Life imitating art imitating life imitating...

(Originally posted June 8, 2005)

Those familiar with the shape note singing tradition know that a disproportionate number of songs in tunebooks like 'The Sacred Harp,' 'The Southern Harmony,' 'The Missouri Harmony,' and so on are named after places, in many cases the birthplaces of the composers. For instance, in 1792 Lewis Edson composed one of the loveliest tunes ever put together, set it to the poetry of Isaac Watts, and named it 'Bridgewater,' after his home town in Connecticut.  Or they can be named after biblical places, like 'Emmaus,' or after places where a composer stopped to have tea and a nosh, like 'Northfield.' *

A number of other shape note hymns take their titles from people's names, as in the case of 'Amanda Ray' (#493 in the 1991 Sacred Harp), which S. Whitt Denson named for a female relative.  The beautiful, understated tune 'O'Leary' (#501) is another example, having been composed by Ted Mercer in honor of a family of longtime singers he's friends with.

Many songs in these tunebooks, of course, have more conventional hymn-type titles: one of my favorites is E.J. King's incomparable 'Gospel Trumpet.'  You also have 'Garden Hymn,' 'I'll Seek his Blessings,' 'Jubilee,' etc.

What's weird, though, is when you find not songs that are named after places, but rather places that have been named after songs. The homepage for Bangor, Maine admits quite readily that the city was named after "an Irish hymn;" what the site doesn't say is that the hymn in question is an old shape note song. I first heard about this from Tim Eriksen, who also contends that the nearby Maine town of China was named after #163b of the Sacred Harp.

Robert Vaughn, a singer from Texas, recently posted to the shape note listserv a link to info about the town of Vilulah, Georgia. According to the town's historical marker, in 1867 a group of "pioneer settlers" met beneath a "bush-arbor" and "constituted the Vilulah Baptist Church...after the loved hymn-tune -- Vilulia in the old Sacred Harp Song Book..."

Photoby Ed Jackson.  Courtesy of the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, U. of Georgia.

It kind of makes my head hurt. If the towns of China and Bangor were given the names of songs, what were the songs named after? 'China' is pretty self-evident, but what in the world is a Bangor? And then you have Vilulah, Georgia, which was named after Vilulah Baptist Church, which was named after 'Vilulia' in the Sacred Harp, which was named after...what or whom, I cannot say.

You gotta feel sorry for the girl in class named 'Vilulia,' though.

*This is, from all accounts I've heard or read, a true thing. According to the legend, Ingalls and his wife stopped off at a restaurant in Northfield, Connecticut at the turn of the 19th century. Frustrated by the slow service at the tavern, he tweaked some words of Watts that he'd been messing around with, and sang something along the lines of, "how long, dear savior, oh how long/shall dinner hour delay..." At our monthly Sacred Harp singings in Baltimore, we always sing this version before dinner, finishing the verse with "...fly swift, ye idle servants round/and bring the fine buffet."

Comments

[Harry]

"If the towns of China and Bangor were given the names of songs, what were the songs named after? 'China' is pretty self-evident, but what in the world is a Bangor?"

Not sure if you're 100% serious here, but just in case you really haven't heard of any other place called Bangor... If we accept the charming story that Bangor Maine is named after Tansur's hymn (in turn named after the Bangor Antiphonary, supposed to have been written at Bangor Abbey), then the Bangor in County Down, Northern Ireland, is the ancestor -- as opposed to the other ancient cathedral city of Bangor in North Wales.

What is a bangor? I don't know how the Irish Bangor gets its name, but in Welsh the word bangor refers to a wattle fence, and hence the clearing it enclosed, of the sort in which an ancient monastic community was founded.

To me the mystery is why on earth Timothy Swan chose to name his hymn after a country the other side of the world. Any ideas?

[Harry]

And by the way "Bangor" is certainly not "an Irish hymn" or (originally) a shapenote song either. It was written in 1734 by the English hymnodist Will­iam Tansur (or Tan­s’ur or Tanzer), long before the shapenote era.