The hymnals of the twentieth century church bear evidence of their long and varied heritage; most Protestant hymnals contain adaptations of music from Gregorian chant to contemporary music and representative pieces from any number of denominational and geographical groups. Each piece in the hymnal, furthermore, may have undergone a substantial history of adapting and re-arrangement, even when the attribution and source seem clear. Several Christian churches, for instance, include among their hymnals a rich and affective four-part hymn with the text "Drop, drop slow tears," which evokes the tears of Mary Magdalene wetting the feet of Jesus (Luke 7:38); the great Jacobean composer Orlando Gibbons receives the credit for writing the hymn in 1623. Yet it may be that only the barest vestige of his pen survives in it.

The text itself, first of all, bears only passing relationship to Gibbons. The poem "Drop, drop slow tears" was written by Phineas Fletcher and published in his 1633 collection Poetical Miscellanies. Fletcher, a pious poet in the spirit of Spenser and Milton, may not have even known Gibbons, though both served the church at King's College, Cambridge. Some later editor adapted the devotional poem to a melody and bass line from a 1623 hymnary, and some other person gave it the four-voiced arrangement sung today. Gibbons' music originally contributed but a melody voice and a keyboardist's basso continuo part.

Even the music to Drop, drop is difficult to trace back to Gibbons. The 1623 publication The Hymnes and Songs of the Church, perhaps the first true hymnal for the Church of England, does contain some music by Gibbons. Publisher and editor George Wither seems to have convinced Gibbons to contribute a number of tunes to his collection, either because Wither had a royal patent to print the volume, or because Gibbons wished to counterbalance some of the wretched music Wither had already published in 1621 for the same pious purpose. To Gibbons' score or so of hymns, Wither apparently added some less-than-brilliant "corrections" during editing, and in one case replaced a Gibbons song (No. 47, A song of joy unto the Lord) with his own adaptation (No. 46, As on the night before this blessed morn); it is unfortunately this tune that traveled the long road to our hymnals.

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