Castle on the River Nile

DESCRIPTION: "In my castle on the River Nile I'm gonna live in elegant style, Inlaid diamonds on the floor And a baboon butler at my door. I'm gonna marry that princess Anna Mazoo/Kalamazoo And my blood's gonna change from red to blue... In my castle on..."
AUTHOR: Words: James Weldon Johnson and Bob Cole / music: James Rosamond Johnson (source: Jim Dixon in mudcat.org thread "Lyr Req: MY CASTLE ON THE NILE")
EARLIEST DATE: 1900 ("Sons of Ham," according to Jim Dixon in mudcat.org thread "Lyr Req: MY CASTLE ON THE NILE")
KEYWORDS: royalty marriage river campsong
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 236, "Castle on the River Nile" (notes only)
NOTES [189 words]: The camp song version is only the chorus of the original song, which is in part about the difficulty of rising in the world; the singer wants to go back to his ancestral homeland. The song is apparently from the musical "Sons of Ham," produced in 1900. Apparently it was also used in "In Dahomey," which was far more famous.
There are a number of ironies in the song. For starters, the nation of Dahomey (which is part of modern Benin) is nowhere near the Nile.
Second, since the original is obviously a "coon song," it was sung by a Black performer. There are, of course, Blacks who live along the upper Nile. But when one thinks of a castle on the Nile, the nation that surely springs first to mind is Egypt -- and the residents of Egypt are not Blacks as the term is usually defined today -- and never were. It is true that Genesis 10:6 makes Mizraim (the Hebrew name for Egypt, and so translated e.g. in the New Revised Standard Version) one of the sons of Ham. But the Ptolemies, who ruled Egypt in the pre-New Testament era, were Macedonians (sons of Japeth), and the population now is Arabic, and Arabic is a Semitic language. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.3
File: ACSF236C

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