song history - How Can I Keep From Singing

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:18 AM

By the way, here's a currently working link to that Waitrose ad.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:14 AM

Gosh, what a confusing thread!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Nov 23 - 07:12 PM

Here are the Digital Tradition lyrics for this song, and I think this version has serious flaws.

---

        HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING

(G) C F / C G / C F C / C G C /
     C - / C - / C F C / C G C

  
  HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING
  
  My life flows on in endless song
  Above earth's lamentation.
  I hear the real, thought far off hymn
  That hails the new creation
       Above the tumult and the strife,
       I hear the music ringing;
       It sounds an echo in my soul
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  What through the tempest loudly roars,
  I hear the truth, it liveth.
  What through the darkness round me close,
  Songs in the night it giveth.
       No storm can shake my inmost calm
       While to that rock I'm clinging.
       Since love is lord of Heaven and earth
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
  And hear their death-knell ringing,
  When friends rejoice both far and near,
  How can I keep from singing?
       In prison cell and dungeon vile
       Our thoughts to them are winging.
       When friends by shame are undefiled,
       How can I keep from singing?
  
-----------------------------------------------------------------
  
  Pete Seeger helped to make this song fairly well-known in the
  folk-revival.  He learned it from Doris Plenn, who had it from
  her North Carolina family.  It can be found in SING OUT, Vol 7,
  No 1, 1957.
  
  Recorded by Ed Trickett on Turning Toward the Morning, FSI-56
  @religion  @music
  filename[ KEEPSING
  TUNE FILE: HOWCANI
CLICK TO PLAY 
  DC           

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:18 AM

By the way, here's a currently working link to that Waitrose ad.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Thompson
Date: 07 Nov 23 - 05:14 AM

Gosh, what a confusing thread!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Nov 23 - 07:12 PM

Here are the Digital Tradition lyrics for this song, and I think this version has serious flaws.

---

        HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING

(G) C F / C G / C F C / C G C /
     C - / C - / C F C / C G C

  
  HOW CAN I KEEP FROM SINGING
  
  My life flows on in endless song
  Above earth's lamentation.
  I hear the real, thought far off hymn
  That hails the new creation
       Above the tumult and the strife,
       I hear the music ringing;
       It sounds an echo in my soul
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  What through the tempest loudly roars,
  I hear the truth, it liveth.
  What through the darkness round me close,
  Songs in the night it giveth.
       No storm can shake my inmost calm
       While to that rock I'm clinging.
       Since love is lord of Heaven and earth
       How can I keep from singing?
  
  When tyrants tremble, sick with fear,
  And hear their death-knell ringing,
  When friends rejoice both far and near,
  How can I keep from singing?
       In prison cell and dungeon vile
       Our thoughts to them are winging.
       When friends by shame are undefiled,
       How can I keep from singing?
  
-----------------------------------------------------------------
  
  Pete Seeger helped to make this song fairly well-known in the
  folk-revival.  He learned it from Doris Plenn, who had it from
  her North Carolina family.  It can be found in SING OUT, Vol 7,
  No 1, 1957.
  
  Recorded by Ed Trickett on Turning Toward the Morning, FSI-56
  @religion  @music
  filename[ KEEPSING
  TUNE FILE: HOWCANI
CLICK TO PLAY 
  DC           

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,henryp
Date: 18 Jan 21 - 03:51 AM

The Clarion Choir in Burnley has requested a new verse for the hymn. I've offered them this;

And now we face the darkest hour – the night is cold and lonely
The road is rough, we've come so far – we long for comfort only
But very soon we'll see the rays that a new dawn is bringing
And we'll enjoy happier days. How can I keep from singing?

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 11:42 AM

It seems as if you have a theory, and you are looking for evidence to support it, rather than examining the evidence as it stands. Why don't you write all this up as a paper, or an article, presenting your arguments, with references to source material (though it helps if that source material is available and I have no idea of where I could get copies of old American hymn books). Rather than asking me to search for material that you havn't presented yourself.

Do I take it that your dentist is in Islington? You have an unusual vocabulary for a Londoner.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 10:18 AM

Probably safest to tread thou in my footssteps, good David Carter - just search for the two possible source tunes, and and look at the dates. Ignore all the recent noise, that's not what I'm looking at at all, we have that tied down to a T, with the exception of the odd slur.
Funnily enough, I tipped my cap to the Wesleys' bones as recently as Thursday, on the way to the dentists. I now have some very odd slurs all of me very own. My interest is because I'm on a Choir Director's course (get him!) and I want to have an argued case for taking the arrangement Bob Chilcott and his mate Peter Hunt did for beginner choirs back to Roots.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 03 Jun 18 - 04:02 AM

Ok, I am a bit confused, and the reason for this probably is that the preview in your link omits many pages.

The link seems to give a hymn written in 2000 to the same tune as Robert Lowry used for How shall I keep from Singing, although it doesn't explicitly attribute the tune to Lowry. The text says that the tune is "loosely based" on a "shape note song called We'll soon be there", though no date is given for that. Loosely based doesn't suggest that Lowry copied it, even if that is earlier, and we don't have that so its difficult to know how similar it actually sounds.

Shape Note seems from my reading to be just a notation, not a musical form.

By dots do you mean the shape note notation?

And which Wesley? S.S. Wesley wrote music, as far as I am aware neither Charles nor John ever did.

Lowry's contemporaries asserted that he wrote the tune to How do I keep from Singing, although not the words as we know. If later people hearing it think it was based on something earlier, well that may be coincidence, or it may have been something he had heard and had slipped his memory. Or it may be people ascribing similarities which are just not there. I have lost count of the number of modern tunes for which people have said that they are based upon Pachelbel's canon.

I guess that people would not care so much about this if it hadn't appeared on a multi-platinum album.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 05:39 PM

No - I've just started having a look, and the hymn tune is cited continuously through the period, although it's possible we have (Wesley's?) Dots A inspiring Poem A (the unattributed base text) which is then set to someone else's Dots B, as I suggest above, by someone in the boonies who doesn't know the tune and adapts a better one

The American Hymns and Tune Book of 1862 refers to it, as does Hymns for the Methodist Episcopal Church (1849) but without the dots, and the general practice of the time was to assume the singers knew that tune by heart.

Over to you, my learned colleagues: find the dots.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: David Carter (UK)
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 04:57 PM

Well the critical bits are not shown in the preview, but that all long post-dates Lowry, surely.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,Jeremy Main
Date: 02 Jun 18 - 04:13 PM

Given it's under a different name Always Rejoicing, and there's also a suggestion (link below) that the tune is derivative from a known shapenote melody, Sing,"Holy!" to the Lord of All, then we start to see folk tradition at its best at work.
Has anyone thought of looking in the Library of Congress?

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=L_liCUHqZboC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false

Subject: To Katie White: Please update Wikipedia!
From: GUEST,Melyssa Rice
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 10:45 AM

To Katie White:
Your book below contains information that should be included in the Wikipedia entry about "How Can I Keep from Singing," as it calls into question whether Lowry wrote or simply published this famous hymn. You are the best person to update Wikipedia with this information, since you own the book. Would you please update Wikipedia so that it's correct?
- Melyssa

Quoting from Katie White:
"I have an original edition of a book written in 1888, Baptist Hymn Writters and Their Hymns by Henry S. Burrage, D. D. written while Lowry was still alive. I am not going to type out its 7 pages which focus on the many hymn books that he edited and the hymns that he wrote. The most famous one is "Shall We Gather at the River" and much of the biography is about the story behind this hymn. But the following quote from the book is of interest to this discussion.

"Besides his own hymns Dr. Lowry has given vitality and popularity to many productions of other writers by the music with which they are sung, such as . . . 'How Can I Keep From Singing,' . . . and a host of others."
From this, it appears that in the 1880s Lowry was known to not be the original source of the words to this hymn, but was being credited for making it known and available. This doesn't solve the debate, but I don't doubt the information for these reasons: 1) the early date of this book, written by a Baptist and about Baptists, while Lowry was serving a Baptist Church and having been a professor at a Baptist School. 2) If the Baptists wanted to lay claim to what it lists as a popular hymn, they would have done so in this 682 page book.

Conclusion: Lowry was the first to publish it but did not write the lyrics."

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 16 Feb 10 - 01:59 PM

What's not true? What does Whittier have to do with this Sunday School hymn?

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 10 - 02:58 PM

Simply not true.

I'll raise you John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), Quaker and author of one of the most popular hymns of all tinme: "Dear Lord and Father of mankind".

Mac

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 12:32 PM

A fuller version of the Waitrose ad here . The "Angel Voices" choir was renamed "Libera" at some point.

Ross

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Carol
Date: 21 Nov 08 - 12:26 PM

Thanks Ross - interesting!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 03:21 PM

Waitrose Christmas ad

Ross

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Carol
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 09:40 AM

It's one of my favourite songs that I love to sing but I haven't noticed the advert. - will have to stop falling asleep through the adverts!!

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,Noreen
Date: 20 Nov 08 - 08:20 AM

Interesting to hear this song (the first two verses) being used for a Waitrose (supermarket) TV advert at the moment!

Lovely song.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 08:01 PM

Google Books has 3 or 4 volumes of The Christian Pioneer in one big file. In taking a closer look at it, the poem actually was published in the 1869 volume, not 1866.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 03 Oct 08 - 06:21 PM

Thanks to Google Books, the first publication of Lowry's hymn is now online. Bright Jewels for the Sunday School

I also found an earlier printing of the poem, from England!
The Christian pioneer, v.20, 1866. p. 39.

It is also in the New York Observer, Aug. 27, 1868. Title is "Always Rejoicing" Above the title it says "For the New York Observer" at the end it says "Pauline T."

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 30 Jun 08 - 07:44 PM

1) The clip of Cordelia's Dad that I was able to hear is Tim Erikson. More info here
Cordelia's Dad has come & gone as members have gone off to further education, careers, etc. They get back together every so often.

2)The tyrant is Doris Plenn's addition. Any tyrant will do.

I was the one who suggested a Civil War connection. It was pure speculation. To me the light after any disaster, war, etc. fits. The timing suggested Civil War to me.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 29 Jun 08 - 12:50 AM

Played it at a re-enactment today (burning of the Wrightsville Bridge), and none of the authenticity police bitched. Sounds like we are in the clear on this one.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 08:02 PM

The fellow in the middle of the row when she sings that particular line - the one with the dodgy sun-darkening glasses? Looks like Jim Jones but I think it's some politico.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 06:58 PM

1) see Franz S.
3) Joe McCarthy! (I think...no kidding)

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Franz S.
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 06:38 PM

Guest JTT:
1. Cordelia's Dad is a musical group that has tried just about everything musical, I think. website: cordeliasdad.com.

2.No particular tyrant. I saw Boris Yeltsin in there, on the occasion of the Soviet attempted coup in 1990(?).
2.5. No clue

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 27 Jun 08 - 05:57 PM

It's very appealing, answering as it does the perennial "How could there be a loving God if there's torture and war and orphans and famine and disease and cruelty and floods and volcanoes and stuff" question by positing that under "earth's lamentation" there is a far-off song of joy, the music that finds an echo in our soul.

Don't know how it stacks up logically or theologically (if that's not in itself a contradiction in terms), but it's vaguely reassuring.

Two questions driving me mad at the moment.

1) Who's Cordelia's Dad, credited as the singer on the version in the Pete Seeger collection Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

2) Who's the tyrant listening worriedly to his death-knell in this version?

and

2 and a half) What has Lord of the Rings got to do with it in this version?

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 25 Jun 08 - 06:52 PM

So, this song does appear to (possibly) have roots in the civil war. However, I do not find it in any of the standard civil war songs collections. So, if we play it at a big July 4 re-enactment (in our authentic garb of course), are purists likely to get bunchied up? Being pacifist types from Quaker schooling, we do not re-enact soldiers...we are civilian abolitionists, so the song fits (if the rumoured origins are correct). Plus it's just a nice tune (and dumb easy in the key of G on the banjo - my favorite benefit).

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: oldhippie
Date: 25 May 08 - 08:14 AM

Anyone have the lyrics in French?

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 25 May 08 - 01:11 AM

Oops. I lied.

The first publication in Christian Pioneer was not in volume 20, but in volume 23, in 1869, under the title "Always Rejoicing." So the American print may have priority after all.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: T in Oklahoma (Okiemockbird)
Date: 25 May 08 - 12:58 AM

On 20 Mar 2001 Burke wrote:

The music is by Robert Lowry, who wrote a lot of tunes for evangelical hymns in the late 19th century. The words are sometimes attributed to Anna Warner, but from another list I've been told: The Dictionary of American Hymnology regarded the matter as unsettled, >author unknown.

Its original printing (with tune) was in Rob't. Lowry, ed., Bright Jewels for the Sunday School (Boston: H.A. Brown & Co., 1869), p. 16. It was republished many times after that.

The qualification with tune is significant. The words alone were published in The Christian Pioneer, vol 20, 1866, page 39, with no author given.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Carol
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 11:42 AM

No matter where the song came from I think it's a great song to sing, even as a Humanist, and am grateful for the extra, 4th verse

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: CapriUni
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 09:38 AM

Thank you for your work, Peace.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 01:25 AM

Just found it. I googled

anne warner, 1864, how can I keep from singing

The page it brings up--go to the bottom and click the first site. I am leaving now because I can't see the screen anymore. Good night.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 01:14 AM

APOLOGIES. I can't relocate the site I got that post from.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 01:06 AM

OK. Try a google of the following

Google Groups results for anne warner, 1864, how can I keep from singing

Help! Lyrics needed for "How can I keep from singing ... - alt.music.enya - 4-Feb-96

Wanted: text and tune for "How Can I keep from ... - rec.music.folk - 8-Jan-95

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 01:05 AM

And this is something written on a site:

"Here's what the _Rise Up Singing_ songbook
says about the song:

   Words: Anne Warner, 1864 (third verse Doris Plenn); music Rev. R.
   Lowry


   This is *not* an old "Quaker" hymn, tho it certainly dates from at least
   1864. It is popular in Iredell Co., North Carolina. Plenn wrote the new
   verse when friends were imprisoned during the McCarthy period.


And here are the lyrics (according to the book; she sings them slightly
differently):


   My life flows on in endless song above earth's lamentation
   I hear the real though far-off hymn that hails a new creation
   Through all the tumult and the strife I hear that music ringing
   It sounds an echo in my soul; how can I keep from singing?


   What though the tempest loudly roars, I hear the truth, it liveth
   What though the darkness round me close, songs in the night it giveth
   No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that rock I'm clinging
   Since Love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?


   When tyrants tremble sick with fear and hear their death knells ringing
   When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing?
   In prison cell and dungeon vile our thoughts to them are winging
   When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?


   I lift my eyes, the cloud grows thin, I see the blue above it
   And day by day this pathway clears, since first I learned to love it
   The peace of God restores my soul, a fountain ever springing
   All things are mine since I am loved; how can I keep from singing?""

That is from
h

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 12:59 AM

www.reggiekidd.com/Book_Features/assets/Kidd_WithOneVoice_Web.pdf

The above goes to a PDF file and I don't know how to link to that. However, if you read the bottom of p.18 and p.19, there is attribution there that the first two stanzas were by Warner and about the Civil War and that Plenn wrote the third stanza in the 1950s regarding the 'McCarthy Era'.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Peace
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 12:53 AM

"14. How Can I Keep From Singing 4:08

(Lyrics: Anne Warner (1864) Doris Plenn (v.3) Music: Rev. R. Lowry/Sanga Music, Inc.) Jon lead vocal, pennywhistle · Mike tenor vocal · Danny baritone vocal, pennywhistle · Ed High land bagpipes"

From here.

And the following:

"For her, this is significantly more than a charming adage. While hospitalized some years back, Nordeen drew great comfort from a certain traditional ballad, titled "How Can I Keep From Singing?" Written in 1864 by Anne Warner, the song – perhaps rooted in N.C.'s Iredell County – was resurrected in 1957 by one Doris Plenn, who, with the McCarthy hearings in mind, added the following verse: "When tyrants tremble sick with fear and hear their death knells ringing; When friends rejoice both far and near, how can I keep from singing? In prison cell and dungeon vile our thoughts to them are winging; When friends by shame are undefiled, how can I keep from singing?"

From here.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: CapriUni
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 12:35 AM

Refreshing an old thread, and an old debate:

I believe Sandy Paton when he says it is not a "Quaker Hymn." At the time the song was written, most Quakers (or at least the ones vocal enough to write tracts explaining Quaker beliefs) were downright hostile to music -- even religious hymns.

However, the song does express ideas which fit well with Quaker theology, and if it is now a favorite to be sung at some modern Quaker gatherings (we're much more relaxed, these days), I can see why.

Central to Quaker belief is the idea of Inner Light -- a spiritual light which comes from God, yet is part of every person as soon as they're born. As William Penn wrote, in his pamphlet Primative Christianity Revived:

If that which may be known of God is manifest in men, the people called Quakers cannot, certainly, be out of the way in preaching up the light within; without which, nothing can be manifested to the mind of man

So the verse

Above the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing
It sounds an echo in my soul
How can I keep from singing?

has always struck me as very "Quakerish in spirit," even if it was never sung in Meeting until 100 years after its composition.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: GUEST,Katie White
Date: 07 Jul 05 - 01:20 PM

I realize that I am responding to an old thread and that this debate may already have been settled. I have an original edition of a book written in 1888, Baptist Hymn Writters and Their Hymns by Henry S. Burrage, D. D. written while Lowry was still alive. I am not going to type out its 7 pages which focus on the many hymn books that he edited and the hymns that he wrote. The most famous one is "Shall We Gather at the River" and much of the biography is about the story behind this hymn. But the following quote from the book is of interest to this discussion.

"Besides his own hymns Dr. Lowry has given vitality and popularity to many productions of other writers by the music with which they are sung, such as . . . 'How Can I Keep From Singing,' . . . and a host of others."
From this, it appears that in the 1880s Lowry was known to not be the original source of the words to this hymn, but was being credited for making it known and available. This doesn't solve the debate, but I don't doubt the information for these reasons: 1) the early date of this book, written by a Baptist and about Baptists, while Lowry was serving a Baptist Church and having been a professor at a Baptist School. 2) If the Baptists wanted to lay claim to what it lists as a popular hymn, they would have done so in this 682 page book.

Conclusion: Lowry was the first to publish it but did not write the lyrics.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: masato sakurai
Date: 02 Apr 04 - 10:36 PM

In its earliest appearance of the hymn, Rev. Rob't Lowry, ed., Bright Jewels For The Sunday School (New York: Biglow & Main, 1869, p. 16), the composer is "R.L.", but the author isn't mentioned.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Cuilionn
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 12:22 PM

Och, an jist for the record... (if ye'll indulge me in a wee bit o thread creep)

The Shakers (the Shaking Quakers) are NAE deid yet! The last survivin community o Shakers is at Sabbathday Lake, New Gloucester, Maine, jist ane toon awa frae me. There are four true Shakers left, but they are supportit by a muckle grait band o followers, the "Friends o the Shakers", that help wi' the upkeep o the plaice. There's a woman in oor food co-op that usit tae live wi the Shakers, an Ah ken a local wuid-wairker that studied furniture-makin wi them an builds/repairs an occasional piece for them. Ah'm thinkin that they'd tak in new folk even the noo, if onyane's serious eno & earnest eno aboot jynin 'em. 'Tis still a guid way o life, tae ma way o thinkin.

--Cuilionn

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: greg stephens
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 09:59 AM

The confusion between Shakers and Quakers contunues to spread, and will doubtless get morre and more common as the dictinction between various sects of Christianity become less and less important to people.
   The attribution of this song to Shakers(or Quakers) seems to follow a fairly common pattern, where things in the past tend to cluster round famous people/things. Dick Turpin ends up with any highwayman stories attributed to him, whereas back in the age of highwayman there were plenty of people in that trade, each with their own story. Similarly, witticisms attach themselves to Oscar Wilde. Any old bit of simple furniture can get labelled "Shaker" in poular thought, and the same thing can happen to songs. I'm perfectly sure that Carolan has acquired a good few harp-tunes in recent years that he wouldnt have known in his life.
   The Shaker/Quaker thing is an unusual example; instead of of all the highwaymen merging into Dick turpin, we have have two separate religions merging, the process being driven by their rhyming with each other. Give it another five hundred years and the bakers and candlestsick makers may merge in as well. people will then be arguing on Mudcat about a strange sect who sang some of the time, sat in silence otherwise, and eked out a simple living selling chairs, loaves of bread and candles that they made by hand.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: LadyJean
Date: 11 Mar 04 - 12:36 AM

A friend, who was a Friend, taught me the song. She claimed it came from Quaker persecutions in North Carolina.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:16 PM

The Civil War connection was not suggested to me by anyone, it's my own pure speculation, based on the date & the lamentaion, tulmult and strife of the 1st verse, not the tyrants. To me it's not simple, happy faith. For me it reads like a lot of Psalms. Sort of "I'm having all these difficulties in life, yet God is with me so I will praise Him." That's probably why it fell out of favor in the 20th cent. 17th-19th cent. hymns are full of this kind of sentiment but you find it less is the later songs.

I suspect the problem with the attribution is that no one seems to have found it earlier than 1869. Lowry may not have listed an author when he published it, but must have listed himself as the composer. This would leave it ambiguous as to if he also wrote the words or he found the words elsewhere, but did not know the author. He died in 1899 so John Julian could have been closer to the sources. OTOH, lots of stuff has been identified as mis-attributed by late scholarship. Expect for hounding on the "it's not Quaker" issue, I'll leave the hymnologists to sort that out.

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 11:31 AM

Doris Plenn (and Pete Seeger) also seem to be responsible for any connection people may make with "Civil War tumult." The verse about tyrants and prison cells is hers, not Lowry's.
A simple hymn of happy faith is badly distorted by this verse.

The verses in Phillips (Masato link) are exactly Lowry's. Whether written in 1860 or published in 1969 (was there an earlier printing?), the song quickly became popular, "My Life Flows On In Endless Song" a common title.

The song book published by the Unitarians, repeats the Quaker song attribution. "Singing the Living Tradition," Unitarian Universalist Association, 1993, Hymn # 108.

Haruo (a member of Mudcat) has an Esperanto version in Himnaro Cigneta. He gives midis for both the Lowry and Sankey tunes.

In "The Luthran Book of Worship, it is # 781 ("My Life...," attribution?)

Subject: RE: song history - How Can I Keep From Singing
From: Burke
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 11:07 AM

Q, I think Sandy knows the background of the story well enough & thought his messages put the entire Quaker question to rest. That includes Plenn's religious background and giving an account of how Pete arrived at his misunderstanding. I guess you don't agree. That's one to take up with Sandy.