The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #131308 Message #3103344
Posted By: Nathan in Texas
26-Feb-11 - 09:40 PM
Thread Name: Hymns - Play along
Subject: RE: Hymns - Play along
This week's offering, featuring mandolin, guitar, harmonica & piano, is "Life's Railway to Heaven" Words by M.E. Abbey; Music Charles D. Tillman, 1890.
Cyberhymnal says of the song; "The origin of this song is murky. Eliza R. Snow may have written the original lyrics, with M. E. Abbey (a Baptist minister in Georgia in the 1890s) supplying the chorus. There is a similar poem/hymn by Snow, called "Truth Reflects upon Our Senses," which Tillman put to this same tune in 1909. At any rate, Abbey and Tillman copyrighted "Life's Railway to Heaven" in 1890. It has long been a favorite in the railroading community."
Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong by Norm Cohen (University of Illinois, 1981) adds the following information:
The lyrics are modeled after a poem by William Shakespeare Hays, who wrote such standards as "The Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane," and "Molly Darling" and "The Drummer Boy of Shiloh." Hays' poem (published in 1886) begins:
Life is like a crooked railroad, And the engineer is brave, Who can make a trip successful From the cradle to the grave, There are stations all along it, Where at almost any breath You'll be "flagged" to stop your engine By the messenger of death. You may run the grades of trouble, Many days and years of ease, But time may have you side-tracked By the switchmen of disease. You may cross the bridge of manhood, Run the tunnel dark of strife, Having God for your conductor On the lightning train of life. Always mindful of instructions Watchful duty never lack; Keep your hand upon the throttle And your eye upon the track.
The earliest known recording is on an Edison cylinder by Edward Allen and Charles Hart about 1918.
"A grim hint of the turn-of-the-century popularity of 'Life's Railway to Heaven' occurs in Gene Fowler's account of the 1902 trial of Tom Horn of Cheyenne for the murder of Willie Nickell. Charlie and Frank Irwin, two friends of Tom, offer to sing him a last song as he waits at the gallow to be hanged. Horn requests 'Keep Your Hand upon the Throttle and Your Eye upon the Rail,' and the brothers oblige with two and a half stanzas, close to the original Abbey-Tillman text." (p. 615)