The Shepherd's Song

New Zealand Listener, Volume 13, Issue 332, 2 November 1945, Page 8

The Shepherd's Song

PROGRAMME, locally organised and presented, of distinctive boldness, originality and interest, was a recent 3YA broadcast by R. R. Beauchamp and company, based on the twenty-third psalm ("The Lord Is My

Shepherd"). The first half and the ,conclusion took the form of the singing of the psalm, both as a psalm and in several metrical versions-including that one from the Scottish psalter, which, I suppose, achieves more regularity of metre than any other body of verse in the language. In order to get my brick thrown at the beginning, I wish to aver with sgme violence that the bleating of good Nuzillund mutton as the background to pastoral song is an idea more blessed in the conception than in the reality. But the purpose of. the programme was an analysis by Mr, Beauchamp of the words of the psalm and its allegory of the sheep and the shepherd, in the light of the methods of the Syrian or Palestinian shepherd-how his flock is small, each member known to him individually; how he uses no dogs, but is followed by the flock throughout the day, leading them to pasture and drink, and back to the fold at night. This was of particular interest, and the manner in which the speaker fitted each image into its context in the shepherd’s routine was particularly clear and informative. It might be well, indeed, if

this knowledge were more widely disseminated; the New Zealand child can hardly appreciate the Biblical pictures of the shepherd as the type of loving kindness, when he knows him as a powerful personality addressing his dogs from some hilltop with a flow of swear words audible at great distances.