This isn’t really a Christmas hymn, but Erlene requested it, and besides, it brings back fond memories to me. We sang this in our seventh-grade Christmas concert. Mr. Held’s entire home room, including me, was drafted into the choir. I was in the back row with all the other kids who couldn’t sing–but never mind, it was fun: and there was no one there to complain about it.
Fun fact: Did you know one of Burl Ives’ middle names was Ivanhoe? Cool!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote these words in 1864. His wife had just died in a fire that burned down their house, and the nation was in the third year of the Civil War–to this day, the bloodiest war ever for America. That any man could write such a hymn as this, still sung 150 years later, displays the image of God in us.
And nobody sang it like Burl ives…
I can never hear this beloved, old-fashioned hymn without thinking of my Uncle Bernie, a wonderful, big-hearted man who late in life finally achieved his dream of being ordained as a minister in the Methodist Church. This hymn was one of his favorites–Shall We Gather at the River, sung by Burl Ives.
Sorry I’m late–wanted to get my bike ride in before it rained.
This is one of those innocent little songs that children used to sing–and maybe still do, somewhere–although I never knew anybody who could sing it as fast as Burl Ives does. Frog Went A-Courtin’ is a folk song with more variations, optional verses, than you can shake a stick at. I kept waiting for my favorite, about “the little moth who wiped her mouth on the table-cloth,” but Mr. Ives didn’t include it.
Yeah: this one, the one about the old woman who swallowed a fly (and then a spider to catch the fly, etc.), Jimmy Crack’d Corn, and the slightly less than dignified Jars and Jars of Green and Gushy Gopher-Guts–brightened up many an hour of childhood, way back when. I’m sure I don’t want to know what they’re singing now.
Anyone for Pop Goes the Weasel?
Another hymn I’ve always loved, since I heard it first in Sunday school–Bringing in the Sheaves. Sung here by Burl ives, one of the great voices of the 1950s and 60s–and follow the lyrics. Sowing with tears, but reaping with joy: so God’s word has promised us.
As we machete our way through the tangled, gloomy jungle of this present age, it helps to know we’re actually going somewhere, and that God will see to it that we get there. And that’s what this lovely old hymn is about. Keep going, everybody, we’re getting there! Shall We Gather at the River, sung by Burl Ives.
This was in old song, from 1876, but it was popular when I was a little boy, and I remember it. It used to move me close to tears, and still does: I guess because I loved my Grandpa.
Some of us have things that are always associated with us, and the sight of one of those things–a cane, a hat, or a grandfather’s clock–always, and vividly, brings to mind the person to whom it belongs.
There were songs like this, back then. I don’t think there are songs like this now.
I’m glad I wasn’t born much later than I was.
There was a lot more to Burl Ives than singing “Jimmy Crack Corn.”
This carol defies the evils of a fallen world. What more can we add to that, but “Sing Louder!”
I hope no one minds an extra hymn today, and an old-time traditional one at that.
Bringing in the Sheaves, sung by Burl Ives–remember him?
We may sow while weeping, that’s for sure: but it’s also for sure that we shall harvest with joy.