St Theodulph of Orleans (tr J.M. Neale) wrote a cracking good hymn.
Q. In today's Palm Sunday procession, I accidentally started singing "The company of angels..." instead of "Thou art the King of Israel...", since I am used to reading text downwards in columns rather than across. After two lines of this I noticed that people were glaring at me, and so I switched back to Verse 1.
My question is: when we got to Verse 2, should I have sung "The company of angels..." again, or gone back to sing the omitted bit from Verse 1? I didn't want people to think I was denying "Thou art the King of Israel".
A: You could try muttering "Thou art the King of Israel..." sotto voce - or sub voce as we Latinists have it.
Q: I had another problem with Verse 3.
A: You mean "with palms before thee went"? Did you sing "psalms" by mistake, even though you have a visual aid to remind you?
Actually, He requested psalms.
Q: Mea culpa, but there's another problem, in Line 3. "Our prayer & prayers & anthems..." I suppose that's a typo?
A: Yes, St Theodulph of Orleans never wrote Inwoodisms like that. It's "Our prayer and praise and anthems". Er, or possibly, "Our praise and prayer and anthems". I'd need to look it up. Still, in these circumstances, you should always sing what is written on the service sheet.
A pope showers people with holy water.
Q: I am a Catholic priest, and at the Palm Sunday procession my attention was distracted by an idiot who was singing the wrong verse of "All glory, laud and honour." So much so, that some of my holy water fell onto a pile of unsold Tablet newspapers, which promptly burst into flames, severely damaging the bespoke mass-trousers worn by one of the servers. Is this a known problem?
The Tablet. Keep away from holy water.
A: Yes, indeed. I even heard a rumour that a certain Tablet journalist was severely burned when she came into contact with some holy water; however, this is probably just malicious gossip.
The Tablet in easy-to-burn form - you can fuel some people all of the time.
