Newspaper reporters covering major Mormon conferences in England or in the large cities of the eastern U.S. used to mock us for the music at those conferences. They said we sang as hymns all sorts of songs that really weren’t hymns, but which instead celebrated the peculiarities of Mormonism. Worse, they said, we set those words to popular tunes of the day, so that listeners couldn’t help but associate the songs not with the holy, but with the dance hall or the nursery or the stage. I don’t know why they said that.

Oh, wait.

Here’s a song that the Saints in the British Mission sang in 1863:

I’d Rather Live in Utah.”

TUNE.—”I’d choose to be a Daisy.”

I’d rather live in Utah than palaces elsewhere,
Surrounded by her mountains high and with her valleys fair.
There reign health, love and union beneath the western sky;
Then O, how joyous ’tis to know deliverance is nigh.

I’d rather live in Utah than palaces elsewhere,
Surrounded by her mountains high and with her valleys fair.

I’d rather go to Utah and toil from morn till eve,
Than linger here in Babylon to pine away and grieve,
Surrounded by those devils dire which have such mighty sway,
Corrupting in their onward march the thoughtless and the gay.

I’d rather live in Utah than palaces elsewhere,
Surrounded by her mountains high and with her valleys fair.

Then let me go to Utah and strive with heart and hand,
To help the kingdom God has raised upon that favored land;
For soon those mountains, hills and dales will blossom as the rose,
And Zion reign in harmony and free from all her foes.

I’d rather live in Utah than palaces elsewhere,
Surrounded by her mountains high and with her valleys fair.

—Edward G. Davis

Really, though, while not quite a hymn – only by roundabout reasoning can you read this as praise of the Lord – is it any sillier than the words the tune was written to accompany?

I’d Choose to Be a Daisy.

I’d choose to be a daisy, if I might be a flower,
My petals closing softly at twilight’s silent hour;
And waking in the morning, when falls the early dew,
To welcome heav’n’s bright sunshine and heav’n’s bright tear-drop, too.

I’d choose to be a daisy, if I might be a flower,
My petals closing softly at twilight’s silent hour.

I love the gentle lily, it looks so meek and fair,
But daisies I love better, for they grow everywhere,
And lilies bloom so sadly, in sunshine or in shower,
But daisies, they look upward, however dark the hour.

I’d choose to be a daisy, if I might be a flower,
My petals closing softly at twilight’s silent hour.

—Frederick Buckley

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The first image is from a completely different edition, of course, but it made a more attractive image to head the post.