The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983 Page: 36
616 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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He prom-lsed nev- er to leave_ me, Nev- er to leave me a - lone.
Refrain
W. W 1 I -
No, nev- er a - lone, No, nev- er a - lone,
He prom - ised nev- er to leave_ me, Nev- er to leave me a - lone.,_
I heard the voice of my Savior
Telling me still to fight on;
He promised never to leave me,
Never to leave me alone.
No, never alone,
No, never alone,
He promised never to leave me,
Never to leave me alone. *
As in ballads of murders and battles and bad men Anglo-Texans had
preserved leanings toward violence, a sinister, darker side in their
character, in their spirituals they had recorded an opposite, brighter,
broader in its embrace-the fervently religious. To find these spirit-
uals I had to go to country churches, where there was neither book nor
instrument to guide the singing, nor social restraint that would keep
a brother or sister happy in the presence of the Lord from beginning
a tune or a shout, or from spontaneous adaptation of old ideas and
lines and tune into a new song familiar enough for the others to follow,
emotional enough to imbue a congregation.
Much of their borrowing came from eighteenth-century hymn mak-
ers like Isaac Watts, John Newton, and William Cowper, who remained
in the Anglican Communion but who wrote hymns akin to those of
the people who had broken away from the established church in any
form. Some came from John Wesley, Anglican turned Methodist, pub-
lisher of a collection of psalms and hymns in Georgia in 1737, and his
brother Charles. In their sometimes willing, sometimes enforced shed-
ding of European customs, manners, and dress, the pioneers clung to
and adapted to frontier use such basics as English common law, En-
glish language, and more widely practiced English art forms.
*Reproduced with the permission of the author and SMU Press, Dallas.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 86, July 1982 - April, 1983, periodical, 1982/1983; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101209/m1/56/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.