On the way up to Lincoln to the the North American Festival of Wales, Frank said "You know what we forgot to bring? Our hymnals!"
If there is one certainty, it's that we would want to have hymnals for the worship service Sunday morning and Gymanfa Ganu sessions that afternoon. (In the US always referred to as Gymanfa Ganu, even though that may be a misuse of mutations.)
So the first thing I did when we got there was buy two new large-print hymnals. I’m glad I did, as the next day they were out of the large-print copies, and I’d be disinclined to go back to the smaller books.
What you see here is almost all of our standard issue hymnals from * WNAA (formerly WNGGA). I don’t see Frank’s large version we already had. I thought it would be with his choir music, but it wasn't. From left to right are:
* the two new ones we just bought,
* my large-print copy (same size as the new ones, I just arranged the shot so it's sitting lower to show the title),
* our two smaller sized ones in the "newer" format. They have been so well used that they both are missing their covers.
* the "old format" copies we first had--two of which are closed and the third (my copy) is open and on top. As you can see, in the old books some of the hymns have all the words down below, and none in between the musical staffs--making it more difficult to follow when you had to keep looking back and forth between the words and the music. On my copy you can see where I had started indicating at the top of the page all the dates that hymns were used, starting with the National Gymanfa in Kansas City in 1992. I gave that up when I realized that some hymns were used for virtually every gymanfa -- "Cwm Rondda", for instance, is the rousing hymn used last every time, right before the national anthem and then "God Be With You 'til We Meet Again."
* WNAA = Welsh North American Association
* WNGGA = Welsh National Gymanfa Ganu Association
The organization's name and name of the annual event changed when they expanded it to include a whole weekend of workshops, concerts, films, etc, in addition to the Gymanfa sessions.
Why am I showing you our hymnals, and boring you with this trivia? My get pushed challenge, given to me by Jackie, was "Music."
How very interesting Mary, delightful image making it more so with the back story! Love to see the old hymns, so familiar , and as a teenager would play the organ in our local chapel on occasions! - this brings back so many memories of my childhood, chapel, Sunday School and of course our annual Gymanfa Ganu ! Thanks for the memories ! fav
Good on @30pics4jackiesdiamond for giving you this challenge. You represented it in a beautiful way, and it’s always good to hear your stories. One of my first thoughts when I looked at the hymnal on top was how difficult it must be to sing the words when they are not between the staffs.
