Cheerfulness

Jean Goodwillie (nee Gillies) emails: “I read the pieces about the Danish hymn tune with interest. I looked in all my hymn books – I have quite a few because our church has four denominations worshipping together as one – and I couldn’t find the tune in any of them.

“My hymn books are all here at home in Livingston and they are all music copies. However, I looked up hymnary. org on the internet and I found that the tune is called Cheerfulness. The words were written by C.E.F. Wyse (1774-1842) in 1838 and the music was by Christian Richart (1831-1892). The music was composed in 1867.

“The words were translated from Danish by J. Christian Bay (1871-1962). There seemed to be different sets of words for the tune. The hymn was in Hymnal for Church and Home, 1st and 2nd Editions. The website also states that Kirsten Flagstad recorded hymns and that they appear on YouTube.

“I did play the tune on my piano to see if I had heard it before but I hadn’t. I learned most of the hymns I know when I lived in Lower Largo for the first 21 years of my life.

“While there, I attended Largo St David’s Parish Church and I was a member of the choir from the age of about 14 years until I left to come to Livingston because my husband, Allan, had found work as an art teacher at Broxburn Academy.

“The other hymns were ones I learned in Livingston. I’ll ask some of our ministers here if they are familiar with the hymn.” terrain, rain.

The farmers laughed, shrugging their shoulders, and splashed along through muddy tracks.

Age mellowed this drought fanatic, his shoulders stooped, he renounced his claim.

“I was young, then, foolish, too,

I have learnt sense now, it’s true.” And so he ceased his incessant plea and prayer for water,

gave up collecting geographical photography and died long before our blistering summers, late winter snow.

The sun, the wind are all the same to him, now snuggly tombed, released from worrying about the weather,

our divine prophet of global warming!

Dundee’s new wharf

Forfar reader Simon Urquhart has been in touch and says: “The feature on boats took me back to 1955 when I worked for Yorkshire Hennibique, who was the main civil engineering contractor on the building of the Queen Elizabeth wharf, just east of what is now the Tay Road Bridge.

“Shortly after completion, the Royal Yacht Britannia visited Dundee on what was a very dreich day and berthed at the new wharf. I have a number of old black and white photographs of the visit of the Royal Yacht Britannia and also the wharf under construction.

“At the time I lived in ‘digs’ in South Baffin Street and walked down Peep O’Day Lane to work.”

Birds and beasts