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Negro Gang Songs
The prisoner lets out a long moan like a lonely steamboat whistle and hollers,
/ fills her focket full of stiver and her mouth full of gold. Every time I kiss her, my blood runs chilly co~o~old.
Then he remembers how lonely he is?
She said that she loved me> but she told me a lie> She hasn't been to see me} Lawd} since last July.
He remembers where he is and puts the bitterness of the prisoner into these two lines,
Ain' but the one thing worries my mind: World full of women} an' ain* nary one mine.
"O Lawd, I Went Up on the Mountain" is a compost of old blues verses and a blues tune set to the rhythm of the woodyard axes.
* In the middle of the second stanza the men begin to double-cut, i.e., to alternate their axe strokes, which from then on occur regularly on the first beat of each measure.
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