In 1844, Georgians Benjamin Franklin White and Elisha J. King published The Sacred Harp, a collection of hymns arising out of Southern folk traditions. Many of the texts were taken from the best of British hymnody, featuring poets like William Cowper, Charles Wesley, and especially Isaac Watts. White and King wrote some of the tunes, and compiled others from around the South. One of the notable features of this hymnal was its use of shape-notes, where four different symbols stood in place of the typical round noteheads. A modified solfege system, using only fa, so, la and ti, enabled singers to learn melodies quickly even if they couldn’t read music.
The hymnal sold well, and went through several editions during White’s lifetime. This collection, which is still in print today in a couple of different formats, introduced a wider audience to tunes such BEACH SPRING (frequently found now with the text “Come, All Christians, Be Committed”) and THE MORNING TRUMPET.
Appearing in two current editions of The Sacred Harp is the song “I Am a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger”1One recorded example of the Sacred Harp version is this one by the women’s quartet Anonymous 4. (found in other sources as “I’m Just a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger” or simply, “Poor, Wayfaring Stranger”). At first glance, it appears to fit well within the Sacred Harp tradition of rural white Southerners: a plaintive, minor-key melody; a text speaking of longing for heaven; the employment of language from Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promised Land; and a desire to see not only loved ones in heaven, but especially Jesus. One can easily imagine the song originating in early nineteenth-century camp meetings, and its presence in The Sacred Harp seems to indicate such a background.
Or does it?
The source of the text is somewhat obscure. The 1991 Sacred Harp edition lists the song as coming from “Bever’s Christian Songster, 1858.” Bever’s book does contain a very similar text with the title “Going over Jordan,” though only the text is printed, and no author is listed.
The Cooper Edition of The Sacred Harp gives the composer as an “Elder C. G. Keith, May 5, 1908.” This, however, appears to be incorrect. In 1905 Black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor included “I Am a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger” (under the title “Pilgrim’s Song”) in a set of piano arrangements of twenty-four melodies of Black origin. Coleridge-Taylor attributes the song only to Black American origin. The arrangement bears the influence both of late Romanticism and early jazz, showing that these seemingly disparate genres may have more in common than one might suppose.
If the song arose among enslaved Black people, the text takes on an additional layer of meaning. As scholars have noted,2As only one example, see Michael Battle, The Black Church in America (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 51. spirituals often contained coded language. “Heaven” or “the promised land” referred to the place of rest for the Christian, but also to the freedom of the North. The “Jordan River” might be an allusion to the Israelites’ journey in the Old Testament (notably, as they were leaving their own slavery), but also could refer to the Ohio River, which separated slave states from free ones. References to trains (as in “This Train Is Bound for Glory”) provided a hidden reference to the Underground Railroad.
Booker T. Washington wrote an introduction to Coleridge-Taylor’s piano set, and his description of spirituals may well have had “I Am a Poor, Wayfaring Stranger” specifically in mind: “[Spirituals] breathe a child-like faith in a personal Father, and glow with the hope that the children of bondage will ultimately pass out of the wilderness of slavery into the land of freedom. In singing of a deliverance which they believed would surely come, with bodies swaying, with the enthusiasm born of a common experience and of a common hope, they lost sight for the moment of the auction-block, of the separation of mother and child, of sister and brother…The music of these songs goes to the heart because it comes from the heart.”3Booker T. Washington, preface to 24 Negro Melodies Transcribed for the Piano by S. Coleridge-Taylor (Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1905), ix.
Life in nineteenth-century Appalachia and the rural South was hard. Life was exponentially harder for Black people living as slaves in antebellum America. However, the history of this song should illustrate that Christians have a common hope regardless of their skin color—the hope of eternal life with our Savior, to sing His praise forevermore.
I am a poor, wayfaring stranger,
While journ’ying through this world of woe,
Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger
In that bright land to which I go.
I’m going there to see my father,
I’m going there no more to roam;
I’m only going over Jordan,
I’m only going over home.
I know dark clouds will gather o’er me,
I know my way is rough and steep;
Yet beauteous fields lie just before me,
Where God’s redeemed their vigil keep.
I’m going there to see my mother,
She said she’d meet me when I come;
I’m only going over Jordan,
I’m only going over home.
I want to wear a crown of glory
When I get home to that good land;
I want to shout salvation’s story
In concert with the blood-washed band.
I’m going there to meet my Savior,
To sing His praise forevermore.
I’m only going over Jordan,
I’m only going over home.
References
| 1 | One recorded example of the Sacred Harp version is this one by the women’s quartet Anonymous 4. |
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| 2 | As only one example, see Michael Battle, The Black Church in America (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 51. |
| 3 | Booker T. Washington, preface to 24 Negro Melodies Transcribed for the Piano by S. Coleridge-Taylor (Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1905), ix. |