Tell Me the Old, Old Story -- A. Katherine Hankey

This 32-year old English woman was sick, and was it perhaps the depth of her illness that spurred the prodigious 50 verses that she would compose over a several-month stretch? From those 50 verses would spring “Tell Me the Old, Old Story”, a poetic appeal that Kate Hankey (her first name actually is Arabella) constructed to express what she initially sensed most strongly. Another part of the same poem led to a companion hymn (I Love to Tell the Story; see Feb. 13, 2016 entry of this blog) that would consummate her request and then the desire to relate what she’d heard. Quite a woman, someone who would not be stopped from sharing what she felt was most important, even while too ill to go about doing so in person. How many of us would do this?

Kate Hankey was the daughter of a wealthy banker, but she found her spiritual roots via other stimuli in her life in 19^th Century England. The Hankey family were ardent believers in what was known as the Clapham sect of Anglicanism. Besides being a Sunday school teacher, she was inspired by the likes of John Wesley and William Wilberforce, and therefore believed strongly in anti-slavery and pro-missionary positions in the social structure of the time. She would also travel to South Africa as a nurse, and cared for her handicapped brother for a time. She herself would become seriously ill in 1866, preventing her, apparently, from fulfilling her most passionate purpose – teaching about and steering others to the Holy Son. Nevertheless, during her recovery from the malady that laid her up, she wrote a lengthy poem that conveyed two main thoughts: She wanted to hear the story – Part 1, The Story Wanted – and then she wanted to be able to re-tell it – Part 2, The Story Told. You can tell from what she penned that she still felt sickly, with phrases like ‘weak and weary’ (v.1), and ‘…time of trouble, a comforter to me.’ (v. 3) She relates that she began in January of that year, and finished her thoughts some 10 months later. This was a person who knew not how to quit! Can one say that her perseverance and devotion were rewarded, since she indeed did recover and lived many more years (until 1911)?

Kate Hankey would probably say that she was rewarded, but not perhaps in the way others might have thought. Her health rebounded, and she lived many more years. Did she merely bask in her recovered physical well-being, though? If she stayed true to her pre-sickness form, we can guess that she continued teaching, and still supported abolitionism and missionary works. She wrote only a few hymn texts over her lifetime, but that doesn’t tell the entire story. Kate’s story may have been simple, contained in but a few sentences necessary to relate its highlights. The other story we have from her, she would undoubtedly say, is more noteworthy. Perhaps that was enough reward for her. It’s OK if another story outranks hers, don’t you think?   

 

See more information on the song story in these sources: The Complete Book of Hymns – Inspiring Stories About 600 Hymns and Praise Songs by William J. Petersen and Ardythe Petersen, Tyndale House Publishers, 2006; 101 Hymn Stories, by Kenneth W. Osbeck, Kregel Publications, 1985; and A Treasury of Hymn Stories by Amos R. Wells, Baker Book House, 1945.   

See this site for all of the original verses: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/t/e/l/l/tellmoos.htm

See a few brief details of the composer’s life here: http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/h/a/n/k/hankey_ak.htm

See this site also for a brief biography of the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Hankey