What hymn was the first to be written in the English language and what was the writer’s purpose for writing this hymn

Behold the glories of the Lamb


Words: Isaac Watts, cir­ca 1688. This is the first hymn in the Eng­lish lan­guage de­signed for pub­lic wor­ship. In a lengthy dis­cuss­ion with his father, Isaac ar­gued that sing­ing on­ly the Psalms in church made them miss much im­port­ant New Test­a­ment truth. Once his con­gre­ga­tion was con­vinced of what Isaac was say­ing, he be­gan turn­ing out a new hymn a week. But this one is the ve­ry first, mak­ing the words “Pre­pare new hon­ors for His Name, and songs be­fore un­known” es­pe­cial­ly mean­ing­ful. This hymn al­so re­veals Watts’ amaz­ing breadth of bib­lical know­ledge (he was on­ly a teen­ag­er at the time); there are al­lu­sions to ma­ny Script­ure pass­ag­es.

Sadly, I am going away for a week in about 20 minutes, but will come back to this on my return. Watts certainly published his first book of hymns in 1707, having written many previous to that date, but James 1st, around about 1620 had already granted permission to George Withers to publish his 'Hymns & Songs of the Church'. Too simplistic to put a date on the first English hymn, but as I say I will have to return to this fascinating subject next weekend...

Cædmon's Hymn was written in Middle English circa 680 AD.

Cædmon's Hymn