Tell me the old, old story

The rehabilitation of ‘story’ in late-20th-c theology, as a validly scriptural way of expressing truth (which resonates with what people will listen to most readily), has done something to rescue the word from its less complimentary definition as an exaggerated or unbelievable narrative. In the past this has brought Arabella ‘Kate’ Hankey’s hymn into the realm of parody; it is also why God has given us a book full of stories cannot convey what it once did—the plural does not help. But each stz of this hymn has strong points to make, some of them uniquely in a hymn-book. The author wrote it on 29 Jan 1866 as part of a much longer work when on her own admission she was ‘weak and weary’, intending it as a verse for adults. This introduces ‘The Story Wanted’; pt 2 is ‘The Story Told.’ She preferred the original plan of eight 4-line stzs, and neither wrote nor approved of the added refrain. Some few hymn-books have left the text as she wrote it, but it is easier to drop the refrain from print than from practice; cf notes to 676. The accident of rhyme has also led many writers to pair ‘story’ with ‘glory’; so here at 1.3 and 4.3, though the hymn does not rest too heavily on this.

The author, with whom it is hard not to have some sympathy, also wrote her own tune for the text. But William H Doane crucially heard the words read out at a YMCA Convention in Montreal; he asked for a copy, and later wrote the now familiar tune [TELL ME THE] OLD, OLD STORY (=EVANGEL) while travelling by stage coach in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Linda Mawson has arranged it for this book.

b Clapham, Surrey (S London) 1834, d Westminster 1911. Born into an evangelical Anglican banking family active in The Lord’s Day Observance Society and part of what was dubbed ‘the Clapham Sect’ (with Thornton, Venn, Wilberforce etc); by the age of 19 she was organising local Sunday Schools, leading Bible classes for shop workers, and writing Christian verse and prose. Becoming seriously ill at 30, she composed a 100-verse poem on the life of Christ, from which her other popular hymn grew: I love to tell the story. This became best known (and is still widely sung) in the USA, with an added refrain in the ‘Gospel Song’ tradition, through the N American composers Doane (qv) and Fischer, and editors Bliss (qv) and Sankey. Julian notes the ‘great beauty and simplicity’ of several of her hymns, and their suitability for ‘Mission Services and Sunday Schools’. No.683