Lyr Add: There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood

Subject: Lyr Add: FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH BLOOD (Joan B Short)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 01:29 AM

With the Getaway coming up, I thought I ought to work on some songs I've wanted to learn. This transcription is just a bit different from what I found in the Digital Tradition, so I thought I'd post it.


FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH BLOOD
(Joan Boyd Short)

There is a fountain filled with blood
The blood of our mining men so brave
Who worked together in the black coal pits
Men who dug each other's graves

Burden pattern:
Men who dug each other's graves, O Lord,
Men who dug each other's graves.
Who worked together in the black coal pits
Men who dug each other's graves.

There is a stream that's filled with tears
The tears of our children and our wives
For their husbands and sons, all good mining men
Who so senselessly have died

There is a river filled with blood
That once was so beautiful and grand
'Til the strip miners tore down our mountainside
Now it runs brown with the blood of our land

There is a fountain filled with blood
The blood of our brave mining men
Let us stand beneath its powerful flood
Be revived to fight and win.

copyright Joan Boyd Short

transcribed from the 1981 Helen Schneyer album "On the Hallelujah Line", Folk Legacy records
Tune: "Fountain filled with blood," traditional hymn,
written or transcribed by Lowell Mason, found in many hymn books

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The Music of Coal CD collection (Lonesome Records and Publishing, 2007) has a recording of this song by Elder James Caudill. The Caudill recording is closer to the Digital Tradition text, but includes only verses 1, 2, and 4. Here are the notes from Music of Coal:

When singer and songwriter Joan Boyd Short of Big Stone Gap, Virginia, composed this song in 1969, it was at the dawning of a great cultural awakening in Appalachia. Short says, "I based this song on a familiar hymn I had sung all my life in my little, rural Methodist church outside Chattanooga." And Short's grandfather, a coal miner in Sequatchie Valley near Whitwell, Tennessee, had died of black lung. Late in Short's father's life, he told her, for the first time, some family coal mining stories as the two sat on a rock at the foot of the mine where her grandfather had worked. Joan began to wonder about what the women and children did, faced with the death of a father and husband, or a son and brother. The idea for this song sprang from that special day.

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Anybody know anything else about Joan Boyd Short? Google tells me whe's a member of the Friends of the Carter Family Fold Steering Committee, so apparently she's still involved in music.
-Joe-

Subject: Lyr Add: THERE IS A FOUNTAIN FILLED WITH BLOOD
From: Joe Offer
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 01:40 AM

Here's a Lutheran version of the original:

There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood
(by William Cowper, 1731-1800)

1. There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel's veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

2. The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day;
And there have (may) I, as vile as he,
Washed (wash) all my sins away.

3. Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed Church of God
Be saved to sin no more.

4. E'er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme
And shall be till I die.

5. When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing Thy power to save.


Heavenly Highway Hymns (Brentwood-Benson Music Publishing) substitutes "may" and "wash" where shown in parentheses above, and includes a burden with each verse, following this pattern:

Lose all their guilty stains.
Lose all their guilty stains.
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

Heavenly Highway Hymns has this fifth verse:

Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I'll sing Thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave.

_______________________________________________________
Notes:
Hymn #157 from _The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal_
Text: Zech. 13:1
Author: William Cowper, 1771, cento
Composer: William Horsley, 1844
First Tune: "Horsley,"
Composer: Lowell Mason, 1830
Second Tune: "Cowper," second tune


Text From:
THE HANDBOOK TO THE LUTHERAN HYMNAL
(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1942)p.123


This text was converted to ascii format for Project Wittenberg by Cindy A. Beesley and is in the public domain.

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I often pair this with There Is Power in the Blood - but only at gospel sings, not at religious services.

Subject: RE: Version Add: Fountain Filled With Blood
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 14 Sep 08 - 04:52 PM

Now that I'm sorting through old letters, at age 85, I just yesterday ran across three or four long ones from Joan Boyd- as she was then- I think she was also a friend of Bill Ed Wheeler, and maybe that's how I originally met her. We were very close for a few years, and then our lives moved apart, because of the miles between us I suppose. She was a fine person, energetic and honest, and her letter still are interesting, exciting to read. Fond greetings, Joan, wherever you are!
Jean

Subject: RE: Version Add: Fountain Filled With Blood
From: GUEST,JBSBigStoneGap
Date: 04 Oct 08 - 05:05 PM

Hello out there in folk music land...

Someone passed along to me your inquiry about "There is a Fountain," the lyrics of which I wrote in the early seventies to the familiar hymn tune I had grown up singing in my childhood church.

I'm not sure where Helen Schneyer learned it or got her version of the lyrics, as I did not discover she had recorded it until one of my former students ran across it in some research he was doing in undergrad school. I called Folk Legacy and they sent me a copy of her cd with apologies for not trying harder to contact me. No problem. That's why it's called "folk music," after all.

The original version of my lyrics appeared in Guy and Candie Carawan's book entitled Voices from the Mountains, published in 1975 by the University of Georgia Press. It was republished in l996.

Through a series of mistaken miscommunications, the lyrics on the Music of Coal cd set actually contain the one or two small changes Helen Schneyer made for whatever reason. That's fine, except in one very notable place the rearranged wording creates a very difficult meter flaw.

"Life" interferred with my basic three-chord folk singing career when I became a high school teacher in 1978. I retired this past year after 30 years. I live very close to music and to musicians...I'm married to singer/songwriter Ron Short...and I consider my musical associations to be one of the great blessings of my life. I was very fortunate indeed to work some with Jean in the late sixties and early seventies when I was living in Nashville and working for WSM television, and it was my honor to call her my dear friend. I am very sorry that our diverse lives caused us to lose touch. The same goes for Billy Edd. The first song I wrote, entitled "Mountain Stream" (also published in Voices from the Mountains) was dedicated to the two of them for their patience, support, encouragement, and friendship.

If you are interested, my original lyrics appear below:

There is a fountain filled with blood
The blood of our mountain men so brave,
Men who worked together in the black coal pits,
Men who dug each other's graves.
Men who dug each other's graves, Oh God,
Men who dug each other's graves,
Men who worked together in the black coal pits,
Men who dug each other's graves.

There is a river that runs with tears,
The tears of the children and the wives
For their fathers and husbands, good mining men,
Who so senslessly have died
(Repeat last 2 lines using same pattern as first verse)

There is a river so deep and wide,
It was once so beautiful and grand,
'til the stripminers tore off our mountainsides,
Now it runs brown with the blood of our land.
(Repeat using same pattern.)

There is a fountain filled with blood
The blood of our land and of our men
Let us stand beneath its powerful flood
Be revived to fight and win.
(Repeat using same pattern)

Best wishes,
Joan

Subject: RE: Version Add: Fountain Filled With Blood
From: open mike
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 05:24 AM

how wonderful that on mudcat people can become re-acquainted with each other despite the obstacles of the years and the miles!!

Subject: RE: Version Add: Fountain Filled With Blood
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Oct 08 - 06:30 PM

Thank you very much for dropping by, Joan - and for posting the correcte lyrics. I hope you'll stop by again.
-Joe Offer-