Interesting!

The tune Joe gives differs in some ways from the one I heard from the Berea College student in 1955. There are enough similarities, though, to show it's related.

Guess we'll never know where Silver Burdett picked it up. The melody does seem to have entered the classical repertoire, and again, I have no idea how. I'm wondering if it became a choral number in colleges, deriving maybe from Berea's use of it?

I've sent an inquiry to the Berea archivist to see if I can turn up anything there.

Meanwhile it seems to be a hammer song roughly in the widespread family the stretches from "Nine Pound Hammer" to "Swannanoa Tunnel." The way I heard it, though, was a very slow lament, nothing like a hammer song.

The search goes on. I'd still like to know if there are more verses. My memory is that the student sang four or five stanzas.

Bob