Song of the Day - 31st December

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!

So we come to the final day of the inaugural year of the project - it's been a brilliant start! I have 38 songs all ready to go out to my participating Beta choirs, two Christmas songs already gone out and one video returned already! I am most encouraged by the enthusiasm shown and the complimentary feedback I have already received.

Today's Song of the Day is a setting of the famous poem "Ring Out, Wild Bells" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. On the theme of ringing out the bad and ringing in the good, it entreats the reader to forget any unpleasantness of the year gone and focus on the good that can be done in the year to come.

Historically, the New Year has not always begun on 1st January. The early Roman calendar began the year on 1st March. The calendar then had just 10 months, beginning with March. September through to December, the ninth through to the twelfth months of the Gregorian calendar, were originally positioned as the seventh through to the tenth months. Roman mythology credits King Numa with the establishment of the two new months of Ianuarius and Februarius, which were initially placed at the end of the year.

The first recorded celebration of New Year's Eve took place in ancient Babylon, around 2000 BC, but New Year's Eve is celebrated in different ways in different countries, with celebrations, feasting, drinking, bell-ringing and fireworks.

The "wild bells" referenced in Tennyson's poem were the bells of Waltham Abbey. According to the local story, Tennyson was staying at High Beach in the vicinity and heard the bells being rung on New Year's Eve.

Ring Out, Wild Bells

By Alfred Lord Tennyson

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,

The flying cloud, the frosty light;

The year is dying in the night;

Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,

For those that here we see no more,

Ring out the feud of rich and poor,

Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,

And ancient forms of party strife;

Ring in the nobler modes of life,

With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care the sin,

The faithless coldness of the times;

Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,

But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,

Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;

Ring out the thousand wars of old,

Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,

The larger heart, the kindlier hand;

Ring out the darkness of the land,

Ring in the Christ that is to be.