hark the glad sound!

Centenary Thanksgiving for Thomas Merritt

‘Order of Service: Please stand as the Dean conducts the Deputy Lieutenant… to her seat at the front of the nave…’ (Truro Cathedral, June 2008).


'Stand up –for they! I’d have turned in my grave
If I’d been in it; when they wafted up the nave
It was like they was puttin’ we simple souls in our place,
Tampin’ down the mood and the spirit, in case
“Hark the glad sound!” sparked off an explosion
Of full-voiced, rapturous, Cornish emotion.

Like Billy Bray, I never stood up for anyone;
And do’ee know why? – because I was a King’s son!
Worship, for we, was like the blasting of rocks
In the bal, not that row of pasty-faced men in frocks
Who kept us flat, like wet fog hiding Carn Brea,
By jumpin’ up and bleating in turn, with nothin’ to say.

They’d ‘a’ been throwed from the pulpit home Redruth
--Or more likely, chucked off the cliff at Hell’s Mouth.
And where was the thunder of triumphant Calvary
In the Bible readings? Wisht as a gnat's wee,
It hurt me to listen! Somebody must have sieved
All the glory out, like they wanted to say He never lived –

The Infant Stranger, Jesse’s tender rod! I tell ‘ee, boy,
It smelt like a museum; with less joy
Than there was in my hovel with sand on the floor
When I called for a pen to write down one more
Heavenly tune before I went. –one more Hosanna!
And I’ve heard my curls from Moonta to Montana

Sung with ecstasy by crowds of Cousin Jacks,
Deep underground, or in chapels no more’n shacks,
But as to that gilded prison there, I thirst
For the hour when “the gates of brass before Him burst!"... '
Rising from the bench, he said, ' Well, see ‘ee ‘gain,
My ‘andsome,’ and shuffled off down St.Mary’s Lane,

A scarecrow figure, singing in croaky baritone,
“The glorious Lord, the glorious Lord, of Life comes down,
Of Life comes down!”… this crazy tramp who grieved
For majestic words, and preachers who believed,
And thought he was Tom Merritt, down a mine at eleven,
His body clamped by pain, his head in heaven.



Notes: Thomas Merritt (1863-1908), self-taught musician and composer of famous Christmas carols, despite constant ill health. Billy Bray (1794-1868), miner and inspirational preacher. ‘Bal’ –mine; ‘wisht’ –weak; ‘curls’ –carols.