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FAMOUS SONGS
various nations. Our Scottish brethren have their 'Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs, turned out of Profane Ballads,' and curiously enough, these are chiefly parodies upon English songs, such as ' John, come kiss me now/ and sung to English tunes. The custom of singing' psalms to hornpipes' has not died away even yet, for we may still point to instances whichever way we turn, and whether at home or abroad." Mr. Chappell was not quite right in his assertions. A goodly number of hymn tunes have been converted to the uses of secular words and entertainments. The Salvation Army almost invariably sing their hymns to good old English secular melodies.
In the Protestant church the "Old Hun-dredth" possesses more than a historical interest. Originally it was composed to the 134th Psalm in the Geneva Psalter, and afterwards used by English Protestants to the 1 ooth—about 1562. The name of the composer has never been satisfactorily decided. It has, on the word of Handel, been ascribed to Luther and then to Claude Gondimel, "a fine composer, assas-sinated at Lyons during the massacres of St. Bartholomew;" but now it seems to have been ascertained with tolerable certainty that Guillaume le Franc, a musician of Rouen, either
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