Talk:Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

message: This page and several related pages on Wikipedia make the popular and wholly unsupported claim that spirituals were used by members of the Underground Railroad to send "coded messages." The internet source cited in this page as a reference, "Spirituals as Coded Communication," is nice to look at but empty of content. (The Frederick Douglass quotation it uses as evidence is taken out of context and does not support the claim that spirituals contained hidden messages. Read My Bondage and My Freedom if you have doubts: In the passage quoted in footnote 13, Douglass and other slaves are singing the song as a /personal/ expression of their plans to escape, not as a means to communicate secretly with others, and in a later passage he writes that he will not reveal in his book any of the actual “pass-words” used by slaves and abolitionists to communicate certain “things, important to us” (280). In other words, this song's lyrics were not part of any code, at least according to Douglass.
Claims of slave songs carrying secret messages may make people feel good today (I think that's why these stories are so popular), but repeating them isn't enough to make them true. At the very least, we should admit when we tell ourselves these stories that we don't have solid, historical evidence to show that songs were used in this manner. Jk180 20:45, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unsupported claims about "coded messages" 

message: I think perhaps we should include an explanation of why the England Rugby team uses this spiritual. The Story is at  England_national_rugby_union_team#Post-War but is probably more appropriate here.
I put one here some time ago but somebody deleted it. It is pretty well atested too. I think there should still be a mention of the incident in the main article on the England rugby union team but feel free to edit it down.GordyB 10:46, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: my club (in the u.s.) sang swing low long before 1988. this story seems to suggest that year as the origin for its connection with rugby in the u.k. surely that can't be so.Toyokuni3 (talk) 20:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

text: do i detect a note of offense in your reply? if so, sorry. that certainly wasn't my intent. but i have always thought of rugby tradition travelling east to west across the pond, not vice versa.i know you lot originated most of the songs we sang. the mayor of bayswater, the sexual life of the camel, the whoredean school and of course, why was he born so beautiful.Toyokuni3 (talk) 23:02, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

text: Sorry Gordy B, you are talking out of your proverbial. The song has been connected to UK rugby for far longer than its supposed introduction to the national game by some schoolboys, lovely story though that is. It might be in the article and cited, but it's not true. My UK university (Cambridge) college rugby team sung Swing Low in the late 70s, not just as a drinking game - at matches too. Other Cambridge college teams sang it too. Ask Rob Andrew - he was singing it in the early 80s at university.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.154.231.96 (talk) 10:52, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  England Rugby 

message: ::This is also used as a drinking game by fighter pilots. The first person to incorrectly give the gestures for this song is required to buy the next round of drinks.
::Please get a reference for this.
I find it intersting that the ENTIRE article is unreferenced.
John Mehlberg (email) 17:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Fighter Pilots

message: There isn't really a place for this in the article, but I just corrected an error that said Elvis Presley recorded the song for one of his movies. That was "Swing Down Sweet Chariot", a completely different song. 23skidoo 18:57, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Elvis

message: The history section begins with:
"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot was composed by Wallis Willis"
and later goes on to state:
"Unfortunately, the original composer's name is permanently lost to history. Alexander Reid, a minister at a Choctaw boarding school, heard Willis singing the songs and transcribed the words and melodies."
These statements seem absolutely contradictory, but neither has a source, so I'm unsure of how to approach correcting it. -=Worloq=- 19:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confusing statement 

message: The song is ranked #1200 of all-time at Acclaimed Music, a site which aggregates music critics lists from around the world to compose a "consensus" list of great music. Not sure if this merits mention in the article or not. I am not a flack for the site, just someone who uses it and thought it might merit mention. GBrady (talk) 20:52, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ranked in AcclaimedMusic.net 

message: This whole article is some what wrong. Is it really a black gospel song? Are or black people trying to steal another Gospel like they are trying to do Amazing grace, even though Amazing Grace was made by a British.
:You have a point. It was (according to the article) written by a Native American, I'm really not sure why we are discribing it as a Negro spiritual. It certainly would not have been a Negro spiritual at the time of writing. Even odder, there is no mention of when the song became popular with black Americans.GordyB (talk) 17:21, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  I am confussed from what I know about the songs origin 

message: THis song is AMAZING!!!!!!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.177.97.39 (talk) 16:25, 14 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  song 

message: Since Allmusic have changed the syntax of their URLs, 1 link(s) used in the article do not work anymore and can't be migrated automatically. Please use the search option on http://www.allmusic.com to find the new location of the linked Allmusic article(s) and fix the link(s) accordingly, prefereably by using the  template. If a new location cannot be found, the link(s) should be removed. This applies to the following external links:
* http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=17:1500026~1~T00A
--CactusBot (talk) 11:17, 2 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dead external links to Allmusic website – January 2011 

message: There's a song on The Ballad of Sally Rose that closes the album, and it's called "Sweet Chariot", the chorus is:
:Swing down sweet chariot
:The flesh will fall and the bones will rot
:But from my sorrow you'll carry me not
:My heart is bound, my soul is chained to the rock.
Any objections on including this allusion here? It's an important album (if commercially a failure) in E. Harris' career.
dnik ► 12:44, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notable allusion 

message: ""Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" was written by Wallis Willis, a Choctaw freedman in the old Indian Territory in what is now Choctaw County, near the County seat of Hugo, Oklahoma sometime before 1862."
It seems unlikely that Wallis Willis was a Choctaw freedman before the Civil War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_Freedmen
"The Choctaw freedmen were enslaved African Americans who became part of the Choctaw Nation with emancipation after the American Civil War, a requirement of the 1866 treaty the US made with the Choctaw."
Kenif (talk) 03:16, 16 March 2014 (UTC
I agree, there is a problem. There is a link in this article to Choctaw freedmen. The dates seem incompatible. Instead of "before 1862" it seems it should be "after 1865", so I'll make that change. Marlindale (talk) 01:30, 24 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  History 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I'm afraid the info in this article is incorrect. The spiritual was originally notated by Ella Sheppard, and her arrangement was sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers of Nashville. The spiritual was sung by enslaved Africans on plantations throughout the South before the Civil War. Wallis Willis may have heard a version of it and attempted to claim credit for it. But the true credit for the manuscript belongs to Ella Sheppard. Nina07011960 (talk) 19:23, 14 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Spiritual's origins

message: It cannot have been first composed
"sometime after 1865" and
"Written Prior to 1862" [photo box]
at the same time.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Starhistory22 (talk • contribs) 05:10, 26 December 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  The years are wrong 

message: Archeophone discovered a rendition of this song from 1894 by the Standard Quartette making that that the first recording.  Gandalf the Groovy (talk) 00:08, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  First Recording