[1]John Powell’s article “In the Lowlands Low”, in the Southern Folklore Quarterly, Vol. i., No. 1, provides a corrective for those who think loosely of our American music tradition as one observable in the highlands only.
[2]The churchman’s frown on the early intrusion of the folk into hymn making may be seen in The English Hymn by Louis F. Benson, pp. 291ff.
[3]See Warren A. Chandler, Great Revivals and the Great Republic, pp. 109ff. and 138f.
[4]Samuel E. Asbury tells me that the camp meetings at Rock Springs, Lincoln County, North Carolina, which he attended in his youth in the 1880’s had been the “mating grounds” for that state for fifty years.
[5]Compare my article on this subject in The American Mercury of June, 1932.
[6]Anne G. Gilchrist, in her article cited above, assumes this song-book recognition of the revival tunes to have begun in 1842. The height of this activity was, to be sure, around that date, that is, from a decade earlier to a decade later. See JFSS, viii., 63 f.; and compare [p. 11] of this work.
[7]The new edition of The Original Sacred Harp, 1936, was not used in making the present collection.
[8]All these books use the country people’s own shape notation, described at length in White Spirituals. See also my article “Buckwheat Notes,” in the Musical Quarterly, xix., No. 4, and the [Preface] of this book.
[9]In Chapter xxi of White Spirituals is the story of how the city-controlled denominations have shown uniformly and increasingly an aversion to the old revival type of song.
[10]The following is a comment made in this connection by John Powell.