My friend Mrs. Lev has been enchanted with folk music since she took guitar lessons in Chicago from Frank Hamilton as a young housewife in the 1960s. She was one of the founding members of the Sacramento Folk Music Club after she moved to California, and she still comes to singarounds in the Sacramento area. At our song circle last night, we sang "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and Marge had us sing a couple verses that she found in the Studs Terkel book titled Will the Circle Be Unbroken which deals with the subject of death. I'd like to post a segment from that book, an interview with Doc Watson:

POSTSCRIPT (page 240)
STUDS: When I think of you and Merle, I think of the old hymn, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?"

DOC: I've always loved that song. It's an old hymn, long before A.P. Carter did his arrangement of it. Let me give you the lyrics that was probably in an old hymn book:
We have loved ones gone to glory
Whose dear forms we often miss
When we close our earthly story
Shall we join them in our bliss

Will the circle be unbroken, by and by, by and by,
There's a better home awaiting far beyond the starry sky.
In this other version, the last verse says:[sings]
We can picture happy gatherings around the fireside long ago
And recall the tearful partings when they left us here below.
It's just as real as life for those who believe. Whoever wrote it was inspired to write it because of the way they felt about life and death and the hereafter.[sings]
Oft they told us in our childhood of that happy land above
Pointing to the dying savior as they told us of his love
Will the circle be unbroken by and by, by and by...
I may do another gospel album sometime before I lose the old voice and age takes the vocals down to where I can't sing. I have some allergies, but I told the boys on the festival, I said, "I can still croak 'em out pretty good, boys." [Laughs] I love to sing gospel and hymns I heard when I was in church. I get a lot of enjoyment out of that.

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From Wikipedia:

Eddy Merle Watson (February 8, 1949 - October 10, 1985) was an American guitarist and folk singer. He was best known for the performances he did with his father, Doc Watson. They played and recorded albums together for 15 years until Merle's death in a tractor accident.

Arthel Lane "Doc" Watson (March 3, 1923 – May 29, 2012) was an American guitarist, songwriter and singer of bluegrass, folk, country, blues and gospel music. Watson won seven Grammy awards as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Louis "Studs" Terkel (May 16, 1912 – October 31, 2008) was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for "The Good War", and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.