The Invisible Church (Continued)
Other spirituals that make use of dual meanings can be found in table 5.2 below:
| Name | Text | Track |
|---|---|---|
| “Walk Together Children | ”O, walk together children Don’t you get weary Walk together children Don’t you get weary Walk together children Don’t you get weary There’s a great camp meeting in the Promised Land |
Listen here |
| Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” | Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel Deliver Daniel, deliver Daniel? Didn't my Lord deliver Daniel And why not every man?He delivered Daniel from the lion's den Jonah from the belly of the whale And the Hebrew children from the fiery furnace And why not every man? |
Listen here |
| “Steal Away” | Steal away, steal away, steal away to Jesus Steal away, steal away home I ain’t got long to stay here |
Listen here |
| “Trampin’ Trampin” | I’m trampin’, trampin’, trying to make heaven my home | Listen here |
According to Dr. Eileen Guenther, these songs with double meaning were a way for the slaves to sing what they could not say (Guenther 2016, 358). The following inventory taken from Rebecca Lynn Raber’s dissertation is a non-exhaustive list of commonly-used themes for coded messages:
- Context: the enslaved often sang of heaven and their longing to go to
heaven - Translation: freedom, the northern free states, Canada, Africa
(Liberia), or heaven
- Context: where evil, sin, and bondage resides
- Translation: being sold further south, slavery, death, sin
- Context: every man whose soul is converted deserves deliverance
- Translation: freedom, escape, religious conversion
- Context: the Year of Jubilee (from Leviticus 25:8-10) referred to the day, every fifty years, when the Israelites received their freedom and their property returned
- Translation: emancipation, freedom, escape
- Context: heroic figures of the Old Testament were ordinary men with extraordinary faith
- Translation: these figures represented the ordinary men and women enslaved on plantations hoping to be delivered from slavery, as well as those heroes that sought to help them to freedom (agents of the Underground Railroad)
- Context: any persons that stood in the way of freedom
- Translation: slave traders, slave masters, slave owners
- Context: a reference to water meant either a journey (on the other side was freedom), or an action of the water (aiding in escape by concealing the scent from dogs) washing the soul cleanly into a new life (baptism, finding freedom)
- Translation: Ohio River (most-used meaning), Atlantic Ocean (to return to Africa), or any other river that posed as a barrier to freedom
- Transportation: (chariots, ships, trains, wheels, wings, shoes, walking, running, flying, Jacob’s ladder)
- Context: any items that would facilitate traveling and escape/modes of transportation
- Translation: methods of movement and escape on the Underground Railroad
- Context: since the slaves didn’t “own” anything, the promise of having these things in heaven or when they were freed was exciting
- Translation: they were symbols of traveling, devotion, praise, or freedom
- Context: providing a sense of “place” kept the focus forward to escape
- Translation: North Star, Canada, freed states, escape routes
A brief analysis of "Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel" is summed up by Rebecca Lynn Raber:
For the enslaved, “Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel” asks the essential question of life: “Why not every man?” Although the piece is (outwardly) another bible story, the heart of the question goes much deeper. “This piece is a classic example of the double or coded meaning that is a key to understanding the lyrics and the role songs played in daily slave life. The song's creators majestically express the hope and desire that God send a deliverer to command the slave owners to let the people go.” Like other spirituals that feature epic figures of the Old Testament—Go Down, Moses, Elijah Rock, Ev’ry Time I Feel the Spirit— Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel offers the enslaved encouragement that since Daniel was delivered, why shouldn’t they also be delivered? This song is the battle cry of the underdog.
(Raber 2018, 33)
For slaves of African descent, belief in Christianity did not signal a loss of cultural identity or spiritual hope, as the inner workings of textual meaning and performance execution indicate.
Steal Away
O, walk together children
"Steal away
steal away
steal away to Jesus
Steal away
steal away home
I ain’t got long to stay here"
Donna M. Cox
"From the moment of capture, through the treacherous middle passage, after the final sale and throughout life in North America, the experience of enslaved Africans who first arrived at Jamestown, Virginia...was characterized by loss, terror, and abuse."