NOW in her ninth decade, Irene Onion (right), a retired teacher and organist, has plenty of experience of playing hymns for children. Aged 83, she has now written her own — a celebration of God’s bounty through the seasons.
“Sing, sing, sing”, which she co-wrote with James Dixon, the activity coordinator at the Old Vicarage Residential Home in Bakewell, was in part inspired by a challenge to create an alternative to “All things bright and beautiful”, a hymn that Mrs Onion confesses to thinking “Not again!” about when she was asked to play it. The new hymn, composed on Apple’s Garage Band music software, comprises verses that move through the farming seasons: “Sing hallelujah About the summer light Whose golden rays Lengthen the days And hold back darker nights.”
A visit to All Saints’, Bakewell, opposite the home, inspired the duo to write a joyful hymn that children would enjoy singing, Mr Dixon recalled this week. A “skipping melody” was chosen, and Mrs Onion found chords to match.
She trained as a teacher, and remembers being inspired by Mabel Esther Allan’s Judith Teaches, a children’s novel of 1955, which tells the story of a young woman who starts a teaching career in an English town. Mrs Onion taught in a junior school in Derbyshire, where she met Derek, her husband of 57 years.
Mrs Onion grew up attending Addison Street Methodist Church, Tibshelf, in Derbyshire, started learning the piano at 11, and recalls childhood hymn-singing from the book Songs of Praise. As a young married woman, she played the organ at North Wingfield Methodist Church. Her own favourite hymns are Welsh ones that “you can really get your teeth into”, she said. Her son, Andrew, still remembers hearing Cwm Rhondda sung by the choir at a church that they visited on holiday in Llandudno. At Mrs Onion’s wedding in 1967, pupils from her school sang “Father, hear the prayer we offer”.
Mr Dixon, who has organised a range of activities at the care home, from filmmaking to poetry, reports that the organist at All Saints’ is keen to play “Sing, sing, sing” on the newly refurbished organ. It has already been debuted by residents at the recent Harvest service.
The duo’s next challenge, they say, is to write a Christmas carol.
The hymn can be heard here