Tunes with secular origins

[Tim Cook]

I understand that before Sacred Harp, Martin Luther is supposed to have asked “Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?” Does anyone know of a list of Sacred Harp songs or church hymns that came from secular tunes? Everyone seems to know that “Wondrous Love” came from “The Ballad of William Kidd,” but I wonder what else. Just wondering what the Devil was singing 😉

 

Tim Cook

Iwaki, Japan

[Chris Brown]

Here are some suggestions, several courtesy of Goerge Pullen Jackson: -

Denson

             111b      Three Ravens

             162        Auld Lang Syne

             175        Braes of Balquhiddar

             338        Rosin the Bow

             376        Star of the County Down

             457        Dowie Dens of Yarrow

Cooper

             152         Scots Wha Hey

Chris Brown

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[Brian Harris]

Hello Tim,

Well, as you know, this phenomenon reflects a practice several centuries old of setting hymns, psalmody or topical songs to folk ballads and dance tunes. Now, since the modes of sacred chant lie at the root of Western secular music, it seems only fitting that certain authors or communities should reclaim this heritage for the sacred sphere. It also reflects the inculturation of Christianity in the popular vernacular at local, regional, and national levels, aside from being a ready to hand means of propagating the Gospel.

One good example of this trend in our book is 160b Turn, Sinner, Turn. This hymn is set to the tune of the ballad Shule Agra (Súil a Grá), also known as Johnny Has Gone for a Soldier. It is in the same tune family as the Irish song Siúl a Rún, of which it may be considered a variant. The lyrics are about a woman lamenting her beloved's departure to fight in the armies of Europe (or, subsequently, for the Patriot cause during the American Revolution) and professing her loyalty to him. It was popular among the Irish Jacobites (possibly as early as the Flight of the Wild Geese during the Glorious Revolution of 1688) as well as during the American War of Independence.

Even more striking is 201 Pilgrim, which is set to the tune of a transportation ballad about being sent to the penal colony at Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) during the British settlement of Australia in the first half of the 19th century. It is drawn from a family of tunes/texts known variously as Van Diemen's Land, Henry the Poacher, The (Gallant) Poachers, The Poacher's Fate, etc. The ballad has to date from before 1811 or so because it also influenced a Luddite song of that period (The Cropper Lads). Even the "Come all ye" chorus has been preserved in the hymn version. Here are two versions of the ballad's opening verse for comparison:

Come all ye gallant poachers

That ramble void of care

That walk out on a moonlit night

With your dog, your gun, your snare

The harmless hare and pheasant

You have at your command

Not thinking on your last career

Upon Van Diemen's Land

Come all you wild and wicked youths

Whosoever you may be

I hope you'll pay attention

And listen unto me

The fate of poor lost convicts

As you may understand

And the hardships they do undergo

Upon Van Diemen's Land

Brian Harris

Boston, MA

--

[Warren Steel]

Tim writes:
I understand that before Sacred Harp, Martin Luther is supposed to have asked “Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?” Does anyone know of a list of Sacred Harp songs or church hymns that came from secular tunes? Everyone seems to know that “Wondrous Love” came from “The Ballad of William Kidd,” but I wonder what else. Just wondering what the Devil was singing.

Good question. I'm not aware of any evidence that Luther ever asked it, though his followers were more tolerant of hymns derived from secular melodies (A lieta vita, Innsbruck ich muss dich lassen) than those of Calvin. The question is more reliably attributed to English evangelist and hymn writer Rowland Hill (1744–1833).
The Makers of the Sacred Harp (2010) documents a great many tunes in the 1991 Sacred Harp that are clearly derived from secular songs, including instrumental chamber music, march and fiddle tunes. WONDROUS LOVE is not one of them, though it has the same meter as Captain Kid and other ballads. Well-known examples include CLAMANDA (p. 42), PRIMROSE HILL (43), ARLINGTON (73), DULL CARE (98), TO DIE NO MORE (111), GREEN FIELDS (127), MORALITY (136), both PLEYEL'S HYMNS, SWEET HOME (161), PLENARY (162), HIGHLANDS OF HEAVEN (175), THOU ART PASSING AWAY (231), WEEPING SAVIOR (310), SOFT MUSIC (323), O COME AWAY (334), SAWYER'S EXIT (338), WHEN I AM GONE (339), THE AMERICAN STAR (346), HAPPY LAND (354), MURILLO'S LESSON (358), LOVING JESUS (361), THE LOVED ONES (413), MARY'S GRIEF AND JOY (451), CORLEY (510). Original secular counterparts to many of these songs may be found at http://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/texts/
As Tom Lehrer adds after reciting all the chemical elements: "These are the only ones of which the news has come to Hahvard,/And there may be many others but they haven't been discahvered."
--
Warren Steel mu...@olemiss.edu
Professor of Music Emeritus University of Mississippi
http://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/

[Wade Kotter]

Tim, you've received some good answers about "secular" tunes in the Sacred Harp. Regarding that "quote," I came across this commentary by David Music a few years ago that I found very enlightening:

https://www.reformedworship.org/article/december-2004/why-should-devil-have-all-good-music-its-time-put-old-myth-rest

Wade

Wade Kotter

South Ogden, UT

"Make a Joyful Noise Unto the Lord"

--

[Bob Richmond]

I don't often get to sing Sacred Harp (I'm a New Harp of Columbia singer), but when I was at a Sacred Harp singing several years ago I about fell off my chair laughing when somebody called that temperance hymn, 344 O COME AWAY.

The tune is an old German student drinking song, Krambambuli, folk tune, text (in 102 verses) by Christoph Friedrich Wedekind (1709-77). Krambambuli was a liqueur of old, no longer made. I learned the song when I was a German major at Harvard in the later 1950s, from an old German professor who I remember had dueling scars on his face. How it got from there to the Sacred Harp isn't clear, I think. Here's a link to the music and text.

https://www.lieder-archiv.de/krambambuli-notenblatt_502170.html

There's at least one other German folk tune in the Sacred Harp, but I can't remember where. I think it's Muss i denn, which Elvis sang as "Wooden Heart".

Bob Richmond

New Harp of Columbia treble

Maryville TN

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[Richard Hulan]

As this is a fasola discussion (not limited to the examples that have found their way into The Sacred Harp), I'll mention that some early ministers of the Disciples of Christ had become familiar with Glasite (aka Sandemanian) publications, during their youth in Scotland.  And that led to at least a little bit of Scottish secular-tune influence on Amos S. Hayden's 4-shape Introduction to Sacred Music, editions of 1834 and 1838.

I don't think this arose when we were working on Makers, but I did touch on it a few times in my MA thesis at Vanderbilt, fifty short years ago.  The source, or short list, came from a helpful addendum to John Glas, Christian Songs, written by Mr. John Glas, and Others (7th ed., Providence, Rhode Island:  Bennett Wheeler, 1787), pp. 130-31.  I no longer have the full list at hand, it was a library book.  But the recommended tunes that I mentioned, in a couple of footnotes, were:

Flowers of the Forest 

Sweet Annie

Yellow-haired laddie

She rose and let me in

Love is the cause of my mourning

Carle, an' the king come

A few of those are a little more devilish than what we normally see in our hymn books, so I just thought I'd share.  I'm not aware that Amos S. Hayden included versions of any of them, except the last (as a setting for the Glasite hymn "When the King of Kings comes").  But he might have.  My thesis (in American Church History) wasn't really about musicology.

A good bit later than 1971, I acquired my own copy of the 8th edition of Glas et al, Christian Songs.  It's an 1802 Connecticut reprint of one from Perth.  Sadly, it lacks the 7th edition's handy list of suggested tunes.  But it has a couple of new songs at the end, more or less Christmas-themed; and for one of them, the tune "Bunker-Hill" is suggested.  Most probably not from Scottish tradition.

Dick Hulan

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[Paul Robinson]

I remember being at a Cooper Book singing, must've 20-25 years ago, and while away from the square on child-care duty I could clearly hear the tune to "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" coming from the class, and later got confirmation from someone that it was the same tune.  I don't remember the number and I can't find my Cooper book at the moment so I'm unable to provide any more detail.

--paulr

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[Fulton, Erin]

They don't make Krambambuli any more? Somebody ought to inform my (paternal) grandmother, who refuses to have a new year's celebration without it. It's functionally the same as a Feuerzangenbowle: sugared rum set on fire and mixed with spiced wine. She does hers with orange peel and juniper berries.

I have only a brief moment at the computer now, but suffice it to say that the "Krambambuli" or O COME AWAY tune was very widespread in the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century. It was invoked as the tune for numerous sacred and secular lyrics; when I was doing research on antislavery music, it was one of the most popular tunes found in those songsters. In the Southern Harmony, the same tune appears with a Sabbath-school text opening "Oh come, come away, the Sabbath morn is passing." (This is actually a very well known and well liked song out of Southern Harmony.) When we first added a "Sacred Harp day" to Big Singing, there was some surprise and consternation upon the part of the Southern Harmony people to learn that the Sacred Harp version was a temperance text, rather than the one we were used to.

I cannot think straight off of a "Muss i denn" variant in the Sacred Harp. Perhaps you have in mind SOFT MUSIC, which is along the lines of "Du liegst mir im Herzen"?

Anywho, goodbye for now. I can send innumerable O COME AWAY lyrics, if anyone is interested.

E. Fulton.

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Subject: Re: [fasola-discussions] Tunes with secular origins

 

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[Bob Richmond]

I found numerous recipes (in German) for a punch called Krambambuli, made with wine and sometimes rum, but I couldn't find any evidence that the liqueur is still in manufacture. I suspect the original song refers to a punch.
https://www.kuechengoetter.de/rezepte/krambambuli-13055

You're quite right about SH 323 SOFT MUSIC, to the tune "Du, du, liegst mir im Herzen" - I misremembered. Thanks for recovering it for me!

Southern Harmony 144 O COME, COME AWAY is indeed the same tune. I suppose that 19th century US German shape-note singers brought the tune with them from Germany. For what I could find out, it's a folk tune in Germany, with no known composer.

Do you know of any other German folk tunes in the Sacred Harp?

Bob Richmond

[Gabriel Kastelle]

CHARLESTOWN (Denson SH '91 p. 52 b)

is known earlier as a sea shanty / sailor's tune.

I suspected from the "feel" of it, from the meter and from the roughly ABBA form of it--

--I owe specific recognition and finding to Craig Edwards, an old-time fiddler specialist and musicologist colleague of mine in CT, and sometime musician staff position holder at the Mystic Seaport Museum.

In a phone call in January 2017, I sang a couple tunes to him...  ...the first one, used by a living modern arranger, felt familiar to Craig, and without precisely finding or recognizing, he placed it within the style of centuries-ago maritime songs, noting similarities to the tune "Barrack St." (sometimes "Patrick St.").   "It's one of those song melodies that gets used and re-used," he commented. "Definitely maritime."

Maybe also similar to "The Shanghaied Dredger" [oyster dredger], once-upon-a-time available in a recording by The Boarding Party ( great band name! :-) ).

Then, CHARLESTOWN:

more immediately, he responded "That's also familiar," continuing, "It's out of the same general 'tune bag'--the Anglo ballad [tradition]."

Then he found it precisely in Helen Creighton's collection Maritime Folk Songs (!! :-( why didn't I learn the page number from him!?). Sometimes associated with the text "Andrew Rose" (I guess look that up in the index), a graphic ballad recounting a true story / real event about the torture and murder of a young sailor (Andrew Rose) by a sadistic ship captain, followed by the captain's trial and execution by hanging. Anyway, that was Craig's thumbnail of the ballad plot.

? Are we secular yet ?

Helen Creighton eventually put out several volumes of such tune collections. These are recommended. Craig imagines that the tune and variants could be found as well in a perusal of Stan Hugill books, for which he could recite titles: Shanties and Sailor Songs, Shanties from the Seven Seas, maybe Songs of the Sea (more of a "coffee table book").

'CHARLESTOWN' is likely NOT a misspelling of Charleston, SC (even though Pilsbury published the tune there in his roundnote, 1799 United States Sacred Harmony. Funny coincidence). Rather, the spelling with a certain 'W' seems to me a likely clue to how the tune found its way into shape note and hollow square traditions in the first place. Short answer: through Indian singers.

CharlestoWn, Rhode Island, was a couple centuries ago the last area of land in the region still, as traditionally, occupied by the Narragansett people. Many of the Ninnuock peoples of Southern New England + E. End of L.I. (incl. Mohegan, Pequot, Montaukett, Narragansett, Nehantic, and Farmington/Tunxis+ peoples) found work in whaling and on European style whaling ships and voyages when more traditional lands and land uses and resources were becoming less available through settler colonialism's transformations. And we have rich documentation, in journals and letters and more from many members of these Algonquian communities and other visitors, that once some learned new music--whether sailing the seas, or by attending school with Eleazar Wheelock, or through other connections--they returned to their communities and must have shared and taught, because the communities are always described by observers as "everyone" singing together, "all good Singers in Psalms, Hymns, and Anthems." [!so specific in letter by the Rev. Samson Occom (Mohegan/ Brothertown) to Solomon Welles, Sept. 26, 1784, = pp. 124-5 in The Collected Writings of Samson Occom, Oxford U P, 2006, ed. Joanna Brooks].

I believe that the secular maritime tune re-named CHARLESTOWN for hollow square singers, be the notes round or patent-shaped, entered the repertoire through the singing of the Narragansett--all the Ninnuock-- ==> became Brothertown Indian Nation. The Brothertown Indians are known travelling, community singers who helped create our traditions.

:-)

-- A. Gabriel Kastelle --

cell: 215-287-2851

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