Idumea: A Song History

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Idumea is a minor-key shape-note tune credited to Ananias Davisson (1780–1857), a singing-school teacher, printer and compiler of tunebooks.[1] Davisson printed his Kentucky Harmony in 1816 at his shop in Harrisonburg, Virginia; it was the earliest known southern tunebook to use shaped note heads, and Idumea appears in that first edition under his name.[2][3] One folk-song index still treats the attribution with a question mark.[4] The text long sung to it is by Charles Wesley, from his Hymns for Children of 1763.[5][4]

Painting of a camp meeting gathered in a sunlit grove of tall trees beside a pond

Worthington Whittredge, The Camp Meeting, oil on canvas, 1874. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the tune.

The tune moved through later shape-note collections such as the Southern Harmony and the Missouri Harmony, and hymnary.org counts it in some forty hymnals.[1][4] In The Sacred Harp, the tunebook B. F. White first published in 1844, it is printed on page 47 (as 47b).[2][6] Recordings outside the singing tradition include one by Doc Watson and Gaither Carlton made in 1964, and the English group the Watersons put it on a 1977 album.[7]

Idumea is heard in the 2003 film Cold Mountain: Sacred Harp singers recorded it at Liberty Baptist Church on Sand Mountain, Alabama, and it plays over a battle scene.[8][9][6] Among songs led at Sacred Harp singings, its rank rose after the film’s release, from 56th in 2003 to 12th in 2004, and in 2013 it stood seventh.[6]

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Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "IDUMEA (Davisson)".
  2. Library of Virginia, Dictionary of Virginia Biography: "Ananias Davisson".
  3. Choral Public Domain Library: "Kentucky Harmony (Ananias Davisson)".
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Am I Born to Die? (Idumea)".
  5. Duke Center for Studies in the Wesleyan Tradition: "Hymns for Children (1763)".
  6. Sacred Harp Publishing Company: "The Cold Mountain Bump".
  7. Mainly Norfolk: "Idumea".
  8. AccessWDUN: Sacred Harp singing and Cold Mountain (2004).
  9. WNYC: "#4194: Theme & Variations: Idumea".