I want to wear a crown of glory,
When I get home on that good land;
I want to shout salvation’s story,
In concert with the blood-wash’d band;
I’m going there to see my Savior,
To sing his praise forever more;
I’m only going over Jordan,
I’m only going over home.
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.