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Title: Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America
       Two Hundred and Fifty Tunes and Texts With an Introduction and Notes

Author: George Pullen Jackson

Release Date: July 10, 2019 [EBook #59884]

Language: English

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Typical of the country singers of early American spiritual folk-songs is this group of their leaders in Winston County, Alabama. For over fifty years their Fourth of July singings have gone on uninterruptedly at Helicon, where this picture was taken in 1927.

The “big singings” take place at county seats and in even larger centers. Here the country folk join in song with those who, though they live in the cities, have grown up in the same rural musical tradition. The Alabama State Sacred Harp Singing Association was pictured in its 1929 summer session in the court house in Birmingham, Alabama.

Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario.

Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd., 10 Orange Street, London W. C. 2.

This Dover edition, first published in 1964, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work first published by J. J. Augustin, Publisher, New York City, in 1937.

The publisher is grateful to the University of Virginia Library for furnishing a copy of the book for purposes of reproduction.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 64-8268

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc.
180 Varick Street
New York 14, N.Y.

TO THE MEMORY
OF MY WIFE
INEZ EMELINE WRIGHT JACKSON

Preface

The ancestors of the bearers of the Southern tradition of folk-music began in very ancient times the practice of singing religious songs to folk-tunes. Nor must one think that this custom showed a lack of respect for religion. On the contrary, it rather emphasized the respect and love of the folk for their traditional music. As their most loved and treasured possession, they brought this noble musical heritage and laid it on the altar of their worship. There is a strong probability that this practice has continued unbroken for at least thirteen centuries. William of Malmsbury, writing in the twelfth century, gives an anecdote of St. Aldhelm, the Anglo-Saxon abbot of Malmsbury during the seventh century, which he took from the notebook of King Alfred the Great, which was extant at that time. According to this story, the Saint would station himself on a bridge in the guise of a gleeman and would collect an audience by singing popular songs. He would then gradually insert into his entertainment the words of the holy scriptures and so lead his hearers to salvation. The chronicler also states that one of the popular songs made by St. Aldhelm and mentioned by King Alfred was still being sung by the folk at the time of his writing, almost five hundred years later.

Chappell, in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, says: “We may date the custom of singing hymns to secular tunes from this time [The Norman Conquest] if, indeed, it may not be carried back to the time of St. Aldhelm. William of Malmesbury records of Thomas, Archbishop of York (created in 1070), that ‘whenever he heard any new secular song or ballad sung by the minstrels, he immediately composed parodies on the words to be sung to the same tune.’

“In a contribution to Notes and Queries, Mr. James Graves gives a curious list of eight songs similarly parodied in The Red Book of Ossory, a manuscript of the fourteenth century, which is preserved in the archives of that see. Six of the songs are English (there are two parodies on one of them), and the remaining two are Anglo-Norman. The Latin hymns seem to have been written by Richard de Ledrede, Bishop of Ossory from 1318 to 1360. The names of the six English songs are as follows:

In the sixteenth century, the early Presbyterians continued this usage, as is evidenced by Wedderburn’s hymnal published in Edinburgh in 1560, quaintly entitled: Ane Compendius Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs, Collected out of Sundrie Parts of the Scriptures, with Sundrie of Other Ballates Changed out of Prophaine Songs, for Avoiding of Sin and Harlotrey. Among these latter was a parody of ‘John, Come Kiss Me,’ the wide and enduring popularity of which is attested by its inclusion in Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, Playford’s Introduction, Apollo’s Banquet for the Treble Violin, Walsh’s Division Violin, Playford’s Division Violin and Pills to Purge Melancholy. There are also references to it in Thomas Heywood’s A Woman Killed with Kindness, Westminster Drollery, Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, The Scourge of Folly, Braithwaite’s Shepherd’s Tales, Tom Tiler and his Wife, and Henry Bold’s Songs and Poems. Allan Cunningham quotes the parody in The Songs of Scotland, Ancient and Modern, as follows:

A similar book appeared in 1642, called: Psalms, or Songs of Zion, turned into the language and set to the tunes of a strange land, by William Slatyer, intended for Christmas Carols and fitted to divers of the most noted and common but solemn tunes, everywhere in this land familiarly used and known. That the Puritans of that century did not invariably confine themselves to “solemn tunes” is indicated by Shakespeare when the Clown in The Winter’s Tale, in praising the vocal prowess of the shearers, assembled for the sheep-shearing feast, says: “Three-man song-men, all, and very ix good ones...; but one Puritan amongst them, and he sings Psalms to hornepipes.” In the New Variorium Shakespeare, H. H. Furness, in commenting on the passage, says: “He sings Psalms to the lively tunes to which horn-pipes were danced,—a practice which, we know was extremely popular in France, and from allusions like the present we can infer that it was not unknown in England.”

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Puritan congregations of New England are said to have had music committees one of the chief duties of which was to go among the folk and gather attractive melodies to be used as hymns. And this was also the custom of the Primitive Methodists, both in Great Britain and in America. In writing of this usage at a later date, Chappell says: “The Primitive Methodists ... acting upon the principle of ‘Why should the devil have all the pretty tunes?’ collect the airs which are sung at pot and public houses, and write their hymns to them ... in this sect we have living examples of the ‘puritans who sing psalms to horn-pipes,’ They do not mince the matter by turning them into slow tunes, ... but sing them in their original lively time.”

This brings us to the nineteenth century, in which appeared the “shape-note hymnals” from which the material in this volume is chiefly drawn. The existence of these books was scarcely known to musicians and music-lovers until recently, when they were vividly brought to the attention of the musical world by Dr. George Pullen Jackson in his book, White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. Music lovers were astonished to learn of the existence of these old books, containing a wealth of uniquely beautiful hymn-tunes, largely folk-tunes and others composed in the same idiom. A majority of these are in the old modes and among them are the tunes of folk-songs, ballads, country-dances and even morris-dances. But musicians were even more surprised to learn that there are literally hundreds of thousands of devotees, in homes, in little gatherings and big singing conventions covering a broad region which stretches from the Valley of Virginia to the plains of Texas, who enthusiastically preserve and practise this tradition. That this usage should have lived on from pioneer times into our present day, when not only what we buy but what we are, is stereotyped by the processes of mass production, seems little short of miraculous. But it is explained by the innate vigour of the tradition itself, by the great love of the tradition-bearers for the old tunes and, not least, by the fact that the books embodying the material used shape notes.

Shape notes, as is explained in White Spirituals, indicate their pitch by their shapes, independently of the lines and spaces of the staff. They were invented to simplify the reading of music. There are two principal systems, the Four Shape and the Seven Shape. In the Four Shape, the first and fourth degrees of the scale are called fa and are represented by a right triangle; the second and fifth are called sol, represented by a round shape; the third and sixth, la, by a square head and the seventh, mi, by a diamond. The Seven Shape system has a different form of note for each degree of the scale and the nomenclature accords with our general practice. The nomenclature of the Four Shape system is of especial interest because x it was known and practised by Shakespeare. Numerous references to it occur in his plays. In King Lear this system is employed in an almost Wagnerian manner to characterize the archvillain, Edmund, who in soliloquy says: “My cue is villanous melancholy” and then sings: “Fa, sol, la, mi.” These four tones measure the extent of a tritone, the forbidden interval called the diabolus or the devil and supposed to be filled with sinister, ominous and evil potency.

As shape notes increased in popularity, bitter controversy arose between their supporters and those of the ordinary staff notes. This was most fortunate, for it gave the fa-sol-la folk a coherence and a sturdier determination to abide by their principles and practices, which enabled them to resist the erosion of modern life and so preserve their beautiful heritage.

Many folk-tunes associated with sacred words have been passed down also solely by the process of oral tradition. Mr. Ernest La Prade, author of Alice in Orchestralia, recently learned of two groups of Primitive Baptists, one in New Jersey and the other in Philadelphia, which still use in their worship only tunes preserved by this process. He was fortunate enough to record several of the hymns from a member of the New Jersey congregation, some of which were modal and all of which were of the type contained in the shape-note books.

The value of these books to students and lovers of our folk-music is incalculable. For although many of the tunes are still extant in the oral tradition, a large portion of them, of indubitable folk origin, have vanished from the oral tradition and, but for these books, would be entirely lost. All who are familiar with the folk-dance revival in England realize the importance of Playford’s English Dancing Master in preserving a large number of tunes and dances that were no longer traditionally extant. The folk material embodied in the shape-note books is no less important and far more varied; it is, in fact, indispensible to all who desire a comprehensive knowledge of British and American folk-music.

Gratitude is due Dr. Jackson for making this material accessible to the public, and admiration, for the painstaking and scholarly way in which he presents his fascinating subject. The tunes are historically important in showing approximately the state of the oral tradition at the time they were written down in the past century. It would be difficult to overestimate their esthetic value. In metrical and rhythmic structure, especially in balance and contrast in phrase lengths; in beauty and eloquence of melodic line, many are unsurpassed by even the best of our traditional tunes. It is not too much to hope that a revival of interest in this music may result in a general use of it in our churches, where its native vigour, unaffected straightforwardness and lyric beauty could go far in freeing us from the insipid banalities of much present-day church music.

John Powell

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction 1

Recent Trends in Song Search 2

Varieties of Religious Songs 4

Religious Ballads

Folk-Hymns

Revival Spiritual Songs

Folk-Song Collectors of Yore 10

Features of American Folk-Tunes 12

Tonal Trends, Tune Families

Metrical Patterns

Scales, Modes

Rufty’s Classification, Chart of Tunes

Tunes of Religious and Worldly Folk-Songs Compared 17

Conclusion 21

Acknowledgments 23

Fifty-one Religious Ballads 27

Ninety-eight Folk-Hymns 87

One Hundred and one Revival Spiritual Songs 169

Bibliography 241

List of Abbreviations of Titles 245

Index of Songs by Titles 246

Index of First Lines of Texts 250

Illustrations

1. Typical country singers of early American spiritual folk-songs Frontispiece

2. The “big singings” take place at county seats and in even larger centers Frontispiece

3. “Dinner on the grounds” xii

4. Classification chart of tunes facing page 16

5. The Original Sacred Harp, 1911 edition 24

6. The sole occurrence of ‘The Babe of Bethlehem’ 26

7. The ‘Morning Trumpet’ in seven-shape notation 26

8. Benjamin Franklin White, and Thurza Golightly White, of Hamilton, Georgia 86

9. The White memorial in Atlanta 86

10. The Sacred Harp appeared in 1844 86

11. The Southern Harmony, 1835 166

12. William (Singin’ Billy) Walker, of Spartanburg, South Carolina 168

13. William Walker’s grave in Spartanburg, South Carolina 168

“Dinner on the grounds” is one of the traditional features of all country singings.

Introduction

Since the sort of folk-song indicated by the title of this book is in all probability unfamiliar to many, I shall assume that my chief task in this Introduction is to make its nature clear. The first step in this explanation will be to distinguish the present material from some other better known sorts of folk-song.

“Is it mountain songs you are collecting? Is it those old ballads?” “Is it the negro spirituals?” These questions were put to me again and again by interested persons while the present collection was in the making.

No, these are not mountain songs and still they are. What do we mean by mountain songs? The very first mountain song I ever recorded was sung to me on the treeless flats of North Dakota. It had arrived there from Kentucky by way of Saint Louis and Los Angeles and had been carried over this circuitous route to its northwestern place of recording by the singers in three generations of one family. The first sailor’s shanty I ever heard was in the mountains of Virginia. It had come from a logging camp in Michigan by way of Chicago. Every folk-song hunter can tell similar tales; and all such experiences convince us that the naming of a type of song after a restricted region or a particular environment, while furnishing a convenient designation, may lead also to much misunderstanding.

The mountain songs designation is one of the least appropriate. Its only justification lies in the fact that some types of traditional song, the secular ballads among them, have persisted perhaps in larger numbers in mountainous regions like those of the southern Appalachians and the Ozarks and are more widely sung there than elsewhere. These songs were Irish, Scotch, and English across the water. They came from highlands and lowlands. They were the common possession of early Americans of those ethnic stocks,—those people who never left the tidewater parts, those who came into the highlands and settled there, and those greater numbers who trekked through the mountain gaps, down the western slopes and spread into the rolling country and plains. The present collection is of songs sung by all these people in all of these parts in early and more recent times and now. Hence, to call them “mountain songs” would be quite inadequate and misleading.[1]

Those who asked if the present collection were to be of the “old ballads” manifested by their question some acquaintance with one variety, an important one withal, of traditional secular folk-song in America. My answer to them was negative, as it is to my present readers. This collection is made up neither of the secular 2 ballads nor of their close relatives, the secular folk-songs, as far at least as their texts are concerned. Nor is it a collection of negro spirituals or negro songs of any kind. And yet it is one of folk-songs, and spiritual ones, as its title truthfully indicates. I shall now attempt to explain this; for it must seem to some an anomaly. The explanation will necessitate my making a brief survey first of recent trends in the activities of those interested in folk-songs.

Recent Trends in Song Search

Until recent years practically all the folk-songs published in America have been those with secular texts. The existence of traditional spiritual folk-songs in this land seems not to have been recognized by folklorists. Negro songs were, to be sure, largely spiritual and they have been regarded as folksongs; but that was an entirely different matter, one in which the students of the white man’s culture were not primarily interested. Early curiosity as to the “slave songs” was not academic. It was rather a popular interest allied with one which was of a missionary-religious nature. The songs themselves, as they became known in northern and eastern centers during the post-Civil War period through the activities of traveling concert groups from southern negro schools, were popularly believed in those parts to be the negroes’ own creations and to be rooted in Africa. They were regarded thus as lying essentially outside the sphere of the white man’s cultural traditions. These attitudes of mind tended to hold apart the two groups, those concerned with the white man’s song traditions and those interested in the religious songs of the black folk. It was a negro-song apologist, Henry E. Krehbiel, who signed, as he thought, the decree of complete separation of the two song bodies with his book Afro-American Folk Songs in 1914; and for most people that was definitive. Even as late as the end of the 1920’s Krehbiel’s word stood practically unchallenged. I shall adduce evidence presently however of the error of his assumption.

In the mean time knowledge of our own American folk-songs deepened and broadened. The earlier interest, one which grew out of the soil tilled by Francis J. Child and was confined to the ballads alone, shorn of their tunes, expanded in the latter part of the second decade of the present century into one which included also folk-songs and the tunes of both ballads and songs. Notable among folklorists with this more comprehensive outlook was the late Cecil J. Sharp who, after long experience in the English folk-song field, took up the hunt in the southern Appalachians. Even the first collection of a part of his findings, published in 1917, provided a revelation as to the wealth of the existing material and was recognized as a model in the matter of musical recording. From then on, the gathering of folk-songs was carried on with renewed enthusiasm and with greater stress laid on the melodies.

One phase of song hunting began in the middle of the 1920’s outside the circle of the folklorists and in complete ignorance of the facts that what was sought was genuine folk material. I refer to the study in the field of the southern religious “country singings”. I make this charge of ignorance the more unhesitatingly since it was my own, and since I worked alone in that field for some years. A report of the early stages of my work appeared in 1933 in a volume entitled White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. Readers of that book have probably recognized that, while I may have told the story of the country singing institution quite thoroughly, I realized then only dimly that the songs under observation were folk-traditional. This realization has come since then gradually, first by reason of a series of accidental findings and more recently as the result of rather extended study.

Why the folklorists never came upon this material before it fell into my hands is not hard to explain. One reason is that the strongest link binding the songs in question to the traditional secular folk-songs is their tunes, and all musical considerations were generally neglected, especially by the earlier folklorists in this land. Another reason was probably that folklorists never thought, any more than I did, of singing groups which used song books, as likely environment for their search. A third reason was that the country songs were religious, a sort which was and is still generally thought of as church music and thus as being far removed from the folk. And finally, collectors have as a rule sought folk-songs in the mountains and other remote places; whereas the country singings are found in the less sparsely populated parts of the lower uplands.

Cecil Sharp should have escaped much of this prejudice and misconception; for his own British Isles are full of religious folk-songs, as he well knew; even though they do not appear there to any extent in a group-singing environment. But that he did not escape it is indicated clearly by his experience in the southern mountains, as he tells of it in the Introduction to his English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. When he came to a home in the mountains and made known his desire to hear songs, he was generally misunderstood. The mountain people thought he wanted to hear them sing “hymns”. But he did not; and though he does not tell us why, he indicates that it was because he was convinced that the “hymns” were not folk-songs. At any rate, he soon learned to ask for “love songs”. And as a result there appeared but two songs of a religious nature, the ‘Cherry Tree Carol’ and ‘Hicks’ Farewell’, among the 122 in his first publication. In the subsequent two-volume collection of his American findings, edited by Maud Karpeles and published in 1932, we find a group of but half a dozen religious songs under the heading “Hymns”. There are also a few biblical ballads in the collection.

Some years after Sharp missed all but completely his opportunity to become the discoverer, or uncoverer, of American religious folk-songs, one of his English co-workers, Anne G. Gilchrist, found some remarkable analogies between the secular folk-songs of England on the one hand and the spiritual songs of the early Primitive Methodists of that land and the early American revivalists on the other; 4 and she published a report of her research in the Journal of the [English] Folk-Song Society, viii (1927-1931), pp. 61-95, in an article entitled “The Folk Element in Early Revival Hymns and Tunes.” This was a real though brief contribution to the very subject which engages us here; for it demonstrated the linking of the nineteenth century religious songs with the older and principally secular folk tradition of her land.

At about the same time, two Americans made smaller contributions. Ethel Park Richardson recorded eleven of the white man’s “spirituals” from oral tradition, as it seems, and included them in her American Mountain Songs; and Samuel E. Asbury furnished the Texas Folk-Lore Society with a group of camp-meeting songs which he had heard in the 1880’s in western North Carolina. The Society published them in 1932.

On Miss Gilchrist’s pages and even more often on the pages of American collectors in the late 1920’s appeared indications of a growing belief that the old white spirituals were the progenitors of the negro spirituals and that, therefore, Krehbiel’s assumption as to negro authorship of the slave songs was in a measure erroneous. Among those who shared constructively in this belief were Newman I. White and Guy B. Johnson. Mr. White consulted a number of the old country-song manuals to good advantage in the preparation of his American Negro Folk-Songs. His use of them was to find merely textual antecedents of negro spiritual borrowings. Mr. Johnson used some of the same manuals happily in the preparation of his Folk Culture on St. Helena Island. His purpose, like that of Mr. White, was to show negro song sources; but his work had the added merit of calling attention to some musical analogies between the spiritual songs of the white and the black Americans. My own contributions to the solution of the problem of negro song sources are mentioned on page 9 of this Introduction. All this evidence assumes considerable weight in proof of the thesis that the negro spirituals, instead of lying outside the white people’s song tradition, represent a selective adoption and carrying-on of that tradition.

If the preceding paragraphs have in a measure made clear the nature of the songs to be presented here, they have done so by the method of elimination and by a review of some of the directions taken recently by students of song, trends which seem to have led inevitably to the uncovering of the body of song found in the old manuals of the country singers and to the establishing of its status as folk-song. It is the revealing of this material and the establishing of its identity which are the chief reasons for the existence of the present volume.

Varieties of Religious Songs

The old song books spoken of above contain various sorts of religious pieces. Among these are the early psalm tunes, evangelical hymns, spiritual songs, religious ballads, “fuguing” songs, and anthems. Each of these varieties represents 5 loosely a phase of, or a period in, religious, musical, or poetic development. Some are folk-songs and many are not. The psalm tunes with their Old-Testament texts—the sober song fare of the early Protestants in Europe, in the British Isles, and in the American Colonies—are probably to some extent of folk origin; but since psalm singing in early America can not be looked on as a free expression of the folk, and since the psalm tunes themselves gave way easily to other far more folky types of religious song, I have chosen to exclude them from the present discussion and collection. The fuguing songs are examples of an early American art development in composing and in group singing in New England during the latter part of the eighteenth century. Despite their enduring popularity in southern rural folk-singing circles and despite the fact that many of them are found to be constructed on the basis of folk-melodic themes, I have decided that they would be inappropriate to this collection. The same objection, that they are of an essentially composed nature, holds also for the anthems and has demanded their elimination.

After making these exclusions I centered attention on three mutually rather distinct types of song all of which seemed to be in varying degrees folk products—the religious ballads, hymns, and spiritual songs.

Religious Ballads

The religious ballads by and large are folk-produced beyond any reasonable doubt. They are uniformly songs for individual singing, not for groups. The sung story was the thing. In one ballad it would be the story of some bad woman, Wicked Polly for example, “who died in sin and deep despair” and went to hell; in another, of some good woman, the Romish Lady for instance, who was burned at the stake for espousing the Protestant cause. Much ballad material was furnished also by the Bible. Scriptural events like the curing of the man sick with the palsy, the restoring of sight to blind Bartimeus, Daniel’s experience in the lions’ den, the raising of Lazarus, the baby Moses in the rushes, the Prodigal Son parable, the birth of Christ, His crucifixion and death,—all are retold in the ballads.

A younger variety of song which I include under the heading of religious ballads is that in which the singer tells his story in the first person. Such stories are those of the poor wayfaring stranger just a-going over Jordan, the departing preacher or missionary, a dying boy or girl, and even a pious gold hunter dying on his way to California. The story may be also the plaint of the religious “mourner”, the backslider, and the criminal sinner, or the exultant tale of the saved. Still another group of ballads is aimed more directly at the conversion of the “young, the gay, and proud.” They usually begin by telling the religious experience of the singer and close with a warning as to the tragic results of worldliness and an exhortation to turn from “this vain world of sin.” These songs are quite similar to the worldly ballads in form, and their tunes are, as will be pointed out presently, of the common folk stock.

Folk-Hymns

The ballads (excepting the experience variety) probably did not originate in any particular organized religious movement. The folk-hymns were, on the other hand, bound up genetically with the protestant evangelical activity which followed John Wesley’s lead in England and then in America. The Wesleyan Revival began as an ordered small-group affair and spread and developed ultimately into a movement whose aspects and practices were completely free-affairs of the uninhibited masses. In the same way the song of that movement, beginning with merely the taste of textual freedom offered by Watts and the Wesleys, and of musical freedom offered by those who furnished the melodies, spread ultimately far beyond the “allowed” tunes and hymn texts of the authorities until religious gatherings were musically completely liberated.

When John Wesley picked up a popular melody here and there on his travels through England and set it to a good hymn text, he little realized that he was setting an example and starting a movement which was to bring into existence hundreds of folk-hymns; that is, songs with old folk-tunes which everybody could sing and with words that spoke from the heart of the devout in the language of the common man.

With the spread of this movement to America a fertile soil for its further development seems to have been found. Here it became known as the Great Southern and Western Revival. Here its store of songs, made after the pattern used in England, was greatly enlarged. In fact the masses took the matter of what they were to sing so completely into their own hands that the denominational authorities, especially the Methodists, though they tried to control it, became helpless.[2]

In looking through the folk-hymns in the second part of this collection one will see scores of tunes which are clearly recognizable as those still sung to ‘Barbara Allen’, ‘Lord Lovel’ and other ancient ballads. This is adequate evidence, I assume, as to where the folk sought and found its hymn tunes. The extent of this tune borrowing process is indicated on page 18f of this Introduction. The texts, on the other hand, may be from the pen of Watts or other eighteenth century English religious poets, or they may be the humbler creations of rural American religious verse makers, like John Adam Granade, or John Leland.

It is impossible to date the beginning of folk-hymn making and singing in America definitely. But on the assumption that they were a part of the Wesleyan movement, we cannot place the beginning of their general use in America before the 1770’s. The part of the land where they first attained popularity—again judging by their Wesleyan affinities—was the upland and inland South; for during the last two decades of the eighteenth century (the time of the first spread 7 of the Methodist movement) four-fifths of the adherents to this sect were to be found in that section.[3]

Revival Spiritual Songs

The revival spiritual songs represent a further advance of the song movement which brought forth the folk-hymns, toward the folk level. As the eighteenth century expired the post-Wesleyan religious tide was high and the camp meeting, the significant institution which became the cradle of the revival spiritual songs, was born. One may therefore get a clearer insight into this new song development if one recalls the character of its early environment. One might well remember, for example, that the camp meetings began and remained in nature surroundings, in the wilderness; that they were immense holiday gatherings;[4] that they thus took on the free-and-easy aspects of the pioneers as a whole rather than of any particular class; and that they were completely free from denominational and all other authoritarian control.

Bearing all this in mind it is perhaps easier to understand how the folk-hymns—grown up in a less boisterous environment—failed to satisfy the new conditions. At the camp meetings it was not a question of inducing every one to sing, but of letting every one sing, of letting them sing songs which were so simple that they became not a hindrance to general participation but an irresistible temptation to join in. The tunes of the folk-hymns were adequate. But the texts (Watts, Wesley and their schools) still demanded a certain exercise of learning and remembering which excluded many from the singing. The corrective lay in the progressive simplification of the texts; and it was in the main this text simplification which brought about and characterised the type of camp-meeting song which was called, in contradistinction to all other types, the spiritual song.

The methods of song-text reducing are familiar. When the American youth sings

he is not only following a practice of the early spiritual song makers and singers—his horse-shoe song itself is a parody of a spiritual in this collection—but he is singing in the infinitely older manner of his race. He is singing an organically constructed tune and refusing to let words interfere with it, a tendency which may be observed from ‘Sumer is icumen in’ to the nineteenth century songs of sailors and to other work-songs and children’s songs, like that of ‘The Big Bad Wolf’, today.

The text simplification in religious folk-songs began modestly. The variety of spiritual song which is closest to the folk-hymn is that in which each short stanza of text (four short lines usually) is followed by a chorus of the same length, as for example:

The verse was mastered probably by comparatively few singers, even though it may have been “lined out” by the song leader. But the whole assemblage had its chance to join lustily in singing the chorus.

A simpler form of spiritual song went directly into a refrain after the first text couplet:

Then came the chorus:

An offspring of this same ‘Morning Trumpet’ song may serve to illustrate the next step in simplification, one in which the singers, instead of using new poetic lines in subsequent stanzas, were satisfied with slight variations of those already sung:

and so on, with “leaders,” “converts,” etc. without end.

The next step is seen in those songs where one short phrase is sung three times and then followed by a one-phrase refrain:

These songs were sometimes called “choruses,” for they are often really nothing else,—detached choruses, the text varied a bit from verse to verse, functioning as complete songs.

The last word in brevity of text is where simply one short phrase or sentence, sung over and over, is made to fill out the whole tune frame as a stanza. ‘Death, Ain’t You Got No Shame’, in this collection is one example among many. Such songs as this were too meager to be welcomed warmly into the old song books. They survive therefore chiefly in oral tradition. But meagerness of text is not, we must remember, any criterion of the worth of a religious folk-song. ‘Hebrew Children,’ for example, the song from which I have just cited a stanza, is at once extremely chary of words and rich in tonal beauty. This becomes evident when one sees Annabal Morris Buchanan’s arrangement of it for modern chorus.

It was the spiritual songs, rather than the hymns or the ballads, which appealed subsequently most deeply to the negroes and have reappeared most often among the religious songs of that race. In White Spirituals I presented twenty different negro songs and traced them, both tunes and texts, directly to as many early religious songs of the white people. In the present collection upwards of 60 songs have been found to be the legitimate tune-and-words forebears of the same number of negro spirituals. (Incidentally, all of the songs just used here to illustrate the steps in text simplification have been borrowed by the black man and made over.) These negro offspring songs are mentioned by title, and information as to where I found them is given in the notes under each of the songs concerned.[5]

The tunes of the secular folk-songs came into the religious environment—into the folk-hymns and spiritual songs—with little change. What one could sing by himself to secular words all could sing in a gathering to religious words. The new surroundings made only one added demand,—that the singers indulge in fewer vocal liberties than they might have enjoyed when singing the same tunes in their homes and alone. I refer to those liberties in personal interpretation, a quaint characteristic of individual folk singing which has given the collectors their numerous variants of one and the same song. Group singers had now to agree on one version of a tune and stick fairly closely to it. I say fairly closely, for the religious singers allowed but few of their tunes to become completely standardized. This will become clear when one studies the variants of certain folk-hymn and spiritual-song tunes in this compilation.

Folk-Song Collectors of Yore

In the earlier years of the camp-meeting movement, few if any of the songs produced in and for that environment appeared in print. The whole body of revival song was therefore generally known as “unwritten music.” The first recordings were of the texts only. They appeared in the form of booklets and bore some such title as “Hymns and Spiritual Songs / for the Pious of all Denominations / as Sung in Camp Meetings.” They were prepared first by itinerant preachers or song leaders who saw in the Great Revival a chance to serve the cause, and perhaps to make money. That these books filled a great need is attested by their ubiquity during the period which may be designated roughly as from 1800 to 1840.

The musical notation of the tunes they sang was the least concern of the revival folk. It is quite probable that the camp-meeting crowds of those times never saw their tunes in musical notation. It is evident that the first recordings of this unwritten music were not made by the revivalists themselves, and that the first book collections of such recordings were not made primarily for use in revivals. The books in which these tunes first appeared were the country singing manuals of which I have spoken above. The singing masters were quick to recognize the value of the rousing revival songs and saw to it that their own institution benefitted from their vogue. The Christian Harmony, published in New Hampshire in 1805 was perhaps the first book to record the revival tunes. The Olive Leaf, a Georgia book of 1878 was the last.[6]

We sometimes have the compiler’s own story of his sources. In the preface to William Caldwell’s Union Harmony for example, the compiler tells us that “many of the airs which the author has reduced to system [notated] and harmonized have been selected from the unwritten music in general use” among Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. William Walker says, in the preface to his Southern Harmony, “I have composed parts to a great many good airs, which I could not find in any publication or in manuscript, and assigned my name as the author.” William Hauser’s preface to his compendious Hesperian Harp is lacking in my copy of his work (the only copy in existence, I believe); but the compiler’s method of finding songs becomes clear when we peruse his pages of song. On the page with ‘Patton’, for example, he notes that he first heard the Rev. William Patton, of Missouri, sing the song which bears his name “at a camp-meeting, North Cove, Burk Country, North Carolina, in 1831 or 1832.” The song entitled ‘Houston’ was an “air I learned from my mother when a small child.” As to ‘Land of Rest’ he states that the “inspiration of this tune [was] caught from a female voice at a distance, at Barbee’s Hotel, High Point, N. C., June 9th, 1868.” Under the song 11 entitled ‘Rev. James Axley’s Song,’ in the same compiler’s Olive Leaf, he tells who the Rev. Axley was and how he, Hauser, came to record the preacher’s favorite tune. John G. McCurry gives a song called ‘Good-By’ in his Social Harp and tells that he put it down “as played on the accordion by Mrs. Martha Hodges of Hartwell,” Georgia.

Instances like these cited above are numerous. They all go to convince us of the great service rendered by the rural singing masters of yore in the preservation of a body of song, in the collecting and publishing of which no one else seems to have been interested.

The country singing books on which I have drawn for most of the songs of this collection, are in the main those which were at my disposal while I was preparing White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. From the Georgia-Carolina section were The Southern Harmony in its 1835 and 1854 editions; The Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist (1845); The Sacred Harp which first appeared in 1844 but whose oldest edition at my disposal has been that of 1859; its three descendants, The Union Harp (1909), The Sacred Harp (Cooper edition, 1902 and four subsequent printings; I consulted the fifth reprint), and The Original Sacred Harp (1911);[7] The Hesperian Harp (1848); The Social Harp (1855); The Christian Harmony (1866); and The Olive Leaf (1878). Among the books originating in the eastern half of Tennessee I searched The Western Harmony (1824); The Columbian Harmony (1825); The Union Harmony (1837); The Knoxville Harmony (1838); The Harp of Columbia (1848); and The Western Psalmodist (1853). From the Valley of Virginia I used The Kentucky Harmony (1814); the German Choral-Music (1816); The Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony (1820); The Virginia Harmony (1831); Genuine Church Music (1832); and The Union Harmony (1848). From Saint Louis I had The Missouri Harmony (1820). I found also some material in two publications which are still in use among the Primitive Baptists, The Primitive Baptist Hymn and Tune Book (1902) and Good Old Songs (1913).[8] Two books, invaluable compendiums of the very sort of songs I was seeking, came to my hand too late for consideration in White Spirituals. They were The Revivalist, published in Troy, New York, in 1868; and Jeremiah Ingalls’ Christian Harmony, published in New Hampshire in 1805. The latter contains scores of religious folk-songs—among them many spiritual songs—which duplicate, though in variant forms, the songs which are found in abundance in the southern country-song manuals. The Revivalist, more than 60 years younger, is a veritable treasure trove of the same sorts of song. Together the two books open new vistas as to the spread and active life period of the song movement under observation. The New Hampshire book, 12 made by a Vermont compiler, proves beyond doubt that the movement did not remain in the South—the section of its first prevalence presumably and of its present persistence—but spread early also into New England. The New York book points definitely to the persistence of the tradition in the northeastern section far longer than we would, without this evidence, have been warranted in assuming.

I went song hunting also among the authored hymn-and-tune-books of the big denominations, but I found little, and that little was already familiar to me from its appearance in the country-singing books.[9]

Further information as to the identity of the books mentioned above may be found in the Bibliography at the end of this volume. The abbreviations which will be used in the body of this song collection when referring to the source song books are explained in the List of Abbreviations of Titles.

Features of American Folk-Tunes

Even after recognizing the three types of religious folk-song as they are described above, it was not always easy in particular instances, to decide on acceptance into this collection or on rejection as non-folk material.

There are literally thousands of songs in the books searched. In the Original Sacred Harp alone there are 609, and the Hesperian Harp holds 677. And while other books are slimmer and duplications from book to book are numerous, it must still be quite evident that it was no easy task to identify just the songs I was after. At times I had to apply a number of criteria. Often the folky nature of the text pointed to an equally folky tune. There was another hint sometimes in the name given as that of the composer of the song. When I met with the names Moore, Walker, Chapin, Breedlove, White, Carrell, Davisson, Hauser, McCurry and a number of others, in the upper right corner of the song page, then I was practically certain that the song on that page was usable. For the men in question were, in reality, not composers. They were recorders and arrangers of unwritten music.[10]

When an example of the old unwritten music made its way into the authorized church hymnals—as happened to a restricted degree from fifty to seventy-five years ago—it was called a “Western Melody” or a “Southern Melody.” Such designations became another reliable token of folk source.

More important than any external indications in determining whether I was dealing in a particular instance with a folk-tune, was the character of the tune itself. The ability to recognize a folk-tune comes to the student of such music gradually, somewhat as does the recognition of a strange language or dialect. It came to me that way; but after assembling my tunes I felt that their general folk character might to some degree be reduced to a set of definite traits. I therefore reexamined not only my own melodies but also those far more numerous tunes in the secular collections of Sharp and others, for such characteristics as tonal trend, rhythmic trend, tonality (modal character), and musical form. Since there is no available definition of a folk-tune and since probably no succinct one can be made, I am hoping that my deductions in the following paragraphs as to some earmarks of American folk-tunes may be helpful to others who are interested in our traditional melodism, as they have been helpful to me.

Tonal Trend, Tune Families

The very beginning of a folk-tune has characteristic marks. The first accented note is usually the tonic of its scale. In almost all cases this first-accent note is preceded by an up-beat note which also is usually a tonic. The upbeat note coming second in frequency is the lower 5 of the scale, with the higher 3 even less often thus employed. The interval, if any, between the up-beat and the first accented note is thus either an ascending fourth, an ascending third (in those cases where these first two notes are 1 and 3) or descending third. And these intervals, though small, are often broken or bridged by an unaccented intervening note. Tunes beginning with an interval of a fifth (ascending 1 to 5 or descending 5 to 1) are quite rare. Common folk-tune beginnings are thus:

As to melodic trend within the body of the tune, I shall speak only briefly. It is a broad subject, too broad to be discussed adequately in this connection. A survey of my tune-thematic card catalog reveals, however, a few characteristics of this melodic trend. The first is that the tunes assume usually an initial upward trend. Another is that the steps or intervals employed are small, predominantly seconds, 14 thirds, fourths, and fifths. Greater intervals are found however at the juncture of two phrases. From these observations we may assume that the American folk-singer does not like big intervals.[11] This assumption, based on recorded tunes, is strengthened when one listens to folk singing and notices their anticipatory slides or scoops in approaching a tone that is only a little higher or lower than the one just sung, a practice which may be interpreted as an anticipation of, and an attempt to master, that which is vocally difficult. But while the individual jumps from note to note are not as a rule great, the pitch compass of the entire tune is often surprisingly wide. The melodies usually end in a descending cadence to the tonic.

Along with the great variety in form which we meet among American folk-tunes, there are certain melodic formulas which seem to be favorites and reappear with unimportant variations as the tonal vestment of many different songs, so many indeed that they might well be looked on as wandering tunes (reminding one of the familiar wandering stanzas in folk texts) or, since they are not identical from song to song, tune families.

In the present collection I have come upon six tune families of different sizes and have named them in each instance after the song which seems to be the most representative member of the family. They are the ‘Lord Lovel’ family, cast in the ionian mode; ‘I Will Arise’, aeolian and ionian; ‘Hallelujah’, mixolydian; ‘Kedron’, aeolian; ‘Babe of Bethlehem’, dorian; and ‘Roll Jordan’, ionian. The tunes in this collection and elsewhere belonging to the ‘Lord Lovel’ family are listed under the song ‘Dulcimer’. Those belonging to the other families are listed under the songs for which the family is named.

Metrical Patterns

In the matter of metrical patterns we find also a variety, and favorites. We have noted the almost universal use of the up-beat. The up-beat initiates two different rhythmic trends, one of which is the iambic, the prevalent one in American folk-tunes: ²/₄ ♩ | ♩′. This two-part type of accent unit (of notes or syllables, whichever way we approach the matter), while occurring in series of four and three, as we have seen, may be found occasionally also in twos, fives, and sixes. Indeed the folk-tunes not infrequently show a refreshing independence of the demands of perfect quadraticality. The other rhythmic trend initiated by the up-beat is the less often used one made up of three-part units, which appear either in three-four time, ¾ ♩ | ♩′ ♩ or slow six-eight time, ⁶/₈ ♪ | ♪′ ♪. With more notes (syllables) in this single amphibrachic unit, the series of such units grows naturally in syllabic 15 length. It often outgrows thus its function as a mere melodic phrase and tends to assume that of the melodic sentence. A fine example of this is in Sharp’s recording of the ‘Cherry-Tree Carol’.

But while the vast majority of folk-tunes follow one or the other of the above described patterns, we must remember that metrical precision or mechanical adherence to any formula is the least of the folk’s concerns. Indeed, we should be justified in assuming such exactness, as seen in text lines of carefully measured lengths and in perfection of rhyme, to be sure signs of individual creative participation; whereas greater freedom and variability in tune and text aspects are obviously characteristic of the folk’s vocalism.

Scales, Modes

The folk-tunes of America are not, in the main, built up on scales of the diatonic major and minor systems which, as is well known, have assumed their present form under the demands of harmony; but on a modal system which grew out of melodic exigences long before harmony made its conquest of the music of western civilisation. Nor do the folk-tunes of this country make use of all the tones of even these modal scales. They often employ but five or six of the seven available tones, leaving characteristic gaps in such scales.

American folk-tune collectors have had their troubles in the interpretation of modal melodies. I have had mine. Even such a life-long student of these things as Cecil Sharp met many a knotty problem in classifying his Appalachian tunes. In view of this difficulty I called on Hilton Rufty, a thorough musician and a reliable authority in the folk-music field, to lend a hand in the modal classification of these tunes. He generously acceded to my request; and by the time my requests had ceased and before his generosity had been exhausted he had checked or corrected all my modal classifications of the tunes in this collection. In making clear Mr. Rufty’s effective and practical method of identifying the character of tunes I shall reproduce his Classification Chart and quote here his explanation of it.

Rufty’s Classification; Chart of Tunes

In identifying the modal character of the “gapped” tunes I have deemed it advisable to proceed by an entirely arbitrary method, free from any sort of theoretical connotation. Should a missing tone be presupposed to make either a major or minor, perfect or imperfect, interval with the tonic, there arise at once ambiguities of modality. For purposes of harmonic treatment it is quite necessary to decide upon which particular mode a gapped tune suggests, but in studying the purely melodic aspects it is reasonable to accept the tune as an entity, considering it in its actual tonal structure and not with regard to its possible modal permutations. To accomplish this purpose I have evolved a chart, based on methods used by Cecil J. Sharp in his English Folksongs from the Southern Appalachians, 16 which for the great majority of the tunes in this collection is an adequate system of classification. The arrangement of the chart is very simple: there are five columns, each beginning with one of the five pentatonic scales. Immediately below each pentatonic scale are four hexatonic scales which are formed by the addition of the missing tones, singly and in their variable positions. The system permits these variables to be read in terms of natural and flatted tones. Lastly in each column are three regular heptatonic modes which are the outgrowth of supplying both missing tones simultaneously and in variable combination. The gaps in the pentatonic and hexatonic scales are indicated by slurs and the numerical positions from the tonic of the missing tones. The supplied missing tones are indicated by black notes, and in fitting any given tune to any scale on the chart I have endeavored where possible to let these black notes indicate the weak tones. Since it was possible, so far as the actual tonal structure of the tunes was concerned, to have a choice in the placing of them, the device of indicating weak tones was a happy solution to a more careful classification. Above each tune in this book I have indicated the modal and, following this and in parentheses, the tonal pattern of the tune with the heptatonic scale as a norm, that is, treating gapped tunes arbitrarily as broken-down heptatonic tunes. A Roman numeral indicates a major or perfect interval with the tonic; an Arabic numeral a minor interval. In event of augmented or diminished fourths or fifths I have used conventional signs. A gap is indicated by a dash.

As a practical example of classification let us take at random, say, ‘Weeping Savior’, a song of the present collection. Counting the tones of the melody we find six with the sixth degree missing. We observe that the tune has a major second, minor third, perfect fourth and fifth, no sixth, and a minor seventh. By transposition we see that from a standpoint of the tonal pattern alone the tune can be listed either as Hexatonic, Mode 2, A or Mode 4, b. But the examination of structural detail shows clearly that 3 being a strong tone and 2 being decidedly weak gives preference to the first classification under Mode 2.

While pentachordal and hexachordal tunes (which do not conform to this system of classification) may be perfect entities, I have, nevertheless, for purposes of uniformity classified them on a heptatonic basis, that is, as heptatonic tunes with the sixth and seventh, or seventh alone, missing respectively. Similarly, while it is somewhat tautological to say, for instance, a tune is heptatonic ionian, I have prefixed the term heptatonic to facilitate identification and to balance the constantly recurrent pentatonic and hexatonic.

An examination of these spiritual folk-tunes reveals a great predominance of gapped scales. Only 23 per cent of them use the full seven-tone series; 44 per cent are hexatonic; 23 per cent are pentatonic; and seven tunes use only from 1 to 5 of their scale.

CLASSIFICATION CHART OF TUNES

The incidence of the different modes has been impossible to ascertain. We are sure of a mode, as Mr. Rufty has noted, only when the scale tones are all represented in the melody. Proceeding however in questionable instances according to the more or less clear modal implication, I have found that about 52 per cent of these tunes may be interpreted as ionian (major), about 30 per cent as aeolian, 7.5 per cent each as dorian[12] and mixolydian, and three tunes as phrygian.

I leave the interpretation of the significance of these figures to others. I venture to suggest however that they will be found to indicate a survival of gapped and modal tunes that is unique in the folk-music of today among peoples of European stock.[13]

A modally constructed tune is, as I have indicated, almost sure to be a folk-tune. And if a melody shows the characteristic gaps, its folk nature is quite assured. Indeed, the complete filling-in of the gaps, creating two half steps, is a sign, though not always a sure one, of art influence.[14]

The above paragraphs show in a general way a few of the more important and evident features by which American folk-tunes may be recognised.[15] Their presence or absence in specific cases has helped me to decide as to the fitness of a tune for acceptance into this collection.

Tunes of Religious and Worldly Folk-Songs Compared

I have indicated above (page 6) that many of the present tunes were borrowed outright from secular folk-songs. The tune-to-tune relationships were discovered to some degree, as I have indicated, by accident. A spiritual tune would remind me of a secular one. I would look it up in Sharp or elsewhere, verify the relationship, 18 and note it under the proper song in this collection. Such accidents, however, account for but comparatively few of my related-tune discoveries. In most instances they came to light as the result of a methodical comparison made possible by my having catalogued my spiritual folk-tunes and a large number of secular folk-melodies. I shall not go into a detailed explanation of this cataloguing method here, chiefly because it is one which, though it answered my own purposes well, would probably be found inadequate as a tool for students of comparative melody in general. I shall say merely that the catalog was a card index of tune beginnings, all transposed to a key which had two flats as its signature. The arrangement was based on the scale position or relative pitch of the first few tones. At the beginning of the catalog were those tunes which began on b-flat, then came those beginning on c and so on. The arrangement among those tunes beginning on any one tone, followed the same pitch sequence, from lowest to highest, taking into consideration the second, third, and more notes of the tune beginnings where necessary. That is, my lexicographical arrangement was like that of the dictionary, but with notes on a regular staff taking the place of letters, and with the scale steps taking the place of alphabetical sequence.

The actual working out of this scheme may be observed in the arrangement of tunes in this collection. In each of the three parts the tunes appear in their catalog sequence.[16]

Through a consistent comparison of the tunes in this catalog with those in secular tune files made on the same plan, I have been able to discover the organic relationship of upwards of 150 melodies in this collection to an even greater number of traditional folk-tunes associated with secular texts. This greater number is explained by the fact that one and the same tune in this collection was often found related to a number of worldly songs. To one tune ‘Pilgrim’, for example, I discovered 17 secular related melodies. The relationship runs in degree all the way from one which is barely recognizable to one which consists in an almost note-for-note identity.

The catalogs were also of distinct value in bringing to light scores of interrelated tunes within the collection, and thus in bringing to light the tune families mentioned on page 14 above.

The search for kindred secular tunes was most fruitful in the case of the ballads and somewhat less so for the hymns. Among the spiritual songs the search yielded surprizingly meager results. The reason lay probably in the nature of 19 the spiritual-song tunes themselves. These tunes—whatever their source—were often altered through the arbitrary intrusion of refrains and choruses. Among these tunes, therefore, my finding of secular analogies was limited usually to melodic parts instead of whole tunes.

To be sure, the tune relationships, religious to secular, which I have pointed out, touch little more than half the songs under scrutiny. But when it is taken into consideration that the related secular tunes were all found in a body of British Isles-American melodies not much greater than that of the spiritual tunes themselves, then it would not seem unreasonable to assume that a complete catalog of American worldly folk-tunes would reveal cognates to many more, possibly to all of the tunes presented here. The kinships already discovered, however, warrant the assumption that these spiritual tunes are part and parcel of the ancestral folk-melodism of the English-speaking peoples.

The worldly-religious tune comparison has also shed more light on the motives which led the revival folk to borrow from the store of secular melody and on the manner of that borrowing. We have indicated above our belief that one motive was the crying need for rousing and familiar tunes. Another reason seems to have been the mere fact that the borrowed tunes were worldly. Worldliness was of itself an asset. Fighting the devil with his own weapons had its distinct advantages in revival technics. But just how and why a particular secular tune came into the religious atmosphere is not always evident. In some instances, however, the examination of the secular original song makes this clear.

When the revivalist heard the Scottish-American sing

he evidently saw at once the possibilities of turning the text to his own evangelistic purposes, and wasted little time in making it over into ‘Sinner’s Invitation:’

which he sang to the same tune.

The ballad tune to

went over easily into the song which told of the Christian voyager who was ‘Bound for Canaan.’

The old ballad ‘Geordie’ begins

The revival singers took this hint, with its tune phrase, and produced, in ‘Victoria’:

In the traditional ballad ‘In Seaport Town’ there is a recurring phrase:

This “valley” suggested to the religious mind the emotional depression of the almost converted mourner as well as the valley of death; and thus came into existence the beautiful spiritual ‘Lonesome Valley’:

whose tune is closely related to that of the secular song.

The ‘Poor Stranger’ of the English secular ballad who appeared also as “poor strange girl,” a “roving soldier,” and a “rebel soldier,” all of whom are “far from my home,” exerted both melodic and textual influence on the ‘Heaven-Born Soldier’ who urges his comrades to

The melody which Johann Sebastian Bach, the great adapter of folk-tunes, made a peasant sing in his Cantata ‘Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet’ spread to England and became there the setting of a number of popular texts in the first half of the eighteenth century. One of these songs, dating from 1772, was ‘Farewell, Ye Green Fields and Sweet Groves’ which gave birth, probably also in England, to the religious song ‘Green Fields’, found in every old southern fasola book. Its opening lines are

With ‘Saw Ye my True Love’ as a model, the task of making the religious text ‘Saw Ye My Savior,’ sung to the same tune, was a grateful one.

The happy inebriate who is his own hero in ‘Way Up On Clinch Mountain’ is reformed and regretful in ‘John Adkins’ Farewell’ where he gives warning to other alcoholics in the same melodic strain.

From the above examples it would seem that the secular text contained often some hint which led the religious adapter in making his new poetic lines; and that the secular tune usually followed as a matter of course.

The comparison of tunes shed no actually new light on the age of the tunes. But it made clear the fact that the folk’s stock of melodies is assembled from divers times. The tunes of two songs in this collection, ‘New Orleans’, and ‘Hark my Soul’, have tonal trends strikingly similar to that of melodies found in the eleventh and early thirteenth centuries respectively. From the early seventeenth century we find ‘Mourner’s Lamentation’ which was in those earlier times ‘Wae is Me for Prince Charley’, a Jacobite song about Charles II of England. ‘Beggar’ is a 21 remake of ‘A-Begging We Will Go’ which has been traced back to 1611. ‘Captain Kidd’ or ‘Kidd’, as it is disguised in the fasola books, dates from the first part of the eighteenth century. It is significant that most of the tunes mentioned in the above paragraphs are comparatively modern in their musical aspects. This fact leads to the suspicion that the really old-sounding tunes, those in the antique modes—dorian, phrygian, and the like, especially in their gapped forms—originated in still earlier times. Here is an inviting field for the student of comparative folk-melodism.

Conclusion

I have been impressed, as I have come to know these tunes better, with their variety and beauty. They are believed, by the country folk who still sing them, to be “the most beautiful music on earth.” When I first heard this sweeping judgment I put it down as emanating from an understandable though extravagant zeal, one which was all the greater perhaps since the singers, mostly oldsters, felt they were fighting for the very life of a dying cause. But I now see I was mistaken. The songs are living vigorously without being fought for. The country folk clearly realized—however they may have expressed the realisation—that the “good old songs” were ingrained in their racial souls and that for this reason it was the most completely soul-satisfying of all music from whatever source.

If this was and still is the firm belief of those uncounted thousands who know and sing the country songs, those who are still carrying on the tradition for the sheer love of it and the joy they get out of it; then is there not an inspiration for us? Is that picture not an incentive to look into, to learn to know this tonal tradition, the chief one in our ethnic background? This quest might well lead to an examination of our other acquired, not inherited, musical concepts and judgments, in search for reasons why, in acquiring them, we have ignored the simpler art of the past. And from this approach we might open the question as to whether these reasons are valid,—wise or unwise.

American folk-music, basing squarely on that of the British Isles, is purer, I assert, and more completely representative of the peoples among whom it has developed, and less representative of individual creative activity than is the folk-music of other Western peoples. As evidence of this I present this collection, commending it to the serious consideration of those interested in fundamental phases of American culture.

This collection challenges, I feel, the attention also of those interested in the songs of the churches. Urban congregational singing depends on hymnals. Hymnals are made by successions of revision committees. These committees have been either hostile to, or incognisant of, American folk-hymns. The perusal of almost any protestant hymn-and-tune book will prove this. Thus we have the 22 strange anomaly: groups whose prime purpose is to induce more general singing by the masses, refusing recognition, in their books of songs, to the melodism of those masses and putting in its place the tonal products of individuals.

There are of late some exceptions to this attitude. In the Christian Science Hymnal, where one finds numerous folk-tunes from many other lands, there are two variants of melodies to be found in the present collection, that is, of ‘Pilgrim’ and ‘Marion’. The editors found these tunes, however, not in America but in the British Isles.

The Methodists who were, as we have seen, originally largely responsible for the appearance of folk-tunes in the American religious environment, have for the past fifty years progressively eliminated them from their authorized hymnals. But their latest revised edition of 1935 indicates that this tendency has been checked. I find in that volume seven tunes which are identical with melodies in the present collection, namely, with ‘Green Fields’, ‘New Britain’, ‘Beloved’, ‘Nettleton’, ‘Friends of Freedom’, ‘Plenary’, and ‘Romish Lady’. There are also five other tunes in the Hymnal called “early American melodies” which I have not been able to identify as folk-melodies.

In England the evangelical protestant hymnal makers seem now to be folk-minded. The English Methodists, at least, have welcomed into their latest Hymn Book no less than 43 traditional folk-tunes of the British Isles. They have even used two tunes—‘Rhode Island’ and ‘Pisgah’—the latter of which appears in the present collection, and have called them “American”, even though one of them, ‘Pisgah’, came hither from England, as Miss Gilchrist has pointed out.

Then there are the folklorists. How will they greet this collection? My stressing of tunes and saying little about texts will be regarded by some of the old-line folklorists—especially those who still conceive all such material as “popular poetry”—with disapproval. Others, those who are sure that folk-song is dying out and therefore see the collector’s duty simply as that of retrieving the last bits of it, may greet the present collection as a new acquisition to the museums. Such a response would arouse in me no enthusiasm and little satisfaction; for I demur completely from narrow interpretations of the status, meaning, import, and destiny of folk-lore, folk-songs, these folk-songs. I do not participate in the pessimism of the folk-song fatalists.

The lore of a folk comprehends, as I understand it, the whole of its basic cultural accomplishments. Understood in this broadest and deepest sense, a folk-lore is truer, more vital and more significant than an art-lore. It is a clearer mirror of a people’s past, a more reliable interpreter of its present trends, and a safer prophet of its culture to come. It is all this because it is the body and soul of that culture, where art is merely a vestment. The art which fits best this body and soul, this basic ethnic character, is the best art. The art of ancient Greece was great for this reason. All students of esthetics since Lessing and Winckelmann have recognized this. They have recognized also that the great periods in the art of any enduring 23 people are those when its gifted creators are in closest harmony with the genius of their race; and that its barren periods are those when the masters have been faithless to their own and have sought afar “the good which lies so near.”

Acknowledgements

I wish to express here my deep gratitude to Mr. Hilton Rufty for his generous help in verifying the musical aspects of this collection and in helping me solve many a knotty problem in interpreting the tunes which I have transcribed from the old singing-school books. Mr. John Powell has earned my sincere thanks for reading critically the entire manuscript, calling my attention to a number of inaccuracies, and to many secular melodies related to those in this volume.

The present collection would have been far less comprehensive without the use of a number of unique source books placed at my disposal by friends. I wish therefore to acknowledge gratefully the co-operation of Mr. Will H. Ruebush for providing me with The Olive Leaf and The Social Harp; Mrs. Annabel Morris Buchanan for The Union Harmony (Hendrickson); Mr. E. S. Lorenz for The Revivalist and Songs of Grace; Mr. John Lair for the Scots Musical Museum; The Lawson McGhee Library (Knoxville, Tennessee) for The Church Harmony and The Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony; Mr. W. E. Bird for The Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist; and Miss Lucille Wilkin for The Western Harmony. The University of North Carolina Press has kindly allowed me to reproduce several songs from White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands. For this I wish to express my sincere thanks.

I wish also to thank those who have furnished me with songs from oral tradition. Among such helpful contributors are Professor Donald Davidson, Mr. Don West, Mr. Samuel E. Asbury, Mr. Francis Arthur Robinson, and Miss Will Allen Dromgoole. My gratitude is hereby expressed also to Dr. Carleton Sprague Smith, Chief of the Music Division of the New York Public Library, and to Dr. Oliver Strunk, Chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress for their helpfulness.

My daughter, Frances Helen Parker, and my sisters, Carol Jackson Ransom and Genevieve Jackson Beckwith, have given me invaluable help in preparing this book for the printer and in correcting the proofs. For this I am deeply and lastingly grateful to them.

George Pullen Jackson Vanderbilt University

Nashville, Tennessee, April 10, 1937

Opened, The Original Sacred Harp, 1911 edition measures twenty inches across. On the left hand page is a “fuguing” song composed in Alabama in 1908 in the eighteenth-century New England manner. ‘Jester’ on the right hand page is a typical camp-meeting spiritual song.

Fifty-one Religious Ballads

The sole occurrence of ‘The Babe of Bethlehem’, a carol, is in The Southern Harmony, 1835. William (Singin’ Billy) Walker recorded it evidently from oral tradition and added a treble and a bass part, in the four-shape notation.

The ‘Morning Trumpet’ is a spiritual song in the unique seven-shape notation of The Harp of Columbia, 1855.

No. 1
ROMISH LADY, HH 257

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The text—undoubtedly of Inquisition times origin—indicates the age of the ballad. It is to be found in the Roxburghe Ballads, i., 43. It is mentioned in Beaumont and Fletcher’s “Knight of the Burning Pestle” (1613). A parody on the opening words:

is in Sandburg’s American Songbag, p. 11. Another echo of this ballad text is:

in ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well’, Sharp, i., 159. I recorded the tune in Dayton, Virginia; see White Spirituals, 202. The Methodist Hymnal (1935, No. 436) has a variant of the tune which it calls a “traditional English carol”.

No. 2
BEGGAR or TO BEGGING I WILL GO, SOC 212.

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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A close tune variant is ‘Lost City’, or ‘To Glory I Will Go’ in this collection. Tune and words are a parody of ‘A-Begging We Will Go’ which was widely popular in the latter part of the seventeenth century and traces of whose existence are found as early as 1611.

See Chappell’s Old English Popular Music, ii., 42-43.

The first stanza of the song as it appeared in Choyce Ayres etc., 1676, runs:

Other songs for which the early song became the prototype were ‘A Bowling We Will Go’, ‘A Fishing We Will Go’, ‘A Hawking We Will Go’ and ‘A Hunting We Will Go.’

No. 3
REVEREND JAMES AXLEY’S SONG, OL 369

Hexatonic, mode 4 A (I II — IV V VI 7)

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The Olive Leaf arranger spoiled the tune’s apparent mixolydian purity by changing the d’s to d-sharps. As to title and source the editor says: “Reverend James Axley was one of the pioneer preachers of the Holston Conference, and a very holy, laborious, and successful minister. I learned this tune and song of Reverend Russell Reneau, who died in Arkansas during our late unhappy Civil War. Crude as the song is, I choose to preserve it in memory of Mr. Axley and Mr. Reneau.” The tune is a variant of ‘Christian Warfare’, GOS 603. Further information as to the Reverend James Axley, whose period of activity in the methodist conferences of Tennessee, Kentucky and other states was during the first decades of the nineteenth century, may be found in Peter Cartwright’s Autobiography, p. 62 and elsewhere.

No. 4
HICKS’ FAREWELL, SOH 19

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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William Walker claims the tune. See ‘Farewell’ in this collection for different melodies associated with this text. Cecil Sharp recorded five versions of the song as he heard them in the Appalachian Mountains in 1916 and 1918. See Sharp, ii., 142-143. The text (given more fully under ‘Farewell’) was written by the Reverend B. Hicks of South Carolina. See White Spirituals, 202ff.

No. 5
FREE SALVATION, Wesleyan Psalmist

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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Miss Gilchrist finds this “reminiscent of the old Cornish ‘When God at first had Adam made’, and of the style of the Manx-Gaelic carvals.” See JFSS, viii., 83.

No. 6
SAILOR’S HOME, SOH 182

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The song is attributed in the Southern Harmony to Wm. M. Caudill and Wm. Walker. The tune bears some resemblance to ‘Liverpool’ in this collection. The song is found also in REV 396, entitled ‘Sonnet’.

No. 7
LIVERPOOL or SOLEMN ADDRESS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, OSH 37

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The earliest appearance of the text is in Mercer’s Cluster, a collection of rurally used hymns (not tunes) by Jesse Mercer, benefactor of Mercer University, who lived in Powellton, Georgia, in the 1820’s. The editor of the Sacred Harp attributes the tune to M. C. H. Davis, a southern rural. The song is found also UH 27, HH 83, HOC 113, WP 36, SOC 76, SOH I and CHH 58. The tune is a member of the ‘Lord Lovel’ family mentioned in the introduction, p. 14, and is closely related to ‘Mermaid’, Sharp, i., 291, and to ‘The Broom of Cowdenknows’, SMM No. 3, and its seventeenth-century country-dance form ‘The Bonny Bonny Broome’, Playford’s The English Dancing Master, p. 74. For a list of other members of the ‘Lord Lovel’ tune family see ‘Dulcimer’ in this collection.

No. 8
LITTLE FAMILY, WS 195 ff.

Pentatonic, mode 1 (I II — IV V VI —)

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See White Spirituals for the full text of seven stanzas about the raising of Lazarus. For references see JAFL, xxv., 17, and xxix., 182.

Almost the same tune is ‘Johnny German’, Sharp, ii., 256. ‘Joe Bowers’, Cox, 527, is also similar. Another spiritual ballad using this tune in variant form is ‘Wedlock (A)’, in this collection.

No. 9
MISS HATAWAY’S EXPERIENCE, HH 421

Heptatonic ionian, Mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The full text is reproduced in White Spirituals, 186f. The tune is closely related to ‘McAfee’s Confession’, Sharp, ii., 15 and 16. John Powell notes in connection with this song: “I have collected this tune often as ‘Young People Who Delight in Sin’ and it is always mixolydian.” He then makes the suggestion: “Why not take out the g-sharp from the signature? In that case the modal indication would be heptatonic mixolydian, mode 3 a + b (I II III IV V VI 7).”

No. 10
DYING CALIFORNIAN, OSH 410

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The song seems to have been inspired by the fate of one of the “forty-niners.” It made its first appearance in fasola circles in the 1859 edition of the Sacred Harp where it is attributed to Ball and Drinkard. For references as to its origin see Hudson, Folksongs of Mississippi, 221.

No. 11
JOHN ADKINS’ FAREWELL, SOC 200

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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John G. McCurry, compiler of the Social Harp, claims this song and dates it 1851. The tune is identical with that of ‘When Boys Go A-Courting’, Sharp, ii., 206. The “drunkard” theme may have been the textual source of ‘Way Up On Clinch Mountain’, where, to the same tune, the singer glories in his excesses including that of whiskey drinking. See Sandburg, 307. Miss Scarbrough has a negro adoption of the same tune in ‘Noble Skewball’; see On the Trail of the Negro Folk-Song, 63. An English folk-song ‘Sweet England’ has a variant tune. See English Folk-Songs for Schools, 46. For an Irish variant see Petrie, No. 1172. A Scotch variant is ‘My Ain Fireside’, Lyric Gems of Scotland, 186, which in turn borrowed its tune from ‘Todlen Hame’.

No. 12
REDEMPTION (C), KHN 185

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The tune is practically the same as ‘Grenadier and the Lady’, JFSS, viii., 194.

No. 13
WEDLOCK (A), SOC 188

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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Another tune and additional stanzas of the text are given in this collection under the title ‘Wedlock (B)’. The song is attributed, in the Social Harp, to Henry F. Chandler and is dated 1854. The tunes of ‘Johnny German’, Sharp, ii., 256; ‘I Rode My Little Horse’, Baring-Gould, Songs of the West, No. 101; ‘The Auld 42 House’, Lyric Gems of Scotland, 49; and ‘Joe Bowers’, are similar to the above air. Another ballad in this collection using this tune in variant form is ‘Little Family’. Stephen Foster’s song ‘Virginia Belle’ leans melodically on ‘Wedlock (A)’. (See my article in The Musical Quarterly, xxii., No. 2.)

No. 14
PATTON, OL 40

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The compiler of Olive Leaf gives the following notes: “From McAnally’s Western Harp” and “Called after the late Wm. Patton, of Mo. Heard him sing it, first, at a camp-meeting, North Cove, Burk Co., N. C., in 1831 or 1832. Published by the admirable A. S. Hayden, perhaps in 1829.” The Celtic melodic influence is clearly felt in the above tune.

No. 15
DYING BOY, OSH 398

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The Sacred Harp says this was “composed by H. S. Rees, 1859”. Is it perhaps a parody of Wm. Haines Lytle’s ‘I’m Dying, Egypt, Dying’? Lytle was a cousin of Stephen Collins Foster whose own song ‘For the Dear Old Flag I Die’ shows close kinship in words and tune to ‘Dying Boy’. (See my article in The Musical Quarterly, xxii., No. 2.) There is a resemblance also between the ‘Dying Boy’ tune and a seventeenth century psalm tune called variously ‘Bella’, ‘Leeds’, ‘Needham’ and ‘Derby’; see Hymns Ancient and Modern, Historical ed., London, Clowes, 1909, p. 79.

No. 16
SAW YE MY SAVIOR, CH 42

Heptatonic ionian, mode 1 A + B (I II III IV V VI VII)

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This song occurs also in Olive Leaf, p. 203, where it is called “a Scotch air”. Miss Gilchrist tells us, in the article often cited here, that ‘Saw Ye My Savior’ is ‘Saw Ye My Father’, or ‘The Grey Cock’, found in both Scotch and English versions. A text is in Herd’s collections of 1769 and 1772, and another with the tune, in Chappell’s Popular Music. Chappell’s version begins:

The melodic phrase above, which coincides with the text “Oh ... me”, is used to build up the tune for ‘Simple Ploughboy’, Sharp, i., 369. As to the influence of this impressive text on the crucifixion songs of the negroes, see White Spirituals, 277. Stephen Foster seems to have been influenced by the ‘Saw Ye My Savior’ tune or its secular relatives in composing his ‘Old Black Joe’. (See my article in The Musical Quarterly, xxii., No. 2.) For further references as to ‘The Grey Cock’ see British Ballads from Maine, 310ff.

No. 17
ESTER, OSH 437

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The Sacred Harp ascribes the song to John S. Terry and dates it 1869. Terry was a singing-school teacher of Georgia and later lived in Alabama. The singing-school teacher took for his warning song the ‘Lord Lovel’ tune type that has been used for many secular ballads. Among them are ‘Barbara Allen’, Sharp, i., 195, tune O; ‘Gypsy Laddie’, Sharp, i., 237, tune F; ‘Come all Ye Fair and Tender Ladies’, Sharp, ii., 135, tune P. For other tunes of the same type see ‘Dulcimer’ in this collection.

No. 18
LONE PILGRIM, SOH 256

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The text is attributed, by the 1911 editor of the Sacred Harp, to B. F. White, original compiler of that book. He wrote it “on the lone prairie in Texas”, while standing “at the grave of a friend who once lived in Georgia”. In Folksongs of Mississippi Hudson gives a variant text from oral tradition and tells of a local 48 legend as to its source which agrees in the main with that given in the Sacred Harp which book, I suspect, was the source of the Mississippi legend.

The tune, variously claimed in the fasola books, is identical with the ‘Braes o’ Balquhidder’. See Gilchrist, JFSS, viii., 77. Other derivatives of the same tune are ‘Sinner’s Invitation’, ‘Florence’, and ‘Orphan Girl’ in this collection. In The Musical Quarterly, xxii., No. 2, I have shown the relationship between this tune and Stephen Foster’s ‘Linda Has Departed’.

No. 19
ORPHAN GIRL, CSH 506

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The Cooper edition of the Sacred Harp gives the note: “Music by Eld. C. G. Keith, Nov. 1, 1906.” See Henry, JAFL, vl., 66f, for further references as to its occurrence. The tune is a derivative of ‘The Braes o’ Balquidder’. See ‘Lone Pilgrim’ for references to related tunes in this collection.

No. 20
PARALYTIC, REV 4

Heptatonic aeolian; mode 4 a + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The author of the text is given as Wm. Hunter. The tune is a variant of ‘London Pride’, Sharp, Morris Dances, Set vii, No. 6. Its proper mode would seem to be dorian and its correct signature therefore one flat.

No. 21
VILLULIA or BARTIMEUS, OSH 331

Pentatonic, mode 4 (I II — IV V — 7)

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Tune attributed to J. M. Day, a Georgian. Doubt as to the correctness of this source is cast by the appearance of both tune and text in the Christian Lyre of 1830, No. 4. Variants are ‘Invocation’, GOS 67, and ‘Lord Revive Us’, PB 198. The Sacred Harp editor evidently looked upon this tune as one in a-minor, whereas it is probably a dorian melody with f-sharp as its tonic, and should have also a d-sharp in its key signature.

No. 22
MOULDERING VINE, UH 101

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 4 a + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune was recorded, from oral tradition evidently, by William Caldwell (of eastern Tennessee) in the 1830’s. His source was doubtless some variant of ‘Banks of Inverary’. Cf. JFSS, viii., 198.

The unique opening melodic phrase is to be found also in ‘Young Beeham’ or ‘Ship’s Carpenter’, Cox 528. Another tune variant in the fasola environment is ‘Sons of Sorrow’, OSH 332.

No. 23
CONVERTED THIEF (A), COH 147

Hexatonic, mode 4 A (I II — IV V VI 7)

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The poem, given in full under ‘Converted Thief (B)’, is attributed to Stennett. William Moore of Tennessee, compiler of Columbian Harmony, lays claim to the tune, and probably did record it from oral sources. Found also SOH 9, OSH 44, GOS 140. The tune is a member of the ‘Hallelujah’ family. See the song with that title in this collection.

No. 24
TENNESSEE, HH 140

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The tune is a member of the ‘Roll Jordan’ family which is described under the song by that name in this collection. The ‘Tennessee’ tune’s resemblance to Foster’s ‘Susanna’ is evident. The melody, or some near relative of it, may well have furnished Foster with his inspiration in composing the latter. It had been sung widely in America for at least fifty years before the Pittsburgh composer published his minstrel song. (See the author’s article ‘Stephen Foster’s Debt to American Folk-Song’, The Musical Quarterly, xxii., No. 2.)

That the ‘Tennessee’ tune was “unwritten music” in the South, and therefore free for all, is indicated by the many claimants to its authorship; Chapin, J. Robertson, L. P. Breedlove, William C. Davis, and William Walker were among them. In various forms and with different texts the tune is found also, CHI 84 (published in 1805), SKH 23, GCM 134, SOH 28, GOS 229, HOC 114, WP 96, TZ 94, SOC 78, SOC 81, SOC 145, SOH 105, OSH 501, SKH 23. The second part of the tune is similar to ‘Jamaica’, Sharp, Country Dances, Set IV, No. 12.

No. 25
FAREWELL, HOC 32

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The tune is attributed in the Harp of Columbia to W. Atchley. It belongs to what I have called (Introduction, p. 14) the ‘Hallelujah’ type of melody. See ‘Hallelujah’ for other related spiritual tunes. A secular song using the same melodic formula is ‘Virginia Lover’, Sharp, ii., 150. The text of ‘Farewell’ is recorded from oral tradition and reproduced from White Spirituals, 202. See ‘Hicks’ Farewell’ in this collection as to the authorship of the words.

No. 26
WICKED POLLY, WS 190

Hexatonic mode 4, b (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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For the full text and much data as to the source and occurrence of this song, see White Spirituals, 189-193. A tune variant is ‘Supplication’, in this collection. Another is ‘Lord Bateman’, Sharp One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 6.

No. 27
MOSES

Hexatonic, mode 1 A (I II III IV V VI —)

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Recorded from singing of Miss Will Allen Dromgoole, Nashville, Tennessee, as she remembered it sung in 1890 by Mr. Tate, stage driver from Beersheba to Beersheba Springs on Cumberland Mountain in Tennessee. The unusual spelling is an attempt at reproducing the emphatic rhythmic pronunciation of Mr. Tate. The one stanza given above was all Miss Dromgoole remembered. The full text, however, was recorded by Mr. Fred Haun of Newport, Tennessee, from the singing of his mother, Mrs. Maggie Haun, and placed at my disposal by Miss Mildred Haun, his sister. This rather defective text is as follows:

No. 28
MOURNER’S LAMENTATION or CHURCH’S DESOLATION, CHH 265

Pentatonic, mode 1 (I II — IV V VI —)

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The above homespun text points to the rural preacher or revival song leader of the late eighteenth century as its source. It is a conversion story in dramatic form, the Savior, the Sinner and the Devil having parts in the drama.

The earliest known occurrence of the tune is in the Vermont book, Ingalls’ Christian Harmony of 1805, p. 77. In the Sacred Harp of 1844, p. 89, it is found with a different text and is entitled ‘Church’s Desolation’. It is claimed there by J. T. White, and in the Christian Harmony of 1866, by William Walker. Both were South Carolinians, from which territory Reed Smith recorded the tune in 1913 as one of the ‘Barbara Allen’ settings; SCB 130. This tune was probably adopted for ‘Church’s Desolation’ and for the ‘Barbara Allen’ ballad from the Scotch ballad ‘Wae’s me for Prince Charlie’. See Kennedy’s Handbook of Scottish Song, p. 20. The London Era in the early 1860’s speaks of this as the “celebrated Jacobite song.” The ‘Prince Charlie’ of the song is Charles II of England. Hence the song, the text at least, is nearly 300 years old. The same tune is used also for ‘Geordie’, Last Leaves, p. 133; ‘Locks and Bolts’, Sharp, ii., 19; ‘Lazarus’, Sharp, ii., 30; an old Irish tune in Petrie, No. 363; ‘Johnny Fa’’, SMM, No. 62; and ‘Hynd Horn’, Motherwell, Appendix, Musick, No. 13.

The noted composer of hymn tunes, J. B. Dykes, was influenced by the ‘Prince Charlie’ melody in the building up of ‘Lindisfarne’; see Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 156, second tune.

No. 29
ADDRESS FOR ALL, CHH 101

Hexatonic, mode 1 b (I II — IV V VI 7)

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William Walker claims this song. See ‘Church’s Desolation’, a variant of the tune, for source references. See also ‘Sweet William and Lady Margery’ (Wyman and Brockway, p. 94) for a secular tune variant.

No. 30
CONDESCENSION, GOS 656

Hexatonic, mode 1 b (I II — IV V VI 7)

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The words are attributed to Isaac Watts. I have supplied the second and third stanzas from The Olive Leaf, p. 129. The tune is from the eighteenth century; found also OSH 286, PB 38, HH 63, UHH 13. The tune’s frame is found with the text of ‘Good Morning, My Pretty Little Miss’, Sharp, ii., 90, also in ‘Ibby Damsel’, Sharp, ii., 137. I surmise that we have, in the last line of the second stanza above, the source of the negro spiritual refrain:

No. 31
GOOD PHYSICIAN, SOH 49

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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This tune is found also in GOS, No. 227. A remake is in OSH 176. It is ‘Banks of Sweet Dundee’, Sharp i., 399. Related also to ‘Pinery Boy’, Shoemaker, 262; and ‘Virginian Lover’, Sharp, ii., 150. The negro song ‘Sin-Sick Soul’, SS, No. 66, is based textually and melodically on the above song.

No. 32
LOOK OUT or WHEN I WAS YOUNG, OSH 90

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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B. F. White, compiler of the Sacred Harp, is given as the composer. It is dated 1842. The text is supplied from Good Old Songs, No. 154. A secular setting is ‘Three Crows’, Davis, p. 562, tune “P”. Both ‘Look Out’ and ‘Three Crows’ are adaptations of ‘Ye Banks and Braes’, or ‘Bonnie Doon’, see Kennedy, Handbook of Scottish Song, p. 27. In Church Harmony, p. 134, we find the ‘Bonnie Doon’ tune in its original form under the little ‘Star of Bethlehem’. A variant tune in this collection is ‘’Tis a Wonder’.

No. 33
SAINT’S REQUEST, OSH 286

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The Sacred Harp gives but one stanza of this ballad. The rest of the text is to be found in Zion Songster. The tune is widely used among the secular ballads. See ‘Barbara Allen’, Sharp, i., 183; ‘Geordie’, Sharp, i., 240; ‘False Young Man’, Sharp, ii., 52; ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’, Smith, 115; ‘True Lover’s Farewell’, Sharp, ii., 114; ‘Lizzie Wan’, Sharp, i., 89; and ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’, Sharp, i., 164 and 166.

No. 34
NEWBERRY or LONESOME GROVE, SOC 131

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The song is attributed in the Social Harp to Wm. C. Davis. The first stanza was evidently inspired by the lines in the traditional English ballad entitled ‘Giles Collins’, Sharp, i., 196, which reads:

Four recently recorded (1917 and 1918) variants of the ‘Newberry’ tune, with one stanza of text each are in Sharp, ii., 197f. See also JAFL, xxv., 276. ‘Lonesome Dove’, Thomas, 162, has the same text but a different tune. ‘Heavenly Dove’ in 65 this collection is a variant tune, but it is more closely related to the ‘Barbara Allen’ tune in Sharp, i., 183ff. ‘Newberry’ belongs to the ‘Lord Lovel’ type of tune mentioned in the Introduction, p. 14. Other melodies of the same type are listed under ‘Dulcimer’ in this collection.

No. 35
DEEP SPRING or CONVERTED THIEF (B), KNH 90

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The tune is found also UH 89, SOC 249, HOC 93, OSH 44. It is reminiscent of ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’, Sharp, i., 166; ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’, Sharp, i., 118; and ‘O Land of Rest’ in this collection.

No. 36
SALUTATION or GOOD MORNING BROTHER PILGRIM, GOS 298

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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This is evidently a marching tune and from the eighteenth century vintage. It occurs also OSH 153, SOC 216, HH 387. ‘Walking on the Levy’ (Newell, Games 67 and Songs of American Children, p. 231) has a similar beginning. Echoes of the text are found in Dett, p. 8:

Stephen Foster’s ‘Farewell My Lily Dear’ and ‘The Soldier’s Home’ show relationship to the tune. (See my article in The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2.) For the English source of this dialogue type of song, see the note under ‘Warrenton’ in this collection.

No. 37
HEAVENLY UNION or EXPERIENCE, REV 42

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 1 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune seems dorian in character. If so classed, the key signature should be natural. A variant of tune and text is in CHI 30 and SWP 69.

No. 38
MARION or I’LL RAMBLE AND I’LL ROVE, SOC 228

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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Further stanzas are made merely by the substitution of “mother” etc. for “father”. The song, tune and words, was probably parodied from ‘Seven Long Years’. See Sharp, ii., 79. From the latter song I quote the second stanza.

Compare also ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’, Sharp, i., 124, tune ‘N’. ‘Marion’ belongs to the ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ group of tunes. See the song by that title in this collection. ‘Kingsfold’, No. 270 in the Christian Science Hymnal is the same. In the English Methodist Hymn Book, ‘Kingsfold’ is given as a traditional melody of England. See also Petrie, Nos. 193 and 863.

No. 39
UNION, OSH 116

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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James, editor of the Original Sacred Harp, 1911, says: “The hymn is from a very old edition, 1820. It is not in any of the hymn books found since that date.” The quick triple time of the tune indicates Irish influence and, probably, source. Similar is ‘Royal Band’, OSH 360.

As to the remarkable rhyme or assonance in the text—see for example the repeated “o” assonance in the first lines—I am reminded of what Cecil Sharp said of this feature in Anglo-Irish ballads of this sort, namely, that “They imitate with more or less success in an alien tongue the assonantal Gaelic rhymes with which their makers, whether hedge-schoolmasters or peasants, were doubtless familiar.” The same metrical trend is in ‘Green Grows the Laurel’, Sharp, ii., 211.

No. 40
POOR WAYFARING STRANGER, GOS 714

Pentatonic, mode 2 minorized (I — 3 IV V — VII)

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This is a comparatively recent recording (around the beginning of the present century) of an extremely widely sung folk-tune. It appears in Good Old Songs as a bare melody, no harmonic parts. I suggest, as an explanation of the d-flat in the fifth measure from the end, the intrusion of dorian influence. The earliest known recording among the fasola folk was in the first edition of the Sacred Harp, 1844. The negro adoptions and adaptations are reviewed WS 251ff.

The tune is quite evidently borrowed from secular environment. I list here a number of secular songs whose tunes are variously related: ‘Barbara Allen’, Sharp, i., 194 and 195; ‘In Old Virginny’, Sharp, ii., 232-234; ‘Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies’, Sharp, ii., 128-136; ‘Katie Morey’, Sharp, ii., 120; ‘Dear Companion’, Sharp, ii., 109; ‘George Reilly’, Sharp, ii., 26; ‘Awake, Awake’, Sharp, i., 358-364, and Petrie, Nos. 1222 and 265.

A note on this song in the Social Harp says that the compiler, John G. McCurry, Hartwell, Georgia, “when eight years old, learned the air of this tune from Mrs. Catherine Penn.” That was therefore in the year 1829.

Text passages in the secular ballads which remind of those in the fasola song are seen in ‘In Old Virginny’, where we read:

We see also in ‘Awake, Awake’, how the poor wayfaring stranger appears as “your true love” who “is going away.”

No. 41
ZION’S SOLDIER, SWP 118

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 4 a + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7).

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For a related chorus text see ‘O Ye Young and Gay and Proud’ in this collection. The tune, claimed by William Walker, is keyed in the natural minor (aeolian) of a. I suggest the signature of one sharp, bringing the tune into the dorian mode, as more natural.

No. 42
FEMALE CONVICT, SOH (1835) 160

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 4 a + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune shows remarkable similarity to ‘As I Was A-Walking’ or ‘Grenadier and the Lady’, see JFSS viii., 194; also to ‘Westron Wynde’ from the early 16th century, see Jackson, English Melodies from the 13th to the 18th Century, p. 11. ‘Female Convict’ was widely sung in the early nineteenth century. The full title reads: “A Female Convict, After receiving pardon in the sight of God, thus addrest her infant. Set to music by R. Boyd.”

No. 43
WEDLOCK (B), OSH 115

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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A variant of the third line of the first stanza, found in SOC 188, reads:

The tune is especially announced in the Sacred Harp as “original” and by Elder E. Dumas, a Primitive Baptist. And it is dated 1869. An older tune to the same text is given in this collection as ‘Wedlock (A)’. See also ‘Wedlock’, Sharp, ii., 272. ‘The Banks of Newfoundland’, a capstan shanty, is essentially the same tune. See JFSS, v., 300.

No. 44
LEP’ROUS JEW, SWP 43

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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A tune quite similar to the one above, though cast in two-four time, is ‘Dependence’, HH 250.

No. 45
SPRING PLACE or CHURCH OF MY YOUTH, GOS 44

Hexatonic, mode 2 b (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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The oldest occurrence of the text seems to be in the Hesperian Harp, 1848. This song is a parody (words and music) of ‘In the Days of My Youth’, Beggars Opera, No. 42; Act 3, Scene 1. The tune there was that sung earlier to ‘A Shepherd Kept Sheep’.

No. 46
REDEMPTION (B), OSH 501

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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The tune of ‘Redemption (C)’ is a variant of the above, as is also that of ‘Redemption (A)’. See the last named song for mention of its tune relationship to the ‘Grenadier and the Lady’.

No. 47
WEEPING MARY (B), SWP 102

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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A version of both tune and words is found in Ingalls’ Christian Harmony of 1805, p. 73. Its seventh and eighth stanzas, reminding of the above text, are:

The tune shows unmistakable family resemblance to a number of secular folk-melodies. See for example the score of ‘Daemon Lover’ tunes, Sharp, i., pp. 244-258; ‘Lady Maisry’, Sharp, i., 97; ‘Locks and Bolts’, Sharp, ii., 17; ‘Betty Anne’, Sharp, ii., 37; ‘Swing a Lady’, Sharp, ii., 379.

No. 48
REDEMPTION (A), WH 101

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 4 a + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune was perhaps the inspiration of R. Boyd in making the melody for ‘Female Convict’, which is in this collection. (Or did the influence flow in the opposite direction?) The ‘Grenadier and the Lady’, as sung in England, is practically the same tune. See JFSS, viii., 194. Full text and a variant melody are given under ‘Redemption (B)’. An ancestor of all these tunes seems to be ‘Westron Wynde’ of the early part of the sixteenth century. See Jackson, English Melodies from the 13th to the 18th Century, p. 11.

No. 49
PRODIGAL, SKH 35

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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Davisson, the compiler of the SKH, claimed this tune. It functioned as the melodic material out of which the “fuguing” tune ‘Alabama’, in the Sacred Harp, was built.

No. 50
HAPPY SOULS (A), OL 145

Hexatonic, mode 4 A (I II — IV V VI 7)

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The tune is one of the comparatively few correct dorian recordings—not minorized—in the fasola song books. The compiler of the Olive Leaf gives the following note below the song: “I learned this air of Rev. Samuel Anthony, of Georgia, more than thirty years ago, Wm. Hauser, M. D., March, 1878.” See Introduction, p. 14, as to the ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ tune family to which ‘Happy Souls’ belongs. An Irish variant is ‘The Peevish Child’, Petrie, No. 591.

No. 51
BABE OF BETHLEHEM, SOH 78

Hexatonic, mode 4 a (I II — IV V 6 7)

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The tune, evidently dorian, is of a type that was widely used and varied by folk singers. I mentioned this type in the Introduction, page 14, and called it the ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ family of tunes because the above seems to have been one of its best members. Other members, in either the dorian or the aeolian mode, are ‘Happy Souls (A)’, ‘Marion’, ‘Atonement’, and ‘Enquirer’ in this collection; related spiritual tunes not included here are ‘Help me to Sing’, OSH 376; ‘Staunton’, SKH 26; ‘Melody’, PB 313; ‘Brownson’, OL 259; ‘Howland’, REV 73; and ‘Sweet Prospect’, OSH 65.

Related worldly songs are ‘The Peevish Child’, Petrie, No. 591; a song without title, Petrie, No. 193; ‘When First I Left Old Ireland’, Petrie, No. 863; ‘Lowlands of Holland’, Sharp, i., 200; ‘Virginian Lover’, Sharp, ii., 149; and ‘The Little Red Lark of the Mountain’, Petrie, No. 383. John Powell has set ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ in a beautiful dorian-mixolydian form for mixed chorus. It is published by J. Fischer and Brother, New York.

Ninety-eight Folk-Hymns

Benjamin Franklin White, and Thurza Golightly White, of Hamilton, Georgia. White was a life-long singing school master and folk-song collector who little dreamed of the immeasurable value his labors were to become to singers and folklorists of posterity. His compendium of tunes, wedded to spiritual texts and provided with simple harmonies, bore the name, The Sacred Harp.

In the shade of spreading magnolias and beneath this memorial erected by kinspeople and devoted Sacred Harp singers in the Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, the revered master of singing rests besides his wife.

THE SACRED HARP appeared in 1844. Its most recent edition came out in 1936. It was the source of sixty-seven songs in the present collection.

No. 52
WASHINGTON, OSH 147

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The text is credited to Joseph Hart, tune to Munday, in the Original Sacred Harp. Melodic relationship is to be seen between this and ‘Ye Mariners of England’. See Dolph, Sound Off, p. 228.

No. 53
STEPHENS, PB 338

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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This is probably a homespun text. Its tune is called a “popular old melody.” I find it almost identical with a ‘Kilrush Air’ in Petrie, No. 167, and with a close variant of the latter, Petrie, No. 283. Other related tunes are ‘Tweed Side’, SMM, p. 9; ‘Inkle and Yarico’, The English Repository, p. 226; ‘O I’m So Happy’, ‘Faithful Soldier’, and ‘Sawyer’s Exit’ in this collection.

No. 54
SEPARATION, UHH 27

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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Found also SOH 30. The tune is like that of the English morris dance ‘I’ll Go and Enlist for a Sailor’, Sharp, Morris Dances, Set No. VIII., 6; ‘Gilderoy’, SMM, No. 5; and ‘Come all ye Faithful Christians’, JFSS, ii., 115-120.

No. 55
VESPER, Baptist Hymnal, No. 65

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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Miss Gilchrist compares this tune with ‘Sprig of Thyme’. See JFSS, viii., 70. Lowell Mason calls it an “Old American Tune” in using it in his Harp of the South, p. 123.

No. 56
MISSIONARY’S FAREWELL, OL 333

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The words are ascribed to “Rev. Samuel F. Smith, Baptist, Boston, Mass.” The tune was “learned [by William Hauser, compiler, of the Olive Leaf] in Burke Co., Ga., 1841.”

No. 57
KEDRON, SOH 3

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune is attributed in the southern books to “Dare”. Found also GCM 165, OSH 48, SOC 175, HOC 45, WP 16. The tune is of a type which was widely sung to texts of the extremely solemn sort. The introduction of slight variation in the expression of this melodic idea led to tunes with other titles and various composers (?). I have called this tune family the ‘Kedron’ group. Its members are ‘Distress’, OSH 50; ‘Solemnity’, MOH 40; ‘Salem’, UH 22; ‘French Broad’ in this collection; ‘Child of Grace’, KNH 74; and ‘Messiah’, VH 30. Secular songs showing the same general melodic trend are ‘McAfee’s Confession’, Sharp, ii., 16, and Cox, p. 525; ‘A Brisk Young Sailor’, Sharp, One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 94; ‘Lord Bateman’, ibid., No. 6; and ‘Samuel Young’, Sharp, ii., 271.

No. 58
ALL IS WELL, OSH 122

Hexatonic (6th missing, cannot be classified but obviously ionian) (I II III IV V — VII)

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As to sources we quote the 1911 editor of the Original Sacred Harp. After attributing tune and words to J. T. White, nephew of B. F. White, compiler of the 1844 Sacred Harp, the editor states: “The tune had been published before it was printed in the [1844] Sacred Harp.” A negro version of the song was recently recorded in Texas and appears in the Publications of the Texas Folk-Lore Society, vii., 109.

No. 59
FAITHFUL SOLDIER, SOH (1835) 122

Hexatonic, mode 1 A (I II III IV V VI —)

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William Walker, compiler of the SOH, claims the tune. A recent variant of it, orally transmitted, is ‘O I’m So Happy’, in this collection. Another variant here is ‘Stephens’. All these tunes seem to derive from an old one recorded in Kilrush, Ireland, and found in the Petrie collection in two variants, Nos. 167 and 283. Compare also the similar ‘Hallelujah’ tune family with its members listed under the tune by that title in this collection.

The text is by John Leland and was uniquely popular—as sung in its purity or associated with various refrains and revival choruses—during the early part of the nineteenth century. The negroes have borrowed freely from this poem in making the texts for their spirituals, especially from the fourth and fifth stanzas. Cf. WS 217ff. and 286.

No. 60
GREEN FIELDS, SOH 71

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The tune is to be found in S. Baring-Gould’s Songs of the West, No. 100, as recorded before 1890 from the singing of an old man in Lamerton, England. We are informed by the editor of the collection that the song, ‘Both Sexes Give Ear to My Fancy’ which used this tune, had been very popular with aged people residing in the North of England, but that it was then “long out of print and handed down traditionally”. The earliest form of the tune seems to have been ‘Es nehme zehn-tausend Ducaten’ in Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet (Cf. Bach-Gesellschaft, Vol. 29, p. 195). The earliest printed form of the Bach tune in England, according to Baring-Gould, was in The Tragedy of Tragedies, or Tom Thumb, 1734, as the setting of the song ‘In Hurry Posthaste for a License’. The earliest occurrence of the tune with the ‘Both Sexes’ text was in The Lady’s Evening Book of Pleasure, about 1740. The air is also found in Vocal Music, or the Songster’s Companion, second edition, 1782, to the song entitled ‘Farewell, Ye Green Fields and Sweet Groves’. This was probably the song whose tune was taken over bodily and whose words were 94 parodied to make the above song ‘Green Fields’. The author of the parody text was sometimes given in the fasola books as John Newton. The incidence of the song in southern song books of the first half of the nineteenth century (MOH 52, GCM 144, UH 112, KNH 80, OSH 127, HH 345, SOC 30, CM 24, HOC 16, TZ 237, SKH 18, PB 312, GOS 303, etc.) indicates its one-time wide popularity also on this continent.

No. 61
SAINTS’ RAPTURE, REV 17

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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There are two more stanzas of the text in the Revivalist. The tune and the text are obviously a parody on ‘Reuben, Reuben, I’ve Been Thinking’.

No. 62
ANIMATION, SOH (1835) 85

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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For the complete text see ‘Lebanon’ in this collection. This song was taken into the Southern Harmony from the Dover Selection. The tune is related to ‘Maid Freed From the Gallows’, Thomas, p. 164, and to the old Irish ‘Tell Me Dear Eveleen’, in A Select Collection of Original Irish Airs, No. 6, composed by Beethoven.

No. 63
INVITATION, OL 247

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The compiler of the Olive Leaf found this song, as he tells us, in F. R. Warren’s Dream Music. The tune shows unmistakable family relationships, especially in the chorus, to ‘Nettleton’ in this collection.

No. 64
HARK MY SOUL, CHH 224

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The song was “Arranged by James Christopher, of Spartansburg, S. C.”, according to the Christian Harmony. Richardson has a variant of this tune used with a text which is a recent mountain eulogy on the whiskey of the hills under 97 the title ‘Moonshine’, see American Mountain Songs, page 94. A hint of the antiquity of this tune form is given by the ‘Ass’s Sequence’ or ‘Orientis partibus’ from the beginning of the thirteenth century, a tune which was apparently cast in the folk-manner of that age.

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Its modern representative is:

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See Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 413.

No. 65
FROZEN HEART, OSH 93

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The text is attributed, in the Sacred Harp of 1844, to Joseph Hart and it is dated 1759. The tune is ascribed to E. J. King. The melodic trend of the refrain brings to mind ‘The Campbells are Coming’.

No. 66
LEBANON, KNH 88

Hexatonic, mode 5 A (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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This text is found HH 413, and also COH 122.

No. 67
SOLDIER’S RETURN, SOH 36

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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Further stanzas are given under ‘Mecklinburg’. The tune was borrowed from ‘When the Wild War’s Deadly Blast’, SMM, No. 131. See also for melodic similarities ‘The Mill Mill O’, SMM, No. 157; and ‘Blue-Eyed Stranger’, Sharp, The Morris Book, Part I, p. 91. See Greig-Keith, Last Leaves, p. 181, for the tune’s wide use in the British Isles during the eighteenth century.

No. 68
CHRISTIAN SOLDIER, GOS 207

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The text is one of those which rationalize religious rites; in this case, that of the communion. The tune is credited to Freeman Price. Its second part reminds of ‘The Merry, Merry Milkmaids’, Sharp, Country Dances, Set No. 5.

No. 69
TRIBULATION, MOH 46

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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The text has been attributed to Watts. Recent hymnals have been purged of this doleful ditty and of all other songs which make hellfire too realistic. The tune was attributed to Chapin in some books and to Davisson in others. Davisson claims it in his Kentucky Harmony (1815). It is practically identical with ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’, Sharp, i., 182, a tune which Sharp heard in Greenwood, Albemarle County, Virginia, Davisson’s own territory and near where he is buried. An early variant which is practically identical with both the Sharp and the Davisson tunes is in Motherwell, Supplement, No. 30, associated with ‘The Bonnie Mermaid’ text. Found also, KYH 43, SOH 119, UH 37, KNH 38, OSH 29, HH 55.

No. 70
VOLUNTEERS, CHH 110

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The tune is attributed to Wm. Bradshaw. Found also HH 159 and SWP 90. Dett, p. 180, and SOH 301, have the same words but different tunes.

No. 71
BACKSLIDER, REV 208

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The tune is similar to those used with several text variants of ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well’. Sharp, i., 150ff. The oldest American song book record of the ‘Backslider’ tune is in Ingalls’ Christian Harmony of 1805, p. 55, where it is entitled ‘The General Doom’ and begins:

No. 72
GOOD OLD WAY (B), OL 8

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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“A tune and song [words] of the Granade period”, William Hauser, compiler of the Olive Leaf suggests. John Adam Granade was an evangelist of the “wild” sort who lived 1775 to 1806. A negro tune which combines elements of the above and ‘I Went Down to the Valley’, in this collection, is in Slave Songs, No. 104.

No. 73
REST IN HEAVEN, OL 358

Hexatonic, mode 2 A minorized (I II 3 IV V — 7 [VII])

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The tune is related to ‘Be Gone Unbelief’, in this collection, and to the worldly tunes listed under that song. Negro adoptions of the tune are Marsh, pp. 144 and 173, and SS 33.

No. 74
TO DIE NO MORE, GOS 363

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The tune is identical with one used with the worldly ballad ‘Three Ravens’, see Davis 562.

No. 75
COLUMBUS, OSH 67

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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The words appeared in Mercer’s Cluster, a Georgia hymn and spiritual-song collection of the 1820’s. The earliest appearance of the tune seems to have been in the Southern Harmony (1835). Found also in HH 128, UH 57, KNH 42, HOC 37, SOC 109, GOS 380, PB 343. The tune is a variant of ‘Antioch’, in this collection.

For negro tune derivatives see White Spirituals, 259. Among the tunes in secular environment, ‘Virginian Lover’, Sharp, ii., 149, tune B, shows closest relationship to the above. See also ‘Flat River Girl’, Rickaby, p. 6; and ‘Driving Saw Logs on the Plover’, Rickaby, p. 89.

No. 76
YONGST, BS 203

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The tune is attributed to W. B. Gillham. It is member of the ‘Lord Lovel’ group mentioned in the Introduction, page 14. Noteworthy in this connection is a variant of the above tune as sung by a negro in North Carolina; see Scarbrough, p. 55. Further tunes belonging to the ‘Lord Lovel’ group are listed under ‘Dulcimer’ in this collection.

No. 77
DOWN IN THE GARDEN, REV 108

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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Four more stanzas of the text are given in the Revivalist. The last part of the tune and the whole text are obvious parodies of the Foster song ‘Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground’. For possible folk sources of Foster’s song, see my article “Stephen Foster’s Debt to American Folk-Song”, The Musical Quarterly, xxii (1936), No. 2, p. 159.

No. 78
ALBION, MOH 49

Pentachordal, cannot be classified (I II III IV V — —)

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The words are by Watts. The tune is ascribed to R(obert) Boyd. It is found also, KYH 18, GCM 171, SOH 23, UH 21, GOS 126, KNH 51, OSH 52, HH 201, HOC 12. It sounds like one of the old psalm tunes.

No. 79
DUNLAP’S CREEK, SOH 276

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The words are Watts’. The tune is given as by F(reeman) Lewis. Found also, GCM 63, SOC 238, WP 44, TZ 77, GOS 650, SKH 83, CM 120, Baptist Hymn and Tune Book (1857), p. 106, where it is called a ‘Western Melody’. It is practically the same as ‘Wife of Usher’s Well’, Sharp, i., 160, Q. See Introduction, 109 page 14, for mention of the ‘Lord Lovel’ type of tune to which ‘Dunlaps’ Creek’ belongs.

No. 80
SINNER’S INVITATION, OL 211

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The tune and words which are parodied here are those of the ‘Braes o’ Balquhidder’. The text is attributed, by the compiler of the Olive Leaf, to “Rev. Wm. McDonald, I guess”. The Scotch song begins:

See Gilchrist, JFSS, viii., 77. Another variant of the ‘Braes o’ Balquhidder’ tune in this collection is ‘Lone Pilgrim’. Gilchrist traces the Scotch tune back still farther to ‘Brochan Buirn’, an old Gaelic air. See JFSS, viii., 76. It influenced Stephen Foster in his making of the tune ‘Linda Has Departed’. (See my article in The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii, No. 2.)

No. 81
LAND OF REST, OL 117

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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“Inspiration of this tune,” says the compiler of the Olive Leaf, “caught from a female voice at a distance, at Barbee Hotel, High Point, N. C., June 9th, 1868.” The mountain woman must have been singing ‘Lord Lovel’; for the tunes of that ballad, as found for example in Davis, p. 574, O; and Sharp, i., 148, are practically the same as ‘Land of Rest’. See Introduction, page 14.

No. 82
FLORENCE, OSH 121

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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“It is an old melody”, J. S. James, editor of the 1911 Original Sacred Harp, says. “Prof. T. S. Carter of Georgia took the outlines and arranged it in 1844.”

The tune is found also, SOC 77, GOS 178. A variant is GOS 165, entitled ‘Lonesome Dove’. Another variant is ‘The Weary Soul’, OSH 72. I find this tune to be a member of the group which I have called the ‘Roll Jordan’ family of melodies. See the song with that title in this collection.

No. 83
ALBERT, SOC 153

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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Credited in the Social Harp to E. R. White and dated 1855. The tune is a clear adaptation of ‘The Girl I Left Behind Me’.

No. 84
ROYAL PROCLAMATION, SOH 146

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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Although Ananias Davisson claims, in the Supplement to The Kentucky Harmony, to have made the tune, no subsequent user of the song seems to have looked on him as its author. It has all the earmarks of an eighteenth century fife-and-drum-corps tune which was appropriately set to the religio-martial text. Found also, UH 91, KNH 91, HH 468, SKH 107, GOS 643.

No. 85
CARRY ME HOME or PENICK, OSH 387

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The initials in the third stanza belonged to “Professor S. R. Penick, a devoted Christian man, and one who was very fond of music,” according to James, 1911 editor of the OSH. But he ascribes tune and words to M. Sikes, a singing-school teacher in Georgia before the Civil War. The tune is a variant of ‘Dying Boy’ in this collection.

No. 86
JORDAN, SKH 86

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The tune belongs to the ‘Roll Jordan’ group; see Introduction, page 14. See also the song by that title in this collection.

No. 87
ENQUIRER, OSH 74

Hexatonic, mode 4 a (I II — IV V 6 7)

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The words are attributed to Isaac Watts; the tune to B. F. White of Georgia, and dated 1844. The tune is a member of the ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ group. See Introduction, p. 14, and, ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ in this collection. A secular related tune is ‘Lowlands of Holland’, Sharp, i., 200. Since the tune has clear dorian implications, its proper key signature is one flat.

No. 88
WONDROUS LOVE, OSH 159

Hexatonic, mode 4 a (I II — IV V 6 7)

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The song is found also, SOH (1854) 252, GOS 436, PB 384, OL 371, and in various tune books of the Baptists up to the present time. The Southern Harmony attributes the tune to “Christopher”; Good Old Songs, to “J. Christopher”; and the Hesperian Harp attributes the words to the “Rev. Alex Means, A. M., M. D., D. D., LL. D.”, a Methodist minister of Oxford, Ga. It looks as though tune and words were born together, so beautifully they fit. The stanzaic form is that of the ‘Captain Kidd’ ballad which has been widely sung and parodied since the beginning of the eighteenth century. A spiritual song tune related to ‘Wondrous Love’ is ‘Villulia’ in this collection. I have heard the country folk sing this tune with the dorian raised sixth.

No. 89
SALVATION (A), BS 127

Hexatonic, mode 1 B (I II — IV V VI VII)

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The tune is evidently a remake of ‘Locks and Bolts’. Compare, for example, Sharp, ii., 19. The difference between the two tunes is probably due in part to their structure, which provided real difficulties for their recorders, and in part to the efforts of the Bible Songs arranger to make the apparently dorian tune fit into current scale formulas. Compare also ‘Bed of Primroses’, Thomas, p. 176.

No. 90
MOUNT WATSON, OL 272

Heptatonic dorian, mode 2 A + B (I II 3 IV V VI 7)

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William Hauser, compiler of the Olive Leaf, informs us that “this tune [is] called after Rev. John H. Watson, whom, in my youth [in the 1820’s], I used to hear sing [it]”. It is a variant of the beautiful traditional secular ballad ‘The Poor Little Fisherman Girl’ or ‘Green Willow’.

No. 91
CROSS OF CHRIST, GOS 504

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The words were quite evidently made to go with the celebration of the footwashing rite still observed by the Primitive Baptists, from whose hymn book the song is taken. The tune is ascribed to L. P. Breedlove of Georgia. I find it to 118 be a close variant of ‘James Harris’ (or ‘Daemon Lover’ or ‘House Carpenter’) turned around; that is, with the second part of the above tune coming first in the secular ballad tune. For versions of the ‘James Harris’ tune see Thomas 172, Davis 592-594, Cox 524, and Sharp, i., 244-258. The oldest variant tune known to me is that in Motherwell associated with ‘Blue Flowers and Yellow’ (Appendix, Musick, No. 17.) After comparing the above tune with its worldly relatives, it becomes evident that the GOS signature of b-flat should be changed to that of f-natural, raising the sixth and restoring what was evidently a dorian tune.

No. 92
ROSE TREE, KNH 165

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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Echoes of ‘Turkey in the Straw’ (see Sandburg, p. 94) are heard in this tune. Compare also ‘My Grandma Lived on Yonder Little Green’, WS 166. The immediate ancestor of the tune, and the source of its title, is the secular song ‘A Rose-Tree in Full Bearing’, The English Musical Repository, Edinburgh, 1811, p. 127. It appeared in William Shield’s ballad opera ‘The Poor Soldier’, 1783. The ‘Rose Tree’ air was known in Ireland also as ‘Moreen O’Cullenan’ and was associated, among other texts, with Moore’s ‘I’d Mourn the Hopes that Leave Us’. See Joyce, p. 40.

No. 93
CLAMANDA, OSH 42

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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Tune found also in CHI 12, KNH 109, UH 63, SOC 168, HH 28, SKH 47, GOS 26. The text, taken from the Dover Selection, as well as the tune, attributed to ‘Chapin’, seem to be closely related to a Christmas carol in JFSS, ii., 115. Its first stanza begins: “Come all ye faithful Christians, That dwell within this land. That pass your time in rioting, Remember you are but man.” The English folk-song, ‘Just as the Tide Was a-Flowing’, has an almost identical tune. See Gould and Sharp, English Folk-Songs for Schools, p. 52.

No. 94
MECKLINBURG, SKH 30

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The compiler of the SKH attributes the tune to Lowry. See White Spirituals, p. 167, for a secular relative of the tune. See also ‘St. Patrick was a Gentleman’, Petrie, No. 346; and I’m Seventeen Come Sunday’, JFSS, ii., 269f.

No. 95
SALVATION (B), SOH 84

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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Of the text which the compiler of the Southern Harmony found in “Rippon”, three further stanzas are found in Caldwell’s Union Harmony, p. 35. The tune, ascribed to Robert Boyd, is found also KYH 22, GCM 136, UH 34, KNH 32, HH 71, HOC 24, TZ 101, and GOS 144. A variant tune is ‘Come All Ye Worthy Christian Men’, Sharp, One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 91. Note similarity in the opening words of both songs. See also Sharp’s note as to other old related songs. The first melodic sentence is quite similar to that of the tune to ‘The Three Ravens’ as Motherwell gives it in Minstrelsy Ancient and Modern, Edition 1873, Appendix, Musick, No. 12:

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No. 96
FRENCH BROAD, SOH 265

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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Four more stanzas in the Southern Harmony. Found also GOS 218, CHH 208. William Walker, compiler of the Southern Harmony, appends the note: “This song was composed by the author in the fall of 1831, while traveling over the mountains, on French Broad River, in North Carolina and Tennessee”. Walker must have been referring simply to the words. He was melodizing, probably unconsciously, in beaten paths. For his tune is almost identical with the older ‘Kedron’ (this collection) which was attributed to “Dare”. Walker declares, in his later song book, Christian Harmony, 1866, p. 208, that he “learned the air of this tune from 123 my mother when only five years old.” That would have been 1814. Both the Dare and the Walker tunes are closely related to the melody of ‘McAfee’s Confession’, Sharp, ii., 16, lower tune, a western North Carolina recording of 1918; and to the Old World song, ‘The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies O’, One Hundred English Folk-Songs, p. 13.

No. 97
DAVISSON’S RETIREMENT, KNH 117

Pentatonic, mode 4 (I II — IV V — 7)

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The poem is by Joseph Grigg (b. 1720). Ananias Davisson of the Valley of Virginia named and claimed the tune in his Kentucky Harmony (1815). Annabel Morris Buchanan has found a tune with the title ‘Retirement’ in a manuscript tune book which she judges to be from the eighteenth century. No text accompanies the tune, and no source is given. It follows:

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A comparison of the two tunes indicates rather plainly that Davisson wrote the tune down from oral tradition, and that his noting was indicative of the manner in which it was actually sung.

No. 98
PILGRIM, OSH 201

Hexatonic, mode 2 b (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune is found also CHI 54, MOH 147, KNH 57, HH 392, SOC 117, and WP 46. Among the many secular songs using this tune are ‘Daniel Monroe’, dating from around 1785, Rickaby, pp. 184 and 229; ‘Lady and the Dragoon’, Sharp, i., 337, recorded in North Carolina in 1918; ‘Sheffield Apprentice’, Sharp, ii., 66; ‘Loving Reilly’, Sharp, ii., 81 and 82; ‘Rebel Soldier’, or ‘Poor Stranger’ Sharp, ii., 215; ‘Sons of Liberty’, Sharp, ii., 225; ‘John Barleycorn’, noted by Sharp in England in 1909; ‘Gallant Poachers’ or ‘Van Diemen’s Land’, also in England, see JFSS, vii., 42, for references; ‘I Wish I Was in Dublin Town’, or ‘The Irish Girl’, JFSS, viii., 263; and ‘Barley and the Rye’, JFSS, viii., 273; ‘High Germany’ and ‘Erin’s Lovely Home’, One Hundred English Folk-Songs, pp. 124 and 127; ‘King’s Lynn’, Christian Science Hymnal; and ‘Rise Up Young William Reilly’, Petrie, No. 510. Stephen Foster’s tune ‘Way Down in Ca-i-ro’ shows influence from this tune formula. See The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2.

No. 99
MISSISSIPPI, SKH 34

Heptatonic aeolian, mode A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The compiler of the Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony attributed the song to “Bradshaw”. I find distinct ancestral traces of its tune in ‘Princess Royal’ given in a number of traditional forms as a morris dance tune in Sharp, The Morris Dance Book. Assuming these to be the oldest forms of the tune, the next younger form seems to have been what was called in Walsh’s Compleat Dancing Master (ca. 1730), “The Princess Royal, the new way”. In 1796 Shield adapted the air to the words of ‘The Saucy Arethusa’ in the ballad opera The Lock and Key. 126 It may be found entitled ‘The Arethusa’ in The English Musical Repository, p. 32. At about the same time—around the end of the eighteenth century—the tune was used also for ‘Bold Nelson’s Praise’ a version of which was recently recorded by Sharp, One Hundred English Folk-Songs, No. 88. The as yet unidentified “Bradshaw” seems to have taken one of these late-eighteenth-century tunes—probably ‘Arethusa’—as his model when he made the ‘Mississippi’ song as it appeared in the Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony in 1820.

No. 100
PLEADING SAVIOR, OSH 234

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The first line of the text above should probably read

The Methodist Hymn Book of England, London, 1933, has the above tune under the title ‘Saltash’, and its source is given as the Plymouth Collection, 1855.

No. 101
NETTLETON or SINNER’S CALL, PB 4

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The words are the widely sung ones of Robinson. Metcalf (Frank J., Stories of Hymn Tunes, p. 141) thinks the tune belongs to John Wyeth (1770-1858). It is the tune that has been used for the Parody ‘Tell Aunt Rhody.’ And its close relative ‘Sweet Affliction’ or ‘Greenville’, in this collection, has been used for the ‘Go Tell Aunt Rhody’ parody.

No. 102
CHARIOT OF MERCY, HH 290

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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This familiar tune continues with the words:

The Hesperian Harp gives the tune as an “Irish Air”. We recognize it as the melody to which ‘Believe Me, If all Those Endearing Young Charms’ is sung universally. Woolridge tells us it is the setting for the popular ballad ‘My Lodging, It is on the Cold Ground’ as printed “on all broadsides, with music, of the last century”, meaning the eighteenth century. The ballad, in connection with a different tune, had been popular from around the middle of the seventeenth century in England. With the above tune its singing vogue seems not even yet to have abated. See Chappell’s Old English Popular Music, ii., 137ff. An old Irish version of the tune is ‘Oh Shrive me Father’, Petrie, No. 632. Stephen Foster undoubtedly had this popular tune formula in mind when he composed ‘Old Folks at Home’. See Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2, pp. 158-160.

No. 103
STOCKWOOD or SISTER THOU WAST MILD, OSH 118

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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The words are attributed in the Sacred Harp to Samuel Francis Smith, author of ‘My Country, ’Tis of Thee’.

No. 104
ROSE, REV 332

Heptatonic aeolian or dorian minorized, cannot be classified (I II 3 IV V [VI] 6 [VII] 7)

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Four more stanzas of the text are given in the Revivalist. The tune was recorded “as sung by Rev. A. C. Rose” from whom it got its title. The oldest recording of the melody known to me is on page 38 of Ingalls’ Christian Harmony, 1805. The Reverend Rose’s song appears in this collection also as ‘O Tell Me No More’, in its standardized tune-book form, whereas the recorder of the above variant has caught much of the folk-singing manner. Both of the tunes in question are related to the ‘Lord Randal’ melodies which are found in Sharp, i., 43, G.

No. 105
SUPPLICATION, OSH 45

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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Words attributed to Watts; tune to Chapin. Found also, Choral-Music, p. 48, KYH 20, MOH 26, GCM 110, SOH 5, GOS 589, UH 14. See WS 190 for the tune’s use with the ‘Wicked Polly’ ballad which is also to be found in this collection. It is a variant also of ‘Lord Bateman’, Sharp, One Hundred English Folk-songs, No. 6; and of ‘Hind Horn’, British Ballads from Maine, pp. 73 and 78. The Singer’s Companion (New York, 1854) has a strikingly similar tune under the title ‘Hame, Hame, Hame’, a Jacobite song whose words tell of a Scotch exile and his longing for home. The editor of that collection found it in the Garland of Scotia. The old Scotch tune is doubtless the source of ‘Supplication’.

No. 106
PRAISE GOD, OSH 528

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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Seaborn M. Denson composed this tune as a setting to Charles Wesley’s text and inserted it, in a fuguing-tune setting, in the Original Sacred Harp of 1911. The tune is testimony to the fact that its composer was steeped in the traditional Anglo-American folk-melodism and in that particular direction which it took in the hands of the eighteenth century fuguing-song makers. Compare for melodic similarities ‘Geordie’, JFSS, iii., 191. White Spirituals tells more about Mr. Denson who died in 1936.

No. 107
LEANDER, SOH 128

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune is ascribed to “Austin”, and the words to Watts. Found also, UH 66, OSH 71, HOC 61, WP 52, TZ 100, MOH 129. The second part of the tune reminds of the second part of ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’. Variants of the melody are ‘Jubilee’, CHI 62 and REV 355; and ‘This Is the Jubilee’, OL 113.

No. 108
THERE IS A REST REMAINS, REV 135

Hexatonic, minorized, cannot be classified (I II 3 IV [IV′] V — 7 [VII])

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A remarkably close remake of this peculiar song by the negroes is given in Dett, p. 108, under the title ‘Go Down, Moses’, where we see the melodic setting of the above words “To all thy people known” and “For all the people of God” fitted note for note to “Let thy people go”. The tunes of ‘Rejected Lover’, Sharp, ii., 96ff., show similarities.

No. 109
BOURBON, COH 67

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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Words attributed sometimes to Watts. Tune attributed to Freeman Lewis. Found also, HH 8, GCM 159, SKY 61, MOH 60 and 143, UH 17, GOS 575. This is the same tune which is used for ‘McFee’s Confession’, Cox, p. 525; ‘Samuel Young’, Sharp, ii., 271; ‘Come, Father Build Me’ (as sung in England), JFSS, viii., 212; and it is similar to ‘Lord Bateman’, One Hundred English Folksongs, No. 6. For further tune relationship see ‘Kedron’ in this collection.

No. 110
GLORIOUS PROSPECT, OL 363

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The author of the Olive Leaf tells us: “This is the first tune I ever harmonized; about 1833. I had learned the air—which I suspect John Adam Granade originated, before I was born—when a boy, to these words.” That the tune went earlier with some secular ballad, seems evident from the resemblances found, for example, in ‘Pretty Nancy of Yarmouth’, Sharp, i., 379; ‘Lamkin’, Sharp, i., 201ff.; ‘The Silk Merchant’s Daughter’, Sharp, i., 383f.; and ‘Green Grows the Laurel’, Sharp ii., 211.

No. 111
O YE YOUNG AND GAY AND PROUD or ETERNITY

Pentachordal, cannot be classified (I II III IV V — —)

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Recorded by the author from the singing of Mrs. Elizabeth Showalter-Miller, Dayton, Virginia, Jan. 20, 1930. Further stanzas of the text and variant melodies may be found in Thomas, p. 118, and Richardson, p. 73.

No. 112
FRIENDS OF FREEDOM, CH 285

Heptatonic, mode 1 b (I II — IV V VI 7)

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Evidently the time should be six-eight. It is found, measured thus, in the 1859 edition of the Sacred Harp, p. 152, under the title ‘Bruce’s Address, Spiritualized’, and begins,

The earlier tune is given, in Lyric Gems of Scotland, p. 242, as that of ‘Hey tutti tattie’. It is there associated with the text ‘Scots wha ha’e wi’ Wallace bled’, the same as ‘Bruce’s Address’, of which both the texts cited here are parodies.

No. 113
PILGRIM’S SONG, REV 369

Heptatonic mixolydian, mode 1 A + b (I II III IV V VI 7)

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The tune is a variant of ‘The Winter it is Past’, Petrie, No. 439.

No. 114
HOLY MANNA, HOC 122

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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Two more stanzas are in SOH 103. This rousing song, still immensely popular, was claimed (probably first recorded) by William Moore, compiler of the Columbian Harmony, in 1825. Subsequent compilers have allowed his claim to stand. Found also, KNH 88, OSH 59, HH 244, SOC 191, HOC 107, WP 89, TZ 301, GOS 340, PB 291. The numerous imitations which flattered this tune are exemplified by GOS 243 and 633, and REV 148. For negro adoptions see WS 268.

No. 115
WAR DEPARTMENT, SOH 94

Chinese pentatonic, cannot be classified (I II — IV V 6 —)

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The words were found by the Southern Harmony compiler in Mercer’s Cluster. The tune is found also HH 277, OSH 160, SOC 167. It is possibly related to Petrie, Nos. 1030 and 1285.

No. 116
DROOPING SOULS, OL 184

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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For complete text see ‘Lebanon’. The song is inscribed “Wm. Hauser, M. D., May 29th, and July 18th, 1874.”

No. 117
BE GONE UNBELIEF, OL 187

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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William Hauser, compiler of the Olive Leaf tells that this “air [was] learned of Reverend Samuel Anthony, of Georgia, in 1841.” The tune of a Virginia version of the ‘Brown Girl’ (Sharp, i., 303) is very close to this in note-trend and character. Also ‘Pretty Saro’, Sharp, ii., 10-12; ‘Cuckoo’, Sharp, ii., 180; ‘Green Bushes’, Sharp, ii., 155; ‘Farewell, Dear Rosanna’, Sharp, ii., 243 and 244, are the same type. Negro adoptions of the tune are Marsh, pp. 144 and 173, and SS, p. 33. A variant in this collection is ‘Rest in Heaven’. For its relationship to the ‘I Will Arise’ tune family, see the song with that title in this collection. The errors in Hauser’s notation of the tune (second, fourth, sixth measures etc.) have been left uncorrected.

No. 118
PILGRIM’S TRIUMPH, OL 61

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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“This enrapturing song [the text] was written by Rev. Jno. Adam Granade, about 1802”, the compiler of the Olive Leaf says. And he adds, “Structure of this air learned of a negro, Mark Hull, 1843.” The tune belongs to the ‘Hallelujah’ group, which see for many related tunes.

No. 119
TO BE WITH CHRIST, REV 14

Hexatonic, mode 2 b (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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One more stanza of the text is in the Revivalist. The tune is notated “as sung by Rev. B. I. Ives.”

No. 120
DEVOTION, OSH 48

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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Watts wrote the words. The tune is ascribed in the Sacred Harp to Americk Hall. Found also, MOH 34, GCM 91, SOH 13, UH 48, WP 17, SKH 9, GOS 548; and in Social Hymn and Tune Book (Philadelphia, 1865) under the title ‘Penitent’.

In JFSS, viii., 72, Miss Gilchrist calls attention to the likeness of the above tune to Sharp’s Appalachian versions of ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’. She also notes Miss Broadwood’s discovery of its likeness to two Gaelic tunes, ‘Tearlach Og’ in the Gesto Collection, and ‘Muile nam Morbheann’ in the Celtic Lyre. I append also ‘Lost Babe’, Sharp, ii., 161, as a further relative.

No. 121
TENDER CARE, GOS 291

Hexatonic, mode 1 b (I II — IV V VI 7)

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Ascribed to P. M. Atchley who was a singing-school man in eastern Tennessee in the early part of the nineteenth century. The tune belongs to the ‘Hallelujah’ family. See the song by that name in this collection for many related melodies.

No. 122
REFLECTION, MOH 444

Hexatonic, mode 1 b (I II — IV V VI 7)

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The tune is usually attributed to Davisson, and this probably as a result of Davisson’s own claim in the Kentucky Harmony. Found also, KYH 42, UH 31, KNH 22, HOC 13, WP 36.

No. 123
PISGAH, OSH 58

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The poem is attributed in the Sacred Harp to Richard Burnham. The tune there, and generally in the southern books, is credited to J. C. Lowry. Found also, MOH 59, GCM 104, SOH 80, UH 23, KNH 56, HH 112, SOC 205, WP 83, TZ 92, SKH 25, GOS 311. A negro spiritual inspired by this song is ‘Lord, Remember Me’, SS 12, No. 15. Miss Gilchrist sees in ‘Pisgah’ a variant of ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’ as found in the Appendix of Motherwell, Minstrelsy, and later published in Chappell’s Popular Music. (See JFSS, viii., 61-95.) Despite the apparently English source of ‘Pisgah’, the Methodist Hymn Book of England reproduces the tune under the title ‘Covenanters’ and calls it “an American Melody.”

No. 124
GAINES, HH 122

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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Charles Wesley wrote the words. William Hauser, Hesperian Harp compiler, claims the tune. For melodic similarities in other spiritual songs see ‘One More River to Cross’, in this collection; ‘Cherry Tree Carol’, Sharp, i., 92 and 93; and ‘Geordie’, Sharp, i., 240.

No. 125
HUMBLE PENITENT, SKH 14

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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Davisson, the compiler of the Supplement to the Kentucky Harmony, claims this tune. It is similar to ‘The Bird Song’, Sharp, ii., 215. For other tune relationships see ‘I Will Arise’ in this collection.

No. 126
CHARMING NAME, CHH 90

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The notated form of this tune (the work is claimed by, and is doubtless that of, William Walker) illustrates excellently the manner of singing in rural America in earlier times. See also WS, p. 211 f.

No. 127
BALM IN GILEAD, REV 15

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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I have reproduced the notation of the Revivalist tune with all its mistakes. A fuller text is given under ‘Good Physician’ in this collection. A negro version entitled ‘There is a Balm in Gilead’ is given in Dett, p. 88. Another is in Work, p. 43.

No. 128
PLENARY, SOH 262

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The tune is the same as the popular ‘Old Grimes is Dead’ and ‘Auld Lang Syne’. It occurs also OSH 162 and CHH 94. The Methodist Hymnal (1935) attributes it to William Shield. In the Southern Harmony its author is given as A. Clark.

No. 129
SAWYER’S EXIT, OSH 338

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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For source of tune and words see WS, p. 167. The tune is borrowed from ‘Old Rosin the Bow’, see Sandburg, p. 167. See also ‘My Sister She Works in a Laundry’, Sandburg, 381; ‘When Sherman Marched Down to the Sea’, Dolph, 347; ‘Washington Badge’, HH 536; ‘Lord Randal’, Sharp, i., 39; and ‘I wonder When I’m to Be Married’, from Dumphriesshire, England, 1855, see JFSS, viii., 142.

No. 130
O TELL ME NO MORE, OL 301

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The text is attributed to “John Gambold, of England.” I find the tune to be a relative of a ‘Lord Randal’ variant which Sharp (i., 43, G) found in eastern Tennessee. The resemblance of the two tunes runs throughout; but in the last four-measure phrase (going with the worldly sentence “I’m sick to the heart and I fain would lie down”) they are practically identical. ‘Rose’ in this collection is a variant of this tune, notated in the folk manner of singing.

No. 131
HEAVENLY DOVE, SOC 23

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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This is quite clearly the ‘Barbara Allen’ tune as it is seen, for example, in Sharp, i., 183ff. It is also related to ‘Lonesome Grove’ in this collection. The “dove” theme in the text of the above song and in the ‘Lonesome Grove’ song was possibly the magnet which attracted the texts to variant tunes.

No. 132
CEYLON, PB 372

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI VII)

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The tune is a close relative of ‘Love Divine’ CHI 63, ‘Heavenly Welcome’ HH 482, ‘Baltimore’ SKH 53, ‘Garden Hymn’ REV 164, and a less close one to ‘Heavenward’, Christian Science Hymnal (1932), No. 136, which is an ancient Irish tune from the Petrie collection. Compare Petrie, No. 993.

No. 133
NEW PROSPECT or O LAND OF REST, OSH 390

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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J. S. James, editor of the 1911 Original Sacred Harp, attributes tune and words to W. S. Turner of Georgia. It is found also, GOS 390.

Close relatives of this tune are ‘Deep Spring’ in this collection, ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’, Sharp, i., 118; and ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’, Sharp, i., 166.

No. 134
I LOVE THEE, OL 318

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The text is attributed to John Adam Granade, the “Billy Sunday” of the revival movement which reached a high point in its trend at about the beginning of the nineteenth century. Granade was the author of many widely sung texts.

The tune is clearly of the ‘Lord Lovel’ family. Compare, for example, the melody which Sharp found in North Carolina; see Sharp, i., 38, A. Its earliest appearance in American religious song books seems to have been in Ingalls’ Christian Harmony, 1805, p. 44.

No. 135
NEW BRITAIN or HARMONY GROVE, SOH 8

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The poem is by Newton. The tune’s source is unknown to the southern compilers. It goes also under the names ‘Symphony’, ‘Solon’, and ‘Redemption’. Found also, WP 27, GCM 105, OSH 45, HH 104, SOC 190, TZ 90, VH 19, Church Harmony 91. A close relative of the tune is ‘Primrose’ in this collection. Further stanzas of the text are given under ‘Melody’.

I recorded this tune also as it was sung by F. Fagan Thompson of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, February, 1936. I reproduce here his version, one in which the tune is slowed and many graces are introduced, as an excellent illustration of the widespread southern folk-manner in the singing of hymns of this sort.

very slow

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No. 136
SPIRITUAL SAILOR, SOH 41

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The Southern Harmony gives the maker of this song as I. Neighbours, who may indeed have been the author of the text. This text is clearly a parody, and the tune a close variant, of ‘When the Stormy Winds do Blow’ or ‘You Gentlemen of England’, a song of seafaring which appears to have been widely sung in England over a long period. References to a ‘Stormy Winds’ ballad reach back to 1660. The tune with different texts appeared as ‘Saylers for my Money’, ‘The Bridegroom’s Salutation’, ‘You Calvinists of England’ and ‘England’s Valour and Holland’s Terrour’. See Vincent Jackson, English Melodies from the 13th to the 18th Century, p. 114.

Other melodic relatives which have come to my notice are ‘The Trees do Grow High’, Sharp, One Hundred English Folk-Songs, No. 25; and ‘John Anderson My Jo John’, The Singer’s Companion, p. 72, and SMM, No. 146.

No. 137
IDUMEA, OSH 47

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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The words are by Charles Wesley. The tune is claimed by Ananias Davisson in his Kentucky Harmony (1815) whence it was borrowed by practically all the subsequent book compilers in the South. The tune was used for the secular ballad ‘Lord Lovel’; see White Spirituals, 177. Also found KYH 33, GCM 36, SOH 31, 156 UH 19, KNH 36, HH 224, SOC 55, HOC 44, TZ 122, MOH 38, Church Harmony, p. 35, GOS 184, PB 246. An imitation of this tune is GOS 325. ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’, Davis, p. 570, shows the same trend, as does also ‘Young Hunting’, Sharp, i., 112.

No. 138
BOZRAH, GOS 59

Hexatonic, mode 2 b (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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The melodic sentence at the beginning and at the end is a favorite. It may be found, for example, also in ‘Greenwood Siding’, Cox, p. 522. A variant of the tune is ‘When I First Left Old Ireland’, Petrie, No. 863. See ‘I Will Arise’ in this collection for further tune relationships.

No. 139
NEW ORLEANS, PB 255

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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For variant forms of the tune see ‘Marion’ and ‘I Will Arise’ in this collection. Among its related secular tunes are ‘Greenwood Siding’ (‘Cruel Mother’), Cox, p. 522; an unnamed tune in Petrie, No. 193; ‘Oh Love it is a Killing Thing’, Petrie, No. 469; and ‘When First I left Old Ireland’, Petrie, No. 863. A remarkable tune resemblance and one which opens to the imagination surprising vistas as to the possible age of the ‘New Orleans’ tune, is to be seen in the Whitsuntide church melody ‘Iam Christus astra ascenderat’ from the eleventh century:

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The same melodic trend is seen also in the German tune set to ‘Christ der du bist der helle Tag’ from the year 1568. See Hymns Ancient and Modern, Nos. 178 and 604.

No. 140
HOLY SON OF GOD, REV 365

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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No. 141
WORTHY THE LAMB, SWP 92

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV 6 7)

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Three more stanzas of the text are in the Southern and Western Pocket Harmonist. The tune is attributed to Bradshaw.

No. 142
CAPTAIN KIDD, COH 73

Hexatonic, mode 4 b (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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The tune is ascribed to Nicholson. The oldest American recording known to me is in the four-shape-note manuscript song collection made by Catherine Alderice in or near Emmittsburg, Md., 1800-1830, p. 37. Miss Gilchrist calls attention to the secular ‘Captain Kidd’ ballad, of which the above is a parody, as it appeared, twenty-five verses long, in Our Familiar Songs and Who Made Them, published in America, 1889. She describes it as “a sort of dying speech and testament probably dating from about 1701 in which year Kidd and nine of his associates were hanged in Execution Dock.... There were many other eighteenth century songs, built on this peculiar stanzaic plan, celebrating other notorious characters, ‘Admiral Benbow,’ ‘Jack (or Sam) Hall.’” Other American spiritual songs in this collection having the same stanzaic form are ‘Wondrous Love’ and ‘Remember Sinful Youth’.

No. 143
JERUSALEM, SOH (1835) 60

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 VII).

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Further stanzas of the text are given under ‘Long-Sought Home’ in this collection. The song is attributed to Benjamin White. This is Benjamin Franklin White, brother-in-law of, and co-worker with, William Walker (compiler of the Southern Harmony) and author subsequently of the Sacred Harp. See White Spirituals, 84.

No. 144
ROBY, OL 273

Heptatonic dorian, mode 2 A + B with altered 3rd (I II 3 [III] IV V VI 7)

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The Olive Leaf compiler informs us that this song which was a favorite with the late Rev. Wesley P. Arnold, of Georgia, was “learned of some dear Baptist friends in Iridell Co., N. C., in 1839, and called ‘Roby’, their name.”

No. 145
REMEMBER SINFUL YOUTH or SOLEMN THOUGHT, SOH 29

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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The mood of the poem indicates a considerable age for it. That the song as a whole was decidedly among the stock of orally transmitted ones is indicated by the many claimants to its authorship. Such claimants in the southern books are F. Price, William Caldwell, James Carrell and Ananias Davisson. Found also, UH 56, KNH 108, HH 225, SKH 66, CHH 361. The stanzaic form is that of ‘Captain Kidd’ in this collection. In his Christian Harmony, William Walker adds the note that “I learned it [the tune] from my dear mother (who now sings in heaven) when I was only three years old,—the first tune I ever learned.” That was in 1812. That the song was even older, however, is shown by its appearance in Ingalls’ Christian Harmony of 1805, p. 39.

No. 146
WEEPING SAVIOR, OSH 33

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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The text is attributed to Benjamin Beddome, and the tune to Joseph Barnby, and to E. J. King. The first, sixth, and seventh measures had only quarter notes in the Sacred Harp. The slurred eighth notes are inserted from a variant of the tune found in the Olive Leaf. They represent probably an effort on the part of the editor of that song book to present the tune as really sung.

No. 147
DETROIT, SOH 40

Hexatonic, mode 2, b (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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Philip Doddridge is credited with the words. The tune is attributed to ‘Bradshaw’ in the Southern Harmony. Found also, UH 33, KNH 23, OSH 39, HH 158, SOC 175, HOC 22, WP 24, SKH 85, GOS 282. The melody is similar to a number of those given by Sharp (i., 150ff.) with ‘The Wife of Usher’s Well’.

No. 148
I SHALL BE SATISFIED, REV 62

Hexatonic, mode 4 b minorized (I II 3 IV V — 7 [VII])

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One more stanza of text in the Revivalist. The song is used “as sung by Rev. G. C. Wells.” It is reminiscent of the ‘Henry Martin’ tune; see Gould and Sharp, English Folk-Songs for Schools, p. 22.

No. 149
EDGEFIELD, OSH 82

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The tune is attributed, in the Sacred Harp, to J. T. White, a Georgian, and is dated 1844. It is a variant of ‘When the Cock Crows it is Day’, Petrie, No. 478. The fuller text, attributed to John Newton, is given under the song ‘Green Fields’ in this collection.

From its first appearance in 1835 up to the time of the Civil War, 600,000 copies of The Southern Harmony went into southern homes. Twenty-four songs from this book are in the present collection.

One Hundred and one Revival Spiritual Songs

William (Singin’ Billy) Walker, of Spartanburg, South Carolina, was perhaps the foremost among those singing masters who welded folk to folk-song. In all his singing schools throughout the southeastern states his handbook was his own excellent collection of spiritual folk-tunes, The Southern Harmony.

In the neglected Magnolia Cemetery in Spartanburg this grave stone was recently found lying flat on the ground. The wording below the representation of Walker’s last song book, The Christian Harmony, reads:

IN
Memory of
Wm. WALKER, A. S. H.[17]

Died Sept. 24th, 1875, in the 67th year of his age. He was a devoted Husband & kind Father. A consistent Baptist 47 years. Taught music 45 yrs. The Author of 4 Books of sacred music. He rests from his labors. He died in the triumphs of faith.

---

Sing praises unto the Lord.

No. 150
JESUS IS MY FRIEND (A), OSH 345

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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In the Sacred Harp of 1859 this song, tune and words, is attributed to the Georgian, J. P. Rees. I have heard my negro servant, Annie Ware, singing it, or fragments of it including the final phrase, “Jesus is my friend,” in Nashville, Tennessee, 1932. It is found also GOS 652.

No. 151
LOST CITY or TO GLORY I WILL GO, OSH 320

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The words are by John Leland. The old tune seems to have been wedded to the above text by E. L. King, about 1844, according to the Original Sacred Harp. John G. McCurry applied the same tune to a text beginning:

and ending with the refrain

See ‘Beggar’ in this collection where there are references to the seventeenth century prototype of the above song. Further stanzas of the above spiritual text are given under ‘Faithful Soldier’.

No. 152
GOLDEN HARP or TO PLAY ON THE GOLDEN HARP, OSH 274

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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Recorded in 1869 for the edition of the Sacred Harp which appeared in that year. The tune stems from some variants of ‘Come all ye Faithful Christians’, cf. JFSS, ii., 115ff.

No. 153
I CAN’T STAY AWAY, CSH 95

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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Further stanzas of the text are given under ‘Golden Harp’. Compare, for melodic similarities ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’, Sharp, i., 161, 162, 164, 168, and 170.

No. 154
MY HOME IS OVER JORDAN, REV 390

Pentachordal, cannot be classified (I II 3 IV V — —)

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This spiritual tune has been widely used as a chorus to other songs. An example is ‘Wings of the Morning’ in this collection.

No. 155
O I’M SO HAPPY

Pentatonic, mode 1 (I II — IV V VI —)

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Recorded by the author, September 21, 1932, in Nashville, Tennessee, from the singing of Samuel E. Asbury who learned it from hearing it sung at camp meetings in western North Carolina in the 1880’s. The tune is quite evidently an orally transmitted version of that of ‘Faithful Soldier’, in this collection, which first appeared in the Southern Harmony (1835) and was claimed by William Walker, the compiler of that collection. See also ‘Hallelujah’ in this collection, a type tune to which the above melody is organically related, for further data as to kindred tunes.

No. 156
CUBA or GO PREACHERS or POOR MOURNER’S FOUND A HOME, OSH 401

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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This typical spiritual was taken into the 1859 edition of the Sacred Harp. Other stanzas were added by simply substituting in the place of “preachers,” the words “fathers,” “mothers,” etc. A negro version of tune and words is in Slave Songs, No. 24.

No. 157
SINNERS TURN, OL 266

Heptatonic, essentially aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 [III] IV V 6 [VI] 7)

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This tune is closely related to ‘Animation’ and, like it, to the worldly tune ‘Ropesman’ in Thomas, p. 164. The melody of the above chorus seems to have been derived from ‘Willy Taylor’, Petrie, No. 745. Compare for similarities ‘Run Nigger Run’, SS 89.

No. 158
DEATH AIN’T YOU GOT NO SHAME

Pentachordal, cannot be classified (I II III IV V — —)

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Recorded by the compiler of this collection from the singing of Francis Arthur Robinson, Nashville, Tennessee, as he had heard it in the backwoods of Wayne County, Tennessee, in 1926. Mr. Robinson called it a “barefoot white” song. The tied notes are sung in a skid or scoop. Subsequent stanzas:

and many more. In The Carolina Low-Country, page 249, a version of the song is given as sung by a negro congregation in Beaufort, South Carolina.

This song is one of the most primitive in the present collection. It is valuable, however, in that it exemplifies well a lyric level which suited both whites and blacks of a certain cultural status.

No. 159
COME TO JESUS, REV 142

Hexatonic, 6th missing, cannot be classified but obviously ionian (I II III IV V — VII)

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Subsequent verses are built up on: He will save you; O, believe him; He is able; He is willing; He’ll receive you; Call upon him; He will hear you; Look unto him; He’ll forgive you; He will cleanse you; He will clothe you; Jesus loves you; Don’t reject him; and, Only trust him. A negro version of tune and text is in Slave Songs, No. 85.

Was ‘Come to Jesus’ a tune importation from Germany? Erk and Böhme (Deutscher Liederhort, vol. iii., p. 735) bring several variants of what is called an “altes Fastenlied.” I reproduce one of them:

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The first part of the German tune is almost identical with the corresponding part of the one, heard widely among American students, with such texts as ‘O My Darling Clementine’ and ‘Found a Horseshoe Just Now’—evident parodies on the ‘Come to Jesus’ tune and words. The second part of the German melody is strikingly like that of the above mentioned negro version in Slave Songs.

No. 160
GLAD NEWS or WE’LL LAND ON SHORE, SOC 18

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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A variant of the above text and tune is ‘when we pass over Jordan’, Mason’s Harp of the South, p. 295.

No. 161
CHRISTIAN PROSPECT or THERE’S A BETTER DAY, SOH 323

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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There are four more stanzas. The song is found also in KNH 52. Both Walker, compiler of the Southern Harmony, and Davisson, compiler of the Kentucky Harmony, laid claim to its authorship.

They were doubtlessly both recorders of this same piece of unwritten music. That was in the 1830’s. See the first phrase of ‘Glorishears’ (Sharp, Morris Dances Set 5, No. 6) for melodic similarities. The above song, both tune and words, inspired the composition of ‘Christian’s Hope’ in this collection. A negro remake of tune and words is in Dett, p. 36.

No. 162
CHRISTIAN’S HOPE or WHERE ALL IS PEACE AND LOVE, OSH 506

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The Sacred Harp, edition of 1911, has the following note: “H. A. Parris, who composed the words and music to the ‘Christian’s Hope’, resides at this time, 1911, at Helicon, Alabama. He is a great lover of the old Sacred Harp tunes.” Mr. Parris composed the song by assembling, happily withal, wandering distichs and melodic phrases from songs of much older times. His chief source, both tonally and textually, was ‘Christian Prospect’ in this collection. I have been told that this spiritual grips the Sacred Harp singers’ emotions so deeply that they can hardly get to the third verse before many burst into tears.

No. 163
DULCIMER or BELOVED, PB 309

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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The poem is by Joseph Swain of England (1762-1796). The tune is attributed to Freeman Lewis whom Tillett calls merely “an American musician.” His dates are 1780-1859. Found also GCM 65, Baptist Hymnal (1902), No. 389. Methodist Hymnal (1905), No. 530; GOS 102, SOH 15. Miss Gilchrist (op. cit.) compares this tune with ‘Fair Rosie Ann’ in Greig’s Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads, p. 771. The chorus of ‘The Sinking of the Titanic’ a phonograph-recorded song of wide popularity in America during the 1920’s, is practically the same melodic trend as that of ‘Dulcimer’. Its text is:

A song curiously similar to the ‘Titanic’ song is in The Carolina Low-Country, page 296, as sung by the negroes on the Santee River in South Carolina. The tune is changed but little. The words are:

The tune of ‘Dulcimer’ is of the ‘Lord Lovel’ type mentioned in the Introduction, p. 14. Other songs in this collection belonging to this type are ‘Yongst’, ‘Dunlap’s Creek’, ‘Liverpool’, ‘Ester’, ‘Lonesome Grove’, and ‘Land of Rest’. Other spiritual folk-tunes of the same type are ‘Eden’, GOS 558; ‘Thy Way O God’, PB 29; ‘Charlestown’, GOS 255; ‘Lord of Glory’, PB 374; ‘New Hope’, PB 373; ‘Golden Hill’, HH 211; ‘Webster’, OSH 31; ‘Hollis’, GOS 73; ‘Edneyville’, HH 193; ‘Blissful Hope’, REV 140; and ‘Tedious Hours’, SOC 69. Further secular tunes of the type are ‘Lord Lovel’, Sharp, i., 148; ‘The Two Brothers’, Davis, 563; ‘The Mermaid’, Sharp, i., 293; ‘Every Night When the Sun Goes In’, Sharp, ii., 269; ‘Three Little Babes’, Davis, 576; ‘Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies’, Sharp, ii., 135; ‘Barbara Allen’, Sharp, i., 195; ‘Gypsy Laddie’, Sharp, i., 237; ‘Horn Fair’, JFSS, ii., 204; and ‘The Cuckoo’, Sharp, ii., 177.

No. 164
WEEPING MARY (A), SOC 98

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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Attributed in the Sacred Harp to “John G. McCurry & Power” and dated 1852. For a variant of this tune used among the negroes see White Spirituals, 256. Miss Gilchrist states that the text of this song is No. 51 in the first English Primitive Methodist Hymn Book, about 1823.

No. 165
GREAT DAY or WHERE WILL YOU STAND, OSH 386

Pentachordal, cannot be classified (I II 3 IV V — —)

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This song bears the date 1859 and the composer’s name, John P. Rees. But beside the title we read: “As sung by Judge Falkerner of Ala.” We may therefore conclude that Rees recorded on that date this older tune from the singing of the Alabama magistrate. Melodic similarities are seen in ‘Trooper and the Maid’, Sharp, i., 305. A recent negro version from Beaufort, S. C., is in The Carolina Low-Country, p. 250.

No. 166
SHOUT ON, PRAY ON or ANTIOCH, OSH 277

Hexatonic, mode 2 b (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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There are three more stanzas of this hymn, the core of which is attributed to Daniel Medley “about 1784.” The tune first appeared in the Social Harp, 1855, where it is attributed to F. C. Wood, a Georgian. A tune and text variant is ‘We’ll Go On’, REV 252. A negro version of this spiritual may be seen in Dett, 195. See also White Spirituals, 259. ‘Antioch’ looks like a make-over from ‘Columbus’ in this collection. The tune is cleverly fitted also to a worldly ballad ‘Edward’, found in eastern Tennessee; see Sharp, i., 47. It is found also fitted to the worldly ballad ‘Cruel Mother’ in North Carolina; see Sharp, i., 58. ‘Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard’, Sharp, i., 162, shows definite influence of ‘Antioch’. See also for melodic similarities ‘Trooper and the Maid’, Sharp, i., 305; and ‘Bridle and Saddle’, Sharp, i., 305; and ‘Bridle and Saddle’, Sharp, ii., 329.

No. 167
WE’LL SHOUT AND GIVE HIM GLORY or REVIVAL SONG, OL 254

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The Olive Leaf editor calls it a “refrain song.”

No. 168
SWEET MORNING, OSH 421

Hexatonic, mode 2 A (I II 3 IV V — 7)

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Found also in GOS 254. How the post-Civil War negroes sang this song to pieces and then patched it together with fragments of ‘Exhilaration’, another song in this collection, is made clear by reference to Slave Songs, p. 74, No. 97. The tune of ‘Trooper and the Maid’, Sharp, i., 305, is the same as that of ‘Sweet Morning’.

No. 169
GOOD OLD WAY (A), OSH 213

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The words of the above song appeared in the Dover Selection in the early years of the nineteenth century and in the Zion Songster, a spiritual-song collection which appeared in 1832. The first appearance of the tune seems to have been in the Southern Harmony of 1835. A related tune in this collection is ‘All the Way ’Long’. Further stanzas of the text are given under ‘Good Old Way (B)’.

No. 170
ALL THE WAY ’LONG, REV 172

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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Related songs in this collection are ‘Good Old Way (A)’, ‘Good Old Way (B)’, and ‘’Tis a Wonder’.

No. 171
’TIS A WONDER, SOC 44

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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Two further stanzas of the text taken from Good Old Songs, No. 511, are:

The song is accredited in the Social Harp to Henry F. Chandler and dated 1854. A North Carolina variant, recorded in 1916, is in Sharp, ii., 294. A variant in the present collection is ‘Look Out’, which see for references to related secular tunes. The earliest American recording of this melody known to me is that in Jeremiah Ingalls’ Christian Harmony of 1805, p. 15. It begins:

No. 172
BOWERS or HAPPY SOULS (B), SOC 82

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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John G. McCurry places his name as composer at the top of the page where this song is found in the Social Harp and dates it 1852. A note at the bottom says: “This tune was arranged as sung by William Bowers, Eagle Grove, Georgia.” Eagle Grove is a few miles south of Hartwell. The tune is a clear borrowing from ‘Wearing of the Green’. See also ‘Our Goodman’, Sharp, i., 269, for melodic similarities. Further stanzas of the text are given under ‘Glorious Prospect’. In The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2, I have called attention to melodic similarities between the above tune (with its variants ‘Oh For my Soul’s Happy’, ‘We’ll Wait Till Jesus Comes’, and ‘O When Shall I see Jesus’ in this collection) and Stephen Foster’s ‘Annie My own Love’ and ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’.

No. 173
HEAVEN’S MY HOME, OSH 119

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The song is ascribed in the Original Sacred Harp to Dr. R. H. Davis and J. S. Terry. This is a re-make of an older tune in four-four time called ‘Old Troy’ in this collection, and ‘Old Troy’ in turn is almost identical with, and probably made out of ‘Wearing of the Green’.

No. 174
OLD TROY or IN JESUS’ BLOOD, SOC 75

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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For tune relationships see ‘Heaven’s My Home’ and ‘Happy Souls (B)’ in this collection. John G. McCurry claims the tune in the Social Harp. It is taken bodily from ‘Wearing of the Green’. A very similar negro spiritual tune is in Dett, p. 42.

No. 175
THERE WILL BE MOURNING or JUDGMENT SCENES, OL 337

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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This old air and its words portray, as the Olive Leaf author declares, “the gloomy side” of the Last Day. But, he adds consolingly, “Now sing the joyous side, with every verse,” thus:

and so on also for the “parents and children,” and the rest. ‘Parting Hymn’, in this collection, uses a similar chorus but has a different verse and tune. A negro version is in Slave Songs, p. 52.

No. 176
WEEPING PILGRIM or YOU MAY TELL THEM FATHER or I’M A POOR MOURNING PILGRIM, OSH 417

Pentatonic, mode 1 (I II — IV V VI —)

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The text is probably a parody of ‘Rebel Soldier’ or ‘Poor Stranger’, Sharp, ii., 212ff. Especially the refrain verses of the two songs show textual and tonal resemblances. The secular refrain runs:

The cowboys, too, made use of the ‘Rebel Soldier’ or ‘Mourning Pilgrim’ in the song ‘Poor Lonesome Cowboy’, Sandburg, p. 273, which reads:

The spiritual song appeared first in the 1859 edition of the Sacred Harp.

No. 177
EXHILARATION or THEN MY TROUBLES WILL BE OVER or I NEVER SHALL FORGET THE DAY, OSH 170

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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I have no information as to the tune excepting that it appeared in the earliest edition of the Sacred Harp, that is, in 1844. The tune and the words of its chorus have served the negroes in the construction of ‘Almost Over’, SS, No. 97.

No. 178
RESURRECTED or MY FATHER’S GONE or AWAY OVER YONDER or TO WEAR A STARRY CROWN, OSH 524

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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Seaborn M. Denson, widely known fasola country singing-school teacher and musical editor of the 1911 edition of the Original Sacred Harp, and author of this song, told me he had heard this song sung in camp meetings around Civil War times in northern Alabama. He recorded it from memory and published it first in the Union Harp in 1909. The tune is a member of the ‘Roll Jordan’ group. See Introduction, page 14, and the song by that name in this collection. Further stanzas read “My mother’s gone”, “My sister’s gone” etc.

The wide spread of this song in the American oral tradition and especially at the time when Mr. Denson heard it in northern Alabama, is indicated by the variant and musically somewhat inferior recording in the Revivalist, Albany, New York, 1868. It is there called ‘Away over Jordan’. It runs:

No. 179
WINGS OF THE MORNING or WESTERN MELODY, BHTBK, p. 213

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The tune trend of the chorus is found also in ‘Rocky Mountain Top’, Sharp, ii., 110; and it is the whole tune of ‘My Home is Over Jordan’ in this collection.

No. 180
WE’LL MARCH AROUND JERUSALEM, REV 358

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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Subsequent stanzas use instead of brethren, sister, leader, preacher, young convert, and backslider, with the conclusion:

The above tune, with some alterations, is found as a negro spiritual in Dett, p. 78.

No. 181
RAGAN or I BELONG TO THIS BAND (B), OSH 176

Hexatonic, mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The above melodic trend will be recognized as that of ‘Roll Jordan’ and Stephen Foster’s ‘Susanna’. Compare ‘Roll Jordan’ in this collection. The chorus—both tune and words—appears also in ‘I Belong to This Band (A)’. Further stanzas of the text are given under ‘Golden Harp’.

No. 182
DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE or WE’LL END THIS WAR, REV 68

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The song bears the name of “Rev. J. K. Tinkham” as its purveyor to the Revivalist. A version of the spiritual song, as sung at about the same time (in the 1870’s) by the negroes, is in Marsh, No. 85, under the title ‘Down by the River’. Another by the same title is in Dett, p. 55; and still another in Dett, p. 74.

No. 183
I’M GOING HOME or I DON’T CARE TO STAY HERE LONG, OSH 282

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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Further stanzas of the text are given under ‘Golden Harp’. This tune was recorded for the 1850 edition of the Sacred Harp, evidently by the Georgian, Leonard P. Breedlove.

No. 184
ROLL JORDAN, OSH 501

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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Charles Wesley wrote the text. According to Lightwood, p. 132, it is a parody on a popular secular song which celebrated Admiral Vernon’s return to England after taking Portobello in 1739. Its first stanza is:

It is found also in SOC, published in 1855. In the Introduction p. 14, I have mentioned the ‘Roll Jordan’ type of melody; it was named after the above tune. Other melodies of the type in this collection are ‘Florence’, ‘I Belong to this Band (B)’, ‘Tennessee’, ‘Jordan’, and ‘Resurrected’. It is this tune type which influenced Stephen Foster in the making of his ‘Susanna Don’t You Cry’ and ‘De Camptown Races’. See in this connection my article in The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2. For samples of negro borrowings of ‘Roll Jordan’ see White Spirituals, 264; Dett, p. 76; and Slave Songs, Nos. 1 and 10.

No. 185
WE’LL ALL PRAISE GOD, REV 381

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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Two more stanzas are in the Revivalist. The relationship between this tune and that of Stephen Foster’s ‘Long-Ago Day’ was noted by me in The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2.

No. 186
HEAVENLY HOME, SWP 150

Pentatonic, mode 1 (I II — IV V VI —)

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No. 187
WHEN WE ALL GET TO HEAVEN or RELIGION IS A FORTUNE, OSH 319

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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The text core is generally ascribed to John Leland (1754-1844). See White Spirituals, 217ff. Further stanzas are given under ‘Faithful Soldier’.

No. 188
BATES or TO HEAR THE TRUMPET SOUND, REV 158

Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)

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A close negro variant of the above spiritual song is in Marsh, p. 136. Both the Marsh song and the present one are rather degenerate descendants, apparently, of ‘Morning Trumpet’ in this collection. See also White Spirituals, 254.

No. 189
RIVER OF JORDAN or HAPPY IN THE LORD, OSH 493

Hexatonic, Mode 3 A (I II III — V VI VII)

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The core of the text is attributed to John Cennick, the English hymn writer. Also found in the Social Harp of 1855.

No. 190
I’M BOUND FOR THE LAND OF CANAAN or SWEET CANAAN, OSH 87

Pentachordal, cannot be classified (I II III IV V — —)

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Text is based on a poem by Watts. The stanzas which are associated with the above are numerous, as are also the refrains and choruses. Found also BHTBK (1857), p. 334; and MHTBK (1889), No. 885. In The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2, I have shown the relationship between the above tune and Stephen Foster’s ‘The Glendy Burk’ and ‘Old Uncle Ned’. See also Dett, p. 188, for a negro song showing some textual and melodic influences.

No. 191
OLD SHIP OF ZION (A), OSH 79

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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The text is said to have been written around 1800 by Rev. Samuel Hauser of North Carolina. The tune is called the “North Carolina Version” of the immensely popular song. See White Spirituals, 257-258. Closely related to the above tune is ‘Sweet Canaan’ in this collection.

No. 192
BABYLON IS FALLEN, GOS 613

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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Negro borrowings of this chorus and the changing of its tune to a major key are to be seen in Dett, p. 2.

No. 193
MARTIN or WAY OVER IN THE PROMISED LAND, SOC 29

Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)

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John G. McCurry, the compiler of the Social Harp, and William C. Davis, both of Georgia, seem to have been the first to record this tune. McCurry dates it 1854. A recently recorded variant of this tune is ‘Long White Robe’, Richardson, p. 67. Compare for melodic similarities the country dance ‘Once I Loved a Maiden Faire’ on page 47 of Playford’s The English Dancing Master.

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No. 194
HEBREW CHILDREN, OSH 481

Hexatonic, mode 5 A (I — 3 IV V 6 7)

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Of the author, the editor of the OSH says: “Peter Cartwright [the presumptive author of tune and words] was a minister of the gospel, and used this tune in his camp meetings long before it was ever placed in notation.—Peter Cartwright was born in Amherst County, Va., 1785, and died in Sangamond [sic] County, Ill., 1872.” The song has been widely sung by the negroes who have added numerous stanzas. See White Spirituals, 263. A pre-Civil War secular negroid parody on ‘Hebrew Children’ was published by C. Bradlee & Co., Boston, 1844. Its first stanza is:

Mrs. Annabel Morris Buchanan has made an excellent arrangement of a version of ‘Hebrew Children’ for chorus. It is published by J. Fischer and Brother, New York.

No. 195
COME ALONG AND SHOUT ALONG or HEAVEN BORN SOLDIERS or NEVER GET TIRED, SOC 184

Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)

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The misfit of words and notes in the first part of the song is quite evident. The compiler of the Social Harp credits J. F. Wade with the song and dates it 1854. The popularity of the melodic trend in the above chorus may be realized when we see it in ‘Ecstacy’ in this collection; in the negro Slave Songs, Nos. 78 and 114; in ‘William and Polly’, Sharp, ii., 141; and ‘Rebel Soldier’, Sharp, ii., 212-215.

No. 196
TO LAY THIS BODY DOWN or WHITE or I’M A LONG TIME TRAVELING, OSH 288

Hexatonic, mode 1 b (I II — IV V VI 7)

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Elder Edmund Dumas of Georgia is supposed to have made the tune. He very likely was the first to record it, that is, for the 1859 edition of the Sacred Harp. A variant is ‘Converted Thief (A)’ in this collection. The negroes have caught the significant part of the chorus in their song ‘Lay This Body Down’, Slave Songs, No. 26. One couplet of this song is

No. 197
HAD I WINGS or ECSTACY, OSH 106

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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Further stanzas of the John Leland text are given under ‘Faithful Soldier’. The tune seems, according to the note in the Sacred Harp, to have been first recorded by T. W. Carter of Georgia in the 1840’s. The tune of the chorus is essentially the same as in ‘Heaven-Born Soldiers’; in the negro tune ‘Every Hour in the Day’, SS p. 58; the negro tune ‘O Daniel’, SS p. 94; ‘William and Polly’, Sharp, ii., 141; ‘Rebel Soldier’, Sharp, ii., 212-215; and Petrie, Nos. 1191 and 1290.

No. 198
SAVE MIGHTY LORD, OSH 70

Pentatonic, mode 2 (I — 3 IV V — 7)

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Further stanzas of the John Cennick text are given under ‘River of Jordan’. The tune is attributed, in the Social Harp, p. 99, to J. A. and J. F. Wade.

No. 199
GRACE IS FREE, REV 50

Heptatonic aeolian, minorized, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7 [VII])

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Two more stanzas of text are in the Revivalist. The tune is of the type seen in ‘The Rejected Lover’, Sharp, ii., 96ff.; and a closer variant is ‘Come All You Worthy Christians’, JFSS, ii., 117.

No. 200
FOR ME THE SAVIOR DIED or ATONEMENT, REV 13

Hexatonic, mode 2 b, with cadentially raised seventh (I — 3 IV V 6 7 [VII])

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The tune is related to ‘The Greenwood Siding’, Cox, p. 522; ‘Babe of Bethlehem’ in this collection; and ‘Come all you Worthy Christians’, fourth version, JFSS, ii., 117.

No. 201
HEAVENLY PORT or WE’LL STEM THE STORM, OSH 378

Pentachordal, cannot be classified (I II III IV V — —)

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The words, given more fully under ‘Jordan’, are Samuel Stenett’s. The Sacred Harp editors attribute the tune to Elder Edmund Dumas, the Georgia Primitive Baptist preacher, who was at the same time a zealous musician of the fasola variety. A close melodic relative is ‘O How I love Jesus’, REV 456. It will be seen as akin to ‘Merrily we Roll Along’. The tune as adopted by the negroes is found in Dett, p. 189.

No. 202
SAY BROTHERS, REV 173

Heptatonic ionian, mode 3 A + b (I II III IV V VI VII)

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Subsequent stanzas are made by substituting for “brothers” the word “sisters” etc., then come phrases like