A Cross on the Mountain

"A Cross on the Mountain" is a gospel song written by Marybeth Callan and Dale Whitcomb and recorded by Callan with the Pruett Brothers for the 1993 charity compilation Swift Hooves.^[1]

Production

It is a slow, tender song in the 1950s Southern gospel manner for piano, organ, acoustic guitar and upright bass, without drums. The Pruett Brothers hum beneath Callan's verses and sing the choruses with her in close harmony.^[1]

Themes

The song describes believers worshipping in secret in the mountains during the Soviet persecutions. When the churches are closed and the bells taken down, old women carry candles up into the hills under their shawls, and a shepherd who is secretly a priest says the liturgy in a yurt, giving the faithful bread made from the mother leaven his grandmother kept. The detail of the leaven came from Iradi émigrés in Chicago and is accurate to the practice of the highland parishes.^[1]

Lyrics

Verse
When they closed up the churches and they took down the bells
And they nailed shut the doors on the hill
The old folks went walking up into the hills
With their candles hid under their shawls

Chorus (lead with the Pruett Brothers)
There's a cross on the mountain, high above the snow
Where the soldiers don't climb and the cold rivers flow
And we'll pray there together till the long night is gone
There's a cross on the mountain, and it's leading us on

Verse
There's a priest with no collar who herds sheep by day
And at night in a yurt he kneels down to pray
With a loaf from the leaven his grandmother kept
He gives bread to the faithful while the valley has slept

Chorus (lead with the Pruett Brothers)
There's a cross on the mountain, high above the snow
Where the soldiers don't climb and the cold rivers flow
And we'll pray there together till the long night is gone
There's a cross on the mountain, and it's leading us on

Bridge
Oh Lord, it's been long, and the winters are cold
But the young learn the prayers from the lips of the old
And someday the bells will ring out in the town
Till then, on the mountain, we'll gather around

Final chorus
There's a cross on the mountain, high above the snow
Where the soldiers don't climb and the cold rivers flow
And we'll pray there together till the long night is gone
There's a cross on the mountain, and it's leading us on

Outro
There's a cross on the mountain
Leading us on

References

1. ^ Talas State University Press (2018). Steppe Ballads: American Song and Iradi Country-Folk, 1980–2010, pp. 71.