Joe; I have heard "Lone Pilgrim" sung on a Peter Rowan album, and I found this reference in a small book titled "Folk Songs of Middle Tennessee" - The George Boswell Collection, under a song titled "The White Pilgrim": Boswell's friend George Pullen Jackson, in his book "Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America" (1937), discusses this sacred ballad at length and concludes that it was composed by B.F. White, the compiler of the famed "Sacred Harp" collection. White supposedly wrote the song on a lonely Texas Prairie while standing at the grave of an old friend whom he had known in Georgia. More recent studies by D. K. Wilgus, though, have shown that the song was written in 1838 by a young Maine minister named Jonathan Ellis; the "white pilgrim" referred to an evangelist of the time, one Joseph Thomas, who wore a white robe most of his later years. The song gained currency through its appearance in William Walker's "Southern Harmony" (1847), an immensely popular southern songbook. The song often is called "The Lone Pilgrim" and has been popularized in later years by guitarist-singer Doc Watson. One of three versions in the Boswell collection, this one was sung by Stanley Horn in Nashville on June 4, 1949. He had learned it from Tom Turner of Ashland City in Cheatham County, just north of Nashville.

I DON'T KNOW HOW TO PUT THE NOTED MUSIC IN, BUT THE WORDS THAT FOLLOW ARE:

I came to the spot where the white pilgrim lay,
And pensively stood by his tomb,
And in a low whisper I heard something say,
How sweetly I sit here alone.

The tempest may howl and loud thunders may roll,
And gathering storms may arise,
But calm are my feelings, at rest is my soul,
The tears are all wiped from my eyes.

The call of my master compelled me from home,
I bade my companion farewell,
I left my sweet children, who for me now mourn,
In far distant regions they dwell.

I wandered a stranger, an exile from home,
To publish salvation abroad,
I met the contagion and sunk in the tomb,
My spirit ascending to God.

Go tell my companion and children most dear,
To weep not the loved one that's gone,
The same hand that led me through scenes dark and drear,
Hath safely conducted me home.

So, obviously Dylan is just pulling a "Carter Family" and copyrighting old material!

HTML line breaks added --JoeClone, 8-Nov-01.