" 

 ""Hymn"" without a doubt historically describes a text which is supposed to be sung.  I wish someone would edit the Charles Wesley article, and replace (lyrics) with (text).  ""Lyrics"" implies to me that the music is the important item, which is the reverse of the truth.  The music is the helper, the lesser item  very necessary for things to work, but still not the important item.  When I embarked on this support of Wikipedia to clarify the truth about ""Hymn"", the article was painfully ambiguous, and seemingly oblivious to the steps behind joining a hymn to a tune which would permit it to be sung.  And by the way, the ambiguous definition has been left with its ambiguity; Eskew's clearer definition has been deleted.   hymnlover 6-19-10"