Self-described “hillbilly” Lendel Abbott (1936-2024) of Maryville, Tennessee, was a craftsman and storyteller. His obituary details: “He authored two published books, Born Too Late, and also Cade Cove Tennessee, My Stories and Our Heritage that featured the rich history and culture of Cades Cove and the East Tennessee Appalachian community with first-hand accounts of the rich culture and traditions of the families of Cades Cove and the East Tennessee Appalachian Culture.”
I excerpt from the first of the two of these a short vignette referencing “old harp” sining of his grandmother and great aunt. He writes in a vernacular dialect.
I’ll note that East Tennessee singers often use M.L. & W.H. Swan’s shape note book, The New Harp of Columbia. As Jeremy Shipp pointed out to me on Facebook “He mentions two songs, “Amazing Grace” and “Wayfaring Pilgrim.” Neither appears in the New Harp of Columbia! (Although the tune “New Britain” appears with different words.)” One can only speculate.
You can learn more about East Tennessee “old harp singing” at: https://www.oldharp.org/
GRANNY AND AUNT MATT SANG IN CHURCH
My granny could sang the old harp songs of old, her sister Aunt Matt Lequire sung old harp too. We walked and went to church up at Pleasant Hill, which is a Methodist. They both got up on the stage to sang the old harp song, “Amazing Grace”. They didn’t knead a song book. They knowed it all their life, from a child up. I remember granny hummed a note or two to get the pitch. They decided it was too low, it wuz raised to a very high pitch or as you would say, key. It wuz so quit you could hear a pin if droped. Many folks set and cryed before they hushed sangen. The hair on my neck seamed to grow down to my faded shirt caller. The best I remember they sang “Way Fairin Pilgrim” in old harp notes that day to.
How well I remember, they wore dresses that retch to their ankles. Granny wore a strang of old purple beads on a old black strang, this old strang would brake once in a while. Her eye sight was failing. I had to help her many times hunt for her beads. There was a few less every time the strang broke. She would not let me change the strang, it was full of knots. Several years after she died, I found one of these old beads out at the old worsh kettle, I have still got it to this day. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the old beads when she died.