When John Henry was a little baby,
sitting on his daddy's knee,
he picked up a hammer,
and a little piece of steel, and said,
"Hammer's gonna be the death of me."
The foreman said to John Henry,
"I'm gonna bring that steam drill round.
I'm gonna bring that steam drill out on the job,
and I'm gonna drive that steel on down."
John Henry said to the foreman,
"A man ain't nothing but a man,
but before I let that steam drill beat me down,
I will die with this hammer in my hand."
John Henry said to his shaker,
"Shaker, why don't you sing?
I'm throwing twelve pounds
from my hips on down;
can't you hear the cold steel sing?"
The foreman said to John Henry,
"I think I hear this tunnel caving in!"
John Henry said, "Foreman, my, my!
That ain't nothing
but my hammer sucking wind."
John Henry drove down in the mountain,
his hammer was striking fire,
but he worked so hard that he broke his heart,
then he laid down his hammer
and he died.
They carried him back to the big white house.
They laid him down in the sand.
Now every time that locomotive roars by
it screams, "Yonder lies a steel driving man."
Now the man who invented the steam drill,
he thought he was mighty fine,
but the steam drill only drove twenty-six feet,
John Henry he drove twenty-nine.
Every Monday morning on that mountain top,
you can hear the bluebirds sing,
you can hear John Henry laugh
from a mile away, and
you can hear his hammer ring.
................................................................................
Although I heard it played by bluegrass porch pickers many times, John Henry
never struck a chord with me until I had studied Yoruban mythology for a number
of years. One Sunday morning I woke up and realized that I knew how to play
and sing John Henry, and it wasn't like the versions I had heard. I knew some
of the verses and ferreted out the others from internet sources.
To me, John Henry is the Orisa Ogun...iron, source of tool making and technology, the knife that cuts, the road that cuts though wilderness and mountains. Ogun came with his people...he was, in fact, the iron shackles that bound them. It was just a matter of time till he was praised in song again.
I ran into alot of interesting information about this ballad online...(the wires that carry the information are also Ogun!)... according to some historians, the "big white house" was an infirmary in the prison work camp, the sand yard inside the fence was an easy graveyard. The "shaker" is the song leader, whose chant marked the time to hold the spike for the driver, and the time to pull your hand away. I wonder if that shaker also implies the sort of gourd shakers that are used by Houguns (priests) in Haitian Voudoun?
For those interested in Ogun, or some of the very best of modern
poetry and playwriting, I couldn't recommend the work of Wole Soyinka too highly.
His long poem, Idandre, is a masterpiece of insight into this subject, as is
his play "The Road."