Follow the Drinkin' Gourd
Encyclopedia
"Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" is an American folk song first published in 1928. The "Drinking Gourd" is another name for the Big Dipper
asterism
. Folklore has it that fugitive slaves in the United States used it as a point of reference so they would not get lost. According to legend, the song Follow the Drinking Gourd was used by a conductor of the Underground Railroad
, called Peg Leg Joe
, to guide some fugitive slaves. While the song may possibly refer to some lost fragment of history, the origin and context remain a mystery. One source asserts that it was a favorite of Harriet Tubman
, who sang it while leading slaves north. A more recent source challenges the authenticity of the claim that the song was used to help slaves escape to the North and to freedom.
The moniker drinking gourd is a reference to the Big Dipper
asterism. Two of the stars in the Big Dipper line up very closely with and point to Polaris
. Polaris is a circumpolar star
, and so it is always seen nearly exactly in the direction of true north. Hence, according to a popular myth, all slaves had to do was look for the Drinking Gourd (the Big Dipper) and follow it to the North Star (Polaris) north to freedom.
in 1928. (The cover spells the title ""Foller de Drinkin' Go'ud.") It had been discovered by H. B. Parks, an entomologist and amateur folklorist. According to the article by Parks, Peg Leg Joe
, an operative of the Underground Railroad
, passing himself off as a journeyman
laborer
, traveled from plantation
to plantation in the vicinity north of Mobile, Alabama
. His laborer's profession was a cover; his real purpose was providing escape routes for the slaves encoded in the lyrics of the song: up the Tombigbee River
, over the divide to the Tennessee River
, then downriver to where the Tennessee and Ohio river
s meet in Paducah, Kentucky
.
and The Weavers
, published an arrangement of Drinking Gourd in the People's Songs Bulletin. Hays, who had become familiar with much of the African-American music and culture, told fellow Weaver Pete Seeger
that he had heard parts of the song from an elderly black "nurse" known as Aunty Laura, while still a child. Seeger later reported that the melody came from Aunty Laura, while the lyrics originally came from anthologies – most likely the Parks version reprinted in a Lomax songbook in 1934.
heard Drinking Gourd from a septuagenarian street singer named John Woodum. The Woodum lyrics diverged greatly from the Parks and Hays versions in that there was no geographical information; instead, the lyrics were designed to be inspirational. Sparks would later found The New Christy Minstrels, who would go on to record an iconic version of the song with a derivation of the Woodum lyrics. It is possible that the Woodum lyrics were created separately from the Hays or Parks versions, and thus do not necessarily cast doubt on those versions' authenticity.
.
VERSE 1
When the sun come back,
When the firs' quail call,
Then the time is come
Foller the drinkin' gou'd.
CHORUS
Foller the drinkin' gou'd,
Foller the drinkin' gou'd;
For the ole man say,
"Foller the drinkin' gou'd."
VERSE 2
The riva's bank am a very good road,
The dead trees show the way,
Lef' foot, peg foot goin' on,
Foller the drinkin' gou'd.
CHORUS
VERSE 3
The riva ends a-tween two hills,
Foller the drinkin' gou'd;
'Nuther riva on the other side
Follers the drinkin' gou'd.
CHORUS
VERSE 4
Wha the little riva
Meet the grea' big un,
The ole man waits--
Foller the drinkin' gou'd.
Hays Lyrics
VERSE 1
When the sun comes back,
and the first quail calls,
Follow the drinking gourd
The old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
CHORUS
Follow the drinking gourd,
Follow the drinking gourd,
For the old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
VERSE 2
The river bank will make a mighty good road
The dead trees show you the way
Left foot, peg foot, traveling on
Follow the drinking gourd.
CHORUS
VERSE 3
The river ends between two hills,
Follow the drinking gourd,
There's another river on the other side,
Follow the drinking gourd.
CHORUS
VERSE 4
Where the great big river meets the little river
Follow the drinking gourd
The old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
Woodum lyrics
VERSE 1
When the sun goes down
And the first quail call
Follow the drinkin' gourd
Then it's time, children
to come one and all and
Follow the drinkin' gourd
CHORUS
Follow the drinkin' gourd,
Follow the drinkin' gourd
There's a roadsign in heaven
On that muddy path to freedom
Follow the drinkin' gourd
VERSE 2
Pegfoot gonna show you the way
Follow the drinkin' gourd
Keep on movin' the Old Man say
Follow the drinkin' gourd
CHORUS
VERSE 3
Think I hear the angels say
Follow the drinkin' gourd
Stars in the heaven gonna show you the way
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
CHORUS
Sparks Lyrics
(As sung by the New Christy Minstrels
)
CHORUS 1
Follow the drinkin' gourd, we gonna
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Keep on travelin' that muddy road to freedom,
Follow the drinkin' gourd
VERSE 1
Think I heard the angels say,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Stars in the heaven gonna show you the way,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Step by step keep a'travelin' on
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Sleep in the holler 'til the daylight is gone,
Follow the drinkin' gourd
CHORUS 2
Follow the drinkin' gourd, we gonna
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Keep on travelin' that muddy road to freedom,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
VERSE 2
There's a good day comin' and it won't be long,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
All God's children gotta sing this song,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Follow that river 'til the clouds roll by,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Keep on movin' better look to the sky,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
CHORUS 3
Follow the drinkin' gourd, we gonna
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
There's a little bit of heaven in that muddy road to freedom,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Step by step keep a'travelin' on,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Big Dipper
The Plough, also known as the Big Dipper or the Saptarishi , is an asterism of seven stars that has been recognized as a distinct grouping in many cultures from time immemorial...
asterism
Asterism (astronomy)
In astronomy, an asterism is a pattern of stars recognized on Earth's night sky. It may form part of an official constellation, or be composed of stars from more than one. Like constellations, asterisms are in most cases composed of stars which, while they are visible in the same general direction,...
. Folklore has it that fugitive slaves in the United States used it as a point of reference so they would not get lost. According to legend, the song Follow the Drinking Gourd was used by a conductor of the Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
, called Peg Leg Joe
Peg Leg Joe
Peg Leg Joe was a sailor who led slaves through the Underground Railroad to freedom. He may have been a real person or composite of people but there is no reliable historical evidence of his existence. As his name suggests, he had a prosthesis for his right leg...
, to guide some fugitive slaves. While the song may possibly refer to some lost fragment of history, the origin and context remain a mystery. One source asserts that it was a favorite of Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman
Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; (1820 – 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves...
, who sang it while leading slaves north. A more recent source challenges the authenticity of the claim that the song was used to help slaves escape to the North and to freedom.
Big Dipper
The Plough, also known as the Big Dipper or the Saptarishi , is an asterism of seven stars that has been recognized as a distinct grouping in many cultures from time immemorial...
asterism. Two of the stars in the Big Dipper line up very closely with and point to Polaris
Polaris
Polaris |Alpha]] Ursae Minoris, commonly North Star or Pole Star, also Lodestar) is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor. It is very close to the north celestial pole, making it the current northern pole star....
. Polaris is a circumpolar star
Circumpolar star
A circumpolar star is a star that, as viewed from a given latitude on Earth, never sets , due to its proximity to one of the celestial poles...
, and so it is always seen nearly exactly in the direction of true north. Hence, according to a popular myth, all slaves had to do was look for the Drinking Gourd (the Big Dipper) and follow it to the North Star (Polaris) north to freedom.
Texas Folklore Society and H. B. Parks
Follow the Drinking Gourd was published by the Texas Folklore SocietyTexas Folklore Society
The Texas Folklore Society is a non-profit organization formed in 1909. John Avery Lomax and Leonidas Warren Payne, Jr., conceived the idea for the Society and served as its first officers....
in 1928. (The cover spells the title ""Foller de Drinkin' Go'ud.") It had been discovered by H. B. Parks, an entomologist and amateur folklorist. According to the article by Parks, Peg Leg Joe
Peg Leg Joe
Peg Leg Joe was a sailor who led slaves through the Underground Railroad to freedom. He may have been a real person or composite of people but there is no reliable historical evidence of his existence. As his name suggests, he had a prosthesis for his right leg...
, an operative of the Underground Railroad
Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by 19th-century black slaves in the United States to escape to free states and Canada with the aid of abolitionists and allies who were sympathetic to their cause. The term is also applied to the abolitionists,...
, passing himself off as a journeyman
Journeyman
A journeyman is someone who completed an apprenticeship and was fully educated in a trade or craft, but not yet a master. To become a master, a journeyman had to submit a master work piece to a guild for evaluation and be admitted to the guild as a master....
laborer
Laborer
A Laborer or labourer - see variation in english spelling - is one of the construction trades, traditionally considered unskilled manual labor, as opposed to skilled labor. In the division of labor, laborers have all blasting, hand tools, power tools, air tools, and small heavy equipment, and act...
, traveled from plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
to plantation in the vicinity north of Mobile, Alabama
Mobile, Alabama
Mobile is the third most populous city in the Southern US state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 195,111 during the 2010 census. It is the largest...
. His laborer's profession was a cover; his real purpose was providing escape routes for the slaves encoded in the lyrics of the song: up the Tombigbee River
Tombigbee River
The Tombigbee River is a tributary of the Mobile River, approximately 200 mi long, in the U.S. states of Mississippi and Alabama. It is one of two major rivers, along with the Alabama River, that unite to form the short Mobile River before it empties into Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico...
, over the divide to the Tennessee River
Tennessee River
The Tennessee River is the largest tributary of the Ohio River. It is approximately 652 miles long and is located in the southeastern United States in the Tennessee Valley. The river was once popularly known as the Cherokee River, among other names...
, then downriver to where the Tennessee and Ohio river
Ohio River
The Ohio River is the largest tributary, by volume, of the Mississippi River. At the confluence, the Ohio is even bigger than the Mississippi and, thus, is hydrologically the main stream of the whole river system, including the Allegheny River further upstream...
s meet in Paducah, Kentucky
Paducah, Kentucky
Paducah is the largest city in Kentucky's Jackson Purchase Region and the county seat of McCracken County, Kentucky, United States. It is located at the confluence of the Tennessee River and the Ohio River, halfway between the metropolitan areas of St. Louis, Missouri, to the west and Nashville,...
.
Lee Hays
In 1947, Lee Hays, of the Almanac SingersAlmanac Singers
The Almanac Singers were a group of folk musicians who, as their name indicates, specialized in topical songs, especially songs connected with the labor movement...
and The Weavers
The Weavers
The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City. They sang traditional folk songs from around the world, as well as blues, gospel music, children's songs, labor songs, and American ballads, and selling millions of records at the height of their...
, published an arrangement of Drinking Gourd in the People's Songs Bulletin. Hays, who had become familiar with much of the African-American music and culture, told fellow Weaver Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
that he had heard parts of the song from an elderly black "nurse" known as Aunty Laura, while still a child. Seeger later reported that the melody came from Aunty Laura, while the lyrics originally came from anthologies – most likely the Parks version reprinted in a Lomax songbook in 1934.
Randy Sparks / John Woodum
In 1955, singer Randy SparksRandy Sparks
Randy Sparks is a musician, singer-songwriter and founder of The New Christy Minstrels and The Back Porch Majority. Prior to that, in the late 1950s he had a solo career and released two albums under the Verve label, a self-titled album in 1958 and Walking the Low Road in 1959...
heard Drinking Gourd from a septuagenarian street singer named John Woodum. The Woodum lyrics diverged greatly from the Parks and Hays versions in that there was no geographical information; instead, the lyrics were designed to be inspirational. Sparks would later found The New Christy Minstrels, who would go on to record an iconic version of the song with a derivation of the Woodum lyrics. It is possible that the Woodum lyrics were created separately from the Hays or Parks versions, and thus do not necessarily cast doubt on those versions' authenticity.
Challenges
Some disagree with these conclusions as to the song's meaning. James Kelley disputes this viewpoint in The Journal of Popular CultureJournal of Popular Culture
The Journal of Popular Culture is a peer-reviewed journal and the official publication of the Popular Culture Association.The Journal of Popular Culture publishes academic essays on all aspects of popular or mass culture...
.
Lyrics
Parks LyricsVERSE 1
When the sun come back,
When the firs' quail call,
Then the time is come
Foller the drinkin' gou'd.
CHORUS
Foller the drinkin' gou'd,
Foller the drinkin' gou'd;
For the ole man say,
"Foller the drinkin' gou'd."
VERSE 2
The riva's bank am a very good road,
The dead trees show the way,
Lef' foot, peg foot goin' on,
Foller the drinkin' gou'd.
CHORUS
VERSE 3
The riva ends a-tween two hills,
Foller the drinkin' gou'd;
'Nuther riva on the other side
Follers the drinkin' gou'd.
CHORUS
VERSE 4
Wha the little riva
Meet the grea' big un,
The ole man waits--
Foller the drinkin' gou'd.
Hays Lyrics
VERSE 1
When the sun comes back,
and the first quail calls,
Follow the drinking gourd
The old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
CHORUS
Follow the drinking gourd,
Follow the drinking gourd,
For the old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
VERSE 2
The river bank will make a mighty good road
The dead trees show you the way
Left foot, peg foot, traveling on
Follow the drinking gourd.
CHORUS
VERSE 3
The river ends between two hills,
Follow the drinking gourd,
There's another river on the other side,
Follow the drinking gourd.
CHORUS
VERSE 4
Where the great big river meets the little river
Follow the drinking gourd
The old man is awaiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.
Woodum lyrics
VERSE 1
When the sun goes down
And the first quail call
Follow the drinkin' gourd
Then it's time, children
to come one and all and
Follow the drinkin' gourd
CHORUS
Follow the drinkin' gourd,
Follow the drinkin' gourd
There's a roadsign in heaven
On that muddy path to freedom
Follow the drinkin' gourd
VERSE 2
Pegfoot gonna show you the way
Follow the drinkin' gourd
Keep on movin' the Old Man say
Follow the drinkin' gourd
CHORUS
VERSE 3
Think I hear the angels say
Follow the drinkin' gourd
Stars in the heaven gonna show you the way
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
CHORUS
Sparks Lyrics
(As sung by the New Christy Minstrels
New Christy Minstrels
The New Christy Minstrels are an American folk music group founded by Randy Sparks in 1961. They recorded over 20 albums and had several hits, including "Green, Green", "Saturday Night", "Today", "Denver", and "This Land is Your Land"...
)
CHORUS 1
Follow the drinkin' gourd, we gonna
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Keep on travelin' that muddy road to freedom,
Follow the drinkin' gourd
VERSE 1
Think I heard the angels say,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Stars in the heaven gonna show you the way,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Step by step keep a'travelin' on
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Sleep in the holler 'til the daylight is gone,
Follow the drinkin' gourd
CHORUS 2
Follow the drinkin' gourd, we gonna
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Keep on travelin' that muddy road to freedom,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
VERSE 2
There's a good day comin' and it won't be long,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
All God's children gotta sing this song,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Follow that river 'til the clouds roll by,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Keep on movin' better look to the sky,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
CHORUS 3
Follow the drinkin' gourd, we gonna
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
There's a little bit of heaven in that muddy road to freedom,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
Step by step keep a'travelin' on,
Follow the drinkin' gourd.
See also
- Songs of the Underground RailroadSongs of the underground railroadSongs of the Underground Railroad reflect that music has always been important in the heritage of African people. This music can relay a story or bring people together in a common cause. In the slavery era, songs may have conveyed coded meanings to help bring the slaves to freedom...
- Harriet TubmanHarriet TubmanHarriet Tubman Harriet Tubman Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; (1820 – 1913) was an African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping from slavery, into which she was born, she made thirteen missions to rescue more than 70 slaves...
- Journal of Popular CultureJournal of Popular CultureThe Journal of Popular Culture is a peer-reviewed journal and the official publication of the Popular Culture Association.The Journal of Popular Culture publishes academic essays on all aspects of popular or mass culture...
- Lee Hays
- Pete SeegerPete SeegerPeter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
- The New Christy Minstrels
External links
- Follow the Drinkin' Gourd MP3 featuring Roger McGuinnRoger McGuinnJames Roger McGuinn is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He is best known for being the lead singer and lead guitarist on many of The Byrds' records...
and Nedra Talley RossNedra TalleyNedra Talley, now Nedra Talley Ross , was a member of the girl group The Ronettes, along with her cousins Ronnie Spector and Estelle Bennett. She is of African-American, Native American and Puerto Rican descents...
(of The RonettesThe RonettesThe Ronettes were a 1960s girl group from New York City, best known for their work with producer Phil Spector. The group consisted of lead singer Veronica Bennett ; her older sister, Estelle Bennett; and their cousin Nedra Talley...
) at the Folk DenFolk DenFolk Den is a folk music website founded in 1995 by Roger McGuinn, former front man of The Byrds. Hosted at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's ibiblio, the site is intended to preserve and promote folk music and offers a new folk song on a monthly basis... - The New Christy Minstrels & Gene Clark-1963-Part lll (The Muddy Road to Freedom: Follow the Drinking Gourd) Live at Fordham University