Who would true valour see

adapted as
He who would valiant be 

with
[James Sampson]
MONKS GATE
ST. DUNSTAN’S

I. Text: Origins

One of the most famous works of religious literature, Pilgrim’s Progress, was written by the nonconformist preacher John Bunyan (1628–1688). Bunyan spent twelve years imprisoned in Bedford (1660–1672), charged with preaching without a license, and used much of his time writing, including a spiritual autobiography, Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666). Some scholars believe he had started to write Pilgrim’s Progress during that period. After his release, he went back to preaching in Bedford, then was imprisoned again briefly in 1677 and probably finished the book there. The first edition of the first part of the book was published in 1678. The Second Part of the Pilgrim’s Progress was published in 1682. A second edition of the second part was issued in 1684, with additions. Bunyan’s hymn, “Who would true valour see,” appeared in the second edition (1687 copy shown at Fig. 1).

As a matter of context, both parts of the story are a deliberate allegory of Christian life. The first follows the journey of a character named Christian, whereas the second involves his wife Christiana and his children who had initially refused to follow him, now retracing his path, aided by a guide named Mr. Greatheart. On their way to the Celestial City, they meet another pilgrim named Valiant-for-Faith, who had just fended off three marauders. His parents had discouraged him from leaving, told him of the many challenges he would face, told him of others who had failed in their attempts, and wrongly informed him that Christian had died in the Black River. Valiant ended his testimony by saying he decided to pursue the Celestial City anyway by choosing to believe the assurances of a figure named Mr. Tell-true. The hymn follows his testimony.

II. Text: Assessment

Hymnologist and literary scholar J.R. Watson provided a detailed analysis of Bunyan’s text:

. . . some of the poem’s distinctive vigour comes from the short lines, 6.5.6.5.6.6.6.5, and the unexpected rhyme scheme, which begins with a quatrain, ABAB, followed by three rhyming lines, CCC, and a fourth unrhymed D. . . . The movement of each verse switches from the rough to the smooth, from alternate rhymes, oddly executed, to consecutive ones. Similarly, the metre is often irregular, and the syntax is unusual. Every verse, however, moves through its various processes to come out at the end with a simple statement, “To be a pilgrim.”

. . . The state of being a pilgrim is itself a privilege, as well as being an arduous undertaking. Bunyan’s triumph is to have understood this, and to have compressed so much human experience into the space of three verses. As a hymn, it is so familiar that it is easy to forget that the word “Pilgrim” is one into which so much Puritan spirituality can be subsumed.[1]

Erik Routley believed part of the message of the song could be interpreted as follows:

This poem, which has now by popular consent been accepted as a congregational hymn, is so human and valuable because it mentions with graphic boldness the enemies of courage. What are the lions and giants, the “dismal stories,” and hobgoblins and fiends, but all those things which modern psychology classifies under general head of “anxieties”?[2]

Frank Colquhoun offered a general overview of the hymn, worth repeating here:

The theme of the hymn is that of Bunyan’s immortal allegory: the Christian life as a pilgrimage, a constant progress along the Way of Holiness “from this world to that which is to come.” It is a sound biblical theme (see, e.g., 1 Peter 1:17, 2:11, Hebrews 11:13, 13:14) and the hymn-writers have not been slow to take it up. Neale’s “O happy band of pilgrims” is an obvious example. The theme is also found in “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah,” “Through the night of doubt and sorrow,” and “Children of the heavenly King.”

The first stanza stresses the need for constancy in the face of the discouraging circumstances to be encountered along the Way. The second describes the strong and fearless spirit in which the pilgrim must meet and vanquish his foes. The third points to the goal of the journey, the Life eternal which is the pilgrim’s heavenly inheritance.[3]

The editors of Companion to Church Hymnal noted the proper voice behind the poem:

An important point to remember, however, is that the song is not sung by Valiant-for-Truth, almost as if he were boasting of his own bravery. No, the words are Bunyan’s, and deliberately his, because he is directing his reader to “come hither” and look closely at Valiant-for-Truth in order to see the kind of courage that is required of the dedicated pilgrim.[4]

Possible scriptural foundations of the text include Matthew 10:22 (“And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved,” KJV) and/or Mark 10:17 (“And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, ‘Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?’” KJV).

III. Publications with Tunes

Bunyan almost certainly did not intend for his text to be sung in public worship. For one, the standard tunes of the day would not have accommodated his unique meter. More importantly, congregational hymn singing was very strongly discouraged among Puritan dissenters of his time, but the practice of it would be championed by Benjamin Keach in his treatise The Breach Repaired in God’s Worship (1691), then brought to greater fruition through the works of Isaac Watts (1674–1748).

1. Sampson Tune

The first known attempt to use the text as a congregational hymn was in Our Hymn Book, Prepared for the Use of . . . Offord Road Chapel (1860), edited by Edwin Paxton Hood. This was a text-only collection, and no tune was suggested. A few years later, a tune setting by British composer James Sampson appeared in a periodical, The Teacher’s Offering (1863 | Fig. 2), which was later reprinted in a collection he edited, The New Sunday School Tune Book (1870). Sampson’s tune is not well known.

2. Percy Dearmer / MONKS GATE

Bunyan’s hymn gained much greater attention when it was published in The English Hymnal (1906 | Fig. 3), using a textual adaptation by Percy Dearmer (1867–1936) and a folk tune adapted by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958).

Regarding the altered text, Dearmer offered a thorough explanation and defense of his work in Songs of Praise Discussed (1933):

In 1904, we who were working at The English Hymnal felt that some cheerful and manly hymns must be added to the usual repertory, and this song sprang to mind. It was a daring thing to add the song to a hymn-book, and it had never been attempted before. To include the hobgoblins would have been to ensure disaster; to ask the congregation of St. Ignotus, Erewhon Park, to invite all to come and look at them, if they wished to see true valour, would have been difficult. But when with the help of the marvellous folk-tune which Vaughan Williams had discovered, we had made a great hymn, it became easy for our imitators to complain that we had altered the words. We felt that we had done rightly, and that no one would have been more distressed than Bunyan himself to have people singing about hobgoblins in church. He had not written it for a hymn, and it was not suitable as a hymn without adaptation. When in 1923, Mrs. Meynell, than whom no better judge then existed, published her anthology, The School of Poetry, she included the Pilgrim Song in our version. . . .

That Bunyan would never have sanctioned the unaltered form as a hymn may be illustrated by considering the literary associations of the word “hobgoblin.” The word does not occur in the Bible (nor in the Metrical Psalter)—nor does “goblin” either—whereas “giant,” of course, does. That the word “hobgoblin” was even hardly in the rank of serious diction is shown by the fact that it is found only twice in Shakespeare, and then in playful, fairy connexions (Midsummer-Night’s Dream, II.i., and Merry Wives, V.v.): hobgoblins in fact occurred, as they do here, with “Fairies black, grey, green, and white, Moonshine revellers and shades of night,” and they were not mentioned in a serious religious connexion at that time, any more than now. . . .

The poem in an invitation to the reader, if he wishes to see what courage really is, to contemplate the heroes of the story, Pilgrim, Valiant, and the others. . . . It is indeed an admirable description of the book as a whole, and quite meaningless as a hymn. To sing it thus is to go against the whole intention of the words, and against Bunyan himself, but it has proved possible to enshrine its noble spirit and most of its diction in a real hymn which has quickly become a national possession.[5]

Generally, Dearmer’s version has been the dominant text in hymnal compilations, and yet in spite of Dearmer’s strong reservations, other hymnal compilers have readily adopted Bunyan’s original text. In order to avoid a sense in which only men are considered valiant, the editors of the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978) changed the first line to read “All who would valiant be,” and some other hymnals have followed suit.

The tune MONKS GATE emerged early in the 20th century, when English folk song collectors preserved variants of a song called “Our captain calls all hands on board tomorrow.” Three examples of this appeared in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society. The first was in volume 1, number 3 (1901), transcribed by W.P. Merrick in October 1900 with the assistance of Albert Burnell from the singing of Henry Hills, who had learned most of his songs from his upbringing in Lodsworth, Sussex, but at the time was a resident of Shepperton, near London. The added remarks are by Lucy E. Broadwood and J.A. Fuller-Maitland. The second was in volume 2, number 8 (1906), transcribed on 22 December 1904 by Ralph Vaughan Williams from the singing of Mrs. Harriet Verrall, “formerly of Monks-gate, Sussex, now living in Horsham.” The added remarks are by Cecil J. Sharp, whose stated variant transcription could not be found in the Journal but is preserved in a manuscript held by the Society. The third was in volume 3, number 11 (1907), and it was not a new transcription, but rather a possible restoration of the tune in a discussion by Annie G. Gilchrist about triple tunes being drawn out into other measures. The accompanying remarks by Lucy E. Broadwood cast doubt on that theory. She thought the tune resembled a Gaelic tune, “Allt-an-t-Siùgar.” All three of the above printed examples are shown in the gallery below.

Fig. 4. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, vol. 1, no. 3 (1901), vol. 2, no. 8 (1906), vol. 3, no. 11 (1907).
   

The version captured by RVW formed the basis of the hymn tune. A manuscript copy of this tune in one of Vaughan Williams’ notebooks is held in the British Library, Add MS 54190, vol. 2, bk. 8, fol. 199r (Fig. 5).

Alan Luff described the transformation here from folk tune to hymn tune:

Vaughan Williams made the fundamental decision to change the phrase pattern of the tune from an ABBC to an AABC structure. Rhythmically, he gave weight to the first bar by extending the initial note, making it easier for a congregation to get started. Likewise, he extended the upbeats of lines 2 and 5—lines 3 and 4 are repetitions of 1 and 2—but broke the pattern from this point onward in a manner typical of his own tunes. He constructed line 6 by doubling the length of two notes and thus extending the melody over the bar line. Line 7 is as in the original, but Vaughan Williams omitted one note from the original measure of five beats; the melody pushes forward with no long note at the end of the line or at the beginning of line 8, an effect the composer much loved in his own tunes.

The melodic changes are few: where the original melody in bar 3 drops to the lower sixth degree of the scale (B), Vaughan Williams takes it only to the seventh (C#), this eliminating the distinctly modal sixth and intensifying the D tonality, and one note is omitted from the penultimate bar. The remainder of the tune is as in the original. These changes, though slight, lessened the melody’s modal folk character, thus allowing for the “more modern” D harmonization.[6]

Vaughan Williams’ tune is sometimes credited with boosting the popularity of Bunyan’s hymn, both the original and Dearmer’s version. Erik Routley said of it, “It has made both the imitation and the hymn itself famous all over the country. It is one of the most striking examples available in modern hymnody of the effect of syncopation and cross-rhythm.”[7]

3. ST. DUNSTAN’S

The other most commonly recommended tune for Bunyan’s hymn is ST. DUNSTAN’S, composed by Charles Winfred Douglas (1867–1944) for The New Hymnal (1918 | Fig. 14) of the Episcopal Church. According to the The Hymnal 1940 Companion, it was composed “on December 15, 1917, while on the train returning to his home, St. Dunstan’s Cottage, Peekskill, from New York City.” At the time, Douglas was music director for the Community of St. Mary, Peekskill, New York.

Like MONKS GATE, this tune was intended for John Bunyan’s hymn. It was the second of two tunes offered in that hymnal for the same text, the other being EGBERT by Walter Henry Hall. Douglas offered his own perspective on ST. DUNSTAN’S in The Living Church, 7 Feb. 1920:

Bunyan’s burly song strikes a new and welcome note in our hymnal. The quaint sincerity of the words stirs us out of our easy-going dull Christianity to the thrill of great adventure. The ballad-like rhythm requires special musical treatment incompatible with a mechanical regularity of measures. Both of the tunes are therefore in free rhythm, following the words. The second tune should have a certain quality of sturdiness which always reminds the writer of Theodore Roosevelt, a lover of Pilgrim’s Progress, and of this song of Valiant (here slightly altered from its form in the Second Part of that great book). I can still see him in memory, climbing steadily and vigorously up a difficult rock trail in Arizona at earliest dawn; the, as ever in his good pilgrimage, campaigning against some of the many giants that threaten our national life.

A still greater and more romantic hero comes to mind when we read the epistle for Sexagesima Sunday, and see St. Paul valiantly battling through manifold disaster to “the care of all the Churches.” This and the preceding hymn, “Oft in danger, oft in woe,” are therefore specially appropriate for Sexagesima.[8]

Douglas’s manuscript for ST. DUNSTAN’S is preserved in the Charles Winfred Douglas Collection, Virginia Theological Seminary, Series 5, Subseries 6, Box 13.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
30 September 2021

Footnotes:

1. J.R. Watson, The English Hymn (Oxford: University Press, 1997), pp. 125–127.

2. Erik Routley, “Who would true valour see,” Hymns and the Faith (1955), p. 193.

3. Frank Colquhoun, “Pilgrim Song: Who would true valour see,” Hymns that Live (1980), p. 308.

4. Edward Darling & Donald Davison, “The Pilgrim’s Song,” Companion to Church Hymnal (2005), p. 858.

5. Percy Dearmer, “He who would valiant be,” Songs of Praise Discussed (1933), pp. 271–272.

6. Alan Luff, “Jesus our mighty Lord,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (1994), p. 902.

7. Erik Routley, “Who would true valour see,” Companion to Congregational Praise (1953), p. 223.

8. Winfred Douglas, “Notes on The New Hymnal—IX,” The Living Church, vol. 62, no. 15 (7 Feb. 1920), p. 450: Google Books; see also Douglas’s remarks in Church Music in History in Practice (1937), p. 260.

Related Resources:

Percy Dearmer, “He who would valiant be,” Songs of Praise Discussed (Oxford: University Press, 1933), pp. 271–272.

Albert Edward Bailey, “He who would valiant be,” The Gospel in Hymns (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), pp. 40–41.

K.L. Parry & Erik Routley, “Who would true valour see,” Companion to Congregational Praise (London: Independent Press, 1953), p. 223.

Erik Routley, “Who would true valour see,” Hymns and the Faith (London: John Murray, 1955), pp. 191–196.

Frank Colquhoun, “Pilgrim Song: Who would true valour see,” Hymns that Live (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980), pp. 306–313.

J.R. Watson & Kenneth Trickett, “Who would true valour see,” Companion to Hymns & Psalms (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing, 1988), p. 390.

Anne LeCroy, Raymond Glover, and David Farr, “He who would valiant be,” The Hymnal 1982 Companion, vol. 3B (NY: Church Hymnal Corp., 1994), pp. 1042–1044.

J.R. Watson, “Who would true valour see,” An Annotated Anthology of Hymns (Oxford: University Press, 2002), pp. 107–108.

Edward Darling & Donald Davison, “The Pilgrim’s Song,” Companion to Church Hymnal (Dublin: Columba, 2005), pp. 857–859.

“He who would valiant be,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/he_who_would_valiant_be