Remember what you said to me your servant

A further contribution from Sing Psalms (1997: see 4, note) is chosen for this, the 7th part (Zayin) of 119, which overlaps with the previous item and includes the familiar v54, ‘Your statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage’. 3.1 is changed in the 2003 edn to ‘The wicked fill my heart with indignation’. Similarly, the music of LAKHNADON is the fruit of co-operation between Donald M MacDonald, Andrew and Isobel Gordon (see note to 94), and Linda Mawson who has arranged the tune for Praise! (for unison voices and piano), providing a more flowing accompaniment than the original SATB while retaining the uneven phrase lengths. The tune is named after the central Indian village where Donald MacDonald worked as missionary doctor, 1973–1988, for ‘fifteen very happy years’.

1997ff. In writing in 1979 about the Scottish metrical Psalms in general and the Church Hymnary 3rd Edn (CH3, 1973) in particular, Erik Routley commended 3 versions by Ian Pitt-Watson (1921–95): ‘His versions are beautifully done and are a good augury for any revision of the Scottish Psalter that may, within the next thousand years or so, be in view.’ (A Panorama of Christian Hymnody pp189–90, revised edn 2005 p400.) Without waiting for future millennia, a committee of the Free Ch of Scotland chaired by Donald M MacDonald began work in the 1990s towards a completely new version of the 150 Psalms which would be ‘a metrical translation rather than a paraphrase’. As in 1650 but unlike Watts and many versions in Praise!, there is no ‘Christianising’; it avoids any rendering ‘which determines whether the passage is exclusively or typically messianic’ and aims to avoid archaisms and (where possible) the inversions which have plagued so many earlier metrical Psalters. Verse (stz) numbers correspond to standard English translations. Various samples were made available, on whole-page format, as the work progressed, some of which are used here; the complete book was published in 2003 with the traditional split pages (music above words), to allow for easy reference to alternative tunes. The texts are anonymous but many contemporary tunes are featured. Its brief Preface, followed by a Music Preface, is also much to the point; an Appendix adds 5 items from the 1650 Psalter and tunes, composers and topics are indexed. A words-only edn is also available. See B E Bridge in HSB215 (April 1998). Nos.4, 8, 112, 113, 119E, 129.