Jerusalem

Yes, sally it's because Blake either lived, or spent a lot of time in Cornwall, and there is a legend that Jesus travelled with his merchant uncle, Joseph of Arithamea, to the region where tin was mined , and this is what Blake had in mind ( the tin mines.....dark, satanic mills.)

I was told, many years ago (and have no idea as to how accurate this is) that it referred to workshops and offices that made city dwellers work hard in punishing conditions.
We imagine that hard working conditions came about during the Industrial Revolution, but there were a lot of workshops before that, and apparently office work - constant copying by poor light, peering and bending - was also very bad for health. Most of these buildings were poorly lit.
I'd love to know if anyone has any other explanation.

I always sing 'these' because that's what's printed in the Hymn Book!

I sing 'those' because I grew up surrounded by tdsm, my parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents had all worked in them. I interviewed my paternal grannie and her workmates in the weaving shed when I was about 13. Never been so overwhelmed in my life, all these large women in those wrap round pinnies, full of life and laughter and surrounded by huge, noisy machines,with the air full (it seemed to me) of wisps of cotton or fluff.
I know it should be 'these' but somehow, emotion gets me every time.

I have heard that Blake was referring to pre-christian monuments like Stonehenge, which were generally thought to be a place where dark pagan rites and human sacrifices were performed, and whose circles of stones were "mills" like the milled edge of coins.

I've always sung 'these'?? The Lord's Prayer is different in Scotland as well.

P.S.. When we planned assemblies at school we always either chose Jerusalem or To be a pilgrim love both . Plenty of hywel.if that is spelt right

Many years ago a teacher said that we might one day understand the words we sang so enthusiastically. Here's a brief explanation
Famously, Blake asks four questions in succession, and the answer to each is a resounding no. Christ’s feet never trod in England; the Lamb of God didn’t gambol – preposterous as the image is – around the Cotswolds; the Holy Spirit wasn’t regularly spotted in London fog; and most directly of all, there was no sense of Jerusalem in the dark Satanic mills of the Industrial Age. The consequent fantasy of building a New Jerusalem in England is widely understood by anyone who studies Blake to be a stonking parody of Napoleonic Era nationalism. Even in 1804, no one sung and danced about their own ‘mental fight’ and expected to be taken seriously.

Instead, Jerusalem encapsulates Blake’s fears about the all-too-easy suppression of the individual spirit. The ‘Satanic mills’ may refer to the Albion Flour Mills, large-scale mills near Blake’s home which were burned down anonymously after they threatened to put smaller millers out of business. (So, Jerusalem as an anthem would celebrate anti-capitalist arson. Which makes us virtually French.) But when Blake wrote about ‘mills’ elsewhere he usually used them as a metaphor for institutionalised religion – which, like Marx after him, he considered the natural ally of capitalism and monarchy.
Makes you think doesn't it!

Laying aside the symbolism of Blake's text, didn't Hubert Parry always write a bloody good tune!

Yes. I loved Repton; reminds me of my first year in Secondary School.

He must be a teeny bit Welsh to have written hymns like that....

I'll give you that one ?!

My favourite hymn and it reminds me too of school.
I note that someone said the words are Quaker - our headmistress was a Quaker.
www.qhpress.org/quakerpages/qwhp/soma.htm
I don't particularly want a religious funeral but I would like that one sung - or at least played.
'Forgive our foolish ways' very apt!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7SX3r59sc
Lovely

I sing 'those'

Just checking in the hymn book
Yes, it is 'those' in 'Hymns Old and New'

Jerusalem was our school song. I think we all sang 'the' dark, satanic mills.
Like Iam I just assumed it was a reference to the cotton mills of the northwest where I grew up and where my grandmother worked from the age of 12.

So there you are OP......you pays yer money and takes yer choice!

Ours was Gaudeamus Igitur sung in Latin (a shortened version)
I don't think they realised it was a popular drinking song

Our school hymn was 'Thee will I love, my God and King'.

Don't think I've ever heard it sung outside that school although I can still remember the words.

The music teacher made us sing 'tar' instead of 'tower' because she said our northern vowels sounded common!

Good job you didn't have to sing 'castle' then.

I think it was because the word 'tower' came at the end of a line and the two syllable came out a bit straggly...

My school adopted Harrow School's 'Forty Years On' as did a few other all girls schools.

I always loved the words and the last verse is now so meaningful.

Forty years on, growing older and older,
Shorter in wind, as in memory long,
Feeble of foot, and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you that once you were strong?
God gives us bases to guard or beleaguer,
Games to play out, whether earnest or fun,
Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,
Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!

merlot yes that is poignant.
The one that always got me was 'Lord dismiss us with thy blessing' sung at the end of every term, with the immortal line 'time that's lost may all retrieve'
As if

Much as I love Jerusalem (and many thanks for all the interesting explanations) I do remain amused by such a stirring song whose responses should be: No, No, No, No, Get them yourself.

Jerusalem! Rousing melody, but difficult to play. Words don't make any sense though IMO.

Bit like a Whiter Shade of Pale. Both obviously written under the influence of something hallucinogenic.