Can It Be True

There’s this song I really want you to know.

I feel as though I’ve been alive for simply ages, and certainly feel every minute of the age I am, but every now and then something catches me out that shows I’m not keeping up with time passing. This song, for instance. When I was fifteen and first a Christian, everyone was singing it – not least because the large numbers of teenagers learning to play folk guitar found it particularly easy to accompany. “What can you play?” “Well, I can manage Can It Be True?”

And I loved it. I thought it was beautiful then, and I still do. It takes me by surprise that nobody else seems to know it any more. I can’t find it anywhere at all on the internet.

Something else I love about it – this has come with the passing of the years – is that it’s written by a Franciscan whose name is given only as Brother William. Those of you who know my St Alcuins series of novels will understand that I inevitably have a soft spot for any Brother William who loves the Lord Jesus.

The copyright of the song belongs to him, and the copyright of the arrangement in Youth Praise belongs to The Venturers. I don’t know who they are.

Youth Praise is long out of print, and the ways of copyright mystify me, so if anyone is reading this who owns the copyright and is cross to see what follows, please contact me and I will take it down. It’s not here for fame or money (as you will realise when you hear me sing it); it’s here because nobody knows or sings Can It Be True any more, and I think they should. The point of copyright is to stop people stealing and making money from other people’s work. The point of this post is to draw attention to the song – so please think of this as publicity not theft.

It’s No 36 in this book.

This is the song.

This is how it goes. I’ve just washed my hair and it looks like old string so I put it up in a kapp to save you that distress. My singing is not good and I’m not impressed by either the sight  or sound of myself, but I remember St Francis saying we must be content not to be good and not to be thought good, so here you are. Oh – and for reasons I cannot fathom, my Mac camera films and photographs like a mirror. I can flip the photos but (so far as I know) not the movies. So everything is back to front. We soldier on. Here goes, then.

Anyone who saw this post the minute I first published it will have been in time to see that I initially posted the WRONG video – my out-take. Uh-oh. Anyway, I showed The Wrong Video to my family and it made them laugh a lot and they said I should put it in. So here it is. Excuse my 'French'.