12.12.07

tyranny and mortal stars

Tuan and I try to have family worship together. The key word is "try" because we're not terribly consistent. We love to sing, so we'll often sit with the beloved red Trinity Hymnal and go to it. I grew up in a church that sang LOTS of great old hymns and Tuan is always willing to try. It can be funny at times because I'll randomly begin singing how I think it should be sung, or the "old words" (like thees, thous, etc) or we both end up off-key, or sometimes Tuan will just sing the wrong words. Tonight, we were singing "Angels from the Realms of Glory" and instead of the line, "ye beheld his natal star," Tuan inserted the word "mortal." The idea of a mortal star just got me giggling which led my thoughts to another instance of misplaced words. Consequently, I laughed every time we got to that portion of the tune and Tuan had to sing solo while I giggled.

The "mortal star" mistake took me back to an RUF Christmas party some years ago. I volunteered to type up a song sheet so we could all sing Christmas carols together. "O come, O come, Emmanuel" is laborious to sing a capella, but we were all gamely trying to keep the tempo, when a terrible mistake was realized.

Instead of:

O come thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Satan's tyranny

I had typed:

O come thou Rod of Jesse, free thine own from Stan's tyranny

I think the song went to pot at that point. A tyrannical person named Stan just doesn't inspire the same longing for freedom as satan's.

1 comment:

Caroline said...

Hee hee... Stan's tyranny. That's so funny. My friend Cari used to think the line in Pirates of Penzance, "Though ye die in combat glory," was "Though ye die and come back gory."