Peter Was a Fisherman

DESCRIPTION: Peter was a fisherman who preached and shouted on Pentecost. "The lily of the valley ... the lily stand in the valley ... green and fair."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1939 (WITrinidadVillage01)
KEYWORDS: flowers Bible nonballad religious
FOUND IN: West Indies(Trinidad)
RECORDINGS:
Michael Williams, "Peter Was a Fisherman" (on WITrinidadVillage01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "He's the Lily of the Valley" (theme)
NOTES [273 words]: A critic quoted in the liner notes ridiculed the idea of Peter equating himself with the lily of the valley (Donald R. Hill, Maureeen Warner-Lewis, John Cowley, Lise Winer, liner notes on WITrinidadVillage01). If we assume the lily reference is to the content of Peter's Pentacost sermon (Acts 2.14-30), and if we do not concentrate so on the word "of," then the reference can be to Luke 12.27-28 ("Consider the lilies how they grow ... If then God so clothe the grass ..."), rather than to Song of Solomon 2.1 ("I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys"). That would be a reference not in Acts, but a conflation of sermon texts.
Sankey #104 has "Through Jesus I shall safely reach the goal. / He's the 'Lily of the Valley,' the 'Bright and Morning Star'; He's the fairest of ten thousand to my soul!" (Ira D Sankey, Sacred Songs and Solos (London: Marshall, Morgan and Scott Ltd, 189?)). Booth #3 is entitled "He's the Lily of the Valley" (Evangeline Booth, The Salvation Army - Songs and Music (New York} The Salvation Army, 1922 ("Digitized by Internet Archive")): "The Lily of the Valley, in Him alone I see All I need to cleanse and make me whole". - BS
The word "lily" is used fifteen times in the King James Bible, and eight of these are in the Song of Songs (2:1, 2, 16, 4:5, 5:13, 6:2, 3, 7:2), it also shows up in 1 Kings 7:19, 22, 26, 2 Chronicles 4:5 as part of the description of the building of the Temple; in Hosea 14:5; and in Matthew 6:28, Luke 12:27, where it refers to the "lilies of the field" and Solomon. I doubt any of this is significant. As Ben says, this is just some texts jumbled together. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.0
File: RcPWAFi

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