I saw that Libba Cotten thread too, and checked it out before posting this one, but it seems more about her biography.

Great videos (including Libba's banjo version of Georgie Buck) but ARGH - both times he gets halfway into the story about how she came to write it and doesn't finish. I was fascinated by the story she was telling to Pete Seeger on the Rainbow Quest video, but just as it seems that some glimmer of the actual meaning was about to come up, Pete says, "You'd better start the song," so she never finishes. (Maybe he'd heard the story before?) In the Aly Bain interview she doesn't say much about the words, or if she does it's edited out.

I'm interested in knowing more about her brother Louis. I'd never heard that before, and it sounds like it has a connection. The words seem to imply an element of not wanting to be found. DO we know anything more about his story?

Dan