Letter: Blake's love for England

Sir: I am impressed by the ignorance, perhaps naivety, of colleagues and others who have written to you about the hymn "Jerusalem". Once I too was perplexed by its steady reappearance at country weddings. At last, one afternoon, the scales fell from my eyes.

The groom in front of me sang the words with fervour and mounting excitement until, at the line "Bring me my arrows of desire" he could not resist making what were no doubt in his eyes appropriate gestures. But that was in the diocese of Hereford.

Herefordians take things as they find them!

This "folk" appreciation of the hymn may account for at least one kind of clerical distaste for it.

The Rev C J R Armstrong

Pwllheli, Gwynedd