Song of the Week: I Bind My Heart This Tide

The Mennonite hymn "I Bind My Heart This Tide" is one that is best sung a capella. The words were written by Lauchlan M. Watt in 1907, and the tune as we know it today was written by J. Randall Zercher in 1965. You can hear the MIDI here and listen to the Farther Along octet sing a harmonious version here. For those who are interested in the hymns found in Hymnal: a Worship Book, the link provides MIDIs of all the hymns listed! This is good news for someone who usually has to plunk out the melody lines very carefully on a small electronic keyboard.

This song is an appropriate hymn for Good Friday, but also for other times. The hymn was one of the four songs sung at my wedding. My wedding was in a Catholic church where the guests were a mixture of Mennonites, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, athiests, agnostics, and seekers. The reason why I chose the hymn was for the second verse:

I bind my soul this day to the neighbor far away
And the stranger near at hand, in this town and in this land.

This verse is evocative of the one in the book of Exodus 23:9:

You shall not oppress a stranger: for you know the heart of a stranger, seeing you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

If I were to take a mission statement from the Hebrew scriptures, that would be it.

Although "I Bind My Heart This Tide" sounds best sung without accompaniment, I have provided guitar chords for private study:

People Look East: a song by Eleanor Farjeon

A Song of the Week Special Edition

While you may know Eleanor Farjeon by way of her poem, "Morning Has Broken" (sung both as a church hymn and as a popular song by Cat Stevens), most children's book afficionados know Farjeon as a prolific children's book writer of an older era. The New York Review of Books recently reprinted Farjeon's Hans Christian Andersen award-winner, The Little Bookroom. However, most of Farjeon's books languish out-of-print. It's understandable in some ways: her stories definitely have a bent toward favoring alabaster-skinned English maidens and the language can veer toward the precious at times. Still, Farjeon at her best produced stories that spoke vividly of human longing, even when those characters happened to be a goldfish or a skinny pig. Besides the aforementioned Little Bookroom, from which I told "The Seventh Princess" for The New York Public Library's annual storytelling symposium, I'm a fan of Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard, which is a frame-tale (i.e. stories within one overarching story) and The Silver Curlew, which is based upon the Tom Tit Tot/Rumplestilkskin fairy tales.

Yesterday, my mother mentioned a Christmas song she liked called "People, Look East," written by Eleanor Farjeon. I searched a bit on the internet for guitar chords to add to my small collection of Christmas songs I like to play. When I didn't find them, I decided to transcribe the chords myself. Transcribing chords usually involves me trying to listen to the song with my earphones on while attempting not to clunk my guitar against the desk. Fortunately, the chords ended up being straight-forward. I hope that those who are looking for the chords find them easily. (As an example of how Google searching isn't as exhaustive as some think, I've found it very hard to locate the chords for the song "Radio Operator" by Rosanne Cash during a simple search-- and yet, here they are, right on my blog.)

Here are the words plus the chords:

Click on the image in order to enlarge it for printing.

You may find the MIDI here.

Coventry Carol

Giotto's Flight into Egypt

Robert Croo receives attribution for the lyrics to "The Coventry Carol," written in 1534. The song was performed in Coventry, England, as part of a play called The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors. The play depicts the Massacre of the Innocents, in which Herod the Great orders his soldiers to kill all male children under two years of age born in Bethlehem. This is why Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt with their newborn son, Jesus. Herod's executive order to kill the prophesised rival to the title "King of the Jews" is evocative of the passages in Exodus in which Pharoah orders the deaths of all baby boys born to Israelite families, and then later, when the Angel of Death takes the firstborn child of each Egyptian family.

December 28 marks the martyrs’ feast day of the Holy Innocents, also known as Childermas. This day is a reminder to me that all children are holy innocents, no matter where or when they were born.

Coventry Carol

Am                     G       E7
Lullay, Thou little  tiny  Child,
Am             Dm       Am
By,   by, lul-ly,  lul-lay.

Am               G        E7
O sisters too, how may we do,
Am          Dm        Am*
For to preserve this day.
       G                         E7
This poor youngling for whom we sing
Am           Dm         Am
By, by, lul-ly,    lul-lay.

Am                 G      E7
Herod the king, in his raging,
Am          Dm        Am
Charged he hath this day.
    G                           E7
His men of might, in his own sight,
Am                 Dm       Am
All young children to slay.

Am                    G         E7
That woe is me, poor Child for Thee!
Am        Dm       Am
And every morn and day,
     G                            E7
For thy parting neither say nor sing,
Am            Dm     Am
By, by, lul-ly, lul-lay.

*According to the MIDI sound samples I've heard, this chord is actually a major chord. However, Loreena McKennitt sings it as a minor chord on her album, A Winter Garden, and that's the version I play on my guitar. You may find the MIDI link here and McKennitt's version here.