“Deep Dive” will be a series of posts where we learn specific songs from our songbooks. Not just how to sing them, but some of the history of the songs and other interesting notes. We will pull learning information from a number of sources online and offline.

This is the first time I’ve tried assembling this type of information for a song. There are a tremendous number of resources out there but I don’t have access to them all and this singer is still relatively new to shape note singing and the history of Sacred Harp.

If you see an error, or using imprecise language, please offer feedback!

-Kevin

The Song

This song is featured in the two current popular tune books that Baltimore uses during out singings: Sacred Harp (1991 Denson) and Shenandoah Harmony. The latter has a different arrangement and is truncated to two lines (the first and third lines from Sacred Harp).

In this post, we will focus on the version presented in Sacred Harp (1991 Denson).

The song as presented in The Sacred Harp takes the first two stanzas of Charles Wesley’s “Hymn 59” and divides them into four lines for the song.

Music

Poetry

And am I born to die?
To lay this body down!
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?

A land of deepest shade,
Unpierced by human thought;
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot!

Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
Must then my portion be!

Waked by the trumpet sound,
I from my grave shall rise;
And see the Judge with glory crowned,
And see the flaming skies!

Learning the Song

“Learn to Sing”

We’ll begin with Esther Morgan-Ellis’ terrific “Learn to Sing Sacred Harp” video on the song. Andy Ditzler joins her to sing the parts. If you’re not familiar with these videos, you should be! The screen is filled up with the musical notation (click “full screen” and watch on a real monitor or TV!) and Esther introduces the song and then each part is sung separately and then a “field recording” is played and sung along with.

Note: Esther has a website, a twitter. We link to the youtube channel itself on our Links page.

The video is broken down into “chapters” for you to easily find the part you want to practice.

Sacred Harp Bremen

Sacred Harp Bremen has a page for the song and a brilliant music player that gives you a synthesized tune for all the parts, and a track that combines them all: https://sacredharpbremen.org/47b-idumea/

Field Recordings

The Source

The music of The Sacred Harp and shape note tradition often goes through many iterations over the course of their long lives.

Makers of the Sacred Harp

The book The Makers of the Sacred Harp identifies the source of “Idumea” in the following way

IDUMEA. S.M.
Words: Charles Wesley, 1763.
Music: Ananias Davisson, in Kentucky Harmony, 1816. Alto in Walker, Christian Harmony, 1867.

The Makers of the Sacred Harp, Steel, D.W.& Hulan, R. H., Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 2010

I will note that printed below the title is a quote from Ecclesiastes 3:2 – “A time to be born and a time to die.” You can see variations of this line from various bibles at Bible Gateway.

Introduction to the Poetry

The CPDL website identifies the source of the poetry in the following way:

This is an hymn by Charles Wesley, originally published in Hymns for Children, 1763, as Hymn 59, with meter 66. 86. D (S.M.D.). This is not to be confused with “And am I only born to die,” with meter 886. 886, published in the same book as Hymn 64.

First Printing Poetry in Facsimile

The following was taken from an Archive.org scan, slightly cleaned up for presentation here:

First Printing Poetry Transcribed

Note: The following text replaces the archaic “long s” in the original with a modern “s”.

1.    And am I born to die,
      To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
      Into a world unknown,
      A world of darkest shade,
      Unpierc'd by human thought,
The dreary regions of the dead,
      Where all things are forgot!

2.    Soon as from earth I go,
      What will become of me?
Eternal happiness or woe
      Must then my portion be:
      Waked by the trumpet’s sound
      I from my grave shall rise,
And see the judge with glory crown’d,
      And see the flaming skies.
 
3.    How shall I leave my tomb?
      With triumph or regret?
A fearful, or a joyful doom,
      A curse or blessing meet?
      Shall angel-bands convey
      Their brother to the bar?
Or devils drag my soul away,
      To meet its sentence there?

4.    Who can resolve the doubt
      That tears my anxious breast?
Shall I be with the damn’d cast out,
      Or number’d with the blest?
      I must from God be driven
      Or with my Savior dwell,
Must come, at his command, to heaven,
      Or else depart to hell.
 
5.    O thou who would not have
      One wretched sinner die,
Who died thyself, my soul to save
      From endless misery,
      Shew me the way to shun
      Thy dreadful wrath severe,
That when Thou comest on the throne,
      I may with joy appear.

6.    Thou art thyself the way:
      Thyself in me reveal,
So shall I pass my life’s short day
      Obedient to thy will;
      So shall I love my God,
      Because he first loved me,
And praise thee in thy bright abode
      Thro' all eternity.

The First Printed Arrangement in Facsimile

The first arrangement of “Idumea” by Ananias Davisson was printed in Kentucky Harmony (1816), and as can be seen, contains none of the lyrics of Charles Wesley’s “Hymn 59”. In fact, it contains the first stanza of the song printed in The Sacred Harp as “147t Boylston”.
Our facsimile is taken from an Archive.org scan.

First Printed Arrangement Poetry

My God, my life, my love,
To thee, to thee I call: 
I cannot live if thou remove, 
For thou art all in all. 

First Arrangement Tenor Compared to Current Arrangement

If we focus on the Tenor, we can see minor differences between the 1816 and 1991 arrangements.

Christian Harmony Printed Arrangement in Facsimile

The setting in Christian Harmony (1867) is in a seven shape note style. It only includes three lines of poetry.
Our facsimile is taken from an Archive.org scan.

“Original Sacred Harp” Printed Arrangement in Facsimile

The setting in “Original Sacred Harp” (1911) is taken from an Archive.org scan.

The poetry here has four lines, the complete first two stanzas of the original hymn.
Note the following text follows the arrangement:

    The original title to these words was "And Others of Riper Years." See history of Charles Wesley on this and other pages of this work. He composed over 6,ooo hymns, and this one was among his favorites. 
    "Idumea" was printed in Walker's "Southern Harmony," in 1835, page 31; "Missouri Harmony," in 1837, page 32. It was first published in 1817. No trace can be found of A. Davidson, author of the music.

The phrase “And Others of Riper Years” was actually second half the enlarged title of a latter printing of the book that contained the original hymn: Hymns for Children, and Others of Riper Years.

Title Pages to Two Editions of Wesley’s Book

On Hymns for Children

[Charles Wesley.] Hymns for Children. Bristol: Farley, 1763.
2nd Bristol: Pine, 1768. [adds to title: and Those of Riper Years]
3rd London: Hawes, 1778. [adds to title: and Those of Riper Years]
4th London: Paramore, 1784. [adds to title: and Those of Riper Years]

From a document produced by Duke Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition:

When John Wesley visited the German Moravians at Herrnhut, he made note of an item (#12) in their constitution: “Our little children we instruct chiefly by hymns; whereby we find the most important truths most successfully insinuated into their minds” (see his Journal, 11–14 Aug. 1738). Encouraged by this precedent, John Wesley published a short volume of Hymns for Children (1747), including nine hymns drawn from HSP (1740), CPH (1741), and HSP (1742).
Seven of the hymns included by John Wesley in Hymns for Children (1743) were written by his brother Charles, showing their shared interest in hymns for children. Indeed, five of the hymns came from a set of seven to which Charles assigned that name in HSP (1742), 194–202. Similar hymns are scattered through Charles’s manuscript collections of verse from the early 1740s on. Moreover, he had considered gathering these into a separate volume from at least 1750. On January 29 of that year he wrote to Mrs. Mary Jones, of Fonmon Castle, Wales, that he was preparing a hymn-book for the students at Kingswood school. His plans for publishing this hymn-book were apparently delayed. A decade later, in a letter to his wife dated January 5, 1760, Charles again announced his intention to publish his “hymns for children” (almost certainly now gathered into a manuscript volume). But once again he was delayed. He developed a serious case of gout, from which he would take two years to recover. He devoted this time to Scripture Hymns (1762). Then, in early 1763, he finally published his own Hymns for Children.
This collection gathered together several different types of verse prepared by Charles over the two decades. The first thirty hymns follow closely the outline of the catechism Instructions for Children, which John Wesley published in 1745 (drawing on the work of Claude Fleury & Pierre Poiret). It is hard to imagine a more obvious use of the form of hymns to “insinuate the most important truths” into the minds of children! Moving on, in hymns 40–50 we surely encounter the core of the hymn-book that Charles was preparing in 1750 for the students at Kingswood School. The final section, “Hymns for the Youngest,” includes the only items that had been published previously, from the set of hymns for children in HSP (1742)—shown in blue font in the Table of Contents below.
Hymns for Children (1763) went through four editions over two decades. In late 1787 an abridged form was published. Given Charles’s declining health, the abridgment was surely done by John Wesley, who added a preface to a 1790 reprint. Cf. Hymns for Children (1787) in the section of this website devoted to John Wesley’s hymn collections.

Editions:
[Charles Wesley.] Hymns for Children. Bristol: Farley, 1763.
2nd Bristol: Pine, 1768. [adds to title: and Those of Riper Years]
3rd London: Hawes, 1778. [adds to title: and Those of Riper Years]
4th London: Paramore, 1784. [adds to title: and Those of Riper Years]