Origins: Mother In The Graveyard

Subject: Origins: Mother's In The Graveyard
From: MickyMan
Date: 27 Oct 18 - 07:35 PM

I've seen several Youtubes of this song, one by 1960s Vermont folksinger Margaret MacArtur, and a more recent rendition by "Anna and Elizabeth".    There's nothing in the database here, though. Does anybody know the origin, or have the words to share?

I'm going to try and make a link below



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Z-ngeXDBM&list=PL6c0TZTqQXAxFJBHDUYHENcfjthDU_4XW

Mother In The Graveyard - Margaret MacArthur

Subject: RE: Origins: Mother's In The Graveyard
From: Stewie
Date: 27 Oct 18 - 08:50 PM

The only note in the insert sheet for Anna & Elizabeth's 'the invisible comes to us' CD is:

'10. Mother in the Graveyard: Hildreth Brown, Brattleboro, Vermont; recorded by Margaret McArthur, November 20, 1961'.

--Stewie.

Subject: RE: Origins: Mother's In The Graveyard
From: RTim
Date: 27 Oct 18 - 09:09 PM

That just about says it all.....

Tim Radford

Subject: RE: Origins: Mother's In The Graveyard
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Oct 22 - 04:50 PM

You can read about the origins on this website
https://vtfolklifearchive.org/collections/items/show/943

Subject: ADD: Mother In The Graveyard
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Oct 22 - 03:15 AM

Margaret MacArthur's Folksongs of Vermont was on Sandy and Caroline Paton's Folk-Legacy label, and Sandy made sure very album had good notes. The album (and notes) are available at Smithsonian Folkways.

Band 5: MOTHER IN THE GRAVEYARD
MacArthur: A Georgia song, sung to me in Brattleboro, Vermont, by Hildreth Brown of Hancock, New Hampshire. She learned it from her aunt, Caroline Lewis Gordon, who had learned it from slaves on the Flint River Plantation in Georgia.

MOTHER IN THE GRAVEYARD

Mother in the graveyard, and I'm on the ground,
Look for me.
Mother in the graveyard, and I'm on the ground,
Look for me.
And I want God's bosom to be my pillow.
Hide me over in the Rock of Ages,
Look for me.

I am a-climbin' Jacob's Ladder, look for me,
I am a-climbin' Jacob's Ladder
And I want God's bosom to be my pillow,
Hide-me over in the Rock of Ages,
Look for me.

Drive the chariot to my door, look for me,
Drive the chariot to my door, look for me.
Drive the chariot to my door
And I want God's bosom to be my pillow,
Hide me over in the Rock of Ages,
Look for me.

Oh when you see Brother Peter when you get to the Kingdom,
Look for me,
Oh when you see Brother Peter when you get to the Kingdom,
And I want God's bosom to be my pillow,
Hide me over in the Rock of Ages,
Look for me.


As far as I can see, the song is not in either Roud or the Traditional Ballad Index.


Recording by Anna and Elizabeth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owl6pZc0zlI

There's a terrific article about the song at the Website of Sing Out! Magazine: https://singout.org/mother-in-the-graveyard/

Subject: RE: Origins: Mother In The Graveyard
From: Matthew Edwards
Date: 20 Oct 22 - 05:58 PM

Thanks Joe for updating this thread; I've been singing this haunting song since I heard Anna and Elizabeth perform it on their CD. The Sing Out! article by Patrick Blackman does some brilliant digging into the roots of the song in the antebellum culture of enslaved African-Americans.

What Patrick Blackman missed however is following the trail of the song to Vermont where Margaret MacArthur recorded it from Hildreth Brown in 1961. This website Women of Berlin NH explains that Hildreth Brown and her aunt Caroline Lewis Gordon (Mrs Orton B Brown) were respectively the granddaughter and daughter of the Confederate General John B. Gordon who had owned the "ancestral plantation Flint River Plantation" referred in Margaret MacArthur's notes.

Caroline Lewis Gordon was born in 1871 and wrote about her postbellum youth in Georgia in an unpublished book from which Hildreth Brown published excerpts in The Georgia Review, Vol.14, No.1 (Spring 1960) which can be read through JSTOR* at The Georgia Review: Plantation Life with General John B. Gordon. In these extracts Gordon describes Beechwood, the fourteen thousand acre plantation on the Flint River near Reynolds in southern Georgia, and how she collected spirituals and dance songs from the "Negroes" on this plantation. She sang these songs for her [white] friends and in public performances until her marriage. It is this collection of songs that she passed on to her niece Hildreth Brown, who sang them for Margaret MacArthur.

The songs, including Mother in the Graveyard, can thus be dated back to at least the 1880s or 1870s to African Americans who were formerly slaves, or descended from slaves, owned by the Gordon family. The songs were preserved by the Gordon family, but this does go to show some of the complex racial and cultural history behind them.

There is a lot more to add, especially about General John B. Gordon, but that can wait for another post.

Matthew Edwards

* It is worth registering for a JSTOR personal account for free online access to some of their content.