Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)

Subject: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot
From: Fay
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 01:21 PM

Hello,

I have some origins for the song which i found on this site, but I couldn't find much about how it got into the rugby world and to the hight it is sung in that community today.

If anyone has facts or theories as to where the song has been and how it has been transmitted I would be very interested.

Thanks, Fay xx

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 01:57 PM

I dont know when it became a big rugby song. In 1962 it was already firmly established as a standard at post match pissups and other male social gatherings. It sat easily beside the more obviously obscene songs because of the rude gestures which were used to accompany the song. The words were never rude, the original spiritual was always sung.
   Earlier than that my memory doesnt go.

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 02:00 PM

Hi, Fay - This thread (click) is our main origins thread on "Swing Low" and related chariot spirituals, so maybe it would be good to keep the discussion on the spiritual in that thread.
Our information on the rugby song is scattered all over, and maybe it would be an idea to gather it the best of it together into this thread. Can somebody post some representative lyrics in this thread for the "Chariot" rugby song?
I added (rugby) to the title of this thread in a desperate attempt to avoid confusion.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: Gareth
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 03:26 PM

Joe, from my playing, and drinking days, the words were always as per the spiritual words, the mimmes, or actions wot accompanied them were not fit for gentile company.

Gareth

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 04:28 PM

We ran through some of this during the World Cup. I tried asking on a Rugby Board. My summary of the info I got back from there is here

Jon

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: greg stephens
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 04:35 PM

The minor words variation from the Paul Robeson version were to sing "a band of angels coming up behind me" instead of the old "a band of angels coming after me".
   This was to make the opportunity for an appropriate linked set of gestures for "COMING", "UP" and "BEHIND" which I will leave to the imagination.

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 22 Dec 03 - 04:39 PM

Should add that my own theory over its entry into the rugby world (rather than an England anthem) is through the days of community singing. It appears, for example, in the News Chronicle Song Book amongst a selection of spirituals.

Jon

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: Fay
Date: 03 Jan 04 - 09:58 AM

Thanks, I'll follow up the links... Ta Fay

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: Wotcha
Date: 04 Jan 04 - 01:50 AM

Also transferred from the rugby tradition of the "Third Half" and used as a closer of events by all expats (of whatever nationality) in the world of the Hash House Harriers ("The Drinking Club with a Running Problem") ... blame the Royal Selangor Club in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for starting that "sport" in 1938.

Cheers/ON ON,

Brian

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: GUEST,tom guest
Date: 04 Jan 04 - 07:19 AM

I wish rugby supporters would leave this beautiful song alone . I'm not concerned about the lewd miming so much as with the way they ruin the rhyme between low and chario' by pronouncing chariot as if they were BBC news readers .

Subject: RE: Origins: Swing Low Sweet Chariot (rugby)
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 05 Jan 04 - 06:24 AM

It used to get sung quite regularly (accompanied by the hand movements) in "The Prospect of Whitby", Wapping, London, during the 60's when the pub was a mecca for rugby song fans.