In his 'Land Where the Blues Began', Lomax also gave a version from the singing of Will Stark of Mississippi. It is differs sufficiently from the above versions to warrant posting. I meant to do this when the thread was on foot, but I must have lost my 'round tuit'.

TRAVELIN' MAN

We'll tell you folks about a travellin' man
Was born in Tennessee.
Made his livin' stealin' chickens
And everything else he see.
If the police got after him,
He certainly got over the road.
Don't care how the freight train ran,
That nigger would get on board.

Chorus:
Travelin' man,
He certainly was a travelin' man,
Travelin' man,
That was ever in the land.
Travelin' man,
He was known for miles around.
He didn't get enough,
He didn't get enough,
Till the police shot him down,
Until the police shot him down.

Sent this travelin' man to the spring
To bring a pail of water.
The distance he had to go
Was two miles and a quarter.
He went and got the water all right,
But he stumbled and fell down.
He went back to the house and got another pail
Caught the water before it hit the ground.
Travelin' man …

They caught this travelin' man down in Savannah, Georgia,
Sentenced him to be hung.
The people all in this town
Thought the nigger's time had come.
Allowed him three minutes to say a speech,
They was carried away in tears.
He crossed his legs and walled his eyes
And sailed through the air.
Travelin' man …

The police took a Winchester rifle
And shot the nigger right through the head.
The nigger come tumblin' down to the ground,
Everybody thought he was dead.
They sent him down South where his mother had gone,
She was carried away in tears.
The opened up the coffin for to see her son
And the fool had disappeared.
Travelin' man...

Source: from the singing of Will Stark, Coahoma County, Mississippi. Quoted in Alan Lomax 'The Land Where the Blues Began' Minerva 1995, pp 194-196.

In relation to the second last stanza, Lomax referred to 'Drums and Shadows: Survival Stories Among the Georgia Coastal Negroes' Savannah Writers Project, WPA, Uni of Georgia Press 1940. J.D. Elder, a Tobagonian wiseman, was raised on stories about how some of his ancestors, grown weary of their hard plantation existence, put corncobs in their armpits and, as they uttered words of magic, rose into the sky and sped of east toward home. The passage goes on to detail how the oldest slaves on the Georgia Sea Islands reportedly witnessed such an incident among recently arrived Africans. The foreman cruelly whipped them and they 'stick duh hoe in duh fiel, riz up in the sky, and tun heself intuh buzzuds an fly right back to Africa'. Another witness remembered that they downed their hoes, danced their way into the air, moving in a circle, faster and faster till 'dey riz up and fly lak a bud back to Africa'. [Lomax 'Land Where the Blues Began' p 195].

Lomax also made this comment:

Like their ancestors, who had herded cattle and hunted game on foot, blacks in the Old South depended on fleetness of foot to get them out of trouble, away from the walking boss, the patrollers, the high sheriff, and the lynch mob. Br'er Rabbit was their first hero, the Travelin' Man their next.

--Stewie.