We went into the library, from the windows of which a clear view can be obtained of the town and the church which stands above it. There certainly was a flag flying from the church tower. I took a pair of field-glasses and satisfied myself that it was the Union Jack. "Would you like me to speak to the Dean about it?" said Godfrey. "Certainly not," I said. "Any interference on your part would merely--and these are rather exciting times. The Dean is entitled, I think, to a little license. I don't suppose he means to keep it there permanently." Then, borne to us by a gentle breeze across the bay, came the sound of the church bells. We have a fine peal of bells in our church, presented to the parish by my father. They are seldom properly rung, but when they are--on Christmas Day, at Easter and on the 12th of July--the effect is very good. "Surely," I said, "the Dean can't be having a Harvest Thanksgiving Service yet? It's not nearly time." Then I noticed that instead of one of the regular chimes the bells were playing a hymn tune. It was, as I might have guessed, the tune to which "O God, our help in ages past" is sung in Ireland. The hymn, since Babberly's first demonstration in Belfast, had become a kind of battle song. It is, I think, characteristic of the Irish Protestants that they should have a tune of their own for this hymn. Elsewhere, in England, in Scotland, in the United States and the Colonies this metrical version of the 90th Psalm is sung to a fine simple tune called St. Ann. But we are not and never have been as other men are. Without a quiver of our nerves we run atilt at the most universally accepted traditions. The very fact that every one else who uses the hymn sings it to the tune called St. Ann would incline us to find some other tune if such a thing were obtainable. We found one which musicians, recognizing that we had some right to claim it as ours, called "Irish" or "Dublin." This tune emerged suddenly from nowhere in response to no particular demand in the middle of the eighteenth century. It is anonymous, but it was at once wedded to the words of that particular hymn, and we have used it ever since. It is difficult to give an opinion on the comparative merits of two hymn tunes, and I hesitate to say that ours is a finer one than that used by the rest of the English-speaking world. I am, however, certain that there is in our tune an unmistakable suggestion of majestic confidence in an eternal righteousness, and that it very well expresses the feeling with which we sing the hymn at political demonstrations and elsewhere. It came to me that day across the waters of the bay, hammered slowly out by the swinging bells, with a tremendous sense of energy. The English St. Ann seemed lilty and almost flippant in comparison.