Talk:The Wayfaring Stranger (song)

[added Joan Ba(e)z]
Joan Bez has recorded this song as well. Adding her name to the lit of performers.

Fair use rationale for Image:Wayfaring Stranger - Jack White.ogg
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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:46, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

["This Song is COOL"]
This Song is COOL —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.0.185.9 (talk) 20:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

["Removed 'Regardless..."]
Removed "Regardless of its origins, it is a hauntingly beautiful piece of music." 210.84.47.58 (talk) 01:33, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Spelling Correction
The artist listed above as Joan Bez, appears to be a typo. The folk singer Joan Baez has recorded many traditional songs in her long career including Barbara Allen, Lonesome Road, (Poor) Wayfarin' Stranger, and Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Kwgmatthies (talk) 15:23, 19 October 2010 (UTC) kwgmatthies

British?
Re: ""The Wayfaring Stranger" (aka "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" or "I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger"), Roud 3339, is a well-known British[citation needed] spiritual/folk song":

Just looking up this song a few months ago in a forties collection compiled by the John and Alan Lomax with musical notes and arrangements by Charles and Ruth Seeger. As I recall, the editors, who go to some length tracking its history, distinctly label this as American. I may return with an edit and a citation. TheScotch (talk) 23:25, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

The melody and sound of this song would make the origin obviously American...Appalachian or negro spiritual originally. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.116.159.30 (talk) 16:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)


 * It's American according to every source I consulted (I added one cite). It first appeared in print in the U.S., in B.F. White's 1844 Sacred Harp collection, but most writers agree it was sung long before that.  The editors of the Fireside Folk Song Book say "sung widely in the southern Appalachians after the Revolutionary War" but do not source their claim. Antandrus  (talk) 02:17, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Jack White Template
Why is there a Jack White Template in an article about a traditional American song? He can not be the author. There is a long list of people who have made recordings of the song. Why select one of them for a template? Shouldn't it be removed? 84.23.155.84 (talk) 13:53, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Good point - I've removed it. noq (talk) 15:00, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Emmylou Harris Header and Template
Same as above why clutter the article with disproportionate references to any Artist? Maybe a section about known recordings would be better surely its been done on other songs. If someone then wants to create a page dedicated to that version, its recording or chart history thats fine but surely this song is a much recorded traditional that should not be appropriated by any one artist. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.101.32.61 (talk) 17:13, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Early appearances in print
The lyrics to Poor Wayfaring Stranger appeared in print in a song entitled "Pilgrim's Song," selecton #126 in Fenner, Thomas P., *Religious Folk Songs of the Negro as Sung on the Plantations* by the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute. Hampton, VA, USA: The Institute press, 1909. There are links to PDF versions of this book online.

The 1991 edition of *The Sacred Harp* (Bremen, GA, USA: Sacred Harp Publishing Co., Inc.) uses the lyrics in hymn #457, WAYFARING STRANGER, PM and attributes the lyrics to Bever's Christian Songster, 1858, which can be found online here: https://archive.org/details/christiansongste00beve.

According to these citations, I would classify The Wayfaring Stranger as both a "Negro Spiritual" and a "White Spiritual."

I don't know how to add this information correctly to the entry, and I'm not invested in the learning curve involved, but if somebody else would like to incorporate these facts, here they are.

I do ongoing research in early appearances of old folk music and have found numerous other examples of song lyrics that have in print earlier than cited in Wikipedia entries (and other reputable sources such as the folk and traditional songs online database maintained by Cal State-Fresno, and I would be happy to contribute to the Wikipedia entries if I don't have to do the coding. But if anybody likes to discuss old folk music, and Negro Spirituals in particular (my current area of inquiry), and is willing to do the data entry correctly--I would be happy to offer information I have. I just don't know how to set up links and footnotes and things like that.

respectfully submitted

Khrysso Heart LeFey, USA (talk) 23:33, 12 October 2015 (UTC) Khrysso Heart LeFey khrysso-at-gmail-dot-com

Some items still need citations
List-items (that do not have embedded links to other articles) really ought to have their own references, IMO, but many do not. Acwilson9 (talk) 22:49, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Justification needed for DO NOT ADD warning
Re:


 * DO NOT ADD an entry here unless the related article contains more than a single line about this song. Not all recordings are notable and if the related article does not contain more than a simple tracklisting, it is not notable.

If an artist has their own wikipedia page, they are notable. Can we get a definition for list stuffing? Kire1975 (talk) 00:43, 10 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The section is for notable versions - not versions recorded by notable people. There have been a very large number of people that have included it as an album track and if you include them as "notable versions" then this article becomes overwhelmed by a list of people that does not add anything to the understanding of the subject. There should be a reference to show each version being talked about rather than just a track listing. noq (talk) 09:21, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

didn't ed sheeran also play it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buAzVkcH4YI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Enw3-UlRU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbGPwEytz98 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2603:6011:9600:52C0:C968:6050:DDB:EF6F (talk) 02:33, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

German Original
I would like to include a youtube link to the German original of this song. This sems like a legitimate use of youtube. 24.108.18.81 (talk) 02:14, 23 February 2024 (UTC)

Tv show
Used as theme song in 1960s TV show “Then Came Bronson”. 72.55.238.216 (talk) 02:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)