No. 39 Union, Osh 116
Heptatonic aeolian, mode 2 A + b (I II 3 IV V 6 7)
Come, brothers and sisters who love one another
And have done for years that are gone;
How often we’ve met him in sweet heav’nly union
Which opens the way to God’s throne;
With joy and thanksgiving we’ll praise him who loved us,
While we run the bright shining way;
Though we part here in body we’re bound for one glory,
And bound for each other to pray.
There was Joshua and Joseph, Elias and Moses,
That pray’d, and God heard from his throne;
There was Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and David,
And Solomon, and Stephen, and John,
There was Simeon, and Anna, and I don’t know how many,
That pray’d as they journey’d along;
Some cast among lions, some bound with rough irons,
Yet glory and praises they sung.
Some tell us that praying, and also that praising
Is labor that’s all spent in vain;
But we have such a witness that God hears with swiftness,
From praying we will not refrain.
There was old father Noah, and ten thousand more,
That witness’d that God heard them pray;
There was Samuel and Hannah, Paul, Silas, and Peter,
And Daniel and Jonah, we’ll say.
That God, by his spirit, or an angel doth visit
Their souls and their bodies while praying,
Shall we all go fainting, while they go on praising,
And glorify God in the flame?
God grant us to inherit the same praying spirit,
While we are journeying below,
That when we cease praying, we shall not cease praising,
But round God’s white throne we shall bow.
James, editor of the Original Sacred Harp, 1911, says: “The hymn is from a very old edition, 1820. It is not in any of the hymn books found since that date.” The quick triple time of the tune indicates Irish influence and, probably, source. Similar is ‘Royal Band’, OSH 360.
As to the remarkable rhyme or assonance in the text—see for example the repeated “o” assonance in the first lines—I am reminded of what Cecil Sharp said of this feature in Anglo-Irish ballads of this sort, namely, that “They imitate with more or less success in an alien tongue the assonantal Gaelic rhymes with which their makers, whether hedge-schoolmasters or peasants, were doubtless familiar.” The same metrical trend is in ‘Green Grows the Laurel’, Sharp, ii., 211.