Uploaded July 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 133 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
This is the beginning of a new chapter, "Prison and Jail Songs."
Sandburg writes: "In the mountains of Kentucky there was sung an old lyric of English origin, Down In The Valley. And there were jail-birds in Lexington, Kentucky, who built and wove from this older song with lines telling their sweethearts where to send letters. . . .
"Charles Hoening, working with a threshing crew near Lexington, heard four harvest hands, go off by themselves after supper, among strawstacks to sing. The gloaming crept on, an evening star came, a rising moon climbed the horizon dusk and mist. "They sang that song over and over and they knew how to sing it.""
Day 133 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
This is the beginning of a new chapter, "Prison and Jail Songs."
Sandburg writes: "In the mountains of Kentucky there was sung an old lyric of English origin, Down In The Valley. And there were jail-birds in Lexington, Kentucky, who built and wove from this older song with lines telling their sweethearts where to send letters. . . .
"Charles Hoening, working with a threshing crew near Lexington, heard four harvest hands, go off by themselves after supper, among strawstacks to sing. The gloaming crept on, an evening star came, a rising moon climbed the horizon dusk and mist. "They sang that song over and over and they knew how to sing it.""
