No. 184 Roll Jordan, Osh 501
Pentatonic, mode 3 (I II III — V VI —)
He comes, he comes, the Judge severe,
Roll, Jordan, roll;
The seventh trumpet speaks him near,
Roll, Jordan, roll.
I want to go to heav’n, I do,
Hallelujah Lord;
We’ll praise the Lord in heav’n above,
Roll, Jordan, roll.
His lightnings flash, his thunders roll,
Roll, Jordan, roll;
How welcome to the faithful soul,
Roll, Jordan, roll.
Charles Wesley wrote the text. According to Lightwood, p. 132, it is a parody on a popular secular song which celebrated Admiral Vernon’s return to England after taking Portobello in 1739. Its first stanza is:
He comes! He comes! The hero comes!
Sound your trumpets, beat your drums!
From port to port let cannons roar
His welcome to the British shore.
It is found also in SOC, published in 1855. In the Introduction p. 14, I have mentioned the ‘Roll Jordan’ type of melody; it was named after the above tune. Other melodies of the type in this collection are ‘Florence’, ‘I Belong to this Band (B)’, ‘Tennessee’, ‘Jordan’, and ‘Resurrected’. It is this tune type which influenced Stephen Foster in the making of his ‘Susanna Don’t You Cry’ and ‘De Camptown Races’. See in this connection my article in The Musical Quarterly, vol. xxii., No. 2. For samples of negro borrowings of ‘Roll Jordan’ see White Spirituals, 264; Dett, p. 76; and Slave Songs, Nos. 1 and 10.