HYFRYDOL, Etc.

A couple of weeks ago, Greg Wasser posted a piece focusing on HYFRYDOL. Strangely, it showed up as "new" in my feed eight days later. I promised him I would post an extended comment with illustrations about HYFRYDOL and its texts, and their alternative tunes. I started writing a reply, and ran into a couple more weird glitches in my usually pretty sharp autocorrect demon. First, when I typed "HYFRY" instead of autosuggesting "[HYFRY]DOL", it proposed "[HYFRY] do". And then a bit later, when I typed "I will sing of my Red" instead of supplying "eemer", it wanted to add "ress"! And then, after I'd got quite a lengthy and correspondingly wordy response typed in to the comment field, my computer lost sight of where I was, and when I got back to it my whole comment had disappeared. So... I opened Notepad and proceeded to start afresh.

I have sort of a love-hate relationship with HYFRYDOL. Here are some of my thoughts and preferences regarding the top dozen hymns paired with HYFRYDOL in the Hymnary.org database; these are in descending order of frequency of pairing (the number preceding the first line is the number of instances of the pairing in the database:

• 75 Alleluia! Sing to Jesus — In my opinion this is a fine tune for the hymn, though if it were accompanied by a good organ I think I'd like to try it to S. S. Wesley's ALLELUIA. I am *not* a fan of singing it to HYMN TO JOY. There are a number of other options, but I'm not familiar enough with them to really judge. None seems clearly worth supplanting ALLELUIA (Wesley) or HYFRYDOL. I'll post a set to look at.
• 69 Come, thou long-expected Jesus — This is one of two hymns for which HYFRYDOL is definitely my preference. I am more accepting of STUTTGART than I was when I first encountered it, but it's not in my opinion nearly as good for this as HYFRYDOL. Historically at Hymnary, STUTTGART is ahead of HYFRYDOL 88 to 69, but since 1979 the stats are . There are a total of 67 tunes for this hymn in the database; aside from the leaders, CROSS OF JESUS, ST. HILARY, and JEFFERSON are most frequent.
• Divine, All Loves Excelling — better than BEECHER, but not as good as BLAENWERN or its original tune, Purcell's FAIREST ISLE. In Sacred Harp circles we sing it to another tune.
• 62 Jesus, what a Friend for Sinners — This is the other hymn, besides "Come, Thou long-expected Jesus" for which I definitely prefer HYFRYDOL. It seems to me (though I haven't really researched the question) that "Our Great Savior" was the text that first popularized HYFRYDOL in the United States, at least.
• 29 Praise the Lord, Ye Heavens, Adore him — I definitely prefer FABEN, but I'll take HYFRYDOL over AUSTRIA.
• 27 I will sing the Wondrous Story — I think I prefer the Bilhorn tune, but I've never really compared them.
• 14 Hear Us Now, Our God and Father — This is the only hymn in this dozen that I'm simply unfamiliar with. 12 Come, Thou Fount of every Blessing — 12 I Will Sing of My Redeemer — 11 Hail Thou once despised Jesus — 11 Ven, Jesús Muy Esperado — the most frequent Spanish version of "Come, thou long-expected Jesus"; should work well. 10 Not Alone for Mighty Empire —

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