City of Refuge

DESCRIPTION: "There is coming a time and it won't be long, You will attend to your business and let mine alone." "You better run." ("Run to the city of refuge.") "Paul and Silas bound in jail."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1914 (Earnest)
KEYWORDS: religious Bible
FOUND IN: US(SE)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 560, "City of Refuge" (1 fragment)
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, pp. 208-209, "City of Refuge" (1 fragment of the chorus, 1 tune (which includes the verse even though the informant did not remember the words))
ADDITIONAL: Joseph B. Earnest, _The Religious Development of the Negro in Virginia_ (Michie Company, Charlottesville, VA, 1914; avaialble on Google Books), p. 154, "[The City of Refuge]" (1 excerpt)
Roud #11828
RECORDINGS:
Blind Willie Johnson, "I'm Gonna Run to the City of Refuge" (Columbia 14391-D, 1929; on BWJ01)
James Garfield Smalls, "You' Gotta Run, Run, Run" (on USSeaIsland03)
NOTES [106 words]: Brown's version is not at all clear why this should be considered a "City of Refuge" text; it never mentions those words, and is a fragment. But there isn't much else to go on.
The mention in song of "cities of refuge" is strange in any case: The cities of refuge were for "the manslayer who kills any person without intent" (Numbers 35:11).
Nor is there any mention of the cities of refuge ever actually being used; they are not mentioned outside Exodus-Deuteronomy, and the few Biblical instances of people wanting sanctuary involve the criminal fleeing into the temple and seizing the horns of the altar (e.g. Joab in 1 Kings 2:28) - RBW
Last updated in version 3.0
File: Br3560

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