A few years ago Miquel kindly sent me some photographs of historical French language Songbooks that came to hand.
This songbook, a second edition printing from 1919 corresponds to one of the Zion's Glad Songs series.
This 1928 songbook corresponds with the 1928 Songs of Praise to Jehovah, which basically replaced Hymns of Millennial Dawn for IBSA meetings.
This 1948 songbook corresponds with the 1944 Kingdom Service Songbook, which was the book released for when singing was reintroduced at general congregation meetings in 1944 in English language congregations.
It seems to me that in the old days in France more Bible Students sang songs in Polish than in French:
ReplyDelete*** jv chap. 22 p. 429 ***
Following World War I, thousands of people from Poland moved into France to work in the coal mines. The French congregations did not pass them by because they spoke a different tongue. They found ways to share Bible truths with these miners and their families, and the number who responded favorably soon outnumbered the French Witnesses. When, as a result of a government deportation order, 280 had to return to Poland in 1935, this only served to reinforce the spread of the Kingdom message there.
*** yb80 p. 87 France ***
Those prewar years ended with 84 congregations in France. Of these, 13 were German-speaking in Alsace-Lorraine, 32 were Polish-speaking, mostly in northern France, and 39 were French-speaking.
The children and grandchildren of those publishers already belonged to the French-speaking congregations. Today there are probably a few Polish congregations in France, but this is a new emigration.
The first Polish songbooks:
1906, Hymns of Millennial Dawn (Polish edition 1917/1918, 1921, 1925)
1928, Song Book (Songs of Praise to Jehovah) (Polish edition after 1930)
1944, Kingdom Service Song Book (The Polish edition was published after the war - 1949).
Concerning the English Songbook
ReplyDeleteI was surprised that the Society did not have a single copy of the 1879 songbook in 2014:
*** kr p. 1 Title Page/Publishers’ Page ***
Photo Credits: Page 178: 1879 Songs of the Bride: Courtesy of the Pitts Theology Library, Candler School of Theology, Emory University