This glorious morn the Savior’s born,
His name it is Christ Jesus.
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.
