folksongs about death

Subject: looking for folksongs about death
From: Kris
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 12:04 AM

I'm researching American folksongs about death which would reflect attitudes, beliefs etc. of the culture they came from. These could be British, American Indian, Negro and White Spirituals, Hispanic and European folksongs sung in rural America. I am interested in any folksongs - lyrics and melody inthis category. Do you know any songs or can you suggest resources ?

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Joe Offer
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 12:25 AM

Well, Kris, if I read the database keyword list correctly, we have 405 songs about death. The ordinary way to search for a category would be to put @death in the search box on the upper right corner of this page, but I'll give you a shortcut. If you click here, you'll get a list of all the songs we have on that topic.
You may also want to check The Ballad Index (click here) for historical information about the songs you find.
Good luck with your research. If you come up with songs or information we don't have here, please come back and share them with us.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From:
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 04:49 AM

If you can get hold of the video "Ledgends of Country Blues Guitar" (Vol I--It has no vol no; but a vol II came out later), Vestapol Videos, listen to the last piece. "Death Has No Mercy in This Land" sung by Rev. Garry Davis as a very old man.

Murray

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From:
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 07:29 AM

What's that one about isn't it grand boys to be bloody well dead?

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Frank in the swamps
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 07:39 AM

If the story I heard is true, Jelly Roll Morton was convinced his musical talent derived from the fact his grandmother sold his soul to the devil. The poor fellow supposedly died in terror, sweating on his deathbed, convinced he could feel the flames of hell. It may not be a song about death, but it was certainly a folk belief related to music. Hmm, what happens when the Puritan "ethic" meets African musical joy?

Frank i.t.s.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: The Shambles
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 12:26 PM

How about 'A Little Stream of Whiskey.

Subject: Lyr Add: A JUG OF THIS^^
From: Alice
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 02:44 PM

One of the first that came to my mind is "Jug Of This". It is in the database under @drink and @age, attributed to Fairport Convention, with the title "Ye Marners All". Fans of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem would recall it as "Jug of This", a song appropriate to a wake.

JUG OF THIS

Ye mourners all as you pass by,
Come in and drink if you are dry,
Just call your drinks and think not amiss,
And pop your nose in a jug of this.

Ye tipplers all, if you've half a crown,
You're welcome all, for to sit down.
Just call your drinks and think not amiss,
And pop your nose in a jug of this.

When I am old and can scarcely crow,
With a long grey beard, and a head that's bald.
Crown my desire, and fulfill my wish,
A pretty young girl, and a jug of this.

When I am in my grave and dead,
And all my sorrows are past and fled,
Transport me then into a fish,
And let me swim in a jug of this.

Another related to wakes and funerals, the obvious, Rosin the Beau (or Bow).

alice in montana

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Alice
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 02:54 PM

In looking for another song to add to this thread, I found this website in Japan of hymns (lyrics and midi) in English, Japanese, and Korean.

http://www.ylw.mmtr.or.jp/~johnkoji/hymn/index.html

alice in montana

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Kris
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 06:20 PM

Thank you to all who responded to my request for help. Any folksongs of American Indians revealing their views of death; also Hispanic ??

Subject: Lyr Add: THROW MY BODY ANYWHERE^^
From: Barry Finn
Date: 26 Sep 98 - 08:22 PM

From the Georgia Sea Islands comes a song from slave times on the Plantations, when the slaves were discarded after falling down on the job.

Throw My Body Anywhere

Throw my body anywhere, in that ol field
Throw my body anywhere, in that ol field

Don't care where you throw me, in that ol field
Don't care where you throw me, in that ol field

Go down to the levee, in that ol field
Go down to the levee, in that ol field

So long as Jesus loves me, in that old field
So long as Jesus loves me, in that ol field

Barry

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: belter
Date: 28 Sep 98 - 04:02 PM

Souvenirs
Pritty Polly
Ceader Forest
Chocolate Chip Cockies
Colorado Trail
From Hear On Up
Cannan's Land
Tittanic
Fair Well To the Fishes
Pritty Boy Floyd
Joe Hill's will
The Dove
Well Met
Matty Groves
Greenland Wale Fisheries
Step It Out Mary
Mrs. Adlams Angles
Places I Remember
Abdulla and Ivan
Young Stranger
Pistle Packen' Mama
Old Blue
Devil Went Down To Gorga
Were Have All The Flowers gone
Rangers Camand
Willie More
John Henry
Reble Soldier
Hard Times
Smuglers Blues
Barbra Allen
The Bird
Grampaw Was a Carpenter
American Pie
The Carpenter
Make Me a Pallet
Johnny I Hardly New Ya
The Sailors Prayer
For songs reflecting aditutes about death, I'm posting the first page of my soung list with a few nonaplicable titles removed. I wonder what a head shrincer would make of that.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Bruce O.
Date: 28 Sep 98 - 05:49 PM

The 18th century Cherokee death song, Alknomook, is on my website.

Others:
Death and the Lady
The Flowers of the Forest
Several Child ballads.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Ferrara
Date: 28 Sep 98 - 08:31 PM

Have you looked at spirituals? Here are a few:
Death Ain't You Got No Shame
I Know Moonlight, I know Starlight
I Don't Want to be Buried in the Storm
Deep River

From white gospel:
Angel Band
Gathering Flowers for the Master's Bouquet
The City Foursquare
Will There Be Any Stars in My Crown

Don't know if you can get hold of any of these. How much of a hurry are you in?

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From:
Date: 29 Sep 98 - 04:18 AM

'What's the Life of a Man' is in the DT. - Susanne

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Jon W.
Date: 29 Sep 98 - 10:40 AM

Lots of cowboy songs - "Bury me not on the lone prarie", "Streets of Laredo" etc.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Bill in Alabama
Date: 29 Sep 98 - 11:13 AM

Going Down The Valley Meeting in the Air Willow Garden (Rose Connally) Hobo's Last Letter Little Streams of Whiskey Supper Time Old Shep Utah Carroll Hobo's Meditation When They Ring Those Golden Bells You Must Walk That Lonesome Valley

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Max
Date: 29 Sep 98 - 12:15 PM

O'Death

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Macha
Date: 20 Apr 04 - 07:00 PM

I am also looking for songs about death. I found: The Irish Ballad, Two Sisters, Turn Turn Turn and Death and the lady.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: GUEST,Anne Croucher
Date: 20 Apr 04 - 07:44 PM

These songs all have a death or deaths, or shipwreck, or are about dying or what might come after

Lyke wake dirge, Two Cawbies (new slain knight)The Edmund Fitzgerald No man's land, The leaves they grow green, Three score and ten, Ellen Vannen, Fiddlers Green, Hanging on the old barbed wire, Cold blows the wind, The gypsies warning (dark eyed stranger) Grandfather's clock, when cannon are roaring, How stands the glass around, Here's to the next man to die, Danny Deever, The Broom blooms bonny, Young Edwin(Lowlands low)

Anne

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Apr 04 - 08:11 PM

Enter - death - no caps, quotes or marks - in the Lyrics and Knowledge Search blank at the top of the page. More songs surface than you can bury in a month of funerals.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: LindsayInWales
Date: 20 Apr 04 - 08:11 PM

this thread suddenly took me back to 1950s and the Brownies, just a few lines from a song I remember

We're the men of the old Dun Cow -
All of us are red men
Feathers in our head men
Down among the dead men
Pow wow, pow wow

oh, and what about "She's Like The Swallow" ..? Sung in school in the 1960s...any help?

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: LindsayInWales
Date: 20 Apr 04 - 08:17 PM

ps I seem to remember also a negro song about "Mas'er's In The Cold, Cold Ground...?"

and later, Cat Stevens'"Lady D'Arbanville"
The Who's "Pictures Of Lily"

a music hall song, "If Those Lips Could Only Speak"

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: BanjoRay
Date: 20 Apr 04 - 08:42 PM

I heard Carl Jones and Beverly Smith sing this a week ago at the Sore Fingers Summer School in the Cotswolds. They got it from the Blue Sky Boys. It's superb - if anyone needs to hear it, I could make an MP3 and mail it

Someone's Last Day

This morning the sun in its beauty arose
To drive night's dark shadows away
To loved ones the setting will sadly disclose
It is someone - someone's last day

Chorus
It is someone someone's last day (very last day)
With its moments sliding away (slip-sliding away)
The bright golden sunset will surely disclose
It is someone - someone's last day

Someone is now nearing the dark river stream
where billows assuredly (azurely?) display
And soon will be severed this life's serious theme
It is someone - someones last day

Chorus

Oh waste not these moments so precious and bright
for nothing their loss can repay
and someone will never behold morning light
It is someone - someone's last day

Chorus twice

Cheers
Ray

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: GUEST,Andy
Date: 20 Apr 04 - 08:50 PM

Hey Kris

I know it's a bit of an outsiders question, me being new and all, but Why?

I guess it's for a thesis or book but why the interest in death as reflected by songs in popular culture?

For example, you could have chosen birth or marriage or anything. Go on, I'm intrigued.

My suggestion is "if you see me comin', better step aside.
Other men did and so other men died" Pretty straightforward.

Cheers

Andy

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: EBarnacle
Date: 21 Apr 04 - 08:56 AM

There is a CD entitled Phillip Hole, The Singing Gravedigger, available from Rick Nestler of 1128 Old Liberty Road, Monticello, NY. Contents include: Phillip Hole, Isn't it grand, Father's Grave, the Old Woman fro Wexford, Tom Lerher's Irish Ballad, I Wish they'd do it now, Old Rosin the Bow, Fiddler's Green, Two Reasons, Yarmouth towne, Hangin' Johnnie, Sam Hall, Black Jack Davy, High Barbary, The Mermaid, Wild rover

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Macha
Date: 21 Apr 04 - 03:58 PM

Claire In Heaven

Sung by Capercaillie

I was no more than three days old
Too young to speak, too young to count my toes
I think of fields where I might run
This moral twilight I was plucked from
Up here we have no goals
You tear your hearts, you claw your souls
I wonder at this life that passed me by
But still I smile

Chorus:
Although I'm not with you down there
I sit alone up here and stare
It's me, my name is Claire
Claire in heaven
Claire in heaven

I wait for my next life patiently
I'm in no rush because of what I see
It's hard for me to understand
I gaze from poisoned sea to poisoned land
Up here we see a new tomorrow
Your world's not round, your world is narrow
For me, I just had a while
But still I smile

Although I'm not with you down there
I sit alone up here and stare
It's me, my name is Claire

(Chorus)

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 21 Apr 04 - 06:15 PM

Going back in the ages "Sir Gavin Grimbold" comes to mind and "The Lyke Wake Dirge"...Both are very old English Folk songs. "Down among the dead men", "Sailors Lament", If I think of any more will put them on.
Best wishes with your research

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Joe_F
Date: 21 Apr 04 - 06:31 PM

When I'm done my journey

I saw her as she came and went

Bonnie George Campbell (Child 210)

Abide with Me

I wish you her here (Malvina Reynolds)

Bloody Well Dead

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Burke
Date: 21 Apr 04 - 06:59 PM

Sing this Isaac Watts hymn to the tune of Auld Lang Syne

Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound;
My ears, attend the cry;
"Ye living men, come view the ground
Where you must shortly lie.

"Princes, this clay must be your bed,
In spite of all your towers;
The tall, the wise, the rev'rend head
Must lie as low as ours!"

Great God! is this our certain doom?
And are we still secure?
Still walking downward to our tomb,
And yet prepare no more?

Grant us the powers of quick'ning grace,
To fit our souls to fly,
Then, when we drop this dying flesh,
We'll rise above the sky.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: GUEST,Puffenkinty
Date: 21 Apr 04 - 08:45 PM

The song is titled "Kalenda Rock".
I don't know where it comes from but
it is all keening sounds and then the words,
"Mother has died today
On Kalenda Rock,
Father has cried and cried".

It's a powerful song

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: iancarterb
Date: 21 Apr 04 - 09:53 PM

Because hymns even today tend to be learned by ear, I think they may still often qualify as folk songs, but the most obvious folky source for traditional hymns that may have worked their way into the wider culture is the most popular Shape Note hymn book, the Original Sacred Harp. My favorite is page 122, All Is Well, but a careful trip through this work alone will be very fruitful, and even provide contradictory attitudes in a few cases. If you don't have one, call or write Hugh McGraw in Bremen, GA and he'll sell you one cheap!

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: GUEST,noddy
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 07:38 AM

I thought it easier to list those NOT about death?

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Macha
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 04:11 PM

Peggy Gordon
Parting glass (?)
Old Ways
The Highwayman
Binnorie
Cruel Sister
Bonny Swans
The Irish Ballad
Puff the Magic Dragon

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 05:40 PM

I'm a member of the English civil war society, and we have a game about how high we can get the body count. So it's a battle to see who can sing "three score and ten" the first

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Snuffy
Date: 22 Apr 04 - 08:29 PM

Waddya mean Parting glass (?)

But since it falls unto my lot
That I should rise and you should not

What else could it be about?

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: SmokinBill
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 12:49 AM

There's an old blues song called "Death Come Creepin'" (also known as "Run, Sinner, Run" if I'm not mistaken) than Mance Lipscomb and others used to do.

There's the classic Appalachian spiritual "O, Death."

Don't forget "St. James Infirmary" (aka "Those Gambler's Blues") or "Gravedigger Blues."

e-mail me at [e-mail] if you want complete lyrics or bibliographical references.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Macha
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 01:29 PM

The Parting Glass could be about some person going away to a place such as Australia because they are a convict.

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: davkbod
Date: 23 Apr 04 - 11:05 PM

Libba Cotton did a song "Freight Train". Probably in DT, but if not I can supply words and tune.

When I die lord, bury me deep
Way down on old Chestnut Street
Lay those stones at my head and feet
Tell them all I have gone to sleep

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Lady Hillary
Date: 24 Apr 04 - 09:34 AM

The young sailor cut down in his prime, an ancestor to the young gambler cut down in his prime, which is an ancestor to streets of Laredo.
EBarnacle

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: sian, west wales
Date: 24 Apr 04 - 01:57 PM

Most people know the Welsh song, All Through the Night. Well, there's a minor-key variation of it (or ... it's a variation of: ...) called "Angau" (Death) along the same lines of "O! Death"!

One night in my bed, failing to sleep all through the night, as my thoughts kept turning to my Journey.

I called for a basin and jug to wash myself but before I put a drop on my face, Death was sitting on the edge of the basin.

I went to church to pray but before I could get up from my knees, Death was sitting on the pew.

I went to a locked room to hide but Death came up through the floor.

I went to sea and rowed for all my might but Death was the Captain of the ships.

Farewell lasses, farewell lads, farewell the evergreen songs of my youth, God forgive me my sins; I go now to follow death.

Rollicking little ditty - not.

sian

Subject: RE: looking for folksongs about death
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 Apr 04 - 05:13 PM

See thread on "Green Gravel," thread 69136, and DT: Green Gravel