Christmas Carols Week 3

Go, Tell it on the Mountain

An unknown origin.

GTIOTM stands as a unique offering to the catalog of well-known Christmas songs.

So many of the carols that we have looked at are European in origin.

A few have been products of white Americans.

GTIOTM, however is a black spiritual.

Most likely originating in the mid-1800’s from an unknown author.

GTIOTM was sung by slaves on plantations across America.

Like many of the songs that were written by slave-workers, GTIOTM was passed down orally from generation to generation.

For decades GTIOTM survived without sheet music and without recordings.

That didn’t change until the early 1900’s.

Before we get to that , let me tell you about something that happened in Nashville, TN.

These are the Fisk Jubilee Singers

Fisk University is the oldest college in Nashville.

It was founded in 1866.

It’s purpose was to train newly freed black men and women in higher education,

Fisk was the first all-black school to receive accreditation in the south.

By 1871, the school was horribly in debt.

In order to get the name of the college out among the public, and to try and raise funds, the Fisk Jubilee Singers were founded.

A group of 10 (mostly) former slaves.

This a cappella group took the last of the money in the school’s treasury and set out on tour.

It was not a warm reception that the singers received.

They began singing traditional hymns and classical arrangements to try and prove their musical training.

They were derided in local papers and compared to a minstrel show.

They were turned away from hotel after hotel in the state of Ohio.

They eventually ran out of money and had to beg for coats to protect themselves from the harsh northern winter.

3 Days before Christmas, one of the most famous preachers of the time, Henry Ward Beecher invited the Jubilee singers to come and sing at his church.

Rather than using their typical repertoire of songs, the group chose to sing the songs of their heart.

They sang the spiritual songs that they had been taught by their parents when they were slaves.

By the end of the service, the congregation was in tears and the donations began to pour in.

From that night forward the Jubilee Singers fortunes were forever changed.

Fisk university still celebrates this performance on campus as Jubilee Day.

They found widespread acceptance and fame that eventually landed them an appearance before Queen Victoria.

For many, the Jubilee singers represented the first time for white people to hear black people sing the black spirituals.

The Jubilee singers continue to sing to this day.

In those early years a seasonal favorite was the song Go, Tell it on the Mountain.

For several years, the Jubilee Singers single-handedly preserved this and many other songs from slipping into oblivion.

Other universities began to catch on.

Howard University in DC

Tuskegee University in Alabama.

These and others formed their own singing groups.

Not everyone was supportive of using the black spirituals in this way, even some of the singers.

“The students were reluctant ambassadors for the songs of their ancestors.”

“The slave songs were never used by us then in public. They were associated with slavery and the dark past and represented the things to be forgotten. Then, too, they were sacred to our parents, who used them in their religious worship.”

The song survived until John Wesley Work Jr. got ahold of it.

John Work was the son of a church music minister.

His father also taught at Fisk University

He attended Fisk University where he studied Latin and History.

He was also highly adept at putting groups together.

He eventually became the conductor of the Fisk Jubilee Singers.

In 1901, John published the first black spiritual song book.

For the first time, the songs that had been passed down orally were now available in print.

New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers

The song book took off.

In 1907, he published a sequel, New Jubilee Songs and Folk Songs of the American Negro.

It was in this book that Go, Tell it on the Mountain was finally printed under the name Christmas Plantation Song.

Fisk recalled his days as a child on campus listening as the students all sang Go, Tell it on the mountain as they went from class to class.

The Jubilee singers kept singing it as well as other small groups around the country, mostly in black churches.

The song found it’s first recording success when Mahalia Jackson recorded it in 1950.

I heard the Bells on Christmas Day

The death of Fannie.

She was Henry’s second wife.

Henry had been married once before to his childhood friend Mary Potter.

She had died near Christmas time in 1835 after complications from a miscarriage.

Henry had met Fannie in 1839, but she had been uninterested in his advances and had rejected him totally.

Seven years later, totally out of the blue and unexpected, Henry received a letter from Fannie agreeing to marry him.

He was so excited, he could not sit through a carriage ride.

He walked/ran the 90 minute trip to her house.

Henry and Fannie very happy and welcomed 6 children into their family.

Charles

Ernest

Fanny

Alice Mary

Edith

Anne Alegra

On July 9, 1861, Henry was taking a nap while Fannie placed locks of the children’s hair into envelopes.

Somehow, as Fannie used hot wax to seal the envelopes, her dress caught on fire.

Henry was awakened by the screams of his wife and rushed to help her.

He tried to smother the fire with a rug, but it was too small.

He was finally able to get the fire out using his own body, but it was too late.

Fannie was horribly burned and she died the next morning.

Henry was also badly burned and was unable to attend his wife’s funeral as he fought for his own life.

Henry was left terribly scarred.

He stopped shaving and grew a beard which became one of his defining characteristics.

Henry’s grief was terrible.

He feared he would go insane and begged his friends not to have him committed.

In 1863, Henry’s son Charley runs away.

Unbeknownst to the rest of his family, Charles made the 400 mile trip to D.C. where joined the union army.

One of his friends later gave his father a letter explaining his departure.

Dear Papa

You know for how long a time I have been wanting to go to the war I have tried hard to resist the temptation of going without your leave but I cannot any longer, I feel it to be my first duty to do what I can for my country and I would willingly lay down my life for it if it would be of any good God Bless you all.

Yours affectionately,

Charley.

Henry was distraught and began writing to every family friend he could think of that might be able to get his son a commission as an officer.

Charles had already impressed his commanding officers however, and had been promoted to Lieutenant.

He was at Chancellorsville, but saw no combat.

He was sick with a fever and missed the battle of Gettysburg.

He rejoined his unit in August of 1863.

On December 1, 1863, Henry received a telegram telling him that his son had been shot in the face 4 days earlier in a skirmish.

This proved to be inaccurate.

Charles had been shot in the left shoulder where the bullet had traveled across his back and exited his right shoulder.

The bullet nicked his spine, but had missed paralyzing him by less than an inch.

Henry goes to find his son.

Henry and his next son Ernest set out immediately to go find Charles.

They left on December 3 and arrived on December 5.

After a difficult search, Henry found his son.

One doctor told him that Charley would never walk again.

Another doctor told him this was not true but that Charley would require intense care for the next 6 months if he was to return to health.

This was not the kind of care that the army could give Charley.

If Henry wanted to see his son recover, he would have to take the responsibility for his nursing.

Henry collected his son and headed back to Boston.

They arrived home on December 8th and the long recovery began.

The Christmas of December 1863 was not a happy one for Henry.

He sat there that Christmas and took stock of his situation.

A 57 year old widow.

A single father of 6 children ages 8-19.

The oldest of which requiring constant, round-the-clock care.

Outside, the bells were ringing out in celebration of Christmas.

Inside, Henry started to write.

He tried to put on paper the dissonance that he felt in his own heart and that he observed in the world as Civil War raged.

The bells sang of peace on earth.

In reality injustice and violence seemed to mock the truthfulness of this optimistic outlook.

He writes:

I heard the bells on Christmas day

Their old familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet the words repeat

Of peace of earth, good will to men.

He feels like this is not the case, so he writes further...

And in despair I bowed my head:

"There is no peace on earth," I said,

"For hate is strong, and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Notice, though, how truth anchors the weary soul.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good will to men.”

So, on Christmas day, 1863, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a man familiar with grief, wrote out of his own life’s experience the words to I heard the bells.