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sister r. mildred barker - on learning songs lyrics

well, as a child i loved to sing, and i would sing almost anything i heard, and when i was hearing these old shaker songs, it attracted me. probably the easy rhythm and words were a great attraction, too. and then i tried to learn every one that i heard, it would be sort of a passion with me to see how many i could learn

i heard a great many from elder harriet coolbroth, and also, as i grew older, from sister lucinda taylor. at the laundry, we used to get her into the ironing room and get her in front of one of the big ironing tablеs, and as she got older, i think she was about 85 or 86 yеars old, and we’d ask her to sing songs to us, and she was kinda shy. she’d say, “you don’t want me to sing to you.” and we’d say, “we do. we want to learn a song.” so she’d teach us songs, and one of the songs i learned from her which i especially remember was the anthem “i looked and the lamb stood on mount zion” and she also taught us at that time what should be the theme of the passing hour, what should be the measure, the sound, the strain, and then we’d get her to show us some of the early dances which we never saw

and one special one, which was most beautiful, was “the heavenly father’s march,” which she could do. she was so graceful, and she had a voice just like a bird, beautiful voice even at that extreme age. so she really enjoyed those singing periods as much as we did

and then i went on to learn every song that i could. i couldn’t learn them from the books because i didn’t understand the latin notation, which was the shakers’ way of noting the songs and the m+n+scripts, and so we just learned them from hearing other people sing them

- sister r mildred barker lyrics

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