[Music]
You got to go that lonesome valley,
You got to go there by yourself.
There's no one can go there for you;
You got to go there,
you got to go there by yourself.
Recorded by the author, February 11, 1933, from the singing of Don
West of the Highlander Folk School, Monteagle, Tennessee. Mr. West
told me that the two subsequent stanzas began, "You got to lie in that
lonesome graveyard" and "Some folks say that John was a Baptist."
After each verse the tune is repeated to the words of the first
stanza.
The source of this spiritual song is very likely 'In Seaport Town',
see Sharp, i., 310, in which there is the recurring phrase:
Till at last they came to a lonesome valley,
and where considerable melodic similarity is to be found. Further
traces of this typical folk-tune are in 'Young Beichan', Sharp, i.,
79; 'My Mother Bid Me', Sharp, ii., 94, tune D; 'Opossum', Sharp, ii.,
353; 'Drivin' Steel', Sandburg, p. 150; the negro song 'You Got to
Cross it for Yourself', Sandburg, p. 486; and 'That Lonesome Valley',
Grissom, p. 2.
In _The Carolina Low-Country_, pp. 284ff., there are two negro
spirituals which lean heavily on 'That Lonesome Valley'. The "lonesome
valley" symbolized, among both negroes and whites, also the mourning
period which was a necessary forerunner of religious conversion.
No. 215
I'M BOUND TO DIE IN THE ARMY or SERVICE OF THE LORD, OSH 80