Uploaded January 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 302 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
The tune in Sandburg is a little different from a more common version.
Sandburg writes: "Among spirituals used by blacks as work songs this is to be mentioned. “They sing it by the hour,” students at the University of Alabama told me, referring to “Ain’ Go’n’ to Study War No Mo’.”
"As they go on, hour by hour, they bring in lines from many other spirituals. The tempo is vital, never actually monotonous, never ecstatic, yet steady in its onflow, sure of its pulses. It is a work song-spiritual. . . . [with] black economy of vocables in speech and song."
ADDITIONAL INFO: Some scholars "believe that the song was inspired by the famous verse in Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:5), the former of which reads in the (American printings of) the King James Version,
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruninghooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
These verses have inspired many songs (too bad they haven't inspired more politicians!), although in this case I would consider the song an allusion, not an actual quote.
Incidentally, although the King James translation is so influential that many more accurate translations are afraid to change it. . . . (from the Traditional Ballad Index)
Day 302 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
The tune in Sandburg is a little different from a more common version.
Sandburg writes: "Among spirituals used by blacks as work songs this is to be mentioned. “They sing it by the hour,” students at the University of Alabama told me, referring to “Ain’ Go’n’ to Study War No Mo’.”
"As they go on, hour by hour, they bring in lines from many other spirituals. The tempo is vital, never actually monotonous, never ecstatic, yet steady in its onflow, sure of its pulses. It is a work song-spiritual. . . . [with] black economy of vocables in speech and song."
ADDITIONAL INFO: Some scholars "believe that the song was inspired by the famous verse in Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:5), the former of which reads in the (American printings of) the King James Version,
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruninghooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
These verses have inspired many songs (too bad they haven't inspired more politicians!), although in this case I would consider the song an allusion, not an actual quote.
Incidentally, although the King James translation is so influential that many more accurate translations are afraid to change it. . . . (from the Traditional Ballad Index)
