Seaborn M. Denson composed this tune as a setting to Charles Wesley’s text and inserted it, in a fuguing-tune setting, in the Original Sacred Harp of 1911. The tune is testimony to the fact that its composer was steeped in the traditional Anglo-American folk-melodism and in that particular direction which it took in the hands of the eighteenth century fuguing-song makers. Compare for melodic similarities ‘Geordie’, JFSS, iii., 191. White Spirituals tells more about Mr. Denson who died in 1936.
No. 107
[LEANDER], SOH 128
Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)
My soul forsakes her vain delight,
And bids the world farewell,
Base as the dirt beneath thy feet
And mischievous as hell.
No longer will I ask your love,
Nor seek your friendship more;