Onward, Christian Soldiers: A Song History

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Sabine Baring-Gould wrote this processional hymn while serving as curate at Horbury Bridge in Yorkshire, for children marching at Whitsuntide.[1] Looking back decades later, he recalled that two village schools were to process together on Whit Monday; wanting a marching song for the children and finding none that fit, he wrote one himself overnight, and he conceded that the haste showed in some rhymes.[2] The date needs care: Hymnary.org's listing gives 1865, but its own notes, the Cyber Hymnal and the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology all place the first printing in the Church Times of 15 October 1864, under the heading "Hymn for Procession with Cross and Banners," and Canterbury dates the writing to 1864.[1][2][3]

Color photochrom of the stone parish church of St Alkelda in the Yorkshire village of Giggleswick

Giggleswick Church, Yorkshire, England, photochrom, c. 1890-1900. Library of Congress. No known restrictions.

The text spread quickly through Anglican collections, appearing in a supplement compiled by T. B. Morrell and William Walsham How in 1867 and in the 1868 appendix to Hymns Ancient & Modern, where it was matched with a tune John Bacchus Dykes adapted from Haydn.[3] The melody now inseparable from it came in 1871, when Arthur Sullivan, later famous for his operettas with W. S. Gilbert, wrote ST. GERTRUDE at the Dorset home of Gertrude Clay-Ker-Seymer, whose name the tune carries.[4] It was first printed in The Musical Times late that year (Hymnary.org says December, as an advance notice for Joseph Barnby's Hymnary of 1872; the Canterbury Dictionary says November), and Hymnary.org now counts it in more than 1,370 hymnals.[4][3] One documented early recording of the pairing is a 1919 Edison Diamond Disc by mixed voices with orchestra.[5]

The hymn's marching swing has kept it tied to public occasions. In August 1941 Winston Churchill picked it, with two other hymns, for a service aboard HMS Prince of Wales at the time of the Atlantic Charter talks,[6] a service at which Franklin Roosevelt was present.[2] It was also sung at Dwight D. Eisenhower's funeral at Washington National Cathedral in 1969.[2] For mountain dulcimer players it is one of the 68 hymns and gospel songs in Stephen Seifert's Join the Jam: Gospel Edition.[7]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "Onward, Christian Soldiers" (text).
  2. The Cyber Hymnal (hymntime.com): "Onward, Christian Soldiers".
  3. Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: "Onward, Christian soldiers".
  4. Hymnary.org: "ST. GERTRUDE" (tune).
  5. Library of Congress: "Onward, Christian soldiers!" (Edison, 1919).
  6. International Churchill Society: "HMS Prince of Wales, 10 August 1941".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Gospel Edition".