Eaters of Flesh is a piano fantasia that began life as a hymn. The hymn text was penned by William Cowherd, the leader of a 19th-century sect of radical Christian vegetarians known as the Bible Christian Church. As a fervent vegan myself, I set this text to music (along with two other texts by Cowherd) as my op. 46, Three Vegan Hymns.
Cowherd’s text reads as follows:
“Eaters of Flesh!” could you decry
Our food and sacred laws,
Did you behold the lambkin die,
And feel yourselves the cause?Lo! there it struggles! hear it moan,
As stretch’d beneath the knife:
Its eye would melt a heart of stone!
How meek it begs its life.Had God, for man, its flesh design’d;
Matur’d by death, the brute,
Lifeless, to us had been consign’d,
As is the ripen’d fruit.Hold, daring man! from murder stay:
God is the life in all.
You smite at God! when flesh you slay:—
Can such a crime be small?
The fantasia uses my original hymn tune for “Eaters of Flesh” as the basis for an impassioned keyboard work.
The fantasia may be performed as with or without the vocal part. If performed without the voice, the pianist should incorporate the melody into the texture.