Bird in a Cage
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-07-27

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.""