No. 142 Captain Kidd, Coh 73
Hexatonic, mode 4 b (I II 3 IV V — 7)
Through all the world below
God is seen all around,
Search hills and valleys through,
There he’s found.
The growing of the corn,
The lily and the thorn,
The pleasant and forlorn,
All declare, God is there;
In meadows drest in green,
There he’s seen.
See springing waters rise,
Fountains flow, rivers run;
The mist that veils the sky
Hides the sun;
Then down the rain doth pour,
The ocean it doth roar,
And beat upon the shore;
And all praise in their ways
The God who ne’er declines
His designs.
The sun with all his rays
Speaks of God as he flies;
The comet in her blaze,
God she cries.
The shining of the stars,
The moon when she appears,
His awful name declares;
See them fly through the sky,
And join the solemn sound
All round.
Not India’s hills of gold,
Where the wonders are told,
Nor zephyrs strong and bold
Can unfold
The mountain Calvary,
Where Christ our Lord did die.
Hark, hear the Savior cry,
Mountains quake, heavens shake,
Christ, call’d to heaven’s host,
Left their coast.
The tune is ascribed to Nicholson. The oldest American recording known to me is in the four-shape-note manuscript song collection made by Catherine Alderice in or near Emmittsburg, Md., 1800-1830, p. 37. Miss Gilchrist calls attention to the secular ‘Captain Kidd’ ballad, of which the above is a parody, as it appeared, twenty-five verses long, in Our Familiar Songs and Who Made Them, published in America, 1889. She describes it as “a sort of dying speech and testament probably dating from about 1701 in which year Kidd and nine of his associates were hanged in Execution Dock.... There were many other eighteenth century songs, built on this peculiar stanzaic plan, celebrating other notorious characters, ‘Admiral Benbow,’ ‘Jack (or Sam) Hall.’” Other American spiritual songs in this collection having the same stanzaic form are ‘Wondrous Love’ and ‘Remember Sinful Youth’.