Happy Pentecost!

While eating breakfast before getting dressed for church this Pentecost Sunday, I discovered an appropriate YouTube video for today. It is of the choir of King’s College, Cambridge, singing “Come down, O Love divine,” hymn #516 in our hymnal. This is a hymn we will be singing at the 10:30 service this morning.

This lovely hymn by Ralph Vaughn Williams is set to the oddly named tune “Down Ampney.” I have always wondered where that strange title came from. As it happens, it is the name of the English village where the composer was born in 1872.

Our hymnal only offers three verses of the hymn. You will hear four in the video. The words of all four verses can be found at Oremus Hymnal. The text dates from the fourteenth century. It was translated into English by Richard Frederick Littledale, appearing in his People’s Hymnal of 1867.

A blessed Pentecost to all!