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 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
Will you go, Lassie, go
To the braes o’ Balquhidder?
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:’