This blog post is part of a larger series on popular hymn tunes in the public domain. ONE LICENSE also offers a Sacred Sounds podcast where you can learn more about sacred music, old and new. To listen to all episodes of Sacred Sounds, please visit https://media.rss.com/sacredsounds/feed.xml (or please click here).

In contrast to the public domain tunes we have discussed so far in our Utilizing Public Domain series, ST COLUMBA is a folk tune of unknown origin. There is no written record of who composed this melody or the circumstances of its creation. Instead, ST COLUMBA has been preserved for us by artist and antiquarian George Petrie. We will look at Petrie’s work more extensively in a moment, but let’s begin by noting the distinctive features of this tune.

Most churchgoers probably recognize ST COLUMBA through its association with Henry Baker’s text, “The King of Love My Shepherd Is,” or Edwin Hatch’s “O Breathe on Me, O Breath of God.” The melody is brief, unfolding in only sixteen measures, comprising two eight-measure phrases. Listeners quickly and easily gain familiarity with ST COLUMBA. The two phrases balance each other in length and harmony: the first phrase’s half cadence and the second phrase’s authentic cadence take the listener from tension to resolution in a short time.

The meter 8.7.8.7. is frequently used, allowing this tune to fit with many song texts. An 8.7.8.7. meter means that the tune accommodates a text with four lines, where the first line contains eight syllables, the second line contains seven, and so on. In other words, the rhythm, or long and short notes of melody, is ordered in such a way that a group of eight syllables and a group of seven syllables will fit in the first phrase, and then another group of eight and seven will fit in the second phrase. The regularity of this meter, built on the repeated alternation of quarter notes and half notes, can give listeners and musicians confidence. Moreover, the sustained half notes permit flexibility in adding or removing the occasional syllable to accommodate a wider range of texts.

ST COLUMBA’s melody is in a major key, rendering the melody “happy” to modern, Western ears. Almost exclusively scalar motion matches the simplicity of the rigidly repeating meter. The scale is only interrupted by neighbor-tone embellishments (notes directly above or below the note) and an arpeggiated major triad halfway through the second phrase. Such regularity offers singers comfort and facility in executing the melody.

Musicians (and worshippers) can thank George Petrie, the artist and Irish cultural historian, for preserving ST COLUMBA through the modern era. Petrie (1790-1866) was a landscape artist and academic essayist. In his contributions to journals like The Dublin Penny Journal and The Irish Penny Journal, he sought to document all aspects of Irish history and culture. Petrie also held offices in the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Royal Irish Academy.

Petrie did not turn his attention to music until later in life, when he founded the Society for the Preservation and Publication of the Melodies of Ireland in 1851. During his tenure with the society, Petrie solicited “airs,” or popular tunes, from the Irish public. He amassed a collection of approximately 1,000 melodies by 1855, and the collection grew to approximately 2,500 by the time C.V. Stanford published a collection in the early 20th Century. The most popular tune that Petrie documented is likely AIR FROM COUNTY DERRY, which most of us know as “Danny Boy.”

William Stokes, Petrie’s biographer, described Petrie’s method in collecting melodies like ST COLUMBA. A singer familiar with a melody would visit with Petrie and sing the melody a few measures at a time so that Petrie could pause to notate those measures. The singer would repeat the melodic fragment and correct Petrie’s notations as many times as required. In his organization of these melodies, Petrie pioneered the recognition of “tune families,” or melodies that were similar enough to have likely originated as the same melody and varied slightly as they were passed through time and space.

ST COLUMBA and Petrie’s work highlight a larger 19th-Century fascination with collecting the folk songs of various cultures. Literary scholars like Francis James Child, composers like Zoltán Kodály and Jean Sibelius, and folklorists like Alan Lomax all dedicated their careers to documenting folk music. The Romantic Era fostered discussion of nation-building and cultural transmission. The 19th-Century imagination was almost obsessed with forming national pasts through the reclamation of folk art and folklore. Thanks to these impulses, melodies like ST COLUMBA were preserved and standardized for further use through the centuries.

Featured image background photo, used with permission from Pexels. Photo by: Bsr gulluk: https://www.pexels.com/photo/wooden-bench-in-the-park-14107074/