Our Singing Country

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	Our Singing Country
	7   Eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, Work killed my brother and sont him to heaven. 8   Eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, I leP old worksy standm' at de workhouse gate. 9   Eighteen hundred and ninety-nine, I outrun worksy, and I left hit behind. Because I never liked to work-a nohow.
	I GOT TO ROLL No record. From the singing of Bess Brown Lomax and Alan Lomax, learned from Black Sampson in the Nashville Penitentiary, 1937. See Od.2, p. 101. "When you're in prison, you can think uf anything and go to singing it. Got something on your mind, you know, and you go to singing it. On Mon­days—we call that 'Blue Monday*—you ain't studyin' 'bout singing. You know you got to go all that week. Don't sing much in the mornin' 'cause you don't jeel good. When you get out there you'd be thinkin' 'bout home. Right after dinner, when they bellies full, the boys don't want to talk or sing either; they're feelin' lazy with their bellies full and that hot sun comin' down. But you got to go anyhow. But late in the evenin', you know, and along about Saturday, we'd sing. 'Long about Friday and Saturday, you know the week is all about done, and, man, you go to singing then. Down there, we call Saturday 'Christmas Eve' and Sunday 'Christmas' 'cause we know when Sunday comes we ain't gonna work.             —Louisiana Negro.