No. 64 Hark My Soul, Chh 224
Hexatonic, mode 3 b (I II III IV V VI —)
Hark, my soul, it is the Lord;
’Tis thy Savior, hear his word!
Jesus speaks, he speaks to thee:
“Say, poor sinner, say, poor sinner,
Say, poor sinner, lov’st thou me?
“I deliver’d thee when bound,
And, when wounded, healed thy wound;
Sought thee wand’ring, set thee right;
Turned thy darkness, turned thy darkness,
Turned thy darkness into light.
“Can a mother’s tender care
Cease toward the child she bare?
Yes, she may forgetful be,
Yet will I re-, yet will I re-,
Yet will I remember thee.”
The song was “Arranged by James Christopher, of Spartansburg, S. C.”, according to the Christian Harmony. Richardson has a variant of this tune used with a text which is a recent mountain eulogy on the whiskey of the hills under the title ‘Moonshine’, see American Mountain Songs, page 94. A hint of the antiquity of this tune form is given by the ‘Ass’s Sequence’ or ‘Orientis partibus’ from the beginning of the thirteenth century, a tune which was apparently cast in the folk-manner of that age.
Orientis partibus
aduentauit asinus
pulcher et fortissimus
Sarcinis aptissimus.
Hez, hez, sire asnes, hez.
Its modern representative is:
See Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 413.