Lyr. Add: ROARING RIVER
(Red River Plantation, c. 1850's)

Harper's creek and roarin' ribber,
Thar, my dear, we'll live forebber;
Den we'll go to de Ingin nation,
All I want in dis creation,
Is pretty little wife and big plantation.

Chorus
Up dat oak and down dat ribber,
Two overseers and one little nigger.

With score.
Fiddle tune (?) described as being sung accompanied by patting.
Solomon Northrup, 1853, "Twelve Years a Slave,: The Narrative of Solomon Northrup, a Citizen of New York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841 and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana," Derby and Miller, Auburn, NY.

This song could have been posted with the other variants, but the mention of 'patting' is the reason I have placed it here.
Reproduced with score in Dena J. Epstein, 1977, "Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, Black Folk Music to the Civil War," p. 151.