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08 Jul 05 - 11:13 PM (#1518618) Subject: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: thespionage "Jordan's River is chilly and cold / Chills the body, but not the soul" I have heard this verse, and slight variations, in numerous folk songs. Where did this come from? Thanks. Russ |
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08 Jul 05 - 11:21 PM (#1518628) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: wysiwyg Russ, it's a couplet appearing in what used to be called (and often are still called) Negro (or some say African American) Spirituals. This type of song often has "floating" verses that float from one song to another as if in the air; also called "zipper verses" because they can be zipped in. Lots more information in the African American Spirituals Permathread and in threads it links off to around Mudcat. BTW "Jordan" in that sense would have been pronounced "Jerdon." ~Susan |
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08 Jul 05 - 11:28 PM (#1518635) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: thespionage Great. I love the fact that Lee Hays with the Weavers created a zipper verse of "Greensleeves": it is hilarious to hear "Rock Island Line" with "Alas my love you do me wrong / To treat me so discourteously." Thanks. Russ |
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08 Jul 05 - 11:30 PM (#1518637) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Q (Frank Staplin) For a little information and several spirituals with the phrase or parts of it, see thread 50443: Jordan River |
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08 Jul 05 - 11:52 PM (#1518654) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Azizi thespionage: According to Philip Schaff's "The Pocket Bible Dictionary" {Lebanon, Tenn; Union Theological Seminary; Jubilee Publisher, 1996; pp125-126} The Jordan River was 'passed over' [meaning 'crossed'] by the Israelites when entering the Promised Land. {Josh.3:14, Ps.114:3}. It is mentioned many times in the Old Testament and miracles are associated with it {such as healing of Naaman {2 Kings 5:14}. In the New Testament the Jordan River was where Jesus was baptised and where John the Baptist baptised 'the multitudes' {Mark 1-9; and Matt. 3:6} Spirituals composed by enslaved African Americans often likened their plight to that of the Israelites who were saved by God's intervention {for example: "Go Down Moses" and "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel"} IMO, this River Jordan verse may have been used as a reminder that in His time, God was gonna trouble the water, and cause Black people to be free as He freed the Israelites. I should also say that there are alot of crossing the river references in African American secular slave songs {such as "I went to the river but I couldn't get across/I paid five dollars for an old gray horse/the horse wouldn't pull/so I traded for a bull etc.} Some people consider these to be coded references to the Ohio River which when crossed would have led to a freedom [though it was an insecure freedom after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act]. And it should also be mentioned that water and water immersion and water deities are very much traditional African concepts. Also, the river and the river bank has been considered to be symbolical [in Afircan and other African Diaspora cultures] of the line separating earth from heaven... **** The variation of "Jordan's River is chilly and cold / Chills the body, but not the soul" that I know best is 'chills the body but it warms the soul" I think that this version better reflects the spirit of that verse. Azizi |
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08 Jul 05 - 11:55 PM (#1518656) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Azizi Susan, You wrote that "Jordan" in that sense would have been pronounced "Jerdon." Says who? And since when? If this pronunciation WAS true for SOME enslaved African Americans quite some time ago [and maybe it was], I know for sure that we never pronounced 'Jordan' 'Jerdon' in the African American Baptist chruch that I attended when I was a child and a teenager. Nor have I EVER heard it pronounced that way in any Black churches or Black community that I have been in. Then and now where I come from and live, Jordan was {and is} pronounced 'JOR-done' {as in "Michael Jordan"}.. Just thought you might want another opinion... Azizi |
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09 Jul 05 - 12:25 AM (#1518670) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: thespionage Thanks Azizi! (I agree about the pronunciation, by the way.) Russ |
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09 Jul 05 - 12:41 AM (#1518676) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Q (Frank Staplin) Azizi, I never heard it any other way than 'Jerdon' (Jurdon) in Georgia, Alabama and Texas. Until well after WW2 and the movement of northerners into the southern cities, both whites and blacks used that pronunciation. The family name Jordan also was pronounced 'Jerdan' or 'Jurdon." My wife has some relatives with that name. They said that they were Jerdons, that Jordans were Yankees. "Roll, Jordan, Roll" was collected in Auburn, Alabama in 1915 as "Roll, Jurding, Roll," another southern variant, from a Negro revival meeting (White, N. I., "American Negro Folk-Songs," p. 87-88), Folklore Assoc. Inc. Verse 1: Roll, Jurding, Roll, roll, Jurding roll; You oughter been settin' in the Kingdom To hear sweet Jurding roll. William Arms Fisher, in his notes to the spiritual, "I'm Just A-Goin' Over Jordan," says that "Jordan is usually pronounced Jerdon." 1926, "Seventy Negro Spirituals" (for low voice), pp. 88-89, Oliver Ditson Co. I have never heard the last syllable as 'done.' (Day is done; rhymes with Sun). |
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09 Jul 05 - 01:03 AM (#1518688) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Azizi Well, I'm from the North/ I have no Southern relatives, and I ahve only been 'down South' one time {to Atlanta, Georgia and does Atlanta still count as the South? Well maybe, but it has sooo many folks who have moved there from the North and Midwest.. Anyway, that might explain the differences in pronounciation. But not only have I heard the pronunciation 'Jordone', but I have also heard 'Jorden' {where the end syllable rhymes with 'ten'}. As that late 20th century saying goes: "Different strokes for different folks". Or as the Hip-Hoppers say "It's all good". |
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09 Jul 05 - 03:31 AM (#1518735) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Neighmond A Darius Jordan lived next to us when I was a kid, and it was an endless pesterment in school because the teachers said "DAIRY iss, JOR dan" and the family said "dur EYE us, JER dun." Now he goes by "D. J." Chaz |
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09 Jul 05 - 06:02 AM (#1518800) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Azizi Hey, Chaz! How you been?! **** Here's a link to an ongoing Mudcat thread that relates to these comments on how the word 'Jordan' is pronounced: Folklore: Y'all speak jest like us.... |
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09 Jul 05 - 09:49 AM (#1518885) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: wysiwyg Azizi, As I said, it "WOULD have been pronounced"-- past tense, back in slave times, and carried forward in black gospel recordings by classic gospel quartets. By every person and for all time? No, but in the several thousand gospel recordings I've listened through, yes. In the studies written about spirituals, yes. I don't make this stuff up! ~Susan |
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09 Jul 05 - 01:21 PM (#1519006) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: frogprince I'm northern, and hadn't come across the "Jerdon" pronunciation until I got an Uncle Dave (Macon, that is) recording a few years ago. |
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09 Jul 05 - 01:30 PM (#1519011) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: frogprince By the way, there is a variation on this, that you haven't heard, here: www.geocities.com/jadelapeer/michaelpage.html someo'thesesdays I'm gonna get the hang of doing clickies here... Dean |
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09 Jul 05 - 01:35 PM (#1519016) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: thespionage That's an interesting variation. The site provides "The Water Is Wide" as the melody, yet I have never heard "Michael" with that tune. Russ |
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09 Jul 05 - 02:12 PM (#1519041) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: Q (Frank Staplin) Neighmond, maybe this is why so many southerners used to go by their initials. A friend claimed that only the initials of his first names were on his birth certificate (N. R), his parents leaving it to him to choose. He suffered anyway, we called him Nicodemus. Darius reminds me of our treatment of Sophia in an English Lit. class; We called her Sophie or Sopheeya; the instructor, from England, insisted that the name was So-phi(as in aye)-a. In Georgia and much of the south, Jerdon (Jerden) persisted as the most common pronunciation up to about WW2, much longer than you note, WYSIWYG. Historically, a comparison has been made with Jourdain, the name of a prominent and widespread southern family in the 19th c., but I know of no basis for this (there are comments in a previous Mudcat thread- so many of these discussions seem to recur at about six month periods). Frogprince, that familiar melody sounds Irish or Scottish- I am sure I have heard it before, but can't rope it in. Thanks for the site. |
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09 Jul 05 - 02:57 PM (#1519068) Subject: RE: Common Lyric: Jordan's River is Chilly From: wysiwyg In addition to the north/south aspect of pronunciation, there's a socio-economic class angle as well-- perhaps a stronger one than the regional angle. A lot of pronunciation/dialect was "sanitized" (I prefer to think of it as censorship) as the slave-times culture of African Americans moved north and as individuals began to prosper. For a variety of reasons documented by African American writers then and since, the AA people working hard to gain respect in middle-class America were reluctant to be associated with the times and culture of the slaves, for a long, long time. It had not been long since free blacks could be and often were picked up by slave hunters under the Fugitive Slave Act, and subject to re-enslavement and death. Also (in common with many cultures), as material moved into hymnals, a lot of these sorts of changes became somewhat set in stone and are now assumed to be "right." In fact, no hymns that began in a folk tradition can ever really be documents as "right," tho they may be "copyrighted." The floating and zipper verses-- and indeed the spirituals themselves as a genre-- most especially defied "right" versioning, as they tended to originate in the creativity and deep feeling of the moment. Songs sprang up in a days' work or a night's lament, and a few-- very few comparatively-- were transcribed. Many more were passed around orally, and folk-processed into "songs" as we would recognize them today. But the folk-processing still continues. It's just a very, very fluid genre. That's part of the attraction! More info in the poermathread.... ~Susan |
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21 Oct 09 - 06:06 PM (#2749763) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: GUEST,mez_G the river Jordan.. warms the soul" was often a verse to "all my trials" sung by Harry Belafonte in 1958.. Joan Baez didn't use the verse in 1962 on her version |
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21 Oct 09 - 08:36 PM (#2749871) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Q (Frank Staplin) Joan Baez sang the verse as: The river Jordan is muddy and cold, It chills the body but not the soul. "All My Trials" was apparently collected as a lullaby, one or two verse, in the Bahamas. It does not appear in any of the 19th century collections. The song was added to or revised by various groups during the folk revival of the 1950s and later. Some regard it as a spiritual song. I would appreciate valid information (as opposed to hearsay) on the origin of the song and its first introduction to the folk song circuit. Cynthia Gooding and Bob Gibson (1956) may have been the first to introduce it. Glenn Yarborough sang it in 1957 and Belafonte sang it in 1959. |
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21 Oct 09 - 09:48 PM (#2749914) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Art Thieme The verse is in a song I included on the 1998 CD called "The Older I Get, The Better I Was" The song's title "Is Your Lamps Gone Out" and comes from Mary Wheeler's 1940 book STEAMBOATIN' DAYS (Univ. of Louisiana Press.) These are all songs that Ms Wheeler collected traveling up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Art |
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21 Oct 09 - 11:10 PM (#2749972) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Janie I have to confess that when I hear most singers pronounce Jordan as Jerdan or Jerdin, et. al. it grates on me as an affectation. There are southern string bands where it sounds just right, but when, for instance, I am at the gospel sing at the Getaway and hear many (quite lovely, btw) people adopt that pronunciation to whom it does not come natural, it irritates me. |
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21 Oct 09 - 11:36 PM (#2749979) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: MissouriMud In Ware and Allen's 1863 collection of Slave Songs of the United States the version of Michael Row the Boat that Ware collected from the Sea Islands had the line "Jordan stream is wide and deep" as a repeated line, but not the chilly and cold/body and soul couplet. |
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22 Oct 09 - 06:40 PM (#2750619) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Art Thieme Hamilton Jordan---always pronounced Jerdon -- was in Jimmy Carter's cabinet. Art |
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22 Oct 09 - 08:17 PM (#2750685) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Q (Frank Staplin) Upsetting how northerners insist on telling southerners how to pronounce their names. Never go to Vienna, Georgia, and tell them it's Vee-enna. It's Beuw-fort, not Bow-fort, S. C. And Monticello, not Montichello. Mind! |
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24 Feb 10 - 01:59 PM (#2848959) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: GUEST,Scott In the United Methodist hymnal, there is a footnote for "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand" that actually states the pronounciation of Jordan is "Jer-dan." My aunt is married into a old-line family of Jordan's and they bristle when people try to prounce the name as "Jor-dan" instead of "Jer-dan." |
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24 Feb 10 - 04:32 PM (#2849147) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Joe Offer Q, it may be Beuw-fort, South Carolina; but I'm quite certain it's Bow-fort in North Carolina [see this article]. Both states have seaside cities named Beaufort, and both are very interesting towns. And they have lighthouses nearby, so I've been to both places. "Jerdun" is the standard pronunciation of "Jordan" in the American South, but I wonder how it's named and pronounced in the various languages of the Holy Land. Anybody know? -Joe- |
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24 Feb 10 - 08:10 PM (#2849374) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Q (Frank Staplin) Joe, you are correct for the two Beauforts. A sister-in-law from Georgia taught in North Carolina; she said southern pronunciations were the subject of a thesis at UNC, but I don't remember any details. Country of Jordan- al-'Urdunn in transliterated Arabic. The River is nahr al-urdun. In Israel- called nehar hayarden. |
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24 Feb 10 - 08:36 PM (#2849392) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Q (Frank Staplin) Please don't ask for pronunciations of Arabic. |
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25 Feb 10 - 03:46 PM (#2850139) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego Sorry; couldn't resist: Many years back, sick and tired of doing "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore," we subbed the following verse - "River Jordan (pronounce it as you will) is deep and wide, Halleluja; Clean rest rooms on the other side, Halleluja." Apparently, the audience agreed; the laughter was rollicking. We apologized, tongue-in-cheek, for profaning the sacred. |
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25 Feb 10 - 04:47 PM (#2850188) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Q (Frank Staplin) The old spiritual "Chilly Water" contains the "chilly and cold" line, but the River Jordan is not mentioned by name (Jubilee Singers). Chilly Water |
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25 Feb 10 - 05:44 PM (#2850257) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Joe Offer Interestingly, the Jordan River is neither chilly nor cold. Murky and a bit slimy might be a good description, but certainly not cold. I stood in the River Jordan for about half an hour during a baptism service about ten years ago. As I went in, somebody said, "Watch out for the piranhas!" Well, there was something nibbling at the back of my legs the whole half hour, but I doubt that it was piranhas.
See how fast he climbs that mast, hallelujah! -Joe- |
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25 Feb 10 - 06:08 PM (#2850277) Subject: RE: Origin: Jordan's River is Chilly and Cold From: Q (Frank Staplin) Just crocodiles, Joe! (Well, no. Many little fish nibble on your legs if you stand still. Some years ago, on a field course, we dug in the sand of a shallow river to make ourselves 'bathtubs' and little minnows swam into them and started nibbling. Better'n soap to clean off the grime). |