The ballads (excepting the _experience_ variety) probably did not
originate in any particular organized religious movement. The
folk-hymns were, on the other hand, bound up genetically with the
protestant evangelical activity which followed John Wesley's lead in
England and then in America. The Wesleyan Revival began as an ordered
small-group affair and spread and developed ultimately into a movement
whose aspects and practices were completely free-affairs of the
uninhibited masses. In the same way the song of that movement,
beginning with merely the taste of textual freedom offered by Watts
and the Wesleys, and of musical freedom offered by those who furnished
the melodies, spread ultimately far beyond the "allowed" tunes and
hymn texts of the authorities until religious gatherings were
musically completely liberated.
When John Wesley picked up a popular melody here and there on his
travels through England and set it to a good hymn text, he little
realized that he was setting an example and starting a movement which
was to bring into existence hundreds of folk-hymns; that is, songs
with old folk-tunes which everybody could sing and with words that
spoke from the heart of the devout in the language of the common man.
With the spread of this movement to America a fertile soil for its
further development seems to have been found. Here it became known as
the Great Southern and Western Revival. Here its store of songs, made
after the pattern used in England, was greatly enlarged. In fact the
masses took the matter of what they were to sing so completely into
their own hands that the denominational authorities, especially the
Methodists, though they tried to control it, became helpless.[2]
In looking through the folk-hymns in the second part of this
collection one will see scores of tunes which are clearly recognizable
as those still sung to 'Barbara Allen', 'Lord Lovel' and other ancient
ballads. This is adequate evidence, I assume, as to where the folk
sought and found its hymn tunes. The extent of this tune borrowing
process is indicated on page 18f of this Introduction. The texts, on
the other hand, may be from the pen of Watts or other eighteenth
century English religious poets, or they may be the humbler creations
of rural American religious verse makers, like John Adam Granade, or
John Leland.
It is impossible to date the beginning of folk-hymn making and singing
in America definitely. But on the assumption that they were a part of
the Wesleyan movement, we cannot place the beginning of their general
use in America before the 1770's. The part of the land where they
first attained popularity--again judging by their Wesleyan
affinities--was the upland and inland South; for during the last two
decades of the eighteenth century (the time of the first spread of the
Methodist movement) four-fifths of the adherents to this sect were to
be found in that section.[3]