The first reference to an “earworm” (which can also be expressed as two words) in a publication in English appears to have been in a novel by Desmond Bagley published in 1978. The concept, though, of a tune or song that repeats endlessly in your mind, is much older and has had many other names. The  German Öhrwurm goes back much further and means exactly the same, the image being, I suppose, of the mental equivalent of a parasitic worm in the gut. Earworms can come from many sources. Popular music is obviously a main one, but one of the effective things about advertising is that its constant repetitions get into your mind. Who of a certain age can look at a Cadbury’s fruit and nut bar without singing, “Everyone’s a fruit and nutcase”? Or wash up without crooning softly, “Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face, with mild green Fairy Liquid”?  And the very mention of Alka-Seltzer can set my wife and I off on an inane chorus of:

Plop, plop, fizz, fizz

Oh, what a relief it is …

… which used to be sung or chanted constantly on TV by three very large American footballers when we lived in the US.

But the purpose of advertisements is merely to sell you things and their content is seriously uninteresting. I have earworms from another source which have far more ethical and ideological content. It turns out that if you sing hymns up to eight times a week as I did as a boarder at Lancaster Royal Grammar School from the age of 10 to 17 they stay with you for life. As hymns contain all sorts of stories and messages it’s interesting to reflect on what effect they have had. As I am essentially sceptical about religious doctrine do they still have meaning for me? In other words do they have secular meanings? And do they offer the same kinds of consolation and satisfaction that they do to genuinely religious people?

There are actually three hymn books involved here though one of them was far more important than the other two. Boarders at Lancaster went to evensong at the local church and there we used Hymns Ancient and Modern, the numbers of the hymns posted on the board in a way that is still in use. In my first year, 1957-8, we used the 1932 book which was edited by the former music master J.W.Aldous. In its main section containing eighty one hymns there are no fewer than fourteen where the music is by the Reverend Dr. J.H. Shakleton-Bailey who was headmaster at the time. The tunes often have local place names like Torrisholme and Capernwray. (Aldous gets one contribution.) But the volume I really knew was the completely re-jigged 1958 edition; it lasted rather less than a generation, being phased out by 1970. But I have always retained my copy as well as remembering many of the words.

It is a larger volume, the main section consisting of 146 hymns divided into sections, some of which refer to aspects of the bible story and some to aspects of Christian belief and religious duty. The local product has completely disappeared. But what strikes me most when looking at it again is the difference between the music and the words. The music is wonderful: there are many traditional tunes, but also works by Gibbons, Tallis, J.S.Bach, Jeremiah Clarke, Handel, Haydn, Mendelsohn, Parry, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Sullivan and Ireland. There are also pieces by Martin Luther and John Milton, not usually thought of as composers. It is all a reminder — like an Italian art gallery — of the proportion of Western artistic effort which has been devoted to religious themes.

The words, however, are predominantly Victorian: of 146 hymns 107 are by men (and apart from Christina Rossetti and Sabine Baring-Gould it is men) who were alive when Queen Victoria was on the throne. In my view Victorian-poetic does not represent the English language at its best and some of it falls into the so-bad-it’s-good category. One line which epitomises this and which everybody knows has not really stayed with me because it hasn’t needed to; I actually sang it four times in the week leading up to last Christmas and I’m not even a member of a choir, though my wife and granddaughter are. It is “Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb” from what is listed as number 29, Adeste Fideles, in the book. It is printed as a dual text and the Latin is Gestant  puellae viscera. Curiously, if you put that on a Latin-English translation site it comes back with, “They carry the entrails of the girl”. The Latin version is credited to Lewis Hensley (1824-1905), the English to Frederick Oakeley (1802-80), W.T.Brooks (no dates) and others.

Good or bad, the words stick in the mind. Eternal Father, strong to save, the last hymn in the book was always special to me as my mother’s family were mainly sailors. I loved the advent hymns especially Hills of the north, rejoice (20) and O Come, O Come, Emmanuel (21) because they meant that Christmas was on its way. Obviously the carols were less important because we were at school for advent but not during Christmas. And, talking of hills, Father, hear the prayer we offer (116) has never left me and the words of verse three go through my mind whenever I’m walking and move from the flat ground to the steep:

Not for ever by still waters

Would we idly rest and stay;

But would smite the living fountain

From the rocks along our way.

Nonsense, really: why would you smite a fountain? Not an efficient way of seeking refreshment. Lord, behold us with thy blessing (124) and its twin Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing (135) always stuck in the mind because they were sung at the beginning and end of term respectively. I have a special memory, too, of Guide me O thou great Redeemer/Jehovah (there are two versions) because before my voice broke I sang the chorus — Bread of Heaven — alone with two other trebles. That must have been in church because it isn’t in the book. It is still heard when Wales play rugby, the tune being Cwm Rhondda.

The Hamlet of hymns is heard more than ever: I mean Jerusalem (135) — words by William Blake, music by Hubert Parry. We used to belt it out on a Sunday morning when there were only School House members present. It’s far from being an orthodox expression of Christian sentiment and my Catholic wife swears she first heard it while on a demonstration as a student. Insofar as it says anything I should dislike it because its millenarian and radical sentiments are far from my own. But the language — “arrows of desire”, “chariots of fire”, a “bow of burning gold” — are so exciting that one doesn’t worry too much about meaning. Curiously, it’s the only hymn in the book which has no printed music though Parry is credited. When I was an undergraduate I was taught philosophy by a number of well known philosophers. One was Alasdair MacIntyre who was keen on interpreting what he saw as the secular meanings of religious events. Anglican hymn singing, on this account, was about “tribal solidarity” — which is what it felt like when School House sang Jerusalem. 

On the question of secular meanings it struck me vaguely as a schoolboy and it strikes me now with more precision that there are two opposite moral and philosophical tendencies in these hymns one of which a sceptical utilitarian might be sympathetic to, but the other one very much not so. I am not talking about those which relate to the bible stories or to the glory of God, but to those which exhort us in some way. On the one hand there are those which fall under the heading here of “Militant on Earth” in which there is a lot of talk of striving and girding, armour and battles. Although this label only applies to hymns 74-80 there are others which could easily be put under the heading. The most famous, of course, is Onward Christian Soldiers, words by Sabine Baring-Gould and music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. But I also very clearly remember singing a hymn I’ve never heard since. The (creepy) music is by Hugh Percy Allen and the words claim to be a translation from the Greek of the eighth century St. Andrew of Crete. The first verse asks:

Christian, dost thou see them on the holy ground,

How the hosts of evil prowl and prowl around?

Christian, up and smite them, counting gain but loss

Smite them by the merit of the holy cross.

The tune is called Midian because the hosts of evil are identified as Midianites, an obscure tribe, supposedly descendants of Abraham, who lived in the northern part of what is now Saudi Arabia. The last reference to them works out to about 700BCE which is about seven centuries before the cross. I always envisaged the troops as non-human — dark, invasive, sci-fi creatures — and then and now judged religious militancy and enthusiasm as inimical to human happiness.

But just as the gamut of saints — even if we confine it to female French saints — runs from the warrior Joan of Arc to the withdrawn and passive Theresa of Lisieux, so does the range of hymns run from militant to quietist. “Quietism” has a very specific religious meaning concerned with withdrawal, contemplation and mysticism. It also broadens out into a less specifically religious and even secular meaning referring to the acceptance of things as they are, the satisfactions of duties performed and the pleasures of everyday things, All things bright and beautiful (number 2) is the best known case even without its original fourth verse which was removed from Ancient and Modern in 1922:

The rich man in his castle

The poor man at his gate

God made them high and lowly

And ordered their estate.

… which we used to use in interviews for applicants for a politics degree, asking them what they thought of the verse and why they thought it might have been removed.

It is much easier to incorporate quietist sentiment into a rational utilitarian philosophy. I would argue that it is an important antidote to the secular striving and girding that dominates many people’s lives, the zero sum games of celebrity and competition which lead to much unhappiness. An important sub-category of quietism in this sense is the celebration of harvest. This is very close to secular sentiment insofar as the Church of England regarded harvest celebrations as essentially pagan until the late nineteenth century (and the Roman Catholic church until the 1980s). Once, I remember, as a graduate student I had Sunday lunch with some friends and, in a bucolic mood, we set off to find a country church where Harvest Festival evensong would be in progress. We succeeded and belted out the words from what is number 100 in the school hymn book:

We plough the fields and scatter

The good seed on the land

But it is fed and watered

By God’s almighty hand

He sends the snow in winter

The warmth to swell the grain

The breezes and the sunshine 

And soft, refreshing rain…

I don’t know how many people I’ve annoyed by singing that last line when it rains. Of course, it does seem appropriate when it rains on a dry garden, but less so on a cricket tour.

But arguably the greatest of quietist hymns is number 126, Melcombe, by Samuel Webb the elder (1740-1816). Its first line is New every morning is the love, but it is the fourth verse which has remained in my mind:

The trivial round, the common task

Should furnish all we ought to ask

Actually though the book says “trivial” I always sing “daily” and I am pleased to say that when washing up I sing that rather than the Fairy Liquid thing.