There was much debate over the origins in the first half of the 20th century. D.K. Wilgus discussed it in a chapter titled "The Negro-White Spiritual" in his Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898 (Rutgers UP, 1959, pp. 344-364); the chapter is reprinted in Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel: Readings in the Interpretation of Afro-American Folklore, edited by Alan Dundes (U. Pr. of Mississippi, 1990, pp. 67-80). Wilgus quotes from Bruno Nettl a position of the "compromise theorists", who "do not hold that the melodies of the American Negroes originated in Africa, but assume that the Negroes have taken over tunes of the whites and combined with them African stylistic traits--hot rhythm, much variation, preference for part-singing, antiphony, and response," saying that "study is revealing that a simple cencept of origin is not only misleading, but nonsensical."