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Christian’s Hope

[ Roud - ; Sacred Harp 206 ; trad.]

The Watersons sang the hymn Christian’s Hope in 1977 on their album Sound, Sound Your Instruments of Joy. A.L. Lloyd commented in the sleeve notes:

Two hymns of this title are to be found in evangelical hymn books. This is the more recent of the two, first published as No. 506 in Joe S. James’s Original Sacred Harp of 1911, where words and music are credited to H. A. Parris. In fact it is an assembly of bits and pieces, text-lines and tune phrases, from older compositions. Behind the melody is the ghost of the old Bampton Morris dance air, Glorishears. George Pullen Jackson, the great commentator on this kind of hymns, says of Christian’s Hope: “I have been told that this spiritual grips the “Sacred Harp” singers’ emotions so deeply that they can hardly get to the third verse before many burst into tears.”

Lyrics

We have our troubles here below
We are travelling through this world of woe
To that bright world where loved ones go
Where all is peace and love
Where all is peace and love
To that bright world where loved ones go
Where all is peace and love

We’re fettered and chained up in clay
Whilst in this body here we stay
By faith we know a world above
Where all is peace and love
Where all is peace and love
By faith we know a world above
Where all is peace and love

I feel no way like getting tired
I am trusting in His holy word
To guide my weary feet above
Where all is peace and love
Where all is peace and love
To guide my weary feet above
Where all is peace and love

(repeat first verse)

Acknowledgements

Transcribed from the singing of the Watersons by Garry Gillard.