilers: the alumnae community isn’t that good.

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 02/11/2023 09:53

@InMySpareTime Sing Hosanna! sing Hosanna! Sing Hosanna to the King of Kings! Sing Hosanna! Sing Hosanna! Sing Hosanna to the King AND NOW STOP SINGING BEFORE YOU EMBARASSINGLY SING IN A REST

DumboHimalayan · 02/11/2023 09:54

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau My school song was in English and was far duller than that. I was envious of the boys' school's song, though, as theirs was in Latin and had the word "rectum" in it. (Whoever wrote/chose that had clearly never met an adolescent boy.)

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CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 02/11/2023 09:58

@DumboHimalayan a deprived childhood! ;) as I have mentioned up thread I cannot deal maturely with the word “come”. In case you haven’t studied Latin, rectum means “right” or “straight” but yes, significant lack of forethought on the part of whoever wrote your school song. They’re a bit weird overall, aren’t they? Especially when you consider that it’s normally religious/Christian schools which have them, and they’re sort of encouraging idolatry of the school as an institution.

DumboHimalayan · 02/11/2023 10:03

Having studied Latin did not, unfortunately, make me immune to a bout of the sniggers on the rare occasion we got to hear the boys' school singing their rectum song.

And yeah, weird religio-institutional vibes from my school song (I don't think I ever bothered to work out what the boys' one was actually about) — a weird custom altogether. Did you have to very carefully glue a photocopied sheet of the school song lyrics inside the front cover of your school hymn book?

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Deathraystare · 02/11/2023 10:05

I actually don't remember any I hated but the whole school loved Gracious Spirit, Holy Ghost. It was played the day they made the announcement that the headmaster died of a heart attack. Most kids were in floods of tears. The night before we were doing a production of something or other and he was playing piano and just kind of slid sideways. Very sad. Lovely man.

DumboHimalayan · 02/11/2023 11:56

Oh how awful for you all @Deathraystare, maybe especially those of you who were there when it happened. He must have been quite young for a fatal heart attack.

I suppose, in a way, if I were thinking about the kind of death I might prefer for myself, then keeling over in the middle of playing the piano — while taking part in a shared effort with members of my chosen community, and in a job role that I (presumably) cared about — might not be the worst way to go, if it weren't for the potential effect on others seeing it. I'm sure he wouldn't have wanted to cause distress among those who saw him die; I hope he didn't even realise what was happening.

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Deathraystare · 02/11/2023 20:14

Thank you @DumboHimalayan. I was amazed that even the bad kids were upset and had good things to say about him

InvisibleDuck · 02/11/2023 20:27

InMySpareTime · 02/11/2023 06:47

Those are just different verses of the same song.
There were loads of verses:
Give me love in my heart, keep me serving
Give me fire in my heart, keep me yearning
Give me Peace in my heart, keep me resting

I'm sure there were others, in my memory of that song, once you'd embarked on it you were in for the long haul. It was a good 20-minutes long at least.

I just googled it and found such gems as 'give me wax for my board, keep me surfing' 😂

Grumpyoldpersonwithcats · 02/11/2023 21:03

di2004 · 01/11/2023 20:32

‘ We plough the fields and scatter’ .. ghastly!

I really like that hymn, but don't associate it with school. Only ever get to sing it once a year at Harvest.

NumberFortyNorhamGardens · 02/11/2023 22:01

Did you have to very carefully glue a photocopied sheet of the school song lyrics inside the front cover of your school hymn book?

No but we did have a booklet supplied at the end of term which was when we normally sang the school song.

@CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau was yours a convent school?

And on that note, does anyone remember ‘Immaculate Mary, our hearts are on fire’? The refrain was ‘Ave, ave, ave Maria’ twice, and I remember encountering both Spanish and Polish versions (!) - almost as international a hymn as Silent Night. Although the English version has a verse with the lines ‘Be England thy dowry, as in days of yore’.

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 03/11/2023 00:18

@NumberFortyNorhamGardens oddly I come from a Catholic family but my school was high-church Anglican. I later became an Oxbridge choral scholar and am still in love with the Anglican choral canon, there is so much beautiful music! I also wanted to be a nun when I was younger >_<

InMySpareTime · 03/11/2023 05:37

We had some dirgey half Latin half English song where the verses were English but the chorus was Latin.

Ave Maria
Gratia Plena
Do-o-minus
Te-e-e-cum
Be-e-ne-di-icta Tu

Can't remember all the verses but one went

All I have I give you
Every dream and wish are yours
Mother of Christ
Mother of mine
Present them to my Lord

Grumpyoldpersonwithcats · 03/11/2023 07:59

InMySpareTime · 03/11/2023 05:37

We had some dirgey half Latin half English song where the verses were English but the chorus was Latin.

Ave Maria
Gratia Plena
Do-o-minus
Te-e-e-cum
Be-e-ne-di-icta Tu

Can't remember all the verses but one went

All I have I give you
Every dream and wish are yours
Mother of Christ
Mother of mine
Present them to my Lord

Pointless fact for the day. Hymns (poetry) with part English and part Latin words are called macaronic verse. 😁

teddyclown · 05/11/2023 07:32

Apologies that I haven't read the thread so it may have been mentioned (I'll catch up later), but I remember when my DC's were at school there was a song called 'Autumn Days' with a very bizarre line about jet planes meeting in the air being refuelled. It always struck me as weird, not something I've ever witnessed. I've just had a quick Google:
https://tireddaddyuk.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/autumn-days-a-question-about-jet-planes/

Autumn Days – A question about “Jet Planes”

When I was a kid, one of my favourite times of year was Autumn. For one reason, this is because my birthday is in October – so Autumn meant prezzies and cake. But there was another reason I l…

https://tireddaddyuk.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/autumn-days-a-question-about-jet-planes

Pliudev · 05/11/2023 09:14

I'm late to this but at my all girls school, I hated 'As pants the hart for cooling streams'. Or was it heart? Anyway, I always thought of knickers and wee. It was a long time ago.

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 05/11/2023 09:19

@Pliudev ”like as the hart desireth the waterbrook”?

Pliudev · 05/11/2023 09:25

Cecile . Ah....is that the same hymn? Or something else?

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 05/11/2023 09:37

@pliudev I know it as an Anglican evensong anthem. Too much harmony and complexity to be a school hymn in the form I know but the tune could be a hymn?

Pliudev · 05/11/2023 11:33

Cecile I've remembered the second line (I think) 'When hunted in the chase'. But our hymns would have been Anglican. Interesting. I think it's a shame there's so little singing in schools now, though I doubt many would agree. Growing up, it was my only exposure to more difficult language, even if we did confuse it with crude imagery.

CeciledeVolangesdeNouveau · 05/11/2023 11:36

Sorry, I should have been more clear! I grew up singing Anglican hymns in school, then went on to be a choral scholar at an Oxbridge college, the latter being the place I was exposed to “like as the hart”. I’m not sure it’s the same one (sorry for the mistake) as the second line in the one I know is “so longeth my soul after thee”.

MidnightMeltdown · 05/11/2023 11:47

I used to like singing hymns at school Blush

To be fair, we only did it in primary school though. I didn't have to sing them as a teenager.