The pastor asked me to play guitar and lead the hymn 'Be Thou My Vision' at yesterday's Lenten service. After having five St Patrick's Day Parades, we were all feeling kinda Celtic, and this hymn is Celtic.

The CyberHymnal has this to say of the words:

Words: At­trib­ut­ed to Dal­lan For­gaill, 8th Cen­tu­ry (Rob tu mo bhoile, a Com­di cri­de); trans­lat­ed from an­cient Ir­ish to Eng­lish by Ma­ry E. Byrne in "Eriú," Jour­nal of the School of Ir­ish Learn­ing, 1905, and versed by El­ea­nor H. Hull, 1912, alt.

The tune, 'Slane' is named after a hill in Ireland. Its history seems obscure, but I'm willing to accept it an as old Irish air.

Our little church includes more than one person who cannot read well, so I folk-processed the words to make them more understandable. In fact, I consider the second line completely unintelligible:

"Be thou my vision, oh Lord of my heart.
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art."

I read that to my husband, and he said "What?!" So out it went, along with extraneous capital letters and any non-standard punctuation. The goal is for everybody to sing.

The tune now, is not what I would call a folk tune. For one thing, it has a range of an octave plus a third. You know, a lot of people think that five notes are enough for a song. (Somewhere on the Mudcat is an impressive list of famous songs with only five notes to them.) 'Slane' has eleven notes.

Then there's the timing. I typed the song out and put the chords on it, and it just didn't seem to go. It was lumpy, with chords in funny places. When that happens, it often means that somebody didn't write pick-up notes as pick-ups, but that didn't seem to be the answer here.

The Catholics (Lord of all Hopefulness) and the Lutherans thought Slane was in 3/4 time, but the CyberHymnal thought 4/4. I tried both. Then I tried making it a crooked tune. That didn't seem to help either.

So finally I went for 6/4. I've played 6/4 before, and I'm comfortable with it. 6/4 seems to be used when a song is 'talky' or uneven. For example, one measure might go LA-la-la LA-la-la while the next goes TUM-ty TUM-ty TUM-ty. (It's used for other things as well.)

However, there was one measure that wouldn't co-operate. The words to it are 'day and by ni-ight,' and when I tried to play it, my left hand got stuck on the fretboard and didn't want to move. And try as I might I couldn't sing the next note - it refused to come to my mind. Strange!

I found that if I lengthened the last syllable of 'night,' I could finish the song. The meter doesn't allow for that at all, but without it I was getting nowhere. I've decided that there is an invisible, magic dot on that note, probably put there by leprechauns, and if you want to play 'Slane,' you must acknowledge it.