Awful school hymns — which ones did you loathe?

[DumboHimalayan]

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 .

Jubilate really was a banger! We couldn't help but all dance to it.

Ju-bi-la-tay

Ev-ree-bod-AY

Praise the lo-ord ihin all his ways

AND

Come before his

Presence singing

Enter now-ow his courts with praise!

Best bit of the school week.

Christmas 1973, aged 10 or 11... My junior school used to host a Christmas dinner for a local old people's club, after which each year group paraded into the hall and sang them a Christmas carol. We spent weeks rehearsing a really modern arrangement - possibly the one that went "Zim zim, zim zim"? - and we really got into it.

...And then, five minutes before we were sent in, our class teacher told us we were now expected to give the old people something traditional, and we should all sing O Little Town of Bethlehem and look cheerful about it or else.

As we trudged, deflated and disappointed, out the classroom door I turned to the teacher and said witheringly, "I suppose you'd like us to sing 'lickle' instead of 'little' too?"

I've never sung O Little Town of Bethlehem again.

We did one "Look for signs that summer's gone, winter's drawing near". We had to sing it after the long summer hols - sadists!

Not all the new ones were crap, though. "Shine, Jesus, Shine" is pretty decent IMO. But I think a lot of my most hated ones are modern, and particularly modern ones written especially for children, like He's Got The Whole World In His Hands.

I think they thought that kids need hymns that are musically boring so they're easy to sing, and lyrically dull and basic so they're easy to understand. But firstly, almost all hymn tunes are written to be easy to learn and sing for a congregation who can't read music and don't understand any music theory anyway. And secondly, while I can see they'd want lyrics that are relatable for kids and perhaps avoiding very adult themes or theologically complex metaphors or whatever, it doesn't need to be as dull as "Who built the ark, Noah built the ark, What went in the ark, Animals went in the ark, Why was there an ark, Because God wanted nearly everyone dead" or "God made you, God made me, God loves you, God loves me, lalalalalaaa".

In my days of attending primary school assemblies, I hated one that went "Love is something if you give it away
You end up having more."

Mostly because I was cringing at the dreadful English.

Showing my age now, but I recall ‘The Ink is black, the page is white, together we learn to resd and write’ - cringeworthy now 😬

Glad that I live am I ! Awful.

I went to university somewhere with a lot of international students, and from chatting with a few of them one evening over drinks, I discovered that not all education systems worldwide seem to prioritise universal awareness and understanding of the existence and formation of oxbow lakes. Odd.

Can't believe streets of London hasn't had a mention yet!

Or settle to Carlisle - and it's up in the morning lads, wind snow or hail ABSOLUTE BANGERS

There was one I can't find the name of, it went something like:
"Have you seen the pussycat sitting on the wall, have heard it's beautiful purr. Puuuurrrr.
Have you seen the lion stalking round it's cage, have you heard it's terrible roar. Roar!
One so big, one so small. Our Heavenly Father cares for them all. One so big, one so small. Our Heavenly Father cares."

Everyone used to cheer when that song was chosen as they used to shout the Roar part as loud as they could. As a quiet child in an echoey school hall I hated it 😆

I used to find All things bright and beautiful really depressing too.

Oh my I'm singing colours of day(light up the fire) to myself lol. That was the only one I liked. Didn't like any others.

'Give me oil in my lamp' - we used to sing 'give me gas in my arse, keep me farting'.

Colours of Day. A crowd pleasing favourite and so trotted out every week, and at every possible event.

A really dull one from school was Abba Father...you are the potter, we are the clay. Tuneless and miserable, we, the singers, always sounded bored.

I liked Walk with me, O' my Lord.

There's definitely some kind of Oxbow Lake conspiracy going on.

The question is not only why are oxbow lakes so prioritised in education internationally, but also how and why do we all remember everything about them so clearly?

🤔

I feel dreadful mentioning this one as the man who wrote it was lovely. The tune was catchy but the lyrics stunk. It was called More than many Sparrows.

I went to university somewhere with a lot of international students, and from chatting with a few of them one evening over drinks, I discovered that not all education systems worldwide seem to prioritise universal awareness and understanding of the existence and formation of oxbow lakes. Odd

They must be a UK specific thing, which is odd. Why do British rivers form ox bow lakes and other rivers in the world don't, I wonder?

Now I come to think of it, we did sing Morning Has Broken and the piano teacher put all the <music technical term incoming> twiddly bits in between verses.

We finished on that one at Sunday evening mass, and every other event, every week, for years. We were saved from it in music lessons as our music teacher attended the same church and was also sick of it.

Not a hymn at all but I remember having to sing Saltwater by Julian Lennon at school when I was about 5. It must have been for a concert or something. Made me cry so much because I actually paid attention to the words. All about humans wrecking the planet, with a grammatically unsound reminder of my own mortality too - 'what will I think of me the day that I die?'

All the ones that had any reference to god.

The only ones I liked were the harvest ones “with the broad beans sleeping in the blankety bed”

The day thou gavest lord is ended. Absolute dirge at the end of term!

Not from school but I remember as a child hating the one with the line ‘If I were a fuzzy wuzzy bear I’d thank you Lord for my fuzzy wuzzy hair’. Also one that started ‘Come let us remember the joys of the town’
We sang them at church before Sunday School and I found them so infantile

@littlehouselessmatch I know him well 🙈

As far as I'm aware, oxbow lakes themselves are a worldwide phenomenon, but the educational determination for every member of the citizenry to receive a full and lasting understanding and appreciation of them is fairly Britain-specific.

Although, to be fair, going by my own education I would've assumed that the blast furnace was the concept of most vital importance to my future existence. It was covered in geography, physics, and at least twice in chemistry. It probably came up in RE and music at some point, if I'd only been paying enough attention. I studied the heck out of blast furnaces. I don't know how many of those damn things I coloured in. And yet somehow I always fucked up the labelling somewhere.

I sang thé least at the private convent-type school I attended. They weren't keen on hymns for some reason, so it was a rare All Things Bright and Beautiful at the end of term.

Also - Britain is a northern maritime climate (not a hymn, but the one thing I retain from years of geography lessons. Along with ox bow lakes.)