We're All Surrounded

DESCRIPTION: "Martha wept and Mary cried. We're all surrounded. That good old man he up and died. We're all surrounded." Abbout a "good old man we'll see no more." "Carry the news, Carry the news to Mary, we're all surrounded..."
AUTHOR: Words: Charley Howard / Music: Walter Bray (source:
EARLIEST DATE: 1945 (Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips)
KEYWORDS: shanty worksong death | Adam Eve
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips, p. 6, "We're All Surrounded" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dime-Song-Book #30, p. 20, "Carry the News to Mary" (1 text)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #275, p. 19, "Carry the News to Mary" (1 reference)
Roud #9164 and V22505
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Marthy Wept (Mary Wept and Marthy Moaned)" (lyrics)
NOTES [188 words]: Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips gives this as an example of a Negro cotton stowing song that was adapted as a shanty. - SL
The reference to "Martha wept and Mary cried" is presumably a reference to the sisters of Lazarus who mourned over their brother in John 11. I don't have a good explanation for the "We're all surrounded" chorus (unless it's a mistake); it occurs to me that it might, just possibly, be a reference to Hebrews 12:1, where we are told that we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (who might well include Martha and Mary). The problem, is, the King James version uses the verb "compassed about" rather than "surrounded" (the Greek means something like "having an encirclement"). There is, in fact, no instance of the English verb "to surround," in any form, in the King James Bible.
The only part of this that seems to have gone into tradition is the single stanza cited by Harlow, which is actually only the first half-stanza of the full song. But it's the one that shows up in tradition, so it's the title used here. The original song is described as "As sung by SImms and Slocum's Minstrels." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: Harl006

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