Composition: Textual Rhyme Scheme (Continued)
Likewise, based on various contemporary collections of spirituals, it appears that specific popular phrases, lines, and couplets reappear often enough for scholars such as Southern to have named them ''wandering versesDefined as a refrain that was repeated in the verse of entirely different hymns.'' Consequently, their original settings are, not surprisingly, even harder to trace. Examples of such phrases include ''the lonesome valley,'' ''the New Jerusalem,'' and ''the ship of Zion'' (Southern 1997, 198). The writers who advocated a Western European origin to all spirituals pointed to these ''wandering verses'' and the presence of sometimes recognizable snippets from the popular hymns of writers such as Watts as further proof of their thesis. But since the Bible is the common source of most lyrics in both traditions, that connection is tenuous at best. And when there is a recognizable hymn (sung by White congregants) referenced in a spiritual, Southern refers to it as a ''refashioning'' of both the lyrics and motives of the original hymn (or hymns)-and not just an alternative version:
The spiritual is another song type [than a hymn] with its own text, music, and distinctive stylistic features. Typically, the melodies of the slave songs represent original composition rather than a borrowing of old tunes. Not that the slaves were averse to appropriating tunes for their improvised songs from other repertories of the period-popular songs, Anglo-American songs, and even hymns. But, as song collector Thomas W. Higginson pointed out, ''As they learned all their songs by ear, they often strayed into wholly new versions, which sometimes became popular, and entirely banished the others.'' In essence, the plantation songs were reshaped by the process of ''communal recreation'' into characteristic African American folk songs, no matter what the original sources of text and melodic materials.
(Southern 1997, 188-189).
In a similar vein, one of the first collectors of spirituals commented that African Americans keep ''exquisite time'' and ''do not suffer themselves to be daunted by any obstacle in the words. The most obstinate Scripture phrases or snatches from hymns they will force to do duty with any tune they please and will dash heroically through a trochaicMetrical patterns in poetry are called feet In English poetry, the definition of trochee is a type of metrical foot consisting of two syllables-the first is stressed and the second is an unstressed syllable. A line of poetry with this type of foot has a trochaic meter. tune at the head of a column of iambs 
SIDE NOTEMetrical patterns in poetry are called feet. An iamb, then, is a type of foot. The other feet are: trochees, anapests, dactyls, and spondees. Iambic pentameter-a line of poetry containing five iambs-is the most common meter in English poetry. An iamb is a metrical foot consisting of one short (or unstressed) syllable followed by one long (or stressed) syllable. with wonderful skill" (Allen 1995, iv).