Abide With Me

This #SlowAirSunday Is "Abide With Me". This beautiful hymn I sang in Church many times. After leaving the cemetery this tune came into my mind and I found myself singing it the whole drive home. At this point I knew that this needed to be in a #SlowAirSunday but I had never played it on the Pipes. I had this distinct feeling that it would work on the Bagpipe and that I needed to film this before I got home. So I set on my way to one of my favorite filming spots near my home and had a calm peaceful heart as I hiked to my filming spot. i played it a couple times and it worked beautifully on the Pipes. It was meant to be. Music speaks so clearly in my soul and I am so happy to share this with you this #SlowAirSunday

Tune History:

"Abide with Me" is a Christian hymn by Scottish Anglican Henry Francis Lyte. It is most often sung to the tune Eventide by William Henry Monk.

There is some controversy as to the exact dating of the text to Abide with Me. An article in The Spectator, 3 Oct. 1925, says that Lyte composed the hymn in 1820 while visiting a dying friend. It was related that Lyte was staying with the Hore family in County Wexford and had visited an old friend, William Augustus Le Hunte, who was dying. As Lyte sat with the dying man, William kept repeating the phrase "Abide With Me…". After leaving William's bedside Lyte wrote the hymn and gave a copy of it to Le Hunte's family.

The belief is that when Lyte felt his own end approaching twenty-seven years later at the age of 54, as he developed tuberculosis, he recalled the lines he had written so many years before in County Wexford. The Biblical link for the hymn is Luke 24:29 in which the disciples asked Jesus to abide with them "for it is toward evening and the day is spent". Using his friend's more personal phrasing "Abide with Me", Lyte composed the hymn. On November 20th 1847 in Nice, then in the Kingdom of Sardinia, Lyte died. The hymn was sung for the very first time at Lyte's funeral.

Lyrics:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day;
Earth's joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Not a brief glance I beg, a passing word,
But as Thou dwell'st with Thy disciples, Lord,
Familiar, condescending, patient, free.
Come not to sojourn, but abide with me.

Come not in terror, as the King of kings,
But kind and good, with healing in Thy wings;
Tears for all woes, a heart for every plea.
Come, Friend of sinners, thus abide with me.

Thou on my head in early youth didst smile,
And though rebellious and perverse meanwhile,
Thou hast not left me, oft as I left Thee.
On to the close, O Lord, abide with me.

I need Thy presence every passing hour.
What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power?
Who, like Thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if Thou abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Filmed in Yucaipa Ca.
Filming by Piper Productions LLC

www.darkislepiper.com