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The Drinking Gourd (The story of)
A story of the Underground Railroad
1993 - Rabbit Ears - Little Ears Music (ascap) / Prankee
Music (ascap)
Video / Cassette / CD |
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Conte pour enfant écrit par
Bernardine Connelly et raconté par Morgan Freeman.
"Based on the traditional folksong, this compelling
tale recounts the daring adventures of one family's escape
from slavery via the Underground Railroad. This touching
story captures all the drama of a perilous flight to freedom."
Musique originale composée par Taj Mahal - Taj Mahal
(guitare, harmonica, banjo, mandoline et chant), Patrick
Cockett (ukulele), Pancho Graham (basse électrique
et acoustique), Mark Goodman (piano et accordéon),
Kim Stone (basse acoustique), Ben Harper (slide et bottleneck
guitare, Weissenborn lap steel et steel dobro), Kester Smith
(batterie et percussions).
Track List :: 01. Follow the Drinking Gourd (narration &
music) 02. Time to Run 03. Follow the Drinking Gourd 04.
Followin' Pegleg's Footprints 05. Takin' to the Woods 06.
Joyful 07. Waiting for My Poppa to Come Home 08. Pegleg
Joe 09. From Now to Way Back Then 10. Spike Driver's Moan
11. Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad 12. Untitled track 13.
Untitled track 14. Untitled track.
Album produced by Taj Mahal, John McCally and Doris Wilhousky. |
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The Underground
Railroad
Underground Railroad : "A secret cooperative network
that aided fugitive slaves in reaching sanctuary in the
free states or in Canada in the years before the abolition
of slavery in the United States." (The American Heritage,
Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition).
Mostly it is associated with routes across the northern
states. Most of the activity seems to have been in Ohio,
Pennsylvania and New York.
The Underground Railroad was developed about 1831 by abolitionists
- the people
who fought slavery through action and worked to abolish
it. Some abolitionists gave anti-slavery speeches or published
anti-slavery newspapers. Some worked on the Underground
Railroad as “conductors,” guiding slaves along
secret routes to the North.
The Railroad’s “stations” were safe houses
along the way where, against the laws that existed at the
time, conductors secretly fed, sheltered and advised runaway
slaves. A lantern on a hitching post meant a safe house.
These abolitionists were both black and white, men and women.
It was the combined efforts of all abolitionists that finally
made possible the complete emancipation of Southern slaves. |
To reduce the numbers of
escaping slaves owners kept slaves illiterate and totally
ignorant of geography. Owners even went so far as to try
to keep slaves from learning how to tell directions. So
Railroad sent travelers into the South to secretly teach
slaves specific routes they could navigate using Polaris
(the North Star). Polaris became a symbol of freedom to
slaves as well as a guide star. |
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Follow
the Drinking Gourd
"Follow the Drinking Gourd" is a coded song that
gives the route for an escape from Alabama and Mississippi.
Of all the routes out of the Deep South, this is the only
one for which the details survive.
The route instructions were given to slaves by an old man
named Peg Leg Joe. Working as an itinerant carpenter, he
spent winters in the South, moving from plantation to plantation,
passing the tune, teaching slaves this escape route.
Then slaves passed the travel instructions from plantation
to plantation by song. Slaves brought from the tribal cultures
of Africa the custom of creating songs to transmit factual
information. In America slaves turned song into codes that
secretly transmitted information they wished to keep from
whites.
Photos : The Big Dipper is known to slaves as the "Drinking
Gourd". The two stars at the end of the bowl of the
Big Dipper point over to Polaris. It’s also the end
of the handle of the Little Dipper. |
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Harriet
Tubman (ca 1822-1913)
This most famous of all Underground Railroad "conductors"
was one of nine children of Harriet Green and Benjamin Ross.
Harriet was enslaved on the Brodess plantation in Eastern
Maryland. Trying to protect another slave, young Harriet
suffered a head injury that resulted in sudden loss of consciousness
throughout her life.
In 1848, she married John Tubman, a free Black man. When
she told him of her growing wish to escape, he threatened
to tell the master. After an aborted escape with her brothers,
she learned that she and her brothers would be sold and
sent to Georgia in a chain gang.
Harriet had other plans. As she later wrote, "There
was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death;
if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no
man should take me alive; I should fight for my liberty
as long as my strength lasted."
Harriet did not know what direction to go in and had no
compass to help guide her. Her father had taught her to
recognize constellations. Once Harriet located the North
Star, she knew which direction to go for freedom and began
her journey. Harriet navigated her way through the woods
at night, found shelter and help with free Blacks and Quakers,
and eventually reached freedom in Philadelphia with William
Still and the Pennsylvania Vigilance Committee.
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When she crossed the
Mason-Dixon Line, Harriet Tubman had this to say: "When
I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to
see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over
everything; the sun came like gold through the trees; I
felt like I was in heaven. I was free; but there was nobody
to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in
a strange land; and my home, after all, was down in Maryland;
because my father, my mother, my brothers, my sisters and
friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.
I would make a home in the North and bring them there, God
helping me. I said to the Lord, ‘I’m going to
hold steady on you, and I know you’ll see me through."
Upon hearing that her niece Mary and her children would
soon be sold, Harriet arranged to meet them in Baltimore
and usher them north to freedom. It was the first of some
13 trips during which she guided, coaxed, coerced and otherwise
brought approximately 70 runaways to freedom. She also helped
another 50 or so with detailed instructions to reach freedom
on their own. The trips became even more difficult after
the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law in 1850. That law
made Canada a primary destination of freedom; Harriet typically
took her "passengers" to St. Catharines, Ontario.
Note 1 : On the Underground Railroad, she was known
as the "Moses of her people." And famous song
"Go Down Moses" is about Harriet Tubman. ("Go
down Moses, Way down in Egypt’s land, Tell old Pharaoh
to let my people go..."). Moses is actually Harriet
Tubman, Egypt stands for the South and Pharaoh stands for
slave owners.
Note 2 : Mason-Dixon Line was the border between
the states of Pennsylvania and Maryland. It got its name
from the men who had surveyed and mapped the land. But this
line took on greater importance as the debate over slavery
heated up. It came to be regarded as the boundary between
“free states” in the North and “slave
states” in the South. |
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The
song and its translation :
Chorus
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is waiting for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.
Verse 1
When the sun comes back and the first quail calls,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is waiting for to carry you to freedom,
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.
"When the sun comes back" means winter and spring
when the altitude of the sun at noon is higher each day.
Quail are migratory bird wintering in the South. The Drinking
Gourd is the Big Dipper. The old man is Peg Leg Joe.
The verse tells slaves to leave in the winter and walk towards
the Drinking Gourd. Eventually they will meet a guide who
will escort them for the remainder of the trip.
Most escapees had to cross the Ohio River which is too wide
and too swift to swim. The Railroad struggled with the problem
of how to get escapees across, and with experience, came
to believe the best crossing time was winter. Then the river
was frozen, and escapees could walk across on the ice. Since
it took most escapees a year to travel from the South to
the Ohio, the Railroad urged slaves to start their trip
in winter in order to be at the Ohio the next winter.
Verse 2
The river bank makes a very good road,
The dead trees show you the way,
Left foot, peg foot, traveling on
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
This verse taught slaves to follow the bank of the Tombigbee
River north looking for dead trees that were marked with
drawings of a left foot and a peg foot. The markings distinguished
the Tombigbee from other north-south rivers that flow into
it.
Verse 3
The river ends between two hills,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
There's another river on the other side,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
These words told the slaves that when they reached the headwaters
of the Tombigbee, they were to continue north over the hills
until they met another river. Then they were to travel north
along the new river which is the Tennessee River. A number
of the southern escape routes converged on the Tennessee.
Verse 4
Where the great big river meets the little river,
Follow the Drinking Gourd.
For the old man is awaiting to carry you to freedom if you
follow the Drinking Gourd.
This verse told the slaves the Tennessee joined another
river. They were to cross that river (which is the Ohio
River), and on the north bank, meet a guide from the Underground
Railroad. |
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