My Soul Wants Something That's New

DESCRIPTION: Chorus: "My soul wants something that's new, that's new, My soul wants some thing that's new (x2)." Verses are "Dark was the night and cold the ground..." and "Was it for crimes that I had done ..." See notes.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1901 (Dett/Fenner/Rathbun/Cleveland-ReligiousFolkSongsOfTheNegro-HamptonInstitute)
KEYWORDS: floatingverses nonballad religious
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Dett/Fenner/Rathbun/Cleveland-ReligiousFolkSongsOfTheNegro-HamptonInstitute, p. 105, "My Soul Wants Something That's New" (1 text, 1 tune; p. 147 in the 1901 edition)
Roud #15290
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground" (first verse from Haweis)
NOTES [250 words]: Dett/Fenner/Rathbun/Cleveland-ReligiousFolkSongsOfTheNegro-HamptonInstitute's text is attributed, in error, by White, to Barton, but White does point out that this text starts with Haweis's first verse "Dark was the night ..." and verse two is "stanza 2 of Watt's 'Alas and Did My Saviour bleed?'" (Newman I. White, American Negro Folk Songs (Hatboro: Folklore Associates Inc, 1965 (reprint of Harvard University Press, 1928) p. 105).
I have split "My Soul Wants Something New" from "Dark Was the Night" because Haweis's first verse has floated here with a verse from another hymn, and includes no other verse from Haweis. In this it is similar to White's #51B, which starts with Haweis's first verse, and continues with couplets from "Amazing Grace," "I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say," "Am I a Soldier of the Cross" and the chorus of "Lord, Remember Me."
Haweis's first verse was floating as early as 1835 where it begins a sacred harp hymn concluded by the first verse of another (Isaac Watts?) hymn, "Now in the hour of deep distress, My God, support thy Son, When horrors dark my soul oppress, O leave me not alone!" (Lowell Mason and T.B. Mason, Mason's Sacred Harp (Cincinnati: Truman and Smith, 1835 ("Digitized by Internet Archive")), p. 66, "Burford"("Dark was the night, and cold the ground"); A Collection of Hymns and Liturgy for the Use of Evangelical Lutheran Churches (Germantown: M. Billmeyer, 1827 ("Digitized by Google")), #135 p. 83, ("Now, in the hour of deep distress")). - BS
Last updated in version 4.0
File: Dett105

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