How Can I Keep From Singing: A Song History
This hymn of steady faith amid trouble first appeared in the New York Observer on 27 August 1868 as a poem titled "Always Rejoicing," signed only "Pauline T."; apart from one sonnet she placed in the same paper that October, nothing is known of her.[1] A year later it was set to music in Bright Jewels for the Sunday School (1869), a William Bradbury collection that came out after his death under the editorship of Robert Lowry, a Brooklyn Baptist pastor.[1][2] There the initials "R.L." stand over the music while the author line is left blank.[2] The Hymnology Archive notes that the initials could be read either way, while C. Michael Hawn reasons that, with the poem already in print under Pauline T.'s name, Lowry probably wrote just the melody.[1][3] Lowry, also the composer of "Shall We Gather at the River," stands out, in the Ballad Index's view, as a hymn writer with more than one song absorbed into oral tradition.[4]
Jacob Jordaens, A Youth and Two Girls Singing, black chalk, brush and brown wash, heightened with white, 17th century. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its singers; it has no connection to the hymn.
The song's later reputation as an old Quaker hymn is a mistake.[3][4] That label spread largely through Pete Seeger, who learned the song in 1956 from Doris Plenn; she in turn had it from a Quaker grandmother in North Carolina. Seeger printed it in Sing Out! in spring 1957 and recorded it for Columbia on In Concert: I Can See a New Day (1964).[1] The Ballad Index, citing John Garst, points out that early Quakers did not sing hymns at all, and the only Quaker connection is Plenn's grandmother.[4] Plenn also wrote an extra stanza, sung by Seeger, as a protest against McCarthyism;[4] Hawn places it around 1950 and cites a note in The New Century Hymnal saying she wrote it while friends of hers were in prison.[3] Even so, some modern hymnals still label the text an early Quaker song.[2]
Seeger and other folk singers revived the hymn in this form, and Enya later recorded it on Shepherd Moons (1991).[3][5] It now appears in many hymnals, often credited jointly to Lowry and Plenn.[2]
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