From the recording Kingdom Coming, or The Year of Jubilo
Henry Clay Work was another prodigious talent of the Civil War years, who went on to write many more songs, including Grandfather's Clock and The Ship that Never Returned, later re-written about a fellow named Charlie riding Boston's MTA. His father was an abolitionist, and although Henry wrote in Negro dialect for the minstrel stage, the feelings expressed here are sincere. I have not reproduced the dialect; but I have to admit I do find the piece a great deal of fun to sing. One bit of explanation: in verse 2, the master is getting tanned, and the Yankees might think he's "contraband." A contraband was an escaped slave. When the war first began, slaves almost immediately started appearing in Union encampments. The officers didn't know what to do with them and some even sent them back to slavery. But Benjamin Butler, who later became the loathed commander of Union-occupied New Orleans, decided to treat the slaves as Confederate property, as slave-owners had always claimed. If they are property, we are confiscating them as contraband of war and not sending them back. This policy continued throughout the war.
Thanks to Keith Fletcher for the fiddle on this one.
Lyrics
Oh, can you see the master comin' with the mustache on his face,
Well, he come out here sometime this morning, said he's gonna leave this place.
He saw the smoke way up the river where the Lincoln gunboats lay,
And he grabbed his hat and he left mighty sudden, and I think he's gone away!
CHORUS:
Oh, the master run, ha ha,
And the black folks stay, ho ho!
And it must be now that the kingdom's comin',
In the Year of Jubilo.
Oh, he's six foot one way, two foot the other, and he weighs three hundred pounds,
And his coat's so big that he can't pay the tailor, and it won't go half way round.
He drills so much they call him Captain, and he's gettin' mighty tanned,
I expect he'll try to fool them Yankees for to think he's contraband.
Now the overseer, he makes trouble, and he runs us round a spell,
Well, we locked him up in the smokehouse cellar with the keys thrown down the well.
His whip is lost, his handcuffs broken and the master'll have his pay,
He's old enough and big enough and ought to know better than to went and run away.