Roamin’ in the gloamin’ (1928)

ROAMIN' IN THE GLOAMIN' 45 were an abstainer you were a member of the Blue Ribbon Army, as it was then called. The Band of Hope meetings I loved. They were bright and colourful. The officials were good men and women, full of high ideals. The singing at the meetings appealed to me from the start. Moody and Sankey, the American evangelists, had left a deeply religious effect all over Britain and the hymns they sang at their revival meetings had taken a powerful grip of the people of Scotland. Their melodies were simple but swinging ; they lent themselves admirably to community singing. I forget many of the hymns we sang at the Band of Hope, but such favourites as "Shall We Gather At the River?" "Throw Out the Life-Line," and similar haunting airs stand out in my memory. I loved every note of them and yelled them out most lustily. The old Scottish psalm tunes we occasionally sang at the Band of Hope, and also at the Sunday School I attended, likewise made an extraordinary appeal to me. "All People That On Earth Do Dwell," to the tune of the Old Hundred; "O, God of Bethel By Whose Hand," to the tune of Martyrdom, and "Do Thou With Hyssop Sprinkle Me," to the tune of St. Kilda, were among my favourites. The last mentioned melody is in a most unusual minor key. It was written by a young Scottish musician named Bloomfield who died early in life and whose body, I have often been told, is lying in an ancient cemetery in Aberdeen. Middle-aged and elderly Scots who may happen to be reading my memoirs will remember this tune of St. Kilda and how whole congregations used to sway from side to side as they were singing its plaintive ear-haunting rhythms. And they will remember the old Precentor with his pitchfork— before the "chists o' whistles" (the organs and harmoniums) were introduced — searching for the key and then leading off the psalmody for the assembled worshippers. His was a job second only in importance to that of the