O Lord of hosts, how lovely is your dwelling-place!

William Sangster once preached on ‘the homesickness of the soul’; this Psalm would have made a vivid illustration. David’s flight from Absalom (2 Sam 15–16) has been suggested as a possible source. Unlike the two previous Pss, this one has no shortage of English metrical versions, some highly effective in both poetry and accuracy. The combined Psalms for Today and Songs from the Psalms, for example, include texts by Tom Howard and three others, without room for H F Lyte or (from Psalm Praise) Jonathan Barnes. Much earlier, John Milton bequeathed to us How lovely are thy dwellings fair (48 lines including ‘They journey on from strength from strength/ with joy and gladsom cheer’) and Isaac Watts, Lord of the worlds above. (56 lines, with ‘O happy souls that pray/ where God appoints to hear…Where God resorts, I love it more/ to keep the door than shine in courts’). So David Preston’s version (c1980) wins its place over some quality competition. It was written at Leicester in time to appear in BP which he edited in 1986, and remains almost unchanged. The images of the sparrow, the pilgrimage to Zion, and the doorkeeper’s contentment at the Lord’s house, are indispensable and unforgettable. The LONDONDERRY AIR is an old Irish melody, probably from the north. Its precise origins are unknown, but it may date from the early 1700s. The melody was published in 1855 in The Ancient Music of Ireland by Dr George Petrie, who credited Miss Jane Ross of Limavady with noting it down on hearing it from a travelling musician. It appeared in Stanford’s 1882 Songs of Old Ireland: a collection of fifty Irish melodies unknown in England, harmonised by the compiler and set to words by the Irish poet A P Graves. As far as is known, this was its first publication in Great Britain. [O] DANNY BOY has been in use as a name only since 1912, when the English barrister Frederick E Weatherly used it for his own patriotic words which popularised the tune. In the present book alternative arrangements are used at 508 (with its bestknown hymn text) and 942. John Barnard’s harmony first appeared in HTC.

b London 1939. d 2020. Archbishop Tenison’s Grammar School, Kennington, London; Keble College Oxford (MA Mod Langs.) He worked as a French Teacher, including 11 years at Ahmadu Bello Univ, Nigeria, and gained a PhD on the French Christian poet Pierre Emmanuel (1916 84). A member of Carey Baptist Ch, Reading, for many years, he later moved to Alweston, nr Sherborne, Dorset. He compiled The Book of Praises (Carey Publications, Liverpool) in 1987, with versions of 71 Psalms; these include modified texts of Watts and a few other classic paraphrasers, but most are by contemporary writers including himself. 60 of his metrical Psalm versions are so far published, including one each in Sing Glory (2000), the Scottish Church Hymnary 4th Edn (2005) and Sing Praise (2010), and 3 in the 2004 edn of CH; also 10 tunes. His writing and composing has taken place in Leicester, Reading, Nigeria and his present home; he was a member of the editorial board throughout the preparation of Praise! and had a major share in the choice of music for the Psalm texts (1-150). His convictions about the Psalms, as expressed in the Introduction to BP, are that ‘There is nothing to compare with their blend of the subjective and the objective, the inner life and practical goodness, the knowledge of one’s own rebellious heart and the knowledge of God…Today’s general neglect of congregational Psalm singing is a symptom of the spiritual malaise of our churches. When the preaching of the Gospel has prospered, bringing into being churches vibrant with spiritual life, men and women have taken great delight in praising their Maker and Redeemer through these scriptural hymns’. 15 of his own, self-selected, feature as his share of ‘contemporary hymns’ in the 2009 Come Celebrate; he has also served as a meticulous proof-reader. Nos.1, 2A, 5*, 6, 7, 11, 15, 16, 17, 19A, 24A, 27A, 30B, 32*, 33*, 38, 40, 42, 43, 47, 51*, 52, 55, 57*, 64, 66, 74, 76, 77, 84, 90, 91A, 96*, 97, 99, 100B, 101, 114*, 120, 126, 132, 139, 142*, 143, 145A, 147*, 824*, 830*, 963*.