I to the Hills Will Lift Mine Eyes

From the Scottish Psalter, 1650

That wonderful alpine peak of musical drama, The Sound of Music, didn’t always get right the strenuous and vibrant Catholic faith of the Von Trapp family, but there are moments when the good nuns of the Nonnberg Abbey speak and behave as such sisters would do. So when Maria, now Frau Von Trapp, comes to the Mother Superior and asks for her help in their escape from the Nazis, the Mother asks her to remember the psalm that begins, “I lift up my eyes to the mountains, whence cometh my help.” And sure enough, they will escape to Switzerland by passing over the bordering mountains, though — and this is not specified in the film — a section of Bavaria still lay ahead of them.

By the way, my family and I have been to the Nonnberg. We were traveling in Europe in 1998, making our way towards Italy, where I had research work to do in translating Tasso’s epic poem about the First Crusade, Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). Our son Davey was only four years old, and the hike up from the central city to the Abbey was long and steep, so that by the time we got there, and the nuns were chanting in the convent church, Davey had had enough, and started to wail — so that Debra and Jessica got in, but I didn’t. You may recall, too, that early in the film, Maria arrives late for prayer, because, as she explains to the Mother Superior, she was just up on the Untersberg, reveling in the glory of God’s creation. Well, that wasn’t only to take liberties with history; it was to take liberties with geography too, because the Untersberg is ten miles away, and that doesn’t count the difficulty of getting up on its high ledges soaring far above the surrounding countryside. It would be rather like saying you were late getting to vespers in the cathedral at Canterbury because you’d been walking on the cliffs of Dover and forgot about the time. In any case, it sure does work in the film, and the demands of art, in a musical no less, take precedence over geography. But I sure wish Davey had let me hear the sisters singing!

That’s all to prepare us for our Hymn of the Week, “I to the Hills Will Lift Mine Eyes,” which is Psalm 121 in The Scottish Psalter. I admire that work. A long time ago, in a satirical adaptation of the Dies Irae, addressing the Almighty in prayer for the authors of bad church music, I included this stanza:

Let their hearts within them falter,
Hearing, as they near thine altar,
Seraphs sing the Scottish Psalter.

It’s the fact that there even was such a thing as the Scottish Psalter that most interests me. What the authors, compilers, and authors did was to set all of the psalms in English verse, typically in the 8-6-8-6 ballad meter, otherwise known as “Common Meter,” with lines 2 and 4 rhyming. Maybe the best known and most beloved of the old renderings is that of Psalm 23, “The Lord’s my shepherd, I’ll not want,” set to the sprightly Scottish folk melody Crimond — or to the robust melody Evan, also Scottish. Anyway, the existence of this sort of psalter implies that ordinary people, in church gatherings or in family devotions, sang the psalms as rendered into English poetry, and since it was usually Common Meter they needed, any one of countless melodies would serve the purpose. Think of using the melody Land of Rest (“Jerusalem My Happy Home”), or St. Agnes (“Shepherd of Souls”), or New Britain (“Amazing Grace”), or Winchester Old (“While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night”) — that’s all you needed, and everybody would recognize the melody, and it took no special genius to sing the words you saw on the page. Call it a feature of true folk life, of a living culture.

Since the hymn adapts Psalm 121, I should say a little about it. The key word throughout it is shamar, in several forms as a verb or a noun: as a verb it means to keep, guard, observe (as of a commandment), protect, heed, watch over; as a noun it means keeper, guard, watchman, protector. The Von Trapp family certainly needed to be guarded by the watchful eye and the protecting hand of God! But what is its first use in Scripture, this word that appears 468 times? It’s when God sets the first man, Adam, in the garden, “to tend it and to keep it.” When the Jewish believer heard that word in that setting, since it is God who is the ultimate keeper, the first and almighty guardian, he would see that God was giving Adam a high station indeed, worthy of one made in the divine image. And what is its next use? The brusque and flippant and guilty reply of Cain, when God asks him what has become of his brother Abel. “I do not know,” said Cain, lying. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” To which the answer is yes, you are, or you ought to have been.

From above comes our help, says the Psalmist, because God, who watches over us, does not slumber, nor does he sleep, nor will he permit our foot to slide. Snakes may be slippery, and sinners too, and the way of the world has got plenty of landslips along it — even such great conquerors as Alexander and Hannibal and Caesar and Napoleon can tell us about that. But the way of God, as strenuous and perilous as it may sometimes feel, is the only way of safety. He who made heaven and earth is its keeper.

Enjoy our hymn today as sung by the wonderful Scottish Festival Choir.

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I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
   from whence doth come mine aid;
my safety cometh from the Lord,
   who heaven and earth hath made.

Thy foot he'll not let slide, nor will
   he slumber that thee keeps.
Behold, he that keeps Israel,
   he slumbers not, nor sleeps.

The Lord thee keeps, the Lord thy shade
   on thy right hand doth stay:
The moon by night thee shall not smite,
   nor yet the sun by day.

The Lord shall keep thy soul; he shall
   preserve thee from all ill;
Henceforth thy going out and in
   God keep for ever will.

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymn, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Please help us continue our mission to share good things every day by joining us as a free or paid subscriber.

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