Immortal Invisible and When A Knight Won His Spurs

[TheTecknician]

Fun fact, just in case you didn't know. The words to these hymns can be transposed to each other's tune. Both are in 3/4 time.

Similarly with Amazing Grace and I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing, although these two have different time signatures.

That's all!

"Reading 'Black Beauty' (that book by Anna Sewell)"
Nearly rhymes and is educational.

@LaMarschallin Love it. If you're not already in the modern-alternative-to-hymns-for-schools-writing business, you should be!

And what about ‘Daisies are our silver, buttercups our gold, these are all the treasures we can have or hold’?

Loved both these hymns when I was at primary school

@LaMarschallin Indeed - and it definitely wasn't on the list of "all these things I love so well"

I mean, how many of us have seen jet planes refueling in the air so regularly that it makes THAT list... (as you can see it still preys on my mind 45 years on...)

That's one of them that I know well. It's a more recent one I can't remember the words.

Michael (Row The Boat Ashore). I'm not sure if this counts as a hymn or is simply a song with some Biblical references. It's ripe for a words-change to an aggressive football chant...which I'll leave to others.

How is a hymn different to a spiritual?

I always hated that one. It's such a 'paupers know your place' message, make do with the beauty of nature, raindrops are much nicer than diamonds and roses are redder than rubies, honest guv! It sits alongside 'the rich man in his castle, the poor man at the gate'.

Love this thread! When a Knight Win His Spurs was my absolute favourite as a child, but until now I haven’t met anyone else who knows it.

in a similar but different vein, the last choir I sang in sang the Vicar of Dibley version of The Lord is My Shepherd. It’s quite hard!

There are hymn tunes and there are hymn words. The words can go with any tune with the same pattern of phrasing.

I think (but happy to be corrected) spirituals are specifically African American songs, dating originally from the period of slavery. They were often working songs, and they were influenced both by hymns and other types of working songs, such as sea-shanties - and sea shanties were reciprocally influenced (there would have been mutual exposure when enslaved Africans were transported).

I'm really fascinated by sea shanties - I have hundreds on CD, and the cross-influence between sea shanties and spirituals is very evident in some songs.

From 'Rubber Bullets' by 10cc, "Sergeant Baker started talking with a ballpoint in his hand. He was cool, he was clear, he was always in command." These two lines fit the rhythmically quite different first two lines of the verse of 'The House That Jack Built' by Alan Price. I promise.

Just watching the Archbishop's installation on i-Player. They're singing a hymn called Thy Hand O God Hath Guided, but what we always sang to that tune is O Jesus I have promised.

That was my school hymn!