The chariot of mercy is speeding its way,
Far, far through the shadowy gloom,
Where the lands that in death’s dark obscurity lay,
Are bursting the bars of their tomb. etc.
This familiar tune continues with the words:
I see where ’tis shedding its luminous ray,
Dispersing the shadows of night;
And wondering nations are hailing the day,
And rejoice in its glorious light.
The Hesperian Harp gives the tune as an “Irish Air”. We recognize it as the melody to which ‘Believe Me, If all Those Endearing Young Charms’ is sung universally. Woolridge tells us it is the setting for the popular ballad ‘My Lodging, It is on the Cold Ground’ as printed “on all broadsides, with music, of the last century”, meaning the eighteenth century. The ballad, in connection with a different tune, had been popular from around the middle of the seventeenth century in England. With the above tune its singing vogue seems not even yet to have abated. See Chappell’s Old English Popular Music, ii., 137ff. An old Irish version of the tune is ‘Oh Shrive me Father’, Petrie, No. 632. Stephen Foster undoubtedly had this popular tune formula in mind when he composed ‘Old Folks at Home’. See Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2, pp. 158-160.