The Wayfaring Stranger (song)

"The Wayfaring Stranger" (also known as "Poor Wayfaring Stranger" or "I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger"), Roud 3339, is a well-known American folk and gospel song likely originating in the early 19th century[1] about a plaintive soul on the journey through life. As with most folk songs, many variations of the lyrics exist.

It has been speculated that "Wayfaring Stranger" may have been derived from "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow," a folk song from the Scottish Borders.[2] However, the fact that the two songs differ entirely in subject matter calls the theory into doubt.

According to the book, The Makers of the Sacred Harp, by David Warren Steel and Richard H. Hulan, the lyrics were published in 1858 in Bever's Christian Songster. This may have been the first time the song appeared in print, in English. Steel and Hulan suggest the song was derived from an 1816 German-language hymn, "Ich bin ein Gast auf Erden" by Isaac Niswander.[3]

During and for several years after the American Civil War, the lyrics were known as the Libby Prison Hymn.[4] This was because the words had been inscribed by a dying Union soldier incarcerated in Libby Prison, a notorious Confederate prison in Richmond, Virginia. It had been believed that the dying soldier had authored the song to comfort a disabled soldier, but since it had been published several years before the Civil War had started (and before Libby Prison existed), this was not the case.

Members of the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.[5]