[Music]
High o'er the hills the mountains rise,
Their summits tow'r toward the skies;
But far above them I must dwell,
Or sink beneath the flames of hell.
Although I walk the mountains high,
Ere long my body low must lie,
And in some lonesome place must rot,
And by the living be forgot.
There it must lie till that great day,
When Gabriel's awful trump shall say,
"Arise, the judgment day is come,
When all must hear their final doom."
Four more stanzas in the _Southern Harmony_. Found also GOS 218, CHH
208. William Walker, compiler of the _Southern Harmony_, appends the
note: "This song was composed by the author in the fall of 1831, while
traveling over the mountains, on French Broad River, in North Carolina
and Tennessee". Walker must have been referring simply to the words.
He was melodizing, probably unconsciously, in beaten paths. For his
tune is almost identical with the older 'Kedron' (this collection)
which was attributed to "Dare". Walker declares, in his later song
book, _Christian Harmony_, 1866, p. 208, that he "learned the air of
this tune from my mother when only five years old." That would have
been 1814. Both the Dare and the Walker tunes are closely related to
the melody of 'McAfee's Confession', Sharp, ii., 16, lower tune, a
western North Carolina recording of 1918; and to the Old World song,
'The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies O', _One Hundred English Folk-Songs_, p.
13.
No. 97
DAVISSON'S RETIREMENT, KNH 117