rsons until at last he was caught and sentenced
to die on the gallows for "having written and circulated grossly
defamatory poems about the royal family". In this extremity, he appealed
to Kingo, who successfully exerted his then great influence to have the
sentence commuted to banishment for life to the Danish colony in India.

Chapter Four
Kingo, the Hymnwriter

Kingo's first hymns appeared shortly before Christmas, 1673, in a small
volume entitled _Spiritual Song-Choir, Part I_. The book contained
fifteen morning and evening hymns and seven paraphrases of the psalms.
Later editions were enlarged by seven "Morning and Evening Sighs" short
hymns that belong to the very best in the collection.

In a foreword addressed to the king, Kingo states that "he has written
these hymns with the hope that they might serve to edify his fellow
Christians, advance the teaching of the Gospel and benefit the royal
household at those daily devotions which it is the duty of every
Christian home to practice". He prays, therefore, he continues, that "the
king will graciously bestow the same approval upon this work that he has
so kindly given to his previous efforts, and thereby encourage him to
continue his endeavor until the Danes shall possess a hymnody that they
have neither begged nor borrowed from other nations. For the Danish
spirit," he concludes, "is assuredly neither so weak nor so poor that it
cannot fly as high toward heaven as that of other peoples without being
borne upon strange and foreign wings".

Commenting on the content of the book, Kingo further explains that he
expects sensitive readers will discover imperfections in his work which
he himself has failed to see, and that it would please him to have such
blemishes called to his attention so that they might be corrected in
future issues. His choice of tunes will, he fears, provoke criticism. He
has set a number of hymns to the melodies of popular songs in order that
"those, who for the sake of its tune, now gladly listen to a song of
Sodom may, if they be Christians, with the more pleasure use it with a
hymn about Zion. By examining the work of other hymnwriters possible
critics might assure themselves, however, that he had in this matter only
followed their example." But Kingo need not have apologized for his
choice of tunes, for they were on the whole fine and were received