Acknowledgements
Copied from the Digital Tradition by Garry Gillard.
[trad.]
The Watersons sang the Manx Primitive Methodist hymn The Good Old Way in 1975 on their album For
Pence and Spicy Ale. This track was also included in 1980 as title track of the Topic sampler The Good Old
Way, in 1993 on the Topic anthology The Folk Collection, in 2000 on the English folk anthology And We'll
All Have Tea, and in 2004 on the Watersons' 4CD anthology Mighty River of Song. They also sang it at a
oncert at Hull Truck Theatre on August 15, 2010 to celebrate Norma's 71st birthday. It was published in
2011 on the DVD Live at Hull Truck. A.L. Lloyd commented in original album's sleeve notes:
The
18th
century saw the Great Awakening of religious dissenter groups with such slogans as “We'll take
the Kingdom of Heaven by storm.” Under the banner of the Awakening were many ecstatic groups—
Shakers, New Lighters, Free Baptists, ultimately Ranters (Primitive Methodists), and others lumped
together as Holy Rollers. Unlike John Wesley, who preferred the tunes of imported elite composers such as
Handel, Giordani and their lesser fellows, the “gospel trumpeters” went in for folky tunes like Amazing
Grace and The Good Old Way. John Cennick (1718-55), who broke away from the Wesleys, was the
founder of folky hymnody with his Sacred Hymns (Bristol 1743), which had an enormous effect on the
wildfire revivals in Britain and America. The Good Old Way is said to have been a favourite hymn of the
wild evangelist John Adam Grenade (1775-1806). In America it acquired a “Hallelujah” chorus and in that
form came back to England and was printed in the Ranters' Hymns and Spiritual Songs (c. 1820). Our
version was collected by John Clague from a marble-mason on the [Isle of Man], John Cubbon. It appears
in the Folk Song Journal (No. 30), and serves to remind us what grand tunes have been lost to our
hymnbooks through the tyranny of [Hymns] Ancient & Modern.
Note: In the above comment, Lloyd's erroneously placed John Cubbon on the Isle of Wight. But the song is
from JFSS No. 30 pp. 296-7 which in volumes 28-30 covers traditional music collected on the Isle of Man.
Thank you very much to John Kaneen for this correction.
Jon Boden sang The Good Old Way as the October 25, 2010 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day.
There is a YouTube video of Eliza Carthy & The Ratcatchers (Jon Boden, Ben Ivitsky and John Spiers)
singing The Good Old Way at Buxton Opera House in 2007:
Note that there are two other hymns with the same title The Good Old Way, Roud 12041 ; Ballad Index
AWG084A ; and Roud 16937 ; Ballad Index ChFRA093 .