Follow the Drinking Gourd

[Pvt.Shattuck]

I first heard this song on a soundtrack CD for Ken Burns The Civil War on PBS. It purports to be a coded song-map used by escaping slaves on the Underground Railroad, and is taught as such in schools.

On further investigation it turns out to be completely inauthentic.
http://www.followthedrinkinggourd.org/

 

[donna]

See my thread on Runaway Slaves.

 

[James B White]

See my thread on Runaway Slaves.

From the article in that thread: "There is no doubt the song, 'Follow the Drinking Gourd' had messages for escape."

Are you standing behind the song as a genuine underground railroad map song? Just curious, because I think the article in this thread makes some good points.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

From my (limited) understanding, the origin of the song is uncertain at best. The most likely explanation is that the form in which we have it today has been at least re-written, though that does not preclude precursor versions surviving from earlier oral tradition (and 'map songs' would never have been written down while they were in active use, since they would have been an automatic target for suppression).

 

[brass napoleon]

FWIW, I tend to agree with this hypothesis, quoted from the article posted in the OP:

If the song predated the Civil War, it served principally as an inspiration to escaping slaves, like the Woodum version. The song would have contained limited or no map information. The geographic verses were added after the war, either by creating new verses, or by combining the Drinking Gourd verses with those from another song. (Traditional songs are so often combined "in the field" that ethnomusicologists have several terms of art for it, including "amalgamation" and the unfortunate sounding "contamination.")​

 

[James B White]

FWIW, I tend to agree with this hypothesis, quoted from the article posted in the OP:

If the song predated the Civil War, it served principally as an inspiration to escaping slaves, like the Woodum version.​

​

I think that sounds reasonable. It's tempting to make the underground railroad more cloak-and-dagger, with kewl songs and coded quilts and underground tunnels, but Frederick Law Olmsted described in the 1850s how one slave conveyed information about the underground railroad if a runaway could get to Virginia: He just said so.

Olmsted, a northerner visiting the deep south, met a slave who had been sold from the upper south to Louisiana. The slave said: "Oh, yes! in Philadelphia, and in Winchester, and in New Jarsey [there are a good many Quakers]. I know--ho! ho! I've been in those countries, and I've seen 'em. I wos raised nigh by Winchester, and I've been all about there. Used to iron waggons and shoe horses in that country. Dar's a road from Winchester to Philadelphia--right straight. Quakers all along. Right good people, dem Quakers--ho! ho!--I know."

Olmsted added a footnote: "Evidently an allusion to the 'underground railroad,' or smuggling of runaway slaves, which is generally supposed to be managed by Quakers. This shows how knowledge of the abolition agitation must be carried among the slaves in the most remote districts."

From http://books.google.com/books?id=Bkqed5n_zQEC&pg=PA37

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

On the contrary, I tend to think map songs were in fact used-- but that they (necessarily) were different from area to area. What survived could be something of an amalgamate of what once was, rewritten to make "sense" out of what had been (inevitably) a jumble.

 

[donna]

I just posted about runaway slaves. I wasn't saying for sure the song was a map. It could have been but also just inspiration.

I got information from the source I posted.

 

[donna]

A very informative article on this song "Follow The Drinking Gourd: A Cultural History" at

http://www.followthedrinkinggourd.org/index.htm

 

[John Winn]

It's an interesting story but, frankly, I'm skeptical that such vague, coded instructions would have got anybody from Alabama to the Ohio River . I think folks more likely got specific instructions for how to get from the starting point to the next stop where somebody else got them to the stop after that and so on. Just a thought.

 

[James B White]

On the contrary, I tend to think map songs were in fact used-- but that they (necessarily) were different from area to area. What survived could be something of an amalgamate of what once was, rewritten to make "sense" out of what had been (inevitably) a jumble.

I haven't looked into map songs much in particular, just because it's not something I've run across in early (say, pre-1900) underground railroad sources. If songs are mentioned, they're the usual hymn-like or Hutchinson-style songs talking generally about yearning for freedom or abolition, but not specifically mnemonic songs giving directions. What are the earliest examples of mentions of map songs? If they weren't mentioned earlier, do you have any theory why they were left out?

A very informative article on this song "Follow The Drinking Gourd: A Cultural History" at

http://www.followthedrinkinggourd.org/index.htm

Um, yes, that's the article posted in the OP of this thread.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I'm not a folk song expert, and I realize there are grounds for skepticism... I'm merely pointing out that the nature of the material means that written evidence is going to be very sparse, so an absence of evidence should not be taken as evidence of absence. My hypothesis is that 'map songs' were local and ephemeral, likely not of any overwhelming artistic or aesthetic value, and that several similar ones may have gotten telescoped into things like 'Drinking Gourd,' which image may have been a common theme.

 

[Pvt.Shattuck]

The song was first written down in 1928, more than 60 years after the Civil War ended. There is no contemporary source for the song's existence or any of it's elements (the peg-leg old man). The song's "map instructions" don't even fit with what we know about the Underground Railroad.
Maybe it was just inspirational, the drinking gourd (Big Dipper) in the night sky symbolizing the impossible dream of the north and freedom. Or maybe slaves never knew any such song at all.
But clearly modern people need to believe that clever slaves outwitted their masters with coded messages, which explains the song's continued popularity.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

Irwin Silber's Songs of the Civil War dates "Gourd" as documented as early as 1910, quoting an H. B. Parks of San Antonio TX: "One of my great-uncles, who was connected with the (underground) railroad movement, remembered that in the records of the Anti-Slavery Society there was a story of a peg-legged sailor, known as Peg Leg Joe ... The main scene of his activities was in the country immediately north of Mobile, and the trail described in the song followed northward to the head waters of the Tombigbee River, thence over the divide and down the Tennessee River to the Ohio."

And again, the date of its being written down cannot automatically be assumed as the date of its composition.

 

[Pvt.Shattuck]

Irwin Silber's Songs of the Civil War dates "Gourd" as documented as early as 1910, quoting an H. B. Parks of San Antonio TX: "One of my great-uncles, who was connected with the (underground) railroad movement, remembered that in the records of the Anti-Slavery Society there was a story of a peg-legged sailor, known as Peg Leg Joe ... The main scene of his activities was in the country immediately north of Mobile, and the trail described in the song followed northward to the head waters of the Tombigbee River, thence over the divide and down the Tennessee River to the Ohio."

And again, the date of its being written down cannot automatically be assumed as the date of its composition.

Is there a actually a Peg-Leg Joe in the "records of the Anti-Slavery Society?" Is it at all likely that an amputee with a mid-nineteenth century wooden leg was eluding patrollers and showing slaves routes through backwoods and streams? C'mon.

 

[Mark F. Jenkins]

I'll note again that what it says is that in the records there is the story of a peg-legged sailor. We're talking about folktales and such here.

 

[donna]

I know you all must think I am so dumb as I put same site down that was in opening post. I did read the whole site and guess just saying there was lots of information and then posted it.

 

[John Winn]

I know you all must think I am so dumb as I put same site down that was in opening post. I did read the whole site and guess just saying there was lots of information and then posted it.

It's OK Ms. donna. We've all done worse (even if some won't admit such). You're family and all so you get a pass.

 

[donna]

Thanks John.

 

[donna]

Bumping this thread on song, Follow The Drinking Gourd.