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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

# Posted 9:50 AM by Patrick Belton  

FESTUM OMNIUM SANCTORUM: In Spain, the performance today is traditional of Don Juan Tenorio, who was not a saint but had an awfully good time not being one. The day's hymn in the Catholic and Anglican churches, For All the Saints, is generally sung to the foot-tapping tune of Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM. The words, though, are those of public transport-taking suffragan Bishop of London William Walsham How (formerly of Wadham), who frequented the dockland slums and was in fact thought something of a saint there. (Given the Nelson anniversary, we could even note a Nelson connection: How's lyrics were first published in the Hymns for Saints' Days, and other Hymns (1864) by Thomas Nelson, nephew of the swashbuckler who in the peerage became Earl Nelson upon the first incumbent's death.) The personal connection: it was my school song, and I quite like it in spite of the fact I've never quite been accused of being a saint, and I once dated a How, though as a gentleman I will take to my grave whether she was or was not a saint.
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