Bickersmith = Bickersteth = Newman?

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Haruo's picture

I look for Edward H. Bickersmith's "When the Battle's Over", the English title and author given for hymn #2 (q.v.) in Espero internacia, which I am making a spreadsheet for. No luck as to either title or author. So I decide it's probably a typo for Edward H. Bickersteth, a fairly well known hymn writer. But I don't see an obvious fit in his first line list (though of course I only have the title, not the first line, to go by). What I do see, however, is a listing of "Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom" as Bickersteth's. When I follow the links, it's only a single instance, and the linked page says nothing about Bickersteth. So how did Bickersteth end up with one instance of Newman's great hymn listed as his, and how can this be corrected? There's no way the Hymnary should be telling people Bickersteth wrote it and requiring them to click further to find out otherwise, unless there's actually a hymnal that credited it to him... Is that how this sort of thing happens, in other words, is it not an error that needs correction?

Incidentally, I've pretty well determined that the English underlying No. 2 in Espero internacia is Bickersteth's "Stand, Soldier of the cross. Thy high allegiance claim", but with an added refrain by Ed. Eldad and a tune by Ira Evans Hicks that's adapted to the refrain-added version. The three stanzas correspond to verses 1, 4 and 5 of the five stanzas given for the two instances in the Hymnary that have full texts. It seems to me that some of this information should go in Notes.

I also note that of the 42 instances of this hymn listed, only one gives the first line as "Stand, soldier of the cross, Thy high allegiance claim"; two just give "Stand, soldier of the cross", and the other 39 all replace "thy" with "the". As the text is given in the two text-supplied instances, the first line is actually "Stand, soldier of the cross" and "Thy high allegiance claim" is the second line. And I don't know why the text authority capitalizes "Soldier" when none of the citations do.


Comments

The hymnal "Concordia, a collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs" published by Augsburg in 1916 has Bickersteth listed as an author of "Lead, kindly Light." That is why one instance appears under Bickersteth's name.

As to "Stand, soldier of the cross," you are right, "Soldier" should not be capitalized. The hymnals that have "the high allegiance" are DNAH hymnals that haven't been proofed yet. DNAH hymns have standard lines whether or not they appear that way in the hymnal. "Thy high allegiance claim" is indeed the second line in both the hymnals that we have full text for. It is added to the first line in the authority as a qualifier because there is another hymn that starts "Stand, soldier of the cross" by William Walsham How.