I have some very nice friends. :) I didn't expect my pal to do anything more than make a suggestion about how to procede...maybe rummage around in her memory a bit...let alone leave her desk. Imagine my surprise when the following appeared in my e-mail.

Hi, D.,

We finally made some headway with your question on the Seaman's Hymn today, thanks to Joe Hickerson's dropping in. Your suspicions are correct -- Bert Lloyd wrote the words, which he set to a hymn tune that appears in the Sacred Harp (Original Sacred Harp, Denson Revision, 1971 edition) as "Prospect." The words to the hymn are attributed to Isaac Watts, 1707, and the melody to Graham. The notes below the setting (the melody line being in the tenor) say this:

"The original title to this hymn was "Christ's Presence Makes Death Easy." Full sketch of Dr. Watts is given in other parts of this book. He was born in 1674 and died in 1748. He was one of the greatest ministers in the world. "Prospect" is one of the older melodies. It appears in "Southern Harmony," by Walker, page 92, in 1835; also "Christian Harmony," and many other books."

Then, in smaller print, "Copyright, 1909, by J.S. James," which applies only to this arrangement of the tune.

I checked _Southern Harmony_ for any additional information on Prospect, and there was none. Nor was any more provided in Christian Harmony_. But you probably have enough to go on now.

Additionally, I performed a copyright search on the online catalog for items from 1978 on, and found nothing. You might want to ask Lea, who visited the Reading Room today to work on this, to go consult the copyright card catalogs in the Madison Bldg. for the decades of the 1960s and 1970s to see if anything turns up.

You (or Lea) could also find out who recorded it by doing a search on the Silver Platter database in the Recorded Sound Reference Center, using the discographical citations to put in call slips for the record jackets, which might contain liner notes with helpful information. I believe Lou Killen recorded it, as well as John Roberts and Tony Barrand. Both are pretty good about documentation.

Hope this helps,

J. ============================== ==============================

Yup, it surely does help. T'anks J. and remember...

...If it's not Scottish...

...it's *Crrrap*.

Back to the hymnals. More as it develops.