Ah, well! If we're gonna talk treble/descant or melody/harmony in general, you can help with a straw poll I've been conducting (when I think about it ...): on the penultimate phrase - let's call it 'feed me til I want no more - who, in your version, remains on the one high note, and who sings the bit that moves downwards then dramatically back up? The United Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church of Canada, and North American Gymanfa Ganu hymnbooks, on which I was raised, give the movement to the soprano/bass lines, with the tenors holding the top note (and the altos bouncing around in a rather lacklustre way, assuaged somewhat by a chance to shine in the next phrase). BUT the Welsh give the moving bits to the tenors and basses, which I reckon is because they want to keep the flashy interesting bits for themselves. I don't know how it was originally arranged. (Seems to me that the Methodists over in England do it the way I learned it in Canada.) So what do you do?

And a true anecdote about Cwm Rhondda: some years back - 10 or 15 or so - the Welsh Methodists were bringing out an Atodiad to their hymnbook. That's a new publications which includes hymns that had become popular *beyond* the existing selection. As Cwm Rhondda wasn't in the original book, it was suggested for the Atodiad ... and turned down by The Committee because (and I tell no lies!) of its association with rugby matches and other pastimes of ill repute.

Story doesn't end there: it is, in actual fact, IN the Atodiad as it is now published. This is because at least one of The Committee thought that was a particularly stupid rationale and had access to the final copy as submitted to the publisher. Cwm Rhondda somehow got slipped into the manuscript. Oops. How did that happen?

siân
only sometimes a.k.a.
si?n
and even less often (as luck has it) as
sin