Eliza Edmunds Hewitt, born on this day in Philadelphia in 1851, was bedridden with a spinal injury for many years, during which she began her hymnwriting career. Her writings were discovered by fellow Philadelphians John Sweney and William Kirkpatrick, composers of gospel songs who together edited and published their own collections, and included many of Hewitt's pieces in their books (and provided the tunes in many cases). One of her best-known songs was Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown.Eliza Hewitt has already shown up here back on May 24, due to her collaboration with Emily Divine Wilson, When We All Get to Heaven. Hewitt was also a good friend of Fanny Crosby. Of her many songs, I chose this one for today.
Bear the good tidings all over the world,
Let the bright banner of love be unfurled,
Wherever sorrow and pain shall be found,
There let the news of salvation resound.
Refrain
All over the world,
All over the world,
Let the bright banner of love be unfurled,
All over the world.
Plant in the wilderness Sharon’s sweet rose,
Blessing will follow wherever it goes;
Onward, led onward by God’s guiding hand,
Open fresh springs in the dry, thirsty land.
Refrain
Oh, what a song shall in heaven be sung!
By every nation and kindred and tongue;
Saints reunited by grace shall be there,
Joy everlasting together we’ll share.
Refrain
Eliza E. Hewitt, c. 1896; alt.
Tune: SHARON'S ROSE (10.10.10.10. with refrain)
William J. Kirkpatrick, c. 1896
Hewitt was a prolific writer, and her publishers must have felt that she needed a pseudonym so she didn't appear to be crowding out other writers (a distinction she shared with Fanny Crosby), so some of her gospel songs were attributed to "Lidie Edmunds." She does have 73 listed at cyberhymnal.org, which means that there may even be several more out there. She also wrote the music for at least three of her songs.
In later years, Eliza Hewitt partially recovered from her injury and was a Sunday School superintendent, both at the Northern Home for Friendless Children and the Calvin Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.
4 comments:
Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown, for which Sweney supplied the music, was the basis on which Buffalo Meat (d. 1920), the first Cheyenne ordained as a Baptist preacher, composed the Cheyenne spiritual song Vehone-ma’kaetaevohkeha’e (link is to WMA file):
Vehone-ma’kaetaevokėha’e
(A Crown)
Jesus A me’etano’tova HE
(Remember that Jesus)
tsestanestȧheexanomoetsė
(has gone to prepare for us)
Vehone-ma’kaetaevokėha’e
(a crown)
tsesto’sėhone’o’sėhaetsė
(when he's going to put it on us)
Jesus A he’ama.
(Jesus in heaven.)
Buffalo Meat, < 1920 (text and tune, drawing on Hewitt and Sweney)
This is #40 in the currently-used Mennonite-published (1982; used by several denominations) Cheyenne hymnal, Tsese-Ma'heone-Nemeotȯtse, which gives (p. 164) the following additional information:
"Will there be any stars in my crown?" is the English hymn upon which this Cheyenne arrangement is based. It is one of many songs published in Sunday school songbooks near the end of the nineteenth century. Ho’evoo’ȯtse (Buffalo Meat) heard this song and made the Cheyenne words for the hymn, retaining the imagery of "a crown."
For Buffalo Meat, the transition to reservation life late in the 1800s was difficult. He and his band protested their loss of freedom with a raid on a place in Texas known as "Adobe Walls." As a result he and several other young men were sent to prison in Florida. He survived the ordeal and came back home to Oklahoma, where he married, settled down on a piece of land, and raised cattle and chickens. He became a Christian, and members of his band followed his example. He was the first Cheyenne ordained as a Baptist preacher. This hymn is one of several he used with his congregation near Kingfisher, Oklahoma.
For the story of Adobe Walls see Donald Berthrong's book, The Southern Cheyennes (U. of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1963), pages 385 ff.
Leland aka Haruo
Interesting material - I know little to nothing about native American hymnody. Buffalo Meat and Eliza Hewitt died in the same year - I wonder if she knew of his adaptation.
P.S. Errata fixed - thanks
Thanks, I'm no expert on the subject, either, and I don't there really is such a thing, because of the diversity of languages and traditions involved. The Mennonite Cheyenne hymnal I cited has the best collection I know of of singable English versions of songs of a specific tribal origin, and the Methodist supplement Voices: Native American Hymns and Other Worship Resources is the best single-volume collection of material from a variety of tribal sources and in the appropriate languages (though often bizarrely transcribed) I know of. Only two hymns that originated in indigenous American languages seem to have really achieved any wide dissemination in English-language hymnals, namely the Dakota Wakantanka taku nitawa (whose best-known translation is Many and great, O God, are Thy things) with its original Dakota melody (LACQUIPARLE), and the Huron Carol, Estennialon de tsonoue, Jesous ahatonhia, written by P. (now St.) Jean de Brébeuf, a Jesuit missionary among the Huron who was martyred during one of the Iroquois' genocidal depradations. This "carol" is much less a Christmas carol in the original than in the Jesse Middleton version best known in English. The first verse of the Middleton text reads
’Twas in the moon of wintertime,
When all the birds had fled,
That mighty Gitchi Manitou
Sent angel choirs instead;
Before their light the stars grew dim,
And wondering hunters heard the hymn:
Jesus your King is born,
Jesus is born,
In excelsis gloria.
but the first stanza in Huron means roughly
Take courage, people, for Jesus is born.
See, the evil spirit that had enchained us has fled;
Don't listen to it any more, for it has sullied our minds.
Jesus is born, he's born! Jesus is born!
The tune is of French folk origin; I've no idea how close it is to the tune the Huron sang it to when it was new. And I'm not sure if Middleton's hunters were "wondering" or "wandering", probably both I suppose.
There are a few others, the Creek "Heleluyan" chant and a Kiowa prayer in the United Methodist Hymnal, 1989, come to mind, as well as a Dakota hymn sung to NETTLETON that's in the Presbyterian Hymnal, 1990; the original is Wotanin waste nahon po, and the English singing text is courtesy of Jane Parker Huber, a pretty good hymnist in her own right.
Leland aka Haruo
I referred (and linked) to this thread today at BaptistLife.com; check out the scans in the thread Esenehane Jesus over there.
Leland aka Haruo
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