“The Colt Your Friends Now Seek to Borrow”
This month we continue our Hymn of the Month series in which one or more hymns drawn from collections published by Leupold Editions will be posted on the opening page of the website for consideration by pastors and musicians who may wish to introduce the hymn to their congregations the following month. The Hymn of the Month will often be thematically appropriate for a particular season of the church year or it may be related to a more general theme about the church’s mission in contemporary society. Thus, pastors and/or musicians may wish to have the choir introduce the hymn on the first Sunday of the month or season and then invite the congregation to join with the choir in singing the hymn on each of the remaining Sundays. Additional hymns will occasionally be suggested for a particular Sunday in the church year or for annual commemorations, such as the liturgies of Holy Week; such hymns may only be appropriate on the designated day, or they might be used as a Hymn of the Month in anticipation of or in response to the particular day observed on the church calendar.
For those congregations that observe the Sunday of the Passion with the Procession of Palms at the beginning of the liturgy followed by the reading of the Passion of Our Lord for the Gospel, this clever text, The Colt Your Friends Now Seek to Borrow, by John Core (1951-2017) set to the tune, SORROWFUL HOSANNAS, by Iteke Prins (b. 1937) is based on Mark 11.1-12, the RCL Year B Processional Gospel read during the Blessing of the Palms, OR for those congregations that celebrate Palm Sunday without the Passion Reading, it is based on the Gospel for the day. In either case, the hymn might be used most effectively as a response immediately following the reading, wherever it happens during the liturgy. It could certainly be introduced by a soloist, adult choir, or children’s choir singing the first stanza, with the assembly joining in on the three remaining stanzas.
Core was born at Camp (now Fort) Rucker, Alabama, and earned a B.A. in Speech Communication from West Virginia University in Morgantown, where he served as a Library Associate cataloging music from 1975 until his death in 2017. Core was a member of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and published four collections of texts with Leupold Editions.
Prins was born in Holland, and immigrated to the United States in 1949. After achieving her career goal as a registered nurse, Prins later served as organist and music director for Blooming Grove Reformed Church in Rensselaer, New York, from 1969 until 2005. Prins has published seven volumes of hymn tunes with Leupold Editions.
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