Most popular articles of 2017

28 December 2017

There are over 5000 individual entries in the Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology. These are the hymns viewed most frequently in 2017:

Land of our Birth, we pledge to thee     Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

This is the concluding poem in Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill (1906), a series of stories and poems constructed on episodes of English history... 

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided   Timothy Dudley-Smith (1926-)

This text has been acclaimed as one of the 20th century’s finest hymns...

We have a gospel to proclaim     Edward Joseph Burns (1938- )

Published in 100 Hymns for Today (1969), and thus in Hymns Ancient & Modern New Standard; it has since been included in almost every major British hymn book...

When I needed a neighbour, were you there     Sydney Carter (1915-2004)

Carter calls it a song, not a hymn (Green Print for Song, 1974), written to be sung by Christians and non-Christians alike, despite its strong Biblical basis...

O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder (‘How great thou art’)    Carl Gustav Boberg (1859-1940), in a Russian translation, translated by Stuart Keene Hine (1899-1989)

Hine probably wrote the fourth verse in 1948, and the image of being ‘taken home’ is said to have been inspired by refugees from Germany or Poland...