The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #29484 Message #373198
Posted By: Haruo
12-Jan-01 - 03:21 AM
Thread Name: Origin: A Little Ship Was on the Sea (D A Thrupp)
Subject: Tune ID: A little ship - If you believe
Can anybody identify for me the secular textual antecedents and/or tune name of the music for the early 1800s children's hymn "A little ship was on the sea" by Dorothy Ann Thrupp. Or how about the complete Thrupp text (I don't think it's in The Cyber Hymnal). The same tune is found in some current hymnals with the purportedly Zimbabwean text
If you believe and I believe and we together pray, The holy spirit must come down and set God's people free.
And set God's people free, and set God's people free,
The holy spirit must come down and set God's people free.
I am quite sure that this is a folk or folk-based tune, but I don't know what the earlier words were. I feel the tune is genetically related somehow to both "Malbrouck" (The Bear Went Over the Mountain) and "Seven Joys", but not identical to either in the forms I'm familiar with.