In the thread Eve links above, it's clear the song was around long before the recording industry:

From: Loyal Jones, Minstrel of the Appalachians: The Story of Bascom Lamar Lunsford (1984; University of Kentucky Press, 2002, p. 220; with music); 'I [Lunsford] heard this in 1903 at a Children's Day Program in a Negro congregation in the Yadkin Valley, Wilkes County, N.C.'"(p. 157)

Other documentation in that thread further shows it's a very early song. Since it was used as a work song (rowing, etc.), that probably means it started as a spiritual. (Please, USE the Spirituals permathread!)

The more you listen to the spirituals that are documented as authentic spirituals, the more you hear songs that you realize later became blues or some variant of "gospel" you might have heard on a commercial recording. When these adaptations got recorded, whoever recorded it often grabbed a songwriting or arranging copyright, and thus established a toehold in the commercial music economy by making fair use of songs they had heard from their cradles. We confuse ourselves when we assume that they sat down one day and actually composed the song. As you hear the spirituals, you realize these commercial songs mostly floated up out of people's bellies, memories, and souls.

Stylistic features attributed to particular performers (especially the guitar work that fascinates us today) are actually representations of what they'd heard sung-- vocalizations improvised originally and then folk-processed into traditional parts of songs.

As an example, I always thought Gary Davis wrote some really cool gospel. Well, he didn't. He applied what he had heard, in so many cases I have found, that I suspect that's true of ALL his gospel work. "Wrote" is a pretty loose term, it turns out.


So "origins" questions can be, "what did this first mean" or "what is the earliest recording" or "when was it written down" or "who has copyright and why" or "who collected it in the field and when" or "who made the first dollar on this"......... And in our own time, "who recorded it" usually means vinyl. But to me it means WAX-- field recordings. Cuz it's FOLK music, whether it later got commercial enough to catch others' attention, or not.

At a certain point you stop documenting these relationships between spirituals and later, commercial songs, because there are too many, and there are so many versions, that it all finally just comes across as music to be enjoyed and taken into oneself.


Back to this song's possible meanings. As I've posted numerous times (please USE the permathread!), spirituals often blended several Scriptural themes into one song. One theme mnight appear in the call part of the verse, another in the response, a third in the chorus, or even a third and fourth in a secondary call-response pattern. (The songs also were used to transmit Bible lessons to non-readers.)

The Scripture references can be precise Bible quotation or half-remembered incorrect quotes, or mixed-together images evocative of both Christian and tribal spiritualities. Like the Native Americans, a lot more was going on for black folks spiritually than mere words can accurately capture-- thus the music, to transcend the words and reflect or express what was happening in the soul.

One of Lunsford's verses includes: root of a tender tree. Does this seem to suggest that the wine is flowing from the tree of life? (Not to be confused with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil where that apple came from). Perhaps the reference is also about drinking from the living stream that Jesus talks about with the woman at the well.

Other versions/verses tell that Christ was there four thousand years ago, Drinkin' of the wine.

That would be a Creation reference.

~Susan