Ministry, hymns and a literary household
Brailsford was born in Birmingham in 1841, the year his father, Charles James Brailsford, died. He trained for the Wesleyan ministry at Didsbury College and began ministerial work at Bangor and Caernarfon in 1863. Later appointments took him to places including Liverpool, London, Bolton, Ilkley and Edinburgh. His career belonged to an itinerant Methodist ministry, with the household repeatedly moving as his appointments changed.
He married Clara Pooley in 1867 and had a son and a daughter. His son, Henry Noel Brailsford, became a journalist and political writer. Edward’s own literary work included religious books, hymns and the Yorkshire village novel Only a Woman’s Hair, published in 1873.
The hymn Behold, Behold the Bridegroom Nigh was written at Ilkley and appeared in Gatecliff’s Chant Book in 1877 before entering the Methodist Hymn Book of 1904. The chant book also included O God of Truth! Speak Now Thy Holy Word and Lord, I Will Follow On.
The Spiritual Sense in Sacred Legend was published in 1910 as the fortieth Fernley Lecture. Its dedication, dated at the manse in Williton, Somerset, calls his wife and daughter his helpers. Brailsford died at Ilfracombe in 1921.
Finding meaning in traditions around the Bible
Brailsford begins by limiting his subject. He is not attempting a survey of every religion or mythology: his examples concern the Bible’s characters, incidents and doctrines. He draws on Jewish traditions, apocryphal writings, the Quran, medieval saints’ legends and the art and literature through which those stories travelled.
