Mind your language
I ACTUALLY learnt something this week. I had been to a wedding where my husband was getting increasingly restive next to me on the bench as he detected each updating of the familiar words of the service of Matrimony. When we got to, `Those whom God hath joined together let no one put asunder', I thought he would explode. We were singing Bunyan's 'To be a Pilgrim', and I too noticed the words were unfamiliar. This is how we began:
Who would true valour see, Let him come hither; One here will constant be, Come wind, come weather.
This, I discover, is more or less what Bunyan wrote. But some bright spark in editing the English Hymnal clearly want- ed to make it more specifically Chris- tian, and came up with the version:
He who would valiant be Gainst all disaster, Let him in constancy Follow the Master.
So it seems there is nothing new about ecclesiastical correctness.
Dot Wordsworth
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