> Norma Waterson > Songs > There Is a Fountain of Christ’s Blood

There Is a Fountain of Christ’s Blood

[ Roud 663 ; Ballad Index Leath197 ; VWML LEB/9/390/2 ; trad.]

Norma Waterson sang There Is a Fountain of Christ’s Blood in 1996 on her first solo album, Norma Waterson. Bob Hudson notes:

A traditional hymn, not to be confused with William Cowper’s more famous There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood. A hundred more conventional popular singers—whether Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, or Amy Grant—could never deliver this song with the power or gutsy reality that Norma brings to it.

Andy Turner sang There Is a Fountain of Christ’s Blood as the 18 April 2014 entry of his project A Folk Song a Week.

Cooper & Toller sang There Is a Fountain of Christ’s Blood on their 2024 album Year’s End. They noted:

We first came across this in the book A Secret Stream, Folk Songs Collected From English Gypsies, edited by Nick Dow with Steve Gardham and Cohen Braithwaite-Kilcoyne, and then discovered some more tunes for it in The Folklore of Herefordshire by Ella Mary Leather. According to the latter volume, the tune was sung by “Eliza Smith (Gypsy) at Weobley, October, 1908” and “Noted by R. Vaughan Williams, from a Phonograph Record.” The words, abbreviated from longer broadside versions, were collected by Cecil Sharp from the 67-year old former farm labourer Thomas Taylor at Ross-on-Wye workhouse in August, 1921. Ella Mary Leather says, “This carol is a great favourite with Herefordshire singers, and was formerly sung at Christmas, although the subject is the Crucifixion and not the Nativity.”

Lyrics

Norma Waterson sings There Is a Fountain of Christ’s Blood

There is a fountain of Christ’s blood
Wide open stretched for to drown our sins
Where Jesus stands with open arms
Of mercy to invite us in

His crown of thorns set on with scorn
He sold his pain his fleshly store
With ragged nails through hands and feet
They nailed our rich redeemer sweet

With a bloody spear they pierced his heart
And bruised his bleeding body sore
From every wound the blood ran down
The spring of life could bleed no more

When all his precious blood was spent
The thunder roared and the rocks did rent
The earth did quake and clouds did rumble
Which made hell shake and devils tremble

The sun and moon a-mourning went
The seas did roar and the temples rent
And the richness of Christ’s precious blood
Did open graves and raise the dead

Acknowledgements

Transcription by Garry Gillard, with thanks to Bob Hudson for the note.