Hey My Love from “Heaven Shall Not Wait”

I am in the “Jesus – One of Us” section of the Iona Community’s Heaven Shall Not Wait, enjoying a break from American songs and enjoying their use of traditional tunes or John Bell’s traditionally influenced melodies. This book is available from Wild Goose and GIA. Selected songs by John Bell are also available through Willow Publications in Australia (the As One Voice people).

I can skip “Sing Hey for the Carpenter” because that was in Gather Australia and I blogged it here. I will note however that there were chords and a proper piano arrangement in GA, whereas here Bell gives only a melody line and advises against any backing except a Bodrhan.

“Hey My Love” is the Beatitudes in folk format set to LADY MAISRY, which turns out to be a delightful old tune. There eight verses to pick from and it is suggested as a gentle meditation. There are obvious liturgical uses if the song style suits.

My backing involved guessing chords again.

I found the text with extremely minor variations on page fourteen of this handout. The only problem is that they say it is an OCP copyright written by Father Cesáreo Gabaráin and translated by Robert Trupia. Trying to check all this I found this note explaining why none of his work, including “Pescadoes Des Hombres” is found there anymore, so I couldn’t check for the date of composition.

The Iona text starts:

1 Blessed are the ones I call the poor,

Hey my love and ho my joy;

Blessed are the ones I call the poor who dearly love me;

Blessed are the one I call the poor,

God shall their kingdom’s place ensure:

Refrain

His kingdom is of heaven, of earth, of fire, of love.

Words: John L. Bell & Graham Maule, copyright © 1987, 2002 Wild Goose Resource Group/ WGRG, Iona Community, Glasgow G2 3DH, Scotland. Melody: ‘Laidy Maisry” Scottish traditional. Websites: wgrg.co.uk & holycity-glasgow.co.uk

Apart from no “hey my love…” this is so close to the Gabaráin text for that to be an obvious copy of the Iona text.

Verses 2,4,6,7 and eight are word for word the same, which at best suggests a lazy translator.

Verse 3 is different:

Blessed are the ones who know their need…

In them God’s promises take seed…

The second line of verse 5 also differs:

With equal grace they’ll hear God’s call.

I can’t imagine that the Iona people authorised this as the Gabaráin text is noted to be a translation. The text has the Iona style so I can only imagine it was stolen from them. All very murky. The tune appears to be the same, so another possibility is a mistake in attribution, but then you would expect the “Hey my love” section to be included.

I suggest you ignore all that and enjoy this glorious performance:

* I’ve decided that maybe no-one has stolen anything. What if the handout has a mistaken attribution AND there is a version for people who can’t bring themselves to sing “hey my love and ho my joy” and sing “all who sing my words today” instead. Since I note that on Wild Goose there is an updated copyright note saying 1987 and 2002, maybe that is for the updated lyric. Without any OCP listings for Gabaráin I’m not sure how to check this. Then again I think I’ve spent too much time checking this already!