Subsequent verses have “It was good for Paul and Silas” and for practically everybody. It is the author’s recording from memory of hearing it sung at meetings of both negroes and whites. Sharp, ii., 291, has the above tune with a judgment-day text under the title ‘Sinner Man’, a song which had come from negro sources.
No. 219
[TAKE ME HOME] or I’M ALONE IN THIS WORLD
Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)
My father’s gone to glory, I’m alone in this world,
my father’s gone to glory, I’m alone.
My father’s gone to glory, I’m alone in this world;
Take me home, dear Savior take me home.
Recorded by the author from the singing of Samuel E. Asbury, September 10, 1932, at Nashville, Tennessee. Mr. Asbury learned it in his boyhood in the 1880’s, from hearing it at camp meetings in western North Carolina. Subsequent verses substitute “my mother,” “my sister,” etc. A negro version of the tune is in Slave Songs, p. 18.