| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
RAILROAD SONGS |
^43 |
||
|
The singer overheard by W. H. Thomas chanting his "railroad blues " had felt the thrill of Wanderlust, as suggested by a train; but the remembrance that he had no money for a ticket chilled him. Truly, to suffer from the "rolling blues" and have no wherewithal to appease one's spirit, is a hardship. To long for escape from loathed circumstance, yet have no ticket, no simple little piece of cardboard that is so trivial, yet indispensable, is tragedy indeed.
Railroad Blues
I got the blues, but I have n't got the fare, I got the blues, but I have n't got the fare,
I got the blues, but I'm too damned mean to cry.
Some folks say the rolling blues ain't bad;
Well, it must not V been the blues my baby had.
Oh I where was you when the rolling mill burned down? On the levee camp about fifteen miles from town.
My mother's dead, my sister's gone astray, And that is why this poor boy is here to-day.
The train is an unfeeling observer in a couple of other songs given by Professor Thomas. The first is a Freudian transcript of a wayward darky's desire, his picaresque ambitions, which, in truth as well as in this dream, are like to end in disaster.
I dreamt last night I was walkin' around, I met that Nigger and I knocked her down; I knocked her down and I started to run, Till the sheriff stopped me with his Gatling gun.
I made a good run but I run too slow,
He landed me over in the Jericho;
I started to run off down the track,
But they put me on the train and brought me back.
I don't know what the Jericho here referred to is, but Huntsville in the next song is a Texas town where a penitentiary is located, so the allusion is quite clear.
To Huntsville
The jurymen found me guilty; the judge he did say, "This man's convicted to Huntsville, poor boy, For ten long years to stay." |
|||