A Minor Mystery and the Touch of Emotion.

The latest mystery tugging at my brain is the reason for having the old hymn When the Roll is Called Up Yonder running through my mind on an almost regular basis. It’s the one which has: ‘when the roll is called up yonder I’ll be there’ at the end of each refrain. I don’t know why this should be since I have no particular reason to suspect that I’m about be called up yonder any time soon. 

I wonder whether it might have something to do with its origins. I’ve always imagined it to be a chapel hymn being belted out with great gusto by the downtrodden masses of the Victorian working class. Large numbers of them were persuaded to non-conformist denominations because the Anglican Church was a leading arm of the Establishment which sought to keep the iniquities of the class system firmly in place. Life for the labourers in the satanic mills and mines of Victorian Britain amounted to little more than endless drudgery, poverty, disease, and all manner of distress, and so I suppose a song envisioning a better existence post mortem would be popular because there was nothing else to be optimistic about. I further suppose that my own generally non-conformist attitude is probably enough to make the connection.

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Today was a cold one with temperatures hovering around freezing all day, and there was a beggar sitting with an upturned cap on the cold pavement in Ashbourne. I saw a woman go over to him and hand him a pack of sandwiches and a hot drink. I confess that it raised the suspicion of a tear, and I wanted to put my arm around her shoulder and say ‘thank you.’ It might have been only a minor gesture, but a light is a light when all’s said and done, and we don’t see too many of those in a world seemingly being turned ever darker by black-hearted leaders near and far.

But she was too far away and chasing after her seemed unbefitting. Besides, I wondered whether I should feel ashamed because even the suspicion of a tear is not very manly, is it?