Introduction

Biography

Boyd stu­died un­der Sa­bine Bar­ing-Gould, then at­tend­ed Wor­ces­ter Col­lege, Ox­ford.

Ordained an Ang­li­can priest in 1877, he ev­en­tu­al­ly be­came vi­car at All Saints Church in Nor­folk Square, Lon­don (1893–1918).

Works

An ar­ti­cle about the ori­gin of Boyd’s tune Pen­te­cost ap­peared in The Mu­sic­al Times, vol­ume 49, num­ber 790, De­cem­ber 1, 1908, pages 786–88:

The Rev. Will­iam Boyd, who comes from an old Scots stock of low­land bor­der thieves—as he wont to say—and is now Vi­car of All Saints’, Nor­folk Square, Hyde Park, has been kind enough, in a plea­sant con­ver­sa­tion with the pre­sent writ­er to tell the sto­ry of his po­pu­lar tune.

‘I be­gan to com­pose,’ he says, ‘when I was a boy of ten years of age. Some of my youth­ful at­tempts you will find in “Ice­land, its scenes and sa­gas” (1863), by Bar­ing-Gould. He was my tu­tor at Hurst­pier­point, and dur­ing his stay in Ice­land (in 1862) he wrote to me oft­en, ex­em­pli­fy­ing his let­ters by char­ac­ter­is­tic pen-and-ink sketch­es to de­scribe men and things.

‘For that, his first book, I put in­to har­mo­nized shape some of the tunes he had not­ed down dur­ing his Ice­land­ic tour. I went up to Ox­ford in 1864, and was or­gan schol­ar of my col­lege (Wor­ces­ter), and I al­so played at St. Ed­mund Hall, Tri­ni­ty and Pem­broke.’ Here it should be stat­ed that the Rev. Bar­ing-Gould’s first cu­ra­cy was at Hor­bu­ry, near Wake­field, a place which gave the name to Dykes’ set­ting of ‘Near­er my God, to Thee.’

To con­tin­ue Mr. Boyd’s nar­ra­tive. ‘Bar­ing-Gould asked me to com­pose a tune to “Come, Ho­ly Ghost, our souls in­spire,” to be sung at a large meet­ing of York­shire col­liers at Whit­sun­tide which he had or­gan­ized. I walked, talked, slept and ate with the words, and at last I evolved the tune which I na­tur­al­ly named “Pen­te­cost,” which had an enor­mous vogue in York­shire.

‘One day, dur­ing my un­der­grad­uate pe­ri­od at Oxford, G. A. Bee­croft, a Christ Church man and an ama­teur mu­si­cian, came to me and said: “I want some fel­lows who write hymn-tunes ab­ove the av­er­age to con­trib­ute to a book I am get­ting up—write me three.” I agreed, and sent him four tunes, from Clent, in Wor­ces­ter­shire, where I was spend­ing Christ­mas with my friend, John Amph­lett—now a well known li­ter­ary fig­ure in the coun­try. One of the tunes was “Pen­te­cost,” which I had pre­vi­ous­ly com­posed for Bar­ing-Gould, but which re­mained in man­uscript. Bee­croft’s col­lect­ion was pub­lished by Bow­den, of Oxford, in the six­ties…

‘How came the tune to be as­so­ci­ated with “Fight the good fight”’? we ask Mr. Boyd. ‘Ah! that is a fun­ny thing,’ he re­plies. ‘One day, as I was walk­ing along Re­gent Street, I felt a slap on my back, and turn­ing round I saw my dear old friend Ar­thur Sul­li­van. “My dear Bil­ly,” he said, “I’ve seen a tune of yours which I must have.” (He was then ed­it­ing Church Hymns.) “All right,” I said. “Send me a cheque and I agree.” No co­py of the book, much less a proof, was sent to me, and when I saw the tune I was hor­ri­fied to find that Sul­li­van had as­signed it to “Fight the good fight.” We had a re­gu­lar fis­ti­cuffs about it, but judg­ing from the fa­vour with which the tune has been re­ceived, I feel that Sul­li­van was right in so mat­ing words and mu­sic.‘

‘The tune was print­ed in the 1875 edi­tion of Hymns An­cient and Mo­dern with­out my per­miss­ion. In their last edi­tion they turned me out, al­so with­out my per­miss­ion. Still they had to come back, I re­joice to say, for peo­ple said ‘the old was bet­ter.’ Since then it has found its way in­to most col­lect­ions, Church of Eng­land and Non­con­form­ist, and has gone all over the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. There is hard­ly a week that I do not get a cou­ple of let­ters, from far or near, ask­ing me to al­low of its in­ser­tion in some new pub­li­ca­tion. And I do, in most cas­es, al­low it, but with the pro­vi­so that the tune must be set to the words “Fight the good fight.”’

To give you an in­stance of its far-reach­ing sweep, let me me­ntion a re­min­is­cence. On land­ing at Ja­mai­ca in Jan­uary, 1902, I was ap­proach­ing the great church at Kings­ton—now a de­so­la­tion, since the earth­quake—bel­lowed, I had al­most said—by a con­gre­ga­tion of 2,000, most­ly black peo­ple. The effect was deaf­en­ing.

And at the C.I.V.’s great ser­vice at St. Paul’s Ca­thed­ral, on the eve of their de­part­ure for the Bo­er War, it rolled through the vast build­ing with thrill­ing ef­fect, Creigh­ton, then Bi­shop of Lon­don, being “great­ly moved,” so he told me af­ter­wards.’

We should here add that the King and the Prince of Wales al­ways ask for the hymn and tune when­ever the func­tion ad­mits of it. It is sung at all Roy­al con­fir­ma­tions—as in­deed at most oth­er con­fir­ma­tions. It is the fa­vour­ite of both sol­diers and sail­ors, and school­boys and un­der­grad­uates, and scarce a ser­vice took place in South Af­ri­ca that the tune was not waft­ed from ten thou­sand throats, sing­ing on the veldt to God Al­migh­ty as the God of Bat­tles. ‘It is the most mov­ing hymn I know,’ said Lord Kit­chen­er to Mr. Boyd, when he came to All Saints’ as ‘best man’ at his bro­ther’s—Ar­thur Kit­chen­er’s—wed­ding.’