O Lord, our guardian and our guide

If a hymnal has one item from Isaac Williams, this is usually it—though several opt also for Disposer supreme, or for neither. He wrote this as ‘Be thou our Guardian …’ (as in the 1965 Anglican Hymn Book); with that exception even the most conservative editors have changed this to the singular. While seeing the need for other modifications, Praise! prefers to keep ‘our’ and ‘us’, not least because the hymn is meant to enlarge on ‘Lead us not into temptation’ (Matthew 6:13, Luke 11:4). The author published this first in his Hymns on the Catechism (1842) in these 4 CM stzs, and it has become a permanent fixture in A&M and many other hymnals. The beginning borrows from Simon Browne’s 1720 hymn Come, gracious Spirit, stz 1.3 of which is ‘be thou our guardian, thou our guide’, and which also speaks of straying from the path but is stronger in its prayers, ‘Lead us to Christ’ and ‘Lead us to heaven’. One variation from the Jubilate version used here is in the final line, where ‘shall’ replaces ‘may’. As well as the opening line, changes from the original are in stz 1 (from ‘and hear me … let not my slippery … and hold us lest we fall’); 2.4 (from ‘thou quickener of …’); 3.2–3 (from ‘outward things … do thou, O Lord …’); and 4.1 (‘always’ for ‘ever’).

Another Isaac (Smith) composed ABRIDGE (811 & 812) which is often used for this hymn. The tune BALLERMA, or SPANISH AIR, is credited to Robert Simpson as he adapted it as a hymn tune, as found among his papers after his death in 1832. The next year John Turnbull included it in Steven’s Selection/Collection of Original Sacred Music …, from where it began to feature as a Psalm tune, often with I waited for the Lord my God (from the Scots version of Psalm 40). But the original melody is by F H Barthélémon, set to a Scottish ballad Durandarte and Belerma which features in Matthew Gregory Lewis’s novel The Monk, of 1795/6. Lewis claimed to be translating parts of an old Spanish poem; the novel was dramatised by James Boaden in 1798 as Aurelio and Miranda and the composer may have written his tune for that production, though the play’s text actually omits the verses. The tune is in current use with several different texts. Belerma was a lady loved in vain for 7 years by the knight Durandarte, who was killed in battle in N Spain, as mentioned in Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

b Cwmcynfelyn, Cardigan 1802, d Stinchcombe, nr Dursley, Glos 1865. A writer of verse from the age of 12; Harrow Sch; Trinity Coll Oxford (becoming a Fellow in 1829). Ordained (CofE) 1825, to a curacy at Windrush, Glos. He shared with Newman and Keble (his ‘spiritual father’) in the ‘Oriel group’ and the development of the Oxford movement. He was Newman’s curate at St Mary’s Oxford, curate at Bisley, Glos from 1842 until illness forced his resignation in 1848, and assistant to the incumbent of Stinchcombe, a few miles to the SW, for the remainder of his life. He had been proposed to succeed Keble (to whom he has been compared for saintliness) as Prof of Poetry, but his tractarian views aroused strong and effective opposition. Among his published vols of verse were The Cathedral (1838), Hymns translated from the Paris Breviary (1839), Hymns on the Catechism (1842), The Baptistery (1844) and Sacred Verses (1845). One of the first generation of ‘Oxford movement’ translators of Lat hymns since 1836, he was well-represented in the early edns of A&M; the current (2000) book has two survivors, one of which (his best-known text, included here) is found in hymnals of many traditions. The other, Disposer supreme, dresses a compact Lat text in a far more expansive English metre with scope for some vivid language; ‘the version surpasses the original in dignity and beauty’— Ellerton. In spite of his not reaching the ‘first rank’ of hymnwriters, his life and work are extensively treated in Julian. No.611.