528
Drooping Souls, No Longer Grieve
From the Adams MS book (western North Carolina, 1824-25),
owned by Professor W. Amos Abrams. The MS spellings, lines,
and stanzas have been followed verbatim et literatim.
Jackson SFSEA 98-9 and DESO 95 give versions of this hymn
and say it appeared in several of the early American hymnbooks,
among them The Knoxville Harmony (1838). which prints the first
line "Mourning souls," and in The Southern and Western Poeket
Harmony (compiled at Spartanburg, S. C, and printed in Phila-
delphia, 1846). In the latter, the first line begins "Drooping souls."
It appears, too, in The Camp-Meeting Chorister . . . (Philadelphia,
1852), pp. 69-70. The Adams text indicates coi)ying from mem-
ory; e.g., "balsam" in stanza 2, reads "lotion" in the printed texts.
See Annabel Morris Buchanan's Folk Hymns of America (New-
York, 1938), p. 58, for a text recovered from oral tradition in
Tennessee. For a North Carolina text taken from oral tradition,
see Chappell FSRA 167.
R i: 1. I c 1 () u s SONGS 587
1 Drooping souls no longer grive
Heaven is propitions
If on Christ you can believe
You shall find him ])rt'ci()us
Jes\is he is passing hy
Calls the mourners to him
It was for mourners lu- did die
Now look up and view him
2 l^'rom his hand his feet his side
I'dowes the healing balsam
Be [ ?] the consolating tide
Boundless as the ocean
Se the loveing current move
For the sick and dieing
I am Resolv'd to gain his love
( )r to perish trying
3 lioundless mercy, rich &: free
Weary souls to gladen
Jesus calls Come unto me
\\'eary heavy-laden
Though your sins like mountains high
Arise and reach to heaven
Soon as you on him relye
All shall be forgiven
4 Now me thinkes 1 hear one say
I will go & prove him
If [ ?] he takes my sins away
Shurely I shall love him
Yes I se the Savior smile
Smileing [ ?J moves my burden
O rich "[ ? sick?j I am for I am ville
Yet it seals [ ?] my pardon
5 Boundless mercy how it flowes
Now I hope I feel it
It has never yet ben told
Still I want to tell it
Jesus he has heal'd my wounds
the wounders story
1 was lost but now 1 am found
Glory Glory ( ilory
6 (dorv to my Saviours name
Saints T noe you lo\'e liim
Sinners you may do the same
588 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE
Only come & prove him
Wilkes County C W C W C W
Hasten to a saviours blood
Feel it and declare it
that I could sing so loud
That all the world could hear it
7 If no greater joys was known
In this [? these?] uper regions
1 would try to travel on
By this pure religion
Heaven here & heaven there
Glory here & younder
Brightest seraphs shout amen
And all the angels wonder
finis M. L. Adams