And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times

DESCRIPTION: "And did those feet in ancient times Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God" visit England and its "dark Satanic mills." "Bring me my bow of burning gold... my chariot of fire.... Till we have build Jerusalem."
AUTHOR: Words: William Blake / Music: Sir Hubert Parry
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1808 (words); music added 1916
KEYWORDS: religious Jesus nonballad
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Pegler-SoldiersSongsAndSlangoftheGreatWar, pp. 267-268, "Jerusalem" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 328, "A New Jerusalem" (1 text)
NOTES [295 words]: This song has a long and complicated history, which is very fully described in its Wikipedia entry, so I won't repeat it all here. William Blake's original poem was published as part of his preface to Milton: A Poem in Two Books; the book is dated 1804, but it is thought that this part of it was typeset c. 1808.
There is of course no Biblical reference to Jesus visiting Great Britain, which was not even incorporated into the Roman Empire until a couple of decades after Jesus's time. Possibly the poem refers indirectly to the widespread legend that Joseph of Arimathea and others ended up in Britain, perhaps at Glastonbury, perhaps carrying the Holy Grail; one might suggest that Jesus would have visited his missionaries there, at least in a vision. For a little bit of background on that, see the notes to "The Corpus Christi Carol."
The "New Jerusalem" is mentioned in Rev. 21:10, etc.
The poem remained just that for more than a century, until Sir Hubert Parry was induced -- apparently somewhat reluctantly -- to set it to music. Ironically, it is now probably his best-known work.
Apart from its use in hymnals, the poem has been reprinted extremely frequently -- when I looked it up in Granger's Index to Poetry, there were dozens of citations. I can't remember any other poem so widely cited. But, curiously, though I have many, many of the books cited in Granger's, I had only one of the books cited for this poem. That probably should tell us something or other, but I don't know what.
The poem was cited as "Jerusalem" and as "(A) New Jerusalem," but the title "And Did Those Feet in Ancient Times" was much more common than the other two combined, so I have used it.
Although widely known as a hymn, traditional collections seem to be very few. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: PSoS267

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography