To Canaan's Fair and Happy Land; Where My Possesion Lies

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of leading worship at a beautiful camp on top of Sand Mountain near the town of Pisgah in Northeast Alabama. The unique, place-out-of-time feel I got from this land made me finally pick up and read Salvation on Sand Mountain, Dennis Covington's brilliant account of snake-handling churches from the old Holiness tradition that can still be found on top of the mountain. Little did I know what I was in for as Covington took me on a journey to and through all aspects of the Southern American experience (something tells me I'm gonna be learning from this book for a LONG time).
Maybe the most fascinating element in the affair was Covington's account (borrowed from David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed) of how white European people wound up in the Smoky Mountains and Deep South in the first place:
"Fischer says that most of the immigrants who settled the Appalachians arrived in waves from North Britain during the middle of the 18th century...But unlike some eariler immigrants to America the Scotch-Irish were not fleeing religious persecution. Instead, their motives were primarily economic, a reaction to high rents, low wages, and scarcity of food. Their flight to America, though, suggested Biblical themes. On Jordan's Stormy Banks i Stand, and cast a wishful eye they would sing to Canaan's fair and happy land, where my possessions lie. I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land, oh who will come and go with me? I am bound for the promised land." (Salvation on Sand Mountain p. 84).
Upon reading this I nearly fell over in my chair. As a worship musician I have played that hymn literally hundreds of times. I often make the point to say while leading it that I want this hymn played at my funeral. Further, a few years ago I started doing this song with only a mandolin playing on the first verse and the rest of the instruments coming in later. There was just something about the tune that fit the mandolin so well. Now I see why! What perfect synergy that the hymn my ancestors sang as they worked their way through the crags and hollers of the Great Smoky Mountains particularly lends itself to one of THE instruments of the mountains; the personal instrument of Bill Monroe (the man who invented bluegrass music).
Quite honestly this struck a deep chord within me. These people are my ancestors (My mother's people came down from the mountains around Asheville, North Carolina; my father's from the cotton fields of West Alabama)! We were not well-to-do folks, we were drunks, headstrong renegades, fighters, misfits. In other words exactly the sort of people Jesus spent His time around. And now I know that they were singing as they came down those mountains. The same song I love to sing today. We are bound for the promised land.