Autumn Days

It was my sons' harvest festival last Friday and one of the hymns was called Autumn Days, by one Estelle White. With apologies to whoever holds the copyright, here are the lyrics.

Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled
And the silk inside a chestnut shell
Jet planes meeting in the air to be refuelled
All these things I love so well

So I mustn’t forget
No, I mustn’t forget
To say a great big thank you
I mustn’t forget

Clouds that look like familiar faces
And a winter’s moon with frosted rings
Smell of bacon as I fasten up my laces
And the song the milkman sings

Whipped-up spray that is rainbow-scattered
And a swallow curving in the sky
Shoes so comfy though they’re worn out and they’re battered
And the taste of apple pie

Scent of gardens when the rain’s been falling
And a minnow darting down a stream
Picked-up engine that’s been stuttering and stalling
And a win for my home team

According to a post on another blog, Estelle White died earlier this year, aged 85. A former nun and a versatile musician, she apparently wrote more than 160 hymns. I must admit though to surprise that this one is so popular at harvest festivals. Evidently I'm not the first to take issue with it either.

I should point out that my sons' school is CoE and lays on the Anglicanism fairly thick at times. Autumn Days seems at odds with this. My own church upbringing leaves me reluctant to term it a hymn. Usually there would be some kind of reference to God or a theological point. The closest this one comes is in the chorus: "I mustn't forget to say a great big thank you" - which begs the question, to whom? The things themselves? The universe? It sounds as though the children are embracing pantheism. Ms White herself apparently believed in starting from something concrete rather than abstract; it’s a common approach among modern songwriters but hymnists normally include some kind of religious reference along the way.

Of course, the basic theme of the song is to be grateful, to something or other. And this, it appears, is why the choristers in the article disliked it: they didn't believe they should be expressing gratitude for aircraft.

I have a more fundamental objection anyway: semantics. I don't believe many jet planes met in the air to be refuelled, even in the 60s when Ms White claimed it was a marvel, and I've never seen a cloud that resembled a familiar face (other than possibly in Disney's version of Pooh and the Heffalump). Would I really be putting my shoes on before the breakfast is even cooked? And milkmen were supposed to whistle, not sing, even assuming you could hear them above the whine of the electric float. Most of all I dislike the last line. "Home" team is the team playing in its own stadium. "My" team implies favouritism. The two concepts are unrelated: "my home team" makes no sense at all. And nor do I think it's healthy to thank a deity for a sports victory: it poses awkward questions in defeat. Perhaps Ms White had no clue about sport. But then she was a Geordie, where football is a religion, and presumably she spent a good part of her life wearing black and white...

The best compliment I can pay this song is that it meant there was no room on the school's playlist for "When the knight won his spurs". Who aren't my home team, incidentally.