Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'

Subject: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 28 Jan 20 - 05:24 PM

In the film '1917', British soldiers about to launch an attack against the German front line are shown listening to a comrade singing 'Wayfaring Stranger'. Whilst I know that the song dates back to around the mid-19th century, it somehow doesn't ring true to me to hear it in a WW1 context when US troops had not then reached the Front. (The film is actually set on the day the US entered the war.)

As (nearly) everything else in the film is meticulously researched, I'm probably wrong, but does anyone know?

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: gillymor
Date: 28 Jan 20 - 07:53 PM

What is the question?

How was the film? I plan to see it this week.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jan 20 - 08:05 PM

Don't miss it. You'll be glued to your seat for over two hours. I've read lots of people digging up inconsistencies in the film, and it could be that the song is another possible one. I don't know. But we thought it was an amazing film.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: gillymor
Date: 28 Jan 20 - 08:10 PM

Thanks, Steve.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Lighter
Date: 28 Jan 20 - 08:37 PM

The lyrics were apparently first printed in Joseph Bever's "Christian Songster" (Dayton, O.: United Brethren in Christ, 1858), pp. 34-35 as "Going Over Jordan," the first line being "I am a pilgrim and a stranger." No tune is given.

The familiar tune is given to the hymn "Fulfillment" in B. F. White and E. J. King's "Sacred Harp" (1844). Composition of the tune has been attributed to King himself.

I'd be surprised if the song was known in Britain in 1917.

But somebody could have known and sung it.

Maybe.

But it's just a movie, and it's a haunting (if unlikely) scene.

One difference between reality and fiction is that people criticize fiction for improbable events, but real life is filled with them.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 Jan 20 - 09:15 PM

Good point, that last one there. I used to argue with MGM Lion, Gawd bless 'im, about the fact that coincidences are no different in terms of likelihood than events that we don't see as coincidences. The mundane and thoroughly unremarkable fact that I just sniffed exactly as I typed "events" is no more likely a juxtaposition, on the face of it, than my hearing the chap on the radio saying the word "sniffed" just as I typed "sniffed." Sorry, I love to digress...

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 29 Jan 20 - 03:47 AM

A great film indeed. The early scenes were uncannily reminiscent of the horrifying images in the contemporary 'what the butler saw'-style machines in the small but excellent private museum at Sanctuary Wood, Ypres (Hill 62). For instance, although, post -'War Horse', we recognise that tens of thousands of horses were killed on the front lines, it's no bad thing to remember just what that meant to a soldier forced to crawl amongst the bodies.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 29 Jan 20 - 08:28 AM

This is an interesting thread about it.

https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=23495

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Jan 20 - 09:31 AM

So it seems unlikely that the words are much older than 1858, or the tune older than 1844.

There are claims that the hymn dates to the 18th century - but no evidence.

See the later part of the thread linked to by Jack.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: GUEST,Wm
Date: 29 Jan 20 - 10:11 AM

E.J. King is better credited as the arranger of FULFILLMENT than the composer. Several instances of the tune predate him, including JUDGMENT HYMN in Jeremiah Ingalls's 1805 Christian Harmony. See the totality of this thread on the FaSoLa Discussions list.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Lighter
Date: 29 Jan 20 - 10:26 AM

Thanks for the new link. I can't evaluate the similarities, but here's what someone else said on that other thread:


From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird) - PM
Date: 03 Jun 08 - 08:23 AM

There are a couple of transcription errors in my last post. Here is the air again:

X: 1
T: Judgement
C: Ananias Davission, Kentucky Harmony 2nd Edition, Knoxville, Nashville, and Lexington, 1817, p. 32
M: 4/4
K: G
L: 1/4
B2 | B E B2 |G E B G | E3 A | B B A2| G2 D E| E4:|
G2 | E E G2 | B d e e | e2 B2 | d e/ d/ B2| G2 B>A | A2 G2 |
E E G2 | B d e e | e2 B2 | d e/ d/ B2| A>B G F | E2 ||

The original I'm working from is a digital facsimile of a copy that was damaged and smudged in spots, unfortunately making a couple of notes hard to make out.

From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird) - PM
Date: 05 Jun 08 - 12:04 AM

Yet another correction: the second note in Judgement should be c, not B.

George Pullen Jackson, in Another Sheaf of White Spirituals, page 147, seems to be the one who first identified the melody Judgement (transcribed above) as being related to "Poor Wayfaring Stranger."   But after listening to Judgement several times, I have concluded that this was mere wishful thinking on Jackson's part.    The resemblance is remote at best.

Another melody in ASoWS, #300, Fulfillment, from the 1844 edition of the Sacred Harp, is also identified by Jackson as being related to "Poor Wayfaring Stranger." In this case the resemblance is much stronger. This conclusion is complicated, however, by the way Jackson has manipulated the rhythm of his transcription of Fulfillment precisely in order to bring out its resemblance to PWS.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: olddude
Date: 29 Jan 20 - 10:53 AM

Amazing film don’t miss this one

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: GUEST,My pointless view
Date: 30 Jan 20 - 06:47 AM

It's a great film but I would have got a plane to drop the message

But then I would have had Gandalf fly to Mordor on an eagle and drop the ring into Mount Doom

I'm no fun

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Jack Campin
Date: 30 Jan 20 - 10:05 AM

Ken es akeyo en la meniana

No B part but much the same as the A part of PWS.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Brian Peters
Date: 30 Jan 20 - 10:53 AM

The English song 'The Captain's Apprentice' has some quite pronounced similarities to the first part of PWS as well.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: FreddyHeadey
Date: 01 Feb 20 - 05:11 PM

["everything else in the film is meticulously researched,"

of the felled cherry orchard, still in blossom
"is that the end for them then?"
"oh no, when all these stones sprout next year there will be a forest of them"

I was impressed by the scenes crossing no man's land
but lots of the rest irritated me.

Their mission was to take an urgent message to another unit 'before dawn', then on the way they faffed around for twenty minutes looking round a farmhouse ... earlier, no thought of watching out for booby-traps till a giant rat set one off ... they were only going to be away for a day but by the night time he had enough rations in his pack to feed a family for a week (ok, I exagerate) ... he wanders right in to the group listening to the song without passing a lookout, listens to the song, THEN asks about finding the commander - and to me it looked like about 10 a.m. by then]

I doubted the song would raise many eyebrows.
Didn't quite feel right to me though.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 02 Feb 20 - 04:11 AM

"As (nearly) everything else in the film is meticulously researched,"

Not too sure about the river scenes, either: I've cycled across northern France, and been on a battlefield tour of the trenches, but I don't recall seeing a fast-flowing river in a gorge, or white-water rapids. I could be wrong about this, though. (Now that's something you don't read on the Mudcat very often!)

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 02 Feb 20 - 09:50 AM

I think you're right about the rapids, and there are a number of other missteps - all minor in my view.

The rapids are just another element to make the story exciting - and a simple, if improbable, delivering the hero to his destination.

What *is* meticulously researched is the look and detail of the uniforms, the appearance of the trenches, the character of the Brits, the booby traps, the scorched-earth policy of the Germans (in Operation Alberich, on which the movie's set-up is loosely based, the German Army destroyed several towns and rounded up 125,000 French civilians to work for them behind their lines.

Mendes does a good job with language too. As a language researcher, I was pleased to note only one or two, momentary and unobtrusive, expressions that almost certainly were not in use in 1917.

There are a couple of other points one might whine about (and some have), but none seriously detract from Mendes's achievement (done with the help of his own army of actors and technicians).

Anyone who enjoyed 1917 will also like Saul Dibb's adaptation of Journey's End (2017) and, of course, Peter Jackson's documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old.

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 02 Feb 20 - 02:28 PM

That song struck me as wrong, too. Maybe, just maybe (though I'd still doubt it) if the troops were American. But not if they were English.

The film was very good -- I saw it three days ago. Not "great", but above average and a good way to spend a couple hours.

I don't particularly care for "modern" (20th century) war films. The exceptions (in my book) are "Paths of Glory", "The Train", "Dirty Dozen", "Three Kings", and "Dunkirk". And the only Vietnam film I could bring myself to watch was "Good Morning, Vietnam".

I found, in quality, "1917" to be not quite as good as "Dunkirk", but not as bad as "War Horse" (aka "Black Beauty In the Trenches").

Linn

Subject: RE: Origins: 'Wayfaring Stranger' in film '1917'
From: GUEST,Lighter
Date: 02 Feb 20 - 04:46 PM

Thread drift; disregard as necessary:

Kubrick's "Paths of Glory" is a magnificent film.

You can see its influence on "1917." Kubrick has a very long tracking shot of Kirk Douglas walking down the trench toward the viewer (a predecessor of Mendes's "single take" illusion).

And, in "1917," the singing in the forest to the silent troops paying rapt attention recalls the penultimate scene of "Paths."