Sometimes called by its chorus, "Fare You Well, Oh Honey," this has become one of the enduring classics of folk repertoire since it was originally collected in 1908 by John A. Lomax from "Dink," a woman "washing her man's clothes outside their tent on the banks of the Brazos River in Texas. " (John A. Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter, New York: Macmillan Company, 1947). The song is more often known as "Dink's Song," one of those rare occasions when an informant is forever linked to the collected song and has assumed an iconic status.
Dink arrived in Texas with groups of contract laborers shipped down from Mississippi to build levees to protect the Brazos's rich bottomland soil for area cotton plantations. The women traveled from Memphis "along with the mules and iron scrapers." The men, skilled levee-builders, arrived from Vicksburg. According to Lomax:
The two groups of men and women had never seen each other until they met on the river bank in Texas where the white levee contractor gave them the opportunity presented to Adam and Eve-they were left to mate after looking each other over. While her man built the levee, each woman kept his tent, toted the water, cut the firewood, cooked his food, washed his clothes and warmed his bed.
It was a short-term arrangement, mediated by white economic power and prevailing racial stereotypes. As the white overseer put it, this was a way to control and pacify the black male laborers lest "they hunt all over the bottomlands for women" which could mean "trouble, serious trouble. Negroes can't work when sliced up with razors." "Today ain't my singing day," Dink told Lomax as her little son played at her feet. "He ain't got no daddy... I ain't had no time to hunt up a name for him."
Plied with gin from a plantation commissary, Dink finally shared her great song of emotional ambivalence, ending each refrain, as Lomax puts it, "with a subdued cry of despair and longing -the sobbing of a woman deserted by her man." In Dink's lyrics the woman is pregnant, wearing her apron high when it once was low. By the same token, it is the woman herself who actually says she will leave the man. Her decision may well be fed by economic despair, emotional estrangement, and endless drudgery. At one point, Lomax asked Dink, "Do you love this new man of yours?"
Dink erupts with the resentful comments Lomax transcribed as follows:
Some o' dese days I'm a goin' to take all dat man's clothes an' put 'em in dis washtub an' get 'em good an' soakin' wet. Den I'm goin' to roll up dese clothes in a gob an' cover de pile up right nice in de middle o' de' bed, smooth down de covers, and stick 'em all in 'round de edges. 'Den I'm goin' off up de river. [sic]
No onsite recording was made to show us what Dink, "reputedly the best singer in the camp," actually sounded like. It has been up to each succeeding singer to create this song afresh. Peggy does exactly that, eliminating the verses about pregnancy or about listening to the advice of one's mother. She adds a new verse which either underscores earlier hints of resentment in Dink's song or sets them in another light by introducing a possible premonition of death:
I went to the river
Sat down and cried
Heard you singing
On the other side
Peggy's version, backed by a finger-picking blues accompaniment, is stark and reserved. It is a hook on which all women can hang their sorrows and frustrations.
lyrics
DINK'S SONG
words, music: traditional USA
arrangement: Peggy Seeger and Neill MacColl
If I had wings like Norah's dove
I'd fly upriver to the one I love
Fare ye well, my honey, fare ye well.
I got a man, he's long and tall
He move his body like a cannonball
Fare ye well, my honey, fare ye well.
One of these days and it won't be long
You'll call my name and I'll be gone
Fare ye well, my honey, fare ye well.
I went to the river, sat down and cried,
Heard you singing on the other side
Fare ye well, my honey, fare ye well.
Late last night it was drizzling rain
Round my heart felt an aching pain
Fare ye well, my honey, fare ye well.
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