Garden Hymn, The

DESCRIPTION: "The Lord into his garden comes, the flowers yield a rich perfume." The hymn describes how God's presence brings life to the garden. Jesus will "conquer all his foes And make his people one."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1800 (published by Jeremiah Ingalls)
KEYWORDS: religious nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Chase-AmericanFolkTalesAndSongs, pp. 158-159, "The Garden Hymn" (1 text, 1 tune)
SongsOfAllTime, p. 39, "Garden Hymn" (1 text, 1 tune)
48MuchLovedFolkSongs, p. 21, "Garden Hymn" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #11502
RECORDINGS:
Singers from Stewart's Chapel, Houston, MS, "Nashville" (on Fasola1)
NOTES [282 words]: The authorship of this piece is somewhat dubious. It's usually credited to Jeremiah Ingalls, but sometimes to William Campbell. In the 1971 Sacred Harp Campbell is given credit as "Translator," whatever that means in the context of an English-language hymn. Sacred Harp gives Alexander Johnson as composer of the tune, but Amelia Ramsey, in her notes to the Stewart's Chapel recording, credits Ingalls for the tune as well. - PJS
Which mostly proves how confused the data in the Sacred Harp can be. John Martin writes to note that many of the Sacred Harp editions lack this piece, and others give different attributions.
Martin adds that he has searched the works of Ingalls, and finds the poem there, in a form rather different from the Sacred Harp version (e.g. it lacks the part about Jesus conquering his foes). Ingalls, Martin writes, "describes the words as 'att. John Stocker, 1777.'"
John Julian, editor, A Dictionary of Hymnology, 1892; second edition 1907 (I use the 1957 Dover edition in two volumes), p. 1712, adds that it "Appeared anonymously in J. Leavitt's Christian Lyre, 1839, Pt. i., No. 22, and subsequently in several collections, including the American Baptist Hymnal, 1903."
This, howeever, is after the death of Ingalls, who lived from 1764 to 1828, according to W. K. McNeil, editor, Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music, Routledge, 2005, p. 193. Ingalls, based on the information there, seems to have been much more a tunewriter than a writer of song texts; perhaps he collected the piece, or set it to music.
I finally gave up and decided to eliminate all author references for the piece. In any case, chances are that any version you hear is composite. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Cha158

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