You Got My Letter

DESCRIPTION: The verse structure is three identical lines and the tag "People keep a-comin' and the train done gone." Verses are "Got my letter?" "John was a writer." "Wrote the Revelation."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1959 (LomaxCD1713)
KEYWORDS: Bible nonballad worksong
FOUND IN: US(SE)
RECORDINGS:
Willis Proctor and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, "You Got My Letter" (on LomaxCD1713)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Mary Had a Baby" (structure, tune, tag line)
NOTES [329 words]: The LomaxCD1713 recording has the same tune, structure and tag line as "Mary Had a Baby." Why not call these the same song? The text even refers to the Bible, but it is an entirely different reference.
The tag floats. See, for example, "All Night Long" (I), Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 583, indexed here as "I Belong to that Band," Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 614A, indexed here as "Down By the Riverside (Study War No More)," and Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, pp. 256-257, indexed here as "Reborn Again."
As a side note, there would be no incongruity in a hymn doubling as a work song. "Drinking of the Wine" is an example of a hymn that has found a place as a work song in many environments, though sung differently to match the work. Allen commented -- in 1867 -- on how many of the work songs heard on the Sea Islands were hymns; in fact, he writes, "it is often, indeed, no easy matter to persuade them to sing their old (secular) songs, even as a curiosity, such is the sense of dignity that has come with freedom" (Allen/Ware/Garrison-SlaveSongsUnitedStates p. x). By the twentieth century secular songs, no longer associated with slavery days, became acceptable as work songs. - BS
In light of the statement that "John was a writer," it is interesting to observe that John was the only gospel writer to whom letters are attributed -- though neither the Gospel nor the Letters of John list an author. The Revelation does, but it is not by the same writer as the Gospel and Letters -- a fact that was known even in antiquity, though the Western church in particular ignored this. In any case, it is unlikely that the writer of this song would know that fact; what the author would have observed is that a gospel, three letters, and the Revelation were all attributed to "John," making him the author of five Biblical books including three letters -- more books, and more letters, than anyone except Paul. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: RcYGMLet

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