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Hang Me

from Bring Me Home by Peggy Seeger

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NOTE BY ELISABETH HIGGINS NULL:


"Hang Me," an American song sometimes known as "I've Been All Around this World," is related to "Working on the New Railroad" and has been a favorite of popular and folk revival singers since Bing Crosby (How the West Was Won, RCA Victor, 1959). Roger Abrahams recorded a version in the late 1950s (Make Me A Pallet on the Floor, Prestige: PR-INT 13034,) and Sam Hinton recorded it a few years later (The Song of Men, Folkways 1961, FA-7100). Hinton's version was transformed into Dave Van Ronk's later version (Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger, Prestige 13056,1963) and no doubt evolved into those sung by The Grateful Dead (Bear's Choice, 1970) and Bob Dylan (live performance, 1990). Today the song and its variants have become standard fare in bluegrass as well as revival repertoire.

Peggy's rendition has several verses rarely found in other recorded versions and closely resembles a version in Louise Pound's American Ballads and Songs (New York City: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1922). Pound calls her song, "The Gambler," and says it was collected in 1917 from the singing of Minnie Dogs, Arlington, Phelps County, Missouri by Frances Barbour, who submitted it to the folklorist Henry Marvin Belden. Another version even more closely resembling Peggy's was collected in 1917 from Billy Laws of Argenta, Arkansas by Vance Randolph. Laws described his version, "My Father Was A Gambler," as only one small part of a long ballad about a murderer who was sick in "Old Missouri" and was hanged in Fort Smith during the 1870s. Minnie Dogs' version describes the condemned man as sick in Fort Smith, but Peggy's version, like that of Billy Laws, has him sick in "Old Missouri."

As with many other execution songs that take the criminal's viewpoint, both the Laws and Peggy Seeger versions express regret that the murderer disregarded the advice of his mother. Peggy also includes a verse in which the condemned man asks to have his children attend the execution, if only to hang their heads and cry. Peggy's tune parallels Laws' melody (as transcribed by Randolph) except for a flatted seventh towards the end of the second phrase. This gives it a strongly mixolydian feel.

Fran Majors, recorded a fuller version ("The Blue Ridge Mountains") for the Missouri collector Max Hunter in 1959. Her version has a decidedly western feel and the protagonist is a cattle thief. One can hear it at the fully digitized Max Hunter Collection.

lyrics

HANG ME

words, music: traditional USA
arrangement: Peggy Seeger, Calum and Neill MacColl
(long-neck 5-string banjo, C-tuning)
supporting vocals: Calum and Neill MacColl

My daddy was a gambler, learned me how to play
My daddy was a gambler, learned me how to play
Said, Son, don't go beggin' while you got your ace and trey.

Way down in old Missouri, sick as I could be (2)
'Long comes a letter: Dear Son, come home to me.

Well, if I'd a-listened to Momma, I wouldn't been here today (2)
But I was young and foolish and easy led astray. So

Chorus
Hang me, O hang me and I'll be dead and gone
Hang me, O hang me, I'll be dead and gone
Well, I don't mind hangin' but you lay in the grave so long
Lay in the grave so long.

Momma and Poppa, little sister make three (2)
Marchin' up that hangin' hill for to see the end of me.

Go send for my two babies to come and see me die (2)
Go send for my two babies for to hang their heads and cry. (Chorus)

They'll put that rope around my neck, they'll pull me very high (2)
Very last words I'll hear 'em say, Won't be long till he die. (Chorus)

credits

from Bring Me Home, released January 22, 2008

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Peggy Seeger Oxford, UK

Peggy is one of the most influential folk singers on either side of the Atlantic. She is Pete Seeger’s half-sister and Ruth Crawford Seeger’s daughter; her first life partner was the English songwriter Ewan MacColl, who wrote First Time Ever I Saw Your Face for her. She has made more than 22 solo recordings to date. Please check ewanmaccoll.bandcamp.com for other albums featuring Peggy. ... more

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