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A.M.; E.H.; A.M.R.; Can.; Am.

Most Anglican books mark this hymn, “For the week before Septuagesima.” It is a translation of an old Latin hymn, Alleluia, dulce carmen, which had faded out of use by the eleventh century. Alleluia is the way the Greek New Testament spells the Hebrew Hallelujah, which is merely the two Hebrew words, hallelu, praise ye, and Jah, the Lord, “Praise ye the Lord.” It was the commonest response in Temple and Synagogue. First the choir sang a Psalm. Then the congregation answered, Hallelujah! Notice, for example, how in the Bible Psalms 115, 116 and 117 all end “Praise ye the Lord,” which in the Hebrew is simply “Hallelujah.” Psalms 146, 147, 148, 149 and 150 begin and end in the same way. In the Book of Maccabees we read: “The people went out from the presence of the King shouting Alleluia.”

The early Christians were so accustomed to this cry that they even regarded it as the song of Heaven. In the Book of Revelation we read: “I heard a great voice of much people in Heaven saying, Alleluia. And the four and twenty Elders fell down and worshipped God, 39 saying Alleluia. And I heard the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” So Alleluia became a prominent feature in all Christian worship. One of the earliest accounts that we have of a Christian Service is found in a Fayoum papyrus of the fourth century, and it says: “When Christians meet, they sing, Glory to the Father, Alleluia! and to the Son, Alleluia! and to the Holy Spirit, Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!” This became a kind of Christian watchword. Martyrs died shouting Alleluia. Jerome tells us that Alleluia was chanted triumphantly at Christian funerals as the corpse was carried to its grave. Sidonius Apollinaris, a fifth-century Bishop of Clermont in France, describes how the Christian haulers by the river side, as they towed the boats, used Alleluia as a chanty to make them heave together. When the Christian Britons in 429 charged the heathen invaders, they raised such a shout of Alleluia, that their enemies fled in panic, and the battle is called in history the Alleluia Victory. When Pope Gregory reported the success of his missionaries in England, he wrote: “Already Britain is beginning to ring with Alleluias.” In some Pacific islands today the native Christians are called by their heathen neighbours the Alleluia Folk, because they are so often heard singing Alleluia.

And this is as it should be. Christians should cultivate the habit of constantly “praising the Lord” for all the good gifts He has given. But the purpose of this hymn is not to urge us to sing Alleluia, but to tell us not to sing it. The forty days of Lent begin on Ash 40 Wednesday; but in the Middle Ages the custom arose of starting a sort of semi-Lent on Septuagesima. Lent is the season when the Church tries to make its members face the grim fact of Sin. It is comparatively easy to cultivate an attitude of cheerful thankfulness; but real penitence is a much more difficult spirit to acquire. So on Septuagesima the Church made several changes in its services, and among others it entirely dropped the singing of Alleluias. In 633 the eleventh canon of the Council of Toledo ordered that “in accordance with the universal custom of Christendom” Alleluia should not be used in any Spanish or Gaulish church from Septuagesima till Easter. So our hymn says:

Alleluia cannot always

Be our song while here below.

Alleluia our transgressions

Make us for awhile forego;

For the solemn time is coming,

When our tears for sin must flow.

But the dropping of a word would hardly be noticed by most of the congregation; so, to emphasize what was happening, some extraordinary ceremonies were invented. At Langres in France they kept an enormous whipping-top with the word Alleluia painted on it in golden letters, and at the close of the Evening Service on the Sunday before Septuagesima two choir-boys used to whip this down the aisle and out of the west door. At Toul they laid in a coffin a plank with the word Alleluia on it, and carried it out of the church with the full funeral ritual, and buried it in the cloisters, where 41 it remained till it was disinterred on Easter Day. Elsewhere they kicked the word out of church painted on a football. This banishing of Alleluia was so firmly fixed in the people’s minds that not only in England, but also in France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the wood sorrel is popularly known as the alleluia, “because,” wrote Turner in 1551, “it appeareth about Easter, when Alleluia is sung again.”

Our hymn was written to be sung while these quaint Farewell-to-Alleluia rites were performed; and, when this ritual was dropped, the hymn also disappeared from the Service Books.

Why did the Church call such attention to the banishing of Alleluia? Because it wanted everyone to feel that, beautiful as the word may be on the lips of the Saints in bliss—

Alleluia is the anthem

Ever dear to choirs on high.

In the House of God abiding

Thus they sing continually—

sinners on earth cannot always be saying “Praise the Lord.” There is something else far more urgent that they must learn to say, and that is “Kyrie, eleison,” “Lord, have mercy.” When we draw near to God, it is good to praise Him for what He has done, but we must also learn to ask pardon for much that we have left undone. These queer Septuagesima ceremonies were a striking preparation for Lent, an object lesson on the need for penitence. So, when Neale discovered this long-forgotten hymn, which does not appear in any 42 manuscript later than the eleventh century, he felt that it was worth resurrecting, and nineteenth-century hymn-book editors agreed with him.

But we must not be content with periodically laying aside our Alleluias in order to ask for pardon. We look forward to a time when there will no longer be any sins to confess or any guilt to check our praises

In our Home beyond the sky

There to Thee for ever singing

Alleluia joyfully.

The tune to which the hymn is usually sung first appeared in 1782 in An Essay on the Church Plain Chant as a setting for the Tantum Ergo, and ten years later in Webbe’s Collection of Motets. It may have been his own composition.