Love Is Little: A Song History

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"Love Is Little" is a Shaker spiritual, a single short verse in praise of humility. According to Shaker music scholar Roger Lee Hall, it was written around 1834 at South Union, Kentucky, by an author whose name has not survived.[1] South Union, near Auburn, was the longest-lasting of the western Shaker communities. It was active from 1807 to 1922.[2] Hall groups it with the Shaker short songs, which usually consist of one verse in two sections, often repeated. His site also corrects an attribution of the song to Elder Issachar Bates.[3]

Victorian valentine card by Kate Greenaway showing two young children with a lamb beneath a blossoming tree

Kate Greenaway, valentine, chromolithograph, 1876. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

Like thousands of Shaker melodies, the song was written down in the Shakers' letter-based notation, which used letters of the alphabet in place of ordinary note heads.[1][4] Hall traced the manuscript to the Western Reserve Historical Society Library in Cleveland. His modern transcription was published in 1992 as the title song of a songbook, and a recording of 36 spirituals drawn from the major Shaker communities appeared the same year.[1] The Shakers of Sabbathday Lake, Maine, also sang it, changing one key word.[1] It is listed on Early Shaker Spirituals, a Rounder album credited to Sister R. Mildred Barker with notes by folklorist Daniel W. Patterson.[5]

The song now circulates well beyond the Shaker villages. Kevin Siegfried's choral settings, published by earthsongs, credit the text to South Union.[6] A Children's Music Network peace songbook lists it as traditional and public domain. The contributor learned it from Sue Ribaudo, a fellow CMN musician who had recorded it.[7]

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Sources

  1. American Music Preservation (Roger Lee Hall): "Love is little".
  2. National Park Service: "South Union Shaker Village".
  3. American Music Preservation (Roger Lee Hall): "Music of the American Shakers - Resources and Recordings".
  4. Folkstreams: "The Shaker Song Tradition".
  5. Discogs: "Sister R. Mildred Barker – Early Shaker Spirituals" (Rounder 0078).
  6. Kevin Siegfried: "Love is Little".
  7. Children's Music Network, Peace Songbook: "Love is Little".