This misspelled Patrick Somerford goes in search of Somerford Keynes, far from Patmos and Milton Keynes

An aerial view of Somerford Keynes, on the borders of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire in Jilly Cooper’s Rutshire (geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Patrick Comerford

Many years ago, while I was staying on the Greek island of Kos, I wanted to visit the neighbouring Aegean island of Patmos and the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian, with the cave where Saint John wrote the Book of Revelation.

I was travelling alone, and the arrangements were slightly complex, making sure I could the right ferries, with an early morning start but still getting back in time for dinner with the family in the evening. There could hardly have been much of a commission or profit for the travel agent, but in the best Greek tradition of philoxenia, she was attentive to all the details and worked hard for a very small task.

The tickets arrived under my hotel room door early in the morning. But when I looked at them my name was spelled Σόμερφορντ – Somerford. There is no ‘C’ in the Greek alphabet, and so had used the Σ, sigma, although I normally use Γκ in transliterations to get the hard C initial for my surname.

As I headed off for Patmos, I wondered whether Patrick Somerford would ever get on board the ferry. Even more worryingly, I wondered whether I would ever get back to Kos. The trip was 2-4 hours each way; could this turn into a 24-hour marathon?

I should never gave worried, and nothing ever came of it … I seem to fret too much about details like this when travelling, yet few people have ever checked my travel papers in Greece, probably because my looks and body language appear Greek.

But I have always let my imagination run away with itself when it comes to any misspelling of my surname – from Comfort to Somerford – to the real and acceptable variants, from Comberford and Commerford to Cumberford or even (in parts of Wexford) Comerton.

But, 25 years after that one-day pilgrimage to Patmos as Patrick Somerford, the name Somerford came to my attention again, with the death of Jilly Cooper two months ago [2 October] and Queen Camilla’s visit this week to the Bristol set of the television series Rivals.

It is going to be no surprise when I say that I have never read any one of Jilly Cooper’s romantic, horsey novels in the Rivals and Riders series. But one of the minor characters in these Rutshire Chronicles is known as Somerford Keynes.

The Manor House in Somerford Keynes, named after the Keynes family (geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0)

I wondered whether he could be a cross between Patrick Somerford and Milton Keynes, but there is, in fact, a village called Somerford Keynes of the Upper Thames Valley, close to the boundary of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, midway between Cirencester, Swindon and Malmesbury, but still 35 km (22 miles) from Quemerford.

Somerford Keynes is a village that stretches for about 1 km north to south along its main street. The north part of the village, taking in a length of the main street, includes a distinct cluster of buildings to the west, with All Saints’ Church, the Manor House and Somerford Keynes House, formerly the vicarage. Somerford Keynes and the neighbouring village of Shorncote have a combined population of about 550-600 people.

Somerford means a ford that can only be used in summer, while Keynes from the name of the Keynes family, originally from Cahaignes in Normandy.

Somerford Keynes is first named in any document is in a charter in the year 685 when King Ethelred’s nephew Bertwald granted land to Saint Aldhelm, first abbot of Malmesbury. All Saints’ Church is a Grade II* listed building built on Saxon foundations from ca 685, and largely rebuilt in the early 13th century. The tower was added in 1710-1713 and the church was restored in 1875 by the architect Frederick Waller.

In the Domesday Book, the village was part of the lands of the Bishop of Lisieux. William de Cahaignes, who held the manor in 1211, was a member of the Keynes family, who were lords of the manor from ca 1100 to 1300 and who give their name to Somerford Keynes. The Manor House is a Grade II listed building and probably dates from the late 15th century or the early 16th century.

Until 1897, Somerford Keynes was in Wiltshire, but it was then transferred to Gloucestershire – by 3 votes to 2.

I have no idea what sort of character Jilly Copper’s Somerford Keynes is supposed to be like. I imagine he’s nothing like me, and I know he has links either with the Comerford family, no matter how whimsically you spell or misspell my family name, or, for that matter, with Milton Keynes.

All Saints’ Church, Somerford Keynes (geograph.org.uk, CC BY-SA 2.0)

An Advent Calendar with Patrick Comerford: 4, 3 December 2025

‘Of all the trees that are in the wood, the holly bears the crown’ … holly and berries on London Road, Stony Stratford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2025)

Patrick Comerford

Advent began this week with Advent Sunday, and the countdown to Christmas is well under way.

At noon each day in Advent this year, I am offering one image as part of my ‘Advent Calendar’ for 2025, and one Advent or Christmas carol or hymn.

‘The Holly and the Ivy’ is a traditional English folk Christmas carol, and is number 514 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The song can be traced only as far as the early 19th century, but the lyrics reflect an association between holly and Christmas that dates back to mediaeval times.

The lyrics and melody varied from one community to another, but have long been standardised. The version that is now popular was collected in 1909 by the English folk song collector Cecil Sharp in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, from a woman named Mary Clayton:

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown.

Refrain:

The rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

The holly bears a blossom,
As white as the lily flower,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
To be our sweet Saviour. (Refrain)

The holly bears a berry,
As red as any blood,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
For to do us sinners good. (Refrain)

The holly bears a prickle,
As sharp as any thorn,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
On Christmas Day in the morn. (Refrain)

The holly bears a bark,
As bitter as any gall,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To redeem us all. (Refrain)

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood,
The holly bears the crown. (Refrain)

Praying with USPG and the music of Vaughan Williams: Monday 5 September 2022

‘Wassail, Wassail, all over the town, / Our bread it is white’ … fresh bread at breakfast time in the Hedgehog Vintage Inn, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

I spent an enjoyable Sunday afternoon at the Parish Fete at All Saints’ Church, Calverton.

Before today begins, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season. In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

The window depicting Christ the healer in the Chapel of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

The Gospel reading for today in the lectionary as adapted by the Church of Ireland is:

Luke 6: 6-11 (NRSVA):

6 On another sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught, and there was a man there whose right hand was withered. 7 The scribes and the Pharisees watched him to see whether he would cure on the sabbath, so that they might find an accusation against him. 8 Even though he knew what they were thinking, he said to the man who had the withered hand, ‘Come and stand here.’ He got up and stood there. 9 Then Jesus said to them, ‘I ask you, is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?’ 10 After looking around at all of them, he said to him, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so, and his hand was restored. 11 But they were filled with fury and discussed with one another what they might do to Jesus.


This performance of ‘The Wassail Song’ was part of ‘Carols for Quire 5,’ at Trinity Cathedral, Cleveland, Ohio, on 20-22 December 2013

Today’s reflection: ‘The Wassail Song’

For my reflections and devotions each day these few weeks, I am reflecting on and invite you to listen to a piece of music or a hymn set to a tune by the great English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

I was listening yesterday [4 September 2022] to the hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’ for which Vaughan Williams wrote the tune ‘Down Ampey,’ named by Vaughan Williams after the pretty Cotswold village in Gloucestershire where he was born in the Vicarage on 12 October 1872.

This morning [5 September 2022], I continue the theme of Vaughan Williams’s connections with Gloucestershire, where he was born, and invite you to join me in listening to his joyful setting from 1913 of the ‘Gloucestershire Wassail.’

This is, perhaps, the most famous of all the local wassail traditions. ‘Wassail’ is an ancient toast meaning something like ‘Good health!’ It is also refers to a mulled cider that was part of ‘wassailing’ festivities, typically on the Twelfth Night of Christmas. To this day, the practice of wassailing survives as a folk tradition in many parts of England.

‘The Wassail Song’ (1913) comes long after Vaughan Williams had edited of the English Hymnal (1906). The intervening seven years were marked by intense activity, and in the end Vaughan Williams was to gather more than 800 songs and variant versions.

‘The Wassail Song’ grew out of these collecting efforts. He published his arrangement of the tune he had gathered as the last in a collection of folk song settings, the Five English Folk Songs, in 1913. The other four songs are ‘The Dark-Eyed Sailor,’ ‘The Springtime of the Year’, ‘Just as the Tide was Flowing,’ and ‘The Lover’s Ghost.’ Vaughan Williams turned to folk song for inspiration throughout f his career, but these five arrangements are often considered his best. Certainly they are the most elaborate, with the material treated freely throughout.

This morning’s is sometimes called ‘The Gloucestershire Wassail’ to distinguish it from ‘The Somerset Wassail.’ The best-known ‘Wassail’ song today, however, is ‘Here we come a wassailing among the leaves so green,’ which comes from Yorkshire. Many versions of wassail songs have been recorded by English folk groups, including Steeleye Span and Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band.

‘The Gloucestershire Wassail’ appears in both the original Oxford Book of Carols (1928), for which Vaughan Williams was one of the editors, and the New Oxford Book of Carols (1992).

Vaughan Williams’s setting has kept alive ‘The Gloucester Wassail,’ which can be traced back to at least the 18th century. It is one of many songs celebrating the tradition of ‘wassailing’ from door to door, when singers are offered drink in thanks for their singing.

In the 19th century, the Christmas season was a time of drunken revelry for many until the Victorians turned it into the family holiday we know today. In ‘Deck the Halls,’ for example, the line ‘Don we now our gay apparel’ was originally ‘Fill the mead cup, drain the barrel,’ while ‘See the blazing Yule before us’ was worded ‘See the flowing bowl before us,’ and ‘sing we joyous all together’ is really ‘Laughing, quaffing, all together.’

For his setting of ‘The Wassail Song,’ Vaughan Williams selected six of the eight verses, leaving out most of the references to specific barnyard animals. For example, the “ox” Vaughan Williams refers to is first a horse, Dobbin, and then two cows, Broad May and Colly, in the original.

When the song refers to ‘our bread it is white,’ it is worth remembering that at one time white bread was not regarded as providing poor nutritional value or bland taste and a texture lacking in appealing texture, but was seen a delicacy enjoyed by the well-to-do.

Vaughan Williams begins the arrangement with a haunting introduction. Although the tune itself opens with a rising fourth (E–A), he commences with a series of rising fifths and then fourths (A–E at first and only then E–A), generating the hollow, ancient sound of harmony without thirds.

He creates rhythmic tension by first following the proper stress emphasis of the word ‘Wassail,’ presenting it as expected on the upbeat, and then going against this by placing it on the downbeat, which can throw choruses off in rehearsals.

Only after all voices have entered can the tenors bring forth the tune itself, eventually handed about to other parts as well.

Throughout the work, dynamics are of special importance, for if properly followed the impression Vaughan Williams creates is that of singers approaching from afar, eventually singing full force when they are nearest to the listener, and then fading away as they head off into the distance, ending with the altos alone on a ppp rising fifth.

‘The Wassail Song’ and original Oxford Book of Carols are not Vaughan Williams’s only ventures into Christmas music. Among his many seasonal creations are his Fantasia on Christmas Carols, including ‘On Christmas Night,’ for baritone, chorus, and orchestra, from the year before ‘The Wassail Song.’

One of the last major pieces he wrote was the spectacular Hodie for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, completed in his 82nd year.

Wassail, Wassail, all over the town,
Our bread it is white and ale it is brown;
Our bowl it is made of the green maple tree;
In the Wassail bowl we’ll drink unto thee.

Here’s a health to the ox and to his right eye,
Pray God send our master a good Christmas pie,
A good Christmas pie as e’er I did see.
In the Wassail bowl we’ll drink unto thee.

Here’s a health to the ox and to his right horn,
Pray God send our master a good crop of corn,
A good crop of corn as e’er I did see,
In the Wassail bowl we'll drink unto thee.

Here’s a health to the ox and to his long tail,
Pray God send our master a good cask of ale,
A good cask of ale as e’er I did see,
In the Wassail bowl we’ll drink unto thee.

Come, butler, come fill us a bowl of the best;
Then I pray that your soul in heaven may rest;
But if you do bring us a bowl of the small,
May the Devil take butler, bowl and all!

Then here’s to the maid in the lily white smock,
Who tripp’d to the door and slipp’d back the lock;
Who tripp’d to the door and pull’d back the pin,
For to let these jolly Wassailers walk in.



Today’s Prayer, Monday 5 September 2022:

The theme in the USPG prayer diary this week is ‘Season of Creation,’ was introduced yesterday by the Season of Creation Advisory Committee.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today (International Day of Charity) in these words:

Let us give thanks for those who are trying to make the world a better place through charitable giving of time, energy and money. May we treat each other charitably.

Street art in Rethymnon in Crete … Sunday 4 September marked the beginning of Creation Season (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Praying with USPG and the music of Vaughan Williams: Sunday 4 September 2022

The Old Vicarage, Down Ampney, where the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 (Photograph: Colin West 2011 / Panoramio)

Patrick Comerford

Today is the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, and is also marked as Creation Sunday. Later this morning, I plan to attend the Parish Eucharist in the Church of Saint Mary and Saint Giles, Stony Stratford, and in the afternoon I hope go to the Parish Fete at All Saints’ Church, Calverton.

But, before today begins, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season. In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

‘Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple’ (Luke 14: 27) … ‘Simon,’ Station 5 in the Chapel at Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield, Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry the Cross (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 14: 25-33 (NRSVA):

25 Now large crowds were travelling with him; and he turned and said to them, 26 ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, 30 saying, “This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” 31 Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. 33 So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.’


’Come down, O Love divine’ (‘Down Ampney’) by King’s College Choir, Cambridge/Thomas Williamson/Stephen Cleobury

Today’s reflection: ‘Come down, O love divine’

For my reflections and devotions each day these few weeks, I am reflecting on and invite you to listen to a piece of music or a hymn set to a tune by the great English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

This morning [4 September 2022], I invite you to join me in listening to the hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’ for which Vaughan Williams wrote the tune ‘Down Ampey.’ Thanks in particular to this setting by Vaughan Williams, this hymn is loved around the world.

He named the tune after the pretty Cotswold village of Down Ampney in Gloucestnershire, where he was born in the Vicarage on 12 October 1872. Down Ampney is off the A417 which runs between Cirencester and Faringdon in Oxfordshire on the A420, and about 5 km north of Cricklade, which is on the A419 running from Cirencester to Swindon, Wiltshire.

The parish church, All Saints’ Church, was founded by the Knights Templar in 1265, although much of its current shape is the result of a Victorian rebuilding. The spire dates from the 14th century, when the south porch was added.

The nave is supported on pointed arches decorated with a profusion of red flowers. One theory says the flowers are a reminder of the bubonic plague or Black Death, when red rash marked the victims’ skin. The Black Death is also said to explain why the church stands at a distance from the centre of the village.

When the order of Templars was suppressed by the crown in 1315, the living of Down Ampney passed to the Abbey of Cirencester. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries it passed to Christ Church, Oxford.

The church has excellent stained glass, much of it Victorian or modern, including a series of nautical parables given by Admiral Charles Talbot after his ship survived a storm off Sebastopol in 1854. Another window depicting the Resurrection Stone is dedicated to Vaughan Williams’s father. The interior is a symphony of woodwork, with intricately carved south transept screen and pulpit, and the Victorian north transept screen incorporates Jacobean panelling. The south transept has a pair of effigies, Sir Nicholas de Valers (or de Valery), a Templar knight associated with the founding of the church, and perhaps his wife, Margaret Bassett, who is shown in a pious pose.

The north transept or Hungerford Chapel is enclosed within a fine oak screen, part of which is made from the Musicians’ Gallery at Cirencester Abbey. The fragments were found in a yard in Down Ampney parish and moved into the church. The chapel is a grandiose memorial to Sir James Hungerford and his son Anthony, successive lords of the manor of Down Ampney. Their ornate, gilded monument dates to 1637 and shows father and son facing each other across a prayer desk.

The composer’s father, the Revd Arthur Charles Vaughan Williams (1834-1875), served in Bemerton, the same parish where the poet George Herbert had been Vicar around 300 years earlier — and at Halsall in Lancashire, before becoming the Vicar of Down Ampney in 1868. He died there on 9 February 1875, only three years after the birth of his son Ralph Vaughan-Williams. Soon after, Vaughan Williams was taken by his mother, Margaret Susan (née Wedgwood) (1842-1937), a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood III and the great-granddaughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, to live with her family at Leith Hill Place, a home in the North Downs in Surrey bought by the Wedgwood family in 1847.

The tune he composed for the mediaeval hymn ‘Come Down, O Love Divine’ (Discendi, Amor santo), written by Bianco da Siena (ca1350-1434), is named ‘Down Ampney’ with affection for and in honour of his birthplace.

‘Come down, O love divine,’ (New English Hymnal, No 137; Irish Church Hymnal, No 294) was originally written in Italian in the 14th or 15th century by Bianco da Siena. It was first translated into English in 1867 by the Revd Dr Richard Frederick Littledale (1833-1890), a Dublin-born Anglican priest who had been forced to give up his full-time parochial ministry due to ill-health.

The hymn was first published in 1906, when it was published in the English Hymnal, edited by Percy Dearmer and Vaughan Williams, set to this strong, eminently singable, tune specially composed for it by Vaughan Williams, with a unique metre. Indeed, many regard this as the most beautiful of all his hymn tunes.

Come down, O love divine,
Seek Thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardour glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn,
Till earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong,
With which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace,
Till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

The Duomo in Siena … ‘Come down, O love divine’ was originally written in Italian in the 14th or 15th century by Bianco da Siena. (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer, Sunday 4 September 2022 (Trinity XII, Creation Sunday):

The Collect:

Almighty and everlasting God,
you are always more ready to hear than we to pray
and to give more than either we desire or deserve:
pour down upon us the abundance of your mercy,
forgiving us those things of which our conscience is afraid
and giving us those good things
which we are not worthy to ask
but through the merits and mediation
of Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

God of all mercy,
in this eucharist you have set aside our sins
and given us your healing:
grant that we who are made whole in Christ
may bring that healing to this broken world,
in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The theme in the USPG prayer diary this week is ‘Season of Creation,’ is introduced this morning by the Season of Creation Advisory Committee:

‘The Psalmist declares, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the Earth, and their words to the end of the world.” (Psalm 19: 1-4) Creation never ceases to proclaim, but do we listen?

‘During the Season of Creation, our common prayer and action can help us listen for the voices of those who are silenced. In prayer we lament the individuals, communities, species, and ecosystems who are lost, and those whose livelihoods are threatened by habitat loss and climate change. In prayer we centre the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.

‘Listening to the voice of creation offers members of the Christian family a rich entry point for interfaith and interdisciplinary dialogue and practice. By listening to the voice of all creation, humans from all cultures and sectors of life can be joined in our vocation to care for our common home.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

‘O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and I rise up’. May we listen to God and follow the path he leads us along, for He has a plan for us.

Street art in Rethymnon in Crete … Sunday 4 September marks the beginning of Creation Season (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Praying with USPG and the music of Vaughan Williams: Saturday 27 August 2022

The enclosed monastery cloisters in Gloucester Cathedral … Vaughan Williams conducted the first performance of his ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’ in the cathedral in 1910 (Photograph: Paradoxplace)

Patrick Comerford

Today, the Church of England’s calendar in Common Worship remembers Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo (387) with a Lesser Festival.

Before today gets busy, I am taking some time this morning for reading, prayer and reflection.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season. In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:

1, One of the readings for the morning;

2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

Saint Monica in a painting once in Orlagh, the former Augustinian retreat house in Rathfarnham, Co Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Monica was born in North Africa of Christian parents in 332 and she was married to a pagan named Patricius, whom she converted to Christianity. They had three children of whom the most famous was her eldest child, the future Augustine.

Augustine ascribed his conversion to the example and devotion of his mother: ‘She never let me out of her prayers that you, O God, might say to the widow’s son “Young man, I tell you arise”.’ This is why the gospel story of the widow of Nain is traditionally read today as her memorial.

Monica’s husband died when she was 40. Her desire had been to be buried alongside him, but this was not to be. She died in Italy, at Ostia, in 387 on her way home to North Africa with her two sons.

Luke 7: 11-17 (NRSVA):

11 Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. 12 As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. 13 When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ 14 Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ 15The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. 16 Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favourably on his people!’ 17 This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.



Today’s reflection: ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis’

For my reflections and devotions each day these few weeks, I am reflecting on and invite you to listen to a piece of music or a hymn set to a tune by the great English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958).

This morning [27 August 2022], I invite you to join me in listening to his ‘Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis.’

The word fantasy or fantasia is sometimes used in music to describe a work that does not follow any set form or pattern. It is also used for compositions that are based on another musical work.

Vaughan Williams’s ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’ is also known as the ‘Tallis Fantasia.’ It was written string orchestra by Vaughan Williams in 1910 and it was performed for the first time on 6 September 1910 in Gloucester Cathedral at the Three Choirs Festival, with Vaughan Williams conducting himself.

That evening, most of the attention that evening was devoted to Elgar’s oratorio The Dream of Gerontius. Elgar had once declined a request from Vaughan Williams to take him on as a pupil. Most critics present that evening found Vaughan Williams’s work difficult to take. The critic of the Musical Times wrote: ‘It is a grave work, exhibiting power and much charm of the contemplative kind, but it appears overlong for the subject-matter.’

But the audience that evening also included Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney, two organ scholars at Gloucester Cathedral who went on to become celebrated composers.

Vaughan Williams had been cycling round the lanes and pubs of Wiltshire, Somerset and Norfolk since 1903, jotting down tunes and ballads from the countryside that inspired his arrangements for hymns in the English Hymnal in 1905, and the music he was writing at the time, including: In the Fen Country, his Norfolk Rhapsodies, The Wasps and On Wenlock Edge.

However, his contributions to the English Hymnal were still anonymous by 1910, and the ‘Fantasia’ heralded the making of his career as well as a new clarity in his art. His A Sea Symphony would have its premiere two months later in Leeds, and he was soon on the way to composing his second symphony, the London Symphony, as well as embarking on his first opera, Hugh the Drover, and the Five Mystical Songs. Folk music, hymn tunes, visionary literature, Renaissance polyphony and cutting-edge orchestration fused in a potent summoning of the humanist New Jerusalem.

The night after the premiere of this Fantasia in Gloucester Cathedral in 1910, Sir Hubert Parry gave a speech in which he declared music to be a socially inclusive agent ‘to get the people from the slums to be elevated by [its] power.’

Vaughan Williams attended meetings of the Hammersmith Socialist Society at William Morris’s home, along with HG Wells and Gustav Holst. This brought him into contact with a Fabian circle that included George Bernard Shaw and George Trevelyan.

A contributor to the Musical Times that month had commented: ‘It is our idiosyncrasy as a nation to prefer religious sentiment to patriotic and national feeling.’ But for Vaughan Williams, the two were inextricably entwined, and the ‘Tallis Fantasia’ is a perfect expression of that unity. He said later: ‘I feel that I am perhaps beginning to emerge from the fogs at last.’

Vaughan Williams went on revise this work twice, in 1913 and 1919. Yet it was not recorded until 1936.

The work is his homage to the Elizabethan composer, Thomas Tallis (ca 1505–1585). Many of Vaughan Williams’s works were inspired by the music of the English Renaissance. In 1906, he included Tallis’s ‘Third Mode Melody’ in the English Hymnal, which he was editing with Percy Dearmer, as his melody for Joseph Addison’s hymn ‘When Rising from the Bed of Death’ (No 92).

Thomas Tallis was a Catholic given a stay of execution among Elizabeth I’s clergy in order to take part in restructuring the Anglican church. The psalm that Vaughan Williams based his Fantasia on is short: a four-line verse that appears in The Whole Psalter Translated into English Metre, published by Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1567, nine years after Elizabeth’s coronation.

Tallis’s original words for the hymn, based in Psalm 2: 1-2, are:

Why fumeth in fight the Gentile’s
spite, in fury raging stout?
Why taketh in hand the people
fond, vain things to bring about?
The Kings arise, the Lords devise,
in counsels met thereto,
Against the Lord with false accord,
against His Christ they go.

Tallis’s words hover, unvoiced, in the distant background to Vaughan Williams’s ‘Fantasia.’ Tallis and fellow Catholics in the Elizabethan era were entrusted with making church music accessible to untrained congregations while preserving a sense of spiritual wonder. They achieved this by drawing on popular songs and ballads, just as Vaughan Williams did for the English Hymnal.

Although this ‘Fantasia’ was not recorded until 1936, later classic post-war recordings by John Barbirolli, Adrian Boult and Richard Hickox have become bestsellers. It is a regular fixture in the BBC’s ‘Hundred Best Tunes.’

In a recent poll of the most popular classical pieces of music, listeners voted this piece third on the Classic FM ‘Hall of Fame.’ First place has gone consistently to a later Vaughan Williams’s piece, ‘The Lark Ascending.’

Vaughan Williams’s ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’ is scored for an expanded string orchestra divided into three parts: orchestra I, a full-sized string orchestra; orchestra II, a single desk from each section (ideally placed apart from Orchestra I); and a string quartet.

Vaughan Williams made this configuration resemble an organ in sound, with the quartet representing the swell division, orchestra II the choir division, and orchestra I the great division. The score specifies that the second orchestra should be placed apart from the first. This spacing emphasises the way that the second orchestra several times echoes the first orchestra.

In structure, this piece resembles the Elizabethan-age ‘fantasy.’ The theme is heard in its entirety three times during the course of the work, but the music grows from the theme’s constituent motives or fragments, with variations upon them. A secondary melody, based on the original, is first heard on the solo viola about a third of the way into the Fantasia, and this theme forms the climax of the work about five minutes before the end.

Vaughan Williams’s ‘Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis’ provides a bridge between the Tudors and the early 20th century. It contains many of his trademarks, particularly the way he whets his chord harmonics with the flattened seventh, a staple of English folk, and the minor third, the key feature of Tallis’s setting.

The piece is open to a rich range of readings, even fantasies, not least that it enacts and heals the rupture of English Catholicism and Protestantism. It is not rapturous, like ‘The Lark Ascending,’ composed four years later, but a solemn, controlled release, the product of a mind in visionary mode, and appropriate listening for this Saturday morning.

Sculptures by Bettina Seitz in the grounds of Markree Castle, Co Sligo (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer, Saturday 27 August 2022:

The Collect:

Faithful God,
who strengthened Monica, the mother of Augustine,
with wisdom,
and through her patient endurance encouraged him
to seek after you:
give us the will to persist in prayer
that those who stray from you may be brought to faith
in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Father,
from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name,
your servant Monica revealed your goodness
in a life of tranquillity and service:
grant that we who have gathered in faith around this table
may like her know the love of Christ
that surpasses knowledge
and be filled with all your fullness;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The theme in the USPG prayer diary all this week has been ‘The Pursuit of Justice.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by Javanie Byfield and Robert Green, ordinands at the United Theological College of the West Indies.

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Let us pray for those who devote their lives to challenging injustice. May they be filled with the Spirit and love for humanity.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Praying with USPG and the hymns of Vaughan Williams: Sunday 31 July 2022

The Old Vicarage, Down Ampney, where the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 (Photograph: Colin West 2011 / Panoramio)

Patrick Comerford

Today in calendar of the Church is the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, and later this morning (31 July 2022) I hope to attend the Parish Eucharist in the Parish Church of Saint Mary and Saint Giles in Stony Stratford.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music is celebrated throughout this year’s Proms season.

In my prayer diary for these weeks I am reflecting in these ways:

1, Reading one of the readings for the morning;

2, Reflecting on a hymn or another piece of music by Vaughan Williams, often drawing, admittedly, on previous postings on the composer;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary, ‘Pray with the World Church.’

Luke 12: 13-21 (NRSVA):

13 Someone in the crowd said to him, ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.’ 14 But he said to him, ‘Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?’ 15 And he said to them, ‘Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.’ 16 Then he told them a parable: ‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. 17 And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” 18 Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” 20 But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” 21 So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

The Duomo in Siena … RF Littledale’s hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’ is a translation of an Italian hymn by Bianco da Siena (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s reflection: ‘Come down, O love divine’

Ralph Vaughan Williams was the composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores, a collector of English folk music and song. With Percy Dearmer, he co-edited the English Hymnal, in which he included many folk song arrangements as hymn tunes, and several of his own original compositions. He wrote the tune ‘Down Ampey’ for the hymn ‘Come down, O love divine,’ and thanks in particular to his setting this hymn is loved around the world.

Vaughan Williams named the tune after the pretty Cotswold village of Down Ampney in Gloucestershire, where he was born in the Vicarage 150 years ago on 12 October 1872. Down Ampney is off the A417, which runs between Cirencester and Faringdon in Oxfordshire on the A420, and about 5 km north of Cricklade, which is on the A419 running from Cirencester to Swindon, Wiltshire.

The parish church, All Saints’ Church, was founded by the Knights Templar in 1265, although much of its current shape is the result of a Victorian rebuilding. The spire dates from the 14th century, when the south porch was added.

The church has excellent stained glass, much of it Victorian or modern, including a series of nautical parables given by Admiral Charles Talbot after his ship survived a storm off Sebastopol in 1854. Another window depicting the Resurrection Stone is dedicated to Vaughan Williams’s father.

The composer’s father, the Revd Arthur Charles Vaughan Williams (1834-1875), served in Bemerton – the same parish where the poet George Herbert had been Vicar around 300 years earlier — and at Halsall in Lancashire, before becoming the Vicar of Down Ampney in 1868. He died there on 9 February 1875, only three years after the birth of his son Ralph Vaughan-Williams.

Soon after, Vaughan Williams was taken by his mother, Margaret Susan (née Wedgwood) (1842-1937), a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood III and the great-granddaughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, to live with her family at Leith Hill Place, a home in the North Downs in Surrey bought by the Wedgwood family in 1847.

The tune he composed for the mediaeval hymn ‘Come Down, O Love Divine’ (Discendi, Amor santo), written by Bianco da Siena (ca1350-1434), is named ‘Down Ampney’ with affection for and in honour of his birthplace.

‘Come down, O love divine,’ (New English Hymnal, No 137; Irish Church Hymnal, No 294) was originally written in Italian in the 14th or 15th century by Bianco da Siena.

Bianco di Santi (ca 1350-1399), also known as Bianco da Siena and Bianco da Lanciolina, was an Italian mystic poet and an imitator of Jacopone da Todi. He wrote several religious poems that were popular in the Middle Ages. At first he was a wool carder who worked in Siena. He eventually became a member of the Jesuates, founded by Giovanni Colombini. He died in Venice in 1399.

The hymn was first translated into English in 1867 by the Revd Dr Richard Frederick Littledale (1833-1890), a Dublin-born Anglican priest who had been forced to give up his full-time parochial ministry due to ill-health.

Littledale was curate in Saint Matthew in Thorpe Hamlet, Norfolk (1856-1857) and curate of Saint Mary the Virgin, Crown Street, Soho, London (1857-1861), where he took an interest in the work of the House of Charity.

For the rest of his life, Littledale suffered from chronic ill-health. He took little part in any parochial duties and devoted himself mainly to writing. Until his death, he continued to act as a father confessor, and next to Edward Pusey is said to have heard more confessions than any other priest in the Church of England. Through William Bell Scott he came to know and influence the poet Christina Rossetti.

Littledale was a contributor to many newspapers and publications, including Kottabos (a college miscellany in TCD), Notes and Queries, the Daily Telegraph, the Church Quarterly Review, and The Academy. He wrote many books and pamphlets in support of Anglicanism in opposition to Roman Catholicism.

In conjunction with the Revd James Edward Vaux, Littledale wrote The Priest’s Prayer Book (1864), The People’s Hymnal (1867), The Christian Passover (1873) and The Altar Manual, of which 46,000 copies were published.

The People’s Hymnal (1867) included the hymn Come Down, O Love Divine, translating the Italian of Bianco da Siena. The original poem was included in the Laudi Spirituali del Bianco da Siena of Telesforo Bini in 1851.

He died at 9 Red Lion Square, London, on 11 January 1890. A reredos to his memory was erected in the chapel at Saint Katharine’s, 32 Queen Square, London, in March 1891.

In 1906, Littledale’s version of Come Down, O Love Divine was included in the English Hymnal, edited by Percy Dearmer and Vaughan Williams. It was set to this strong, eminently singable, tune specially composed for it by Vaughan Williams, with a unique metre. Indeed, many regard this as the most beautiful of all his hymn tunes.


’Come down, O Love divine’ (‘Down Ampney’) by King’s College Choir, Cambridge/Thomas Williamson/Stephen Cleobury

Come down, O love divine,
Seek Thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardour glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn,
Till earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong,
With which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace,
Till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

The Piazza del Campo in Siena … RF Littledale’s hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’ is a translation of an Italian hymn by Bianco da Siena (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Today’s Prayer:

At the annual conference of the USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) in High Leigh last week, we were updated on the work of USPG’s partners in Ukraine, Russia and with USPG’s partners with Ukrainian refugees.

The theme in the USPG prayer diary this week is ‘Refugee Support in Poland.’ The Revd David Brown, Chaplain of the Anglican Church in Poland, spoke to USPG earlier in the year about the conflict in Ukraine and how it has affected churches in Poland. The situation may have changed since he wrote:

‘There are many refugees from Ukraine who have travelled to Poland. These people come from all sections of society and some of them have existing links to family and friends in Poland. Many thousands of refugees don’t have such links and are simply trying to find a safe place to stay. Major train stations are used as transit points for refugees with volunteers from many different organisations offering basic supplies there.

‘Our chaplaincy is small in number, so it is difficult for us to take collective action. Instead, individuals from our congregation are volunteering at help centres and providing shelter for refugees, who are often shocked and traumatised by their experiences. It can also be a struggle for both refugees and their hosts to acclimatise to each other. The chaplaincy continues to hold daily services and offer pastoral care and support to all affected by the current situation and those in Poland who are facing problems unrelated to the conflict in Ukraine.

‘We recognise that the fallout from the situation in Ukraine will pose long-term challenges in the coming weeks, months and years. Our chaplaincy will be here to offer support wherever possible.’

Sunday 31 July 2022:

The USPG Prayer Diary invites us to pray today in these words:

Welcoming God,
you taught us to befriend the stranger.
May we offer hospitality and support
to all in need.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

‘Come down, O love divine, Seek Thou this soul of mine’

The Duomo in Siena … RF Littledale’s hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’ is a translation of an Italian hymn by Bianco da Siena (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Tomorrow [13 January] is the first Sunday after the Epiphany, when we mark the Baptism of Our Lord at the Parish Eucharist at 9.30 a.m. in Castletown Church, Kilcornan, Co Limerick, and at Morning Prayer at 11.30 a.m. in Holy Trinity Church, Rathkeale, Co Limerick.

On both occasions, we are renewing our Baptismal vows, and appropriately one of the hymns we are singing is ‘Come down, O love divine’ for which Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote the tune ‘Down Ampey.’ Thanks in particular to this setting by Vaughan Williams, this hymn is loved around the world.

He named the tune after the pretty Cotswold village of Down Ampney in Gloucestershire, where he was born in the Vicarage on 12 October 1872. Down Ampney is off the A417, which runs between Cirencester and Faringdon in Oxfordshire on the A420, and about 5 km north of Cricklade, which is on the A419 running from Cirencester to Swindon, Wiltshire.

The parish church, All Saints’ Church, was founded by the Knights Templar in 1265, although much of its current shape is the result of a Victorian rebuilding. The spire dates from the 14th century, when the south porch was added.

The nave is supported on pointed arches decorated with a profusion of red flowers. One theory says the flowers are a reminder of the bubonic plague or Black Death, when red rash marked the victims’ skin. The Black Death is also said to explain why the church stands at a distance from the centre of the village.

When the order of Templars was suppressed by the crown in 1315, the living of Down Ampney passed to the Abbey of Cirencester. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries it passed to Christ Church, Oxford.

The church has excellent stained glass, much of it Victorian or modern, including a series of nautical parables given by Admiral Charles Talbot after his ship survived a storm off Sebastopol in 1854. Another window depicting the Resurrection Stone is dedicated to Vaughan Williams’s father. The interior is a symphony of woodwork, with intricately carved south transept screen and pulpit, and the Victorian north transept screen incorporates Jacobean panelling. The south transept has a pair of effigies, Sir Nicholas de Valers (or de Valery), a Templar knight associated with the founding of the church, and perhaps his wife, Margaret Bassett, who is shown in a pious pose.

The north transept or Hungerford Chapel is enclosed within a fine oak screen, part of which is made from the Musicians’ Gallery at Cirencester Abbey. The fragments were found in a yard in Down Ampney parish and moved into the church. The chapel is a grandiose memorial to Sir James Hungerford and his son Anthony, successive lords of the manor of Down Ampney. Their ornate, gilded monument dates to 1637 and shows father and son facing each other across a prayer desk.

The composer’s father, the Revd Arthur Charles Vaughan Williams (1834-1875), served in Bemerton, the same parish where the poet George Herbert had been Vicar around 300 years earlier — and at Halsall in Lancashire, before becoming the Vicar of Down Ampney in 1868. He died there on 9 February 1875, only three years after the birth of his son Ralph Vaughan-Williams.

Soon after, Vaughan Williams was taken by his mother, Margaret Susan (née Wedgwood) (1842-1937), a daughter of Josiah Wedgwood III and the great-granddaughter of the potter Josiah Wedgwood, to live with her family at Leith Hill Place, a home in the North Downs in Surrey bought by the Wedgwood family in 1847.

The tune he composed for the mediaeval hymn ‘Come Down, O Love Divine’ (Discendi, Amor santo), written by Bianco da Siena (ca1350-1434), is named ‘Down Ampney’ with affection for and in honour of his birthplace.

The Old Vicarage, Down Ampney, where the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 (Photograph: Colin West 2011 / Panoramio)

‘Come down, O love divine,’ (New English Hymnal, No 137; Irish Church Hymnal, No 294) was originally written in Italian in the 14th or 15th century by Bianco da Siena.

Bianco di Santi (ca 1350-1399), also known as Bianco da Siena and Bianco da Lanciolina, was an Italian mystic poet and an imitator of Jacopone da Todi. He wrote several religious poems that were popular in the Middle Ages. At first he was a wool carder who worked in Siena. He eventually became a member of the Jesuates, founded by Giovanni Colombini. He died in Venice in 1399.

The hymn was first translated into English in 1867 by the Revd Dr Richard Frederick Littledale (1833-1890), a Dublin-born Anglican priest who had been forced to give up his full-time parochial ministry due to ill-health.

Richard Frederick Littledale was born in Dublin on 14 September 1833, the fourth son of John Littledale, an auctioneer. He entered Trinity College Dublin in 1850, was elected a Scholar in 1852, graduated BA with a first in classics, and in 1855 received the senior Berkeley gold medal and the first divinity prize. He later proceeded MA (1858) and LL.B and LL.D (1862), and DCL at Oxford (1862) comitatis causa.

He was curate in Saint Matthew in Thorpe Hamlet, Norfolk (1856-1857) and curate of Saint Mary the Virgin, Crown Street, Soho, London (1857-1861), where he took an interest in the work of the House of Charity.

For the rest of his life, Littledale suffered from chronic ill-health. He took little part in any parochial duties and devoted himself mainly to writing. Until his death, he continued to act as a father confessor, and next to Edward Pusey is said to have heard more confessions than any other priest in the Church of England. Through William Bell Scott he came to know and influence the poet Christina Rossetti.

Littledale was a contributor to many newspapers and publications, including Kottabos (a college miscellany in TCD), Notes and Queries, the Daily Telegraph, the Church Quarterly Review, and The Academy. He wrote many books and pamphlets in support of Anglicanism in opposition to Roman Catholicism.

In conjunction with the Revd James Edward Vaux, Littledale wrote The Priest’s Prayer Book (1864), The People’s Hymnal (1867), The Christian Passover (1873) and The Altar Manual, of which 46,000 copies were published.

The People’s Hymnal (1867) included the hymn Come Down, O Love Divine, translating the Italian of Bianco da Siena. The original poem was included in the Laudi Spirituali del Bianco da Siena of Telesforo Bini in 1851.

He died at 9 Red Lion Square, London, on 11 January 1890. A reredos to his memory was erected in the chapel at Saint Katharine’s, 32 Queen Square, London, in March 1891.

In 1906, Littledale’s version of Come Down, O Love Divine was included in the English Hymnal, edited by Percy Dearmer and Vaughan Williams. It was set to this strong, eminently singable, tune specially composed for it by Vaughan Williams, with a unique metre. Indeed, many regard this as the most beautiful of all his hymn tunes.


’Come down, O Love divine’ (‘Down Ampney’) by King’s College Choir, Cambridge/Thomas Williamson/Stephen Cleobury

Come down, O love divine,
Seek Thou this soul of mine,
And visit it with thine own ardour glowing;
O Comforter, draw near,
Within my heart appear,
And kindle it, thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn,
Till earthly passions turn
To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;
And let thy glorious light
Shine ever on my sight,
And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

Let holy charity
Mine outward vesture be,
And lowliness become mine inner clothing;
True lowliness of heart,
Which takes the humbler part,
And o’er its own shortcomings weeps with loathing.

And so the yearning strong,
With which the soul will long,
Shall far outpass the power of human telling;
For none can guess its grace,
Till he become the place
Wherein the Holy Spirit makes his dwelling.

The Piazza del Campo in Siena … RF Littledale’s hymn ‘Come down, O love divine’ is a translation of an Italian hymn by Bianco da Siena (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

A fountain in Adare recalls the piety of a countess

Lady Dunraven’s fountain outside the Trinitarian Abbey Church on the Main Street in Adare, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

Outside the Trinitarian Abbey Church, which was restored by the Earls of Dunraven in the 19th century as the Roman Catholic parish church of Adare, Co Limerick, stands a tall obelisk-style mounted surmounted by a Celtic cross with carvings in relief.

This marks the fountain erected in the heart of the village in 1844, and the carved trefoil and cross motifs hint at the religious piety of the woman who donated this fountain to Adare.

The inscription says the monument was ‘erected by Caroline Countess of Dunraven in grateful memory of the zeal shewn by the people of this village in quenching fire at the offices Adare Manor on the 1st April 1844.’

The fountain is an early work by Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892), the architect who carried out much of the restoration work in Gothic Revival style at both Adare Manor and the parish church.

But who was Caroline Countess of Dunraven?

Caroline Wyndham (1790-1870) was born on 24 May 1790 at Clearwell Court in the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire. Although the Wyndham family of Dunraven in Glamorgan had no titles or peerages, they were one of the leading families in South Wales.

Caroline’s diaries, letters and annual reflections indicate that, even as a teenager, she was a deeply religious woman who had been affected by Methodism and by the evangelical revival that began in the 1780s.

From the day of her 18th birthday in 1808 until her death in 1870, Caroline kept a diary that forms part of her archive, together with annual reflections and letters.

Caroline was a rich heiress when she married the Hon Windham Henry Quin of Adare Manor in 1810, and he eventually succeed his father as the 2nd Earl of Dunraven. Valentine Quin (1752-1824) presumably chose the title of Dunraven when he was made an earl in 1822 in honour of his daughter-in-law, and the Quin family eventually changed their name to Wyndham-Quin.

She was a remarkable lady: immensely energetic, ambitious and good humoured, she was also extremely sensible and careful about money. Architecture was an interest she shared with her husband.

As well as taking an active part in the restoration of Adare Manor and the village churches, Caroline continued to take an active interest in the life of the church in Gloucestershire village where she was born, and a copy of her portrait hangs in the vicar’s vestry in Saint Peter’s Church, Clearwell, in the Forest of Dean.

Caroline financed the building of Saint Peter's Church, the mortuary chapel, the repair of the 14th century cross, work at the local school, the building of the cottage hospital and a new frontal on Saint Anne’s well, all at Clearwell.

For this work, she commissioned the architect John Middleton (1820-1885), who, like Hardwick was an exponent of the Gothic Revival. Clearwell has the most examples of his work in one village anywhere in England.

She and her husband also set about rebuilding Dunraven Castle in Glamorgan.

Her fountain in Adare sits next to the Holy Trinity Church in a prominent place on the Main Street and it contributes significantly to the streetscape of the town.

The monument displays fine stonemasonry and artistic skills, and the lettering and carving at the base of the cross are particularly fine. Although no water now flows from the cast-iron spouts on the three sides, the fountain remains a curious historical and artistic item in the town.

Adare Manor, once the home of the Wyndham-QAuin family, Earls of Dunraven (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

In search of the castle that was the Thurles home of Lady Thurles

Bridge Castle in Thurles, Co Tipperary, built in 1453 by the Earl of Ormond … was this the 17th century home of Lady Thurles? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Thurles earlier this week [25 July 2018], I went looking for the castle in Thurles that was home for over six decades to Elizabeth Butler, Dowager Lady Thurles, and one of the leading women to engage in politics in Ireland in the 17th century.

Elizabeth Poyntz (1587-1673) was a daughter of Sir John Poyntz of Iron Acton in Gloucestershire. She became Lady Thurles in 1608 when she married Thomas Butler (1586-1619), Viscount Thurles, son and heir of Walter Butler (1559-1632), 11th Earl of Ormond.

Apparently, her father-in-law opposed the marriage, perhaps because her father was notoriously debt ridden, and he would die penniless.

Some sources say Elizabeth lived in Thurles Castle for 65 years, from the time she married in 1608 until she died in 1673, apart for a short period at the end of the Cromwellian era (1658-1660).

Thomas and Elizabeth Butler, Lord and Lady Thurles, were the parents of sons and four daughters before he drowned on 15 December 1619, His father, the Earl of Ormond, was beginning a long prison sentence in the Fleet Prison in London, and Thomas was on his way to answer charges of treason for having garrisoned Kilkenny, when the ship taking him to England was wrecked off the Skerries.

The widowed Lady Thurles married again, about 1620. Her second husband was Captain George Mathew of Radyr and Llandaff in Glamorganshire, Wales, and they had two more sons and one more daughter.

George Mathew died at Tenby in Wales in 1636. His widow continued to call herself Lady Thurles and lived for a further 37 years. When she died in Thurles in May 1673, she was buried in Saint Mary’s Church of Ireland parish church.

But which castle in Thurles was the life-long home of Lady Thurles, and how did she manage to return there in 1660?

Samuel Lewis wrote 200 years ago that during the parliamentary war in the mid-17th century, Thurles Castle was garrisoned by the supporters of King Charles I. It was later taken by the parliamentarian forces, who demolished the castle.

Did Lady Thurles return to a newer building at the site of a castle that may also have been called Thurles Castle? The historians Francis Grose (1791) and Ella Armitage (1912) imply a building called Thurles Castle was still standing in their lifetimes.

So, which castle did Lady Thurles live in?

Bridge Castle, overlooking the River Suir, dominated the Thurles skyline from 1453, when it was built by James Butler, 4th Earl or Ormond, who built two castles at Thurles that year.

The River Suir below Bridge Castle and Barry’s Bridge in Thurles, Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

This castle is a mediaeval tower house, similar to many castles of this type built across Ireland in the mid-15th century, and a small fragment of the east gate of the town wall is still attached to the north wall of the castle. The castle was built to control the river crossing at the River Suir, to collect tolls and if necessary to defend the river crossing against attacks.

Bridge Castle is a small three-storey tower with a vault over the first floor. The original doorway may have been set in the west wall and a spiral stairway rises in the north-west corner, giving access to all the upper floors.

A small fragment of the original east facing arched gateway of the walled town protrudes today and is still attached to the north wall of the castle. Small garrisons of armed soldiers were housed in these buildings, and the small, pointed arch doorway on the north wall may have provided the small garrison immediate access from the tower to the river crossing.

The castle was leased on 17 June 1617 by Thomas Butler, Lord Thurles, for 21 years to Richard Power, Donat O’Haly and R[ichar]d Wale. The lease included ‘all that castle called Bridge Castle with its appurtenances, parcel of the Manor and Lands of Thurles.’

The castle lost its strategic significance when Barry’s Bridge, beside the castle, was first built ca 1650, and the bridge has since been rebuilt ca 1820.

The River Suir below Barry’s Bridge in Thurles, Co Tipperary (Photograph: Patrick Comerford], 2018)

The Down Survey (1655-1656), carried out by Sir William Petty, lists James Butler, (1610-1688), Earl of Ormond and future Duke of Ormonde, and his mother Elizabeth Butler (1615-1685), Dowager Lady Thurles, as the proprietors of Bridge Castle.

The Civil Survey refers to a ‘a faire house wherein the Lady of Thurles liveth with a castle and severall Turrets upon the Bawne.’

So, perhaps, Lady Thurles returned after the Cromwellian era to live at Bridge Castle in Thurles, while her son James Butler, who had succeeded as Earl of Ormond and later became Duke of Ormonde, returned to live in Kilkenny Castle.

Ormonde was a first cousin once removed of Grany Kavanagh who married John Comerford of Ballybur Castle, Co Kilkenny, and Edward Comerford was a witness to his marriage settlement when James Butler married Lady Elizabeth Preston in 1629.

After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Lady Thurles wrote to her son in 1661, recommending Edward Comerford’s son, Thomas Comerford, for service and for the restoration of his father’s confiscated lands.

Ormonde was also a half-brother of Toby Mathew of Thurles and Annfield. Ormonde gave Toby Mathew the manor, castle and town of Thurles and a vast estate. A century later, the Bridge Castle was lit up, along with the bridge and the market house, in celebration when Toby Mathew’s descendant, Frances Mathew (1738-1806), was elected MP for Co Tipperary.

Francis Mathew later received the titles of Baron Llandaff (1783), Viscount Llandaff (1793) and Earl of Llandaff (1797) was elected Tipperary Member of Parliament, a position he held from 1768 to 1783.

Francis Mathew lived at Thomastown Castle, Co Tipperary, where the temperance campaigner Father Theobald Mathew was born in 1790. Thomastown Castle fell into ruin by the late 19th century. Apart from the external walls, none of the original fabric remains, the castle is suffering from structural problems that could lead to full or partial collapse, and there is an immediate threat of further deterioration.

But Thomastown Castle is half-way between Cashel and Tipperary Town, and so could not be the Thurles Castle where Lady Thurles lived for most of her life.

However, there is one other castle in Thurles that claims to be her former residence. The Black Castle, which was sold on the open market last year [2017] along with a commercial building that links it directly to Liberty Square, the main square in Thurles. When the Black Castle was put on the market by Kenny family, the vendors claimed the castle had been the home of Elizabeth Poyntz and her husband Thomas Butler, Viscount Thurles, in the 17th century.

The Black Castle is a 15th-to-16th century tower house built beside another castle and motte. The present remains include a four-storey tower house with a parapet built with roughly coursed limestone rubble and with a pronounced base-batter.

There is a barrel vault over the ground floor, a pointed vault over the second floor and wooden floors elsewhere. The original entrance, which is now blocked, was in the south end of the east wall with two other entrances inserted at a later date.

The main entrance gave access to two lobbies protected by overhead murder-holes and a cruciform gun loop. The walls and floor at ground-floor level have been concreted and a plastic barrel-shaped panel roof inserted to accommodate its last function as an abattoir.

There are mural stairs in the west and north walls that give access to the upper floors. The windows at first-floor level have been blocked up or modified.

Very little is left of the parapet wall, but a portion of it survives on the south and west sides with evidence of a bartizan at the south angle, and there are remains of spouts at the base of the parapet wall. Substantial corbels projecting out of the west face, three above the first and the same above the second-floor level.

Only fragmentary remains of the bawn survive, the north wall of which was levelled in recent years. A 17th century house may have been built against the west face of the tower house but has not survived.

But if this was the site of the Thurles Castle that was home to Lady Thurles in the 17th century, it would explain the names of Castle Lane, Castle Park and Moate Lane nearby, as well as Castle Meadows a little further away.

The former Black Castle, west of Liberty Square, was bought by a local financier and business figure, Timothy Maher, who said at the time he is budgeting to spend €2 million to restore the castle.

There is no direct access to this castle site, so I did not get to see the Black Castle during my visit to Thurles earlier this week. But I plan to return and it promises to be interesting to see how the new owners develop the castle.

A plaque at Saint Mary’s Church recalls Lady Thurles was buried here in 1673 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2018)

Singing two Christmas carols to tunes arranged by Vaughan Williams

A lost Christmas sheep hiding in the Lectern in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

I cannot help noticing that one of the sheep hidden around Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, by the Revd Abigail Sines in a children’s Christmas trail is named ‘Patrick’ and hangs delicately from the wings of the eagle on the lectern.

I wondered how much of a distraction Patrick proved to be during Monday evening’s Service of Nine Lessons and Carols.

‘The Wexford Carol,’ which was sung to John Rutter’s setting on Monday evening, includes the lines:

Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep …

I’m sure those shepherds in Bethlehem kept their sheep away from cathedral lecterns and soaring eagles.

Once again, this was a beautifully planned and delivered service, and I wrote yesterday afternoon [20 December 2016] about one of the carols, the Coventry Carol, which seems to have been a mainstay of many carol services and radio programmes this year. But I was also pleased that the service included two carols with tunes by Ralph Vaughan Williams.



Most people know the words of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem,’ and its words provide commentators with ready illustrations for Christmas-time editorials wondering when ‘glad tidings’ may come to towns like this in the Middle East, meeting ‘the hopes and fears of all the years.’

But how many people know that the tune for this popular hymn, ‘Forest Green,’ was arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams – or, for that matter, know where Forest Green is?

‘Forest Green’ is an English folk tune associated with the ballad ‘The Ploughboy’s Dream.’ Vaughan Williams turned ‘Forest Green’ into a hymn tune for The English Hymnal (1906), which he co-edited with Percy Dearmer, using the tune as a setting for ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’

The people of Nailsworth in Gloucestershire claim Vaughan Willias named the tune after Forest Green in Nailsworth. Perhaps their claims have been boosted by the fact that the composer was born in Gloucestershire.

This Forest Green near Nailsworth is in one of the Stroud Valleys in the Cotswolds. Saint George’s Church in Nailsworth was designed in the Early English style by MH Medland of Gloucester and was consecrated in 1900. Because of a lack of funds, the church originally consisted only of a nave, aisles and south porch, without any chancel or tower. The chancel, Lady Chapel and vestries, dedicated as a World War I memorial, were added in 1939, but the church tower was never added.

Three of the stained glass windows in the south aisle, depicting Saint Luke, Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas, are by Charles Eamer Kempe. Three others depict Saint Richard of Chichester, Saint George and Saint Martin. The other window is by Herbert Bryans and shows the prophetess Anna. The East window was designed by Peter Strong and was installed in 1977.

However, the melody ‘Forest Green’ was collected by Vaughan Williams from a singer, Henry Garman, of Forest Green, Surrey, in 1903, and combined with the words ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ in the English Hymnal in 1906.

Abinger is a large, well-wooded and mostly rural civil parish in the Mole Valley in Surrey. More than half of the parish lies on the Greensand Ridge, while the remainder is divided between the Vale of Holmesdale and the North Downs. Abinger is recorded in the Domesday Book. Saint James’s Church at Abinger Common is a II* class listed building with an 11th century nave, a chancel and north chapel built in 1220.

Vaughan Williams collected ‘The Ploughboy’s Dream’ from Henry Garman of this Forest Green in 1903. Henry Garman was born in 1830 in Sussex, and in the 1901 census he was living in Ockley, Surrey.

Vaughan Williams’s own manuscript notes that Garman was a ‘labourer of Forest Green near Ockley – Surrey. (Aged about 60?).’ However, Garman would have been nearer 73 when he shared the tune.

‘Forest Green’ is shaped in rounded bar form (AABA), and has the cheerful characteristics of folk tunes, which help to support the humanness of this text.

It was adapted into a hymn tune harmonised by Vaughan Williams, and was first published in the English Hymnal in 1906.



The other Vaughan Williams setting on Monday evening was the Herefordshire Christmas Carol, ‘This is the Truth Sent from Above,’ which is one of several folk tunes preserved and popularised by Ralph Vaughan-Williams.

In 1909, he transcribed it from Ella Mary Leather, a collector of Herefordshire folk music, who had herself received it from a Mr W Jenkins, a folk singer from King’s Pyon.

This English folk carol was collected in the early 20th century by many English folk song collectors in Shropshire and Herefordshire and a number of variations on the tune exist, although the texts remains broadly similar.

Cecil Sharp collected an eight stanza version of the carol from Seth Vandrell and Samuel Bradley of Donninglon Wood in Shropshire, although Sharp notes that a longer version existed in a locally-printed carol book.

Vaughan Williams collected a different, Dorian mode version of the carol at King’s Pyon, Herefordshire, in July 1909 from Ella Mary Leather, a folk singer who learned the carol through the oral tradition. This version, which contains only four stanzas, is sometimes known as the Herefordshire Carol.

Vaughan Williams first published the melody in the Folk-Song Society Journal in 1909, but he credited it as being sung by a Mr W Jenkins of King’s Pyon.

Vaughan Williams later used the carol to open his Fantasia on Christmas Carols in 1912.Gerald Finzi, with permission from Vaughan Williams and Ella Leather, also used the melody as the basis of his 1925 choral work The Brightness of This Day, substituting the text for a poem by George Herbert.

The descant is by Sir Thomas Armstrong (1898–1994), who studied at the Royal College of Music with Gustav Holst and Vaughan Williams, who became a life-long friend. Later, he was organist of Exeter Cathedral, organist of Christ Church, Oxford, and Principal of the Royal Academy of Music.

‘Woman was made with man to dwell. Thus we were heirs to endless woes’ ... an unfortunate coincidence linking the last line of Verse 2 and the first line of Verse 3 in a much-loved carol (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

The text of this carol recalls the fall from grace of Adam, and the promise of redemption by Jesus. However, in almost all printed editions, several of the verses are missing. The missing text leads to a presumably unintended faux pas, with the second verse ending ‘Woman was made with man to dwell,’ and the next verse starting ‘Thus we were heirs to endless woes.’

Of course, man’s woes do not stem simply from dwelling with woman. The full version reads:

This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the God of love:
Therefore don’t turn me from your door,
But hearken all, both rich and poor.

The first thing which I do relate
Is that God did man create,
The next thing which to you I’ll tell,
Woman was made with man to dwell.

Then, after this, ’twas God’s own choice
To place them both in Paradise,
There to remain, from evil free,
Except they ate of such a tree.

But they did eat, which was a sin,
And thus their ruin did begin.
Ruined themselves, both you and me,
And all of their posterity.

Thus we were heirs to endless woes,
Till God the Lord did interpose,
And so a promise soon did run,
That he would redeem us by his Son.

And at this season of the year
Our blest Redeemer did appear,
Here he did live, and here did preach,
and many thousands he did teach.

Thus he in love to us behaved,
To show us how we must be saved;
And if you want to know the way,
Be pleased to hear what he did say:

‘Go preach the Gospel,’ now he said,
‘To all the nations that are made!
And he that does believe on me,
From all his sins I'll set him free.’

O seek! O seek of God above
That saving faith that works by love!
And, if he’s pleased to grant thee this,
Thou ’rt sure to have eternal bliss.

God grant to all within this place
True saving faith, that special grace
Which to his people doth belong:
And thus I close my Christmas song.