Wayfaring Stranger is a popular Southern US spiritual song.A reasonable approximation of the tune appears as "Judgment" in Ananias Davisson's Kentucky Harmony, 1816. It is related to the secular tunes "Man of Constant Sorrow", "East Virginia", "Silver Dagger", and "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies". The song appeared in White and King's 1844 Sacred Harp essentially in the form that we sing it today.The tune is structurally pentatonic, lacking the second and sixth scale degrees. Here's it's played as hexatonic, using the second as a passing tone. You can find all its notes on Dorian and Aeolian scales. Arguably, you'll get better use out of your fretboard real estate if you play it in a tuning intended for the Aeolian mode.It appears in 3/4 time in Denson and Broadman and in 4/4 time in Cooper's "BF White Sacred Harp".As a kid in the 1950s, we sang it in 3/4 time at the Baptist Church and in 4/4 time elsewhere. It's played here in 4/4 time at a tempo of 168.I play it with metal finger picks in noter-drone style on a Kudzu Patch Galax strung with 0.010" strings straight across.The dulcimer is tuned DDCC (in a single octave) with a reverse capo on the fourth fret of the outermost drone string, yielding a tuning of ADCC with A at a higher pitch than D and C. This tuning starts an Aeolian scale on the first fret of the paired melody strings.