Way Down in Indiana

DESCRIPTION: A minstrel-song adeventure fantasy. The adventures of an Indiana slave. See NOTES for some examples.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1948 (recording, Charles S. Brink)
KEYWORDS: travel hunting burial corpse death work humorous nonballad nonsense talltale slave Black(s)
FOUND IN: US(MA)
Roud #24836
RECORDINGS:
Charles S. Brink, "Way Down in Indiana" (in BayardCollection, video 10 ("Charles S. Brink #4" starting at 07.35))
NOTES [210 words]: Charles Brink's song includes, among its many verses:
"One morning I thought that I'd seen an alligator / I turned the kit around and I chopped him sweet potato / ... / I upped with a brick I popped him such a lick / There's nothing but a pine nut upon a big cake."
"Master he died on the eleventeenth of April / They put him in a truck what they called the Sugar Maple / They dug the hole right out on the level? And I really believe that he'd gone to the devil."
"Captain A-Rotten, I never can forgot him / He put me on a lease for to roll a bale of cotton. / It's Tom beats the drum and it's Big Bill the fifer / I is the boy who can read, write and cipher: / Twice two are four, carry one is seven / Twice six is twenty-nine less eighteen's eleven / Betwixt you and me, it's very plain to see / It's hard to beat the banjer by the double rule of three." - BS
It should be noted that, while Indiana was technically a free state before the American Civil War, it was almost certainly the most pro-Southern of all states north of the Ohio River. It was an open secret that slaves were kept there -- Senator Jesse D. Bright of Indiana (1813-1875) was a slave-owner; he was actually expelled from the Senate for his pro-Southern behavior during the Civil War. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.1
File: RcWaDoIn

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