Varied Subjects- Songs/Ballads from Overton Co.
[Page 161 of her thesis is missing in my MS copy. It has introductory notes and the first stanza of a gospel song from the mid-1800s usually called "Cooling Spring." I'm including a text from Hoyle's Hymns & Songs (1869) below.
R. Matteson 2014]
CHAPTER IX-- VARIED SUBJECTS IN BALLAD AND SONG
CONTENTS
Cooling Spring (Merry Merry Little Spring)
Whippin' That Old T.B.
Advice to Wife Seekers
Old and Only in the Way
The Ship that Never Returned
[Blind Man's Ballad]
Mississippi Flood
You're Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone
Old Charlie
My Grandfather's Clock
Cooling Spring- From: Hoyle's Hymns & Songs for Temperance Societies and Bands of Hope; by William HOYLE 1869. Crabtree's version is slightly different.
Oh, a goodly thing is the cooling spring,
By the rock where the moss doth grow;
There is health in the tide, and there’s music beside,
In the brooklet’s bounding flow.
CHORUS: Merry, merry little spring, sparkle on,
Merry, merry little spring, sparkle on for me;
Ripple, ripple silvery brook, ripple on,
Ripple, ripple silvery brook, ripple on for me.
And as pure as heaven is the water given,
And its stream is for ever new ;
’Tis distilled in the sky, and it drops from on high,
In the showers and gentle dew. Merry, &c.
Let them say ’tis weak, but it’s strength I’ll seek,
And rejoice while I own its sway;
For its murmur to me is the echo of glee,
And it laughs as it bounds away. Merry, &c.
0, I love to drink from the foaming brink
Of the bubbling, the cooling spring;
For the drops that shine shall be ever mine,
And its praise, its praise, I’ll sing. Merry, &c.