Follow the Drinking Gourd song

[Wilson Gray]

FWIW, drinking gourds were still being made and used by black Texans
well into the late 'Forties, at least. (I never actually lived in Texas
after 1949.) My family, upper-middle class by local black standards,
used them only as decoration. We had regular, enameled-metal,
store-bought dippers for drinking, etc. And we always referred to the
constellation as the "Big Dipper." IMO, the resemblance between a
drinking gourd, which looks (very) roughly like a lightbulb, and the
Big Dipper is not obvious. Of course, a different genus or species may
have been used elsewhere.

-Wilson Gray

On Oct 15, 2004, at 9:03 AM, Joel Bresler wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Joel Bresler <joel.br at VERIZON.NET>
> Subject:      Re: Follow the Drinking Gourd song
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> At 11:59 PM 10/14/2004 -0400, you wrote:
>> On Oct 14, 2004, at 3:44 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>
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>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>>> Subject:      Re: Follow the Drinking Gourd song
>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>> --
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>>>
>>> ISTR that Harold Courlander expressed some skepticism about the
>>> genuineness song in his 1963 book
>
> <snip>
>
> "Negro Folk Music USA."
>
> Hi, Jonathan and all.
>
> Please note that Courlander was commenting on the Lee Hays
> "reconstruction"
> of the song (first published in 1947 and first recorded in 1951), NOT
> the
> Parks original. I wish I knew what Courlander made of the H.B. Parks
> version, if he knew it at all!
>
> I would be very grateful for early African-American references to "the
> drinking gourd" as a synonym for the Big Dipper/Ursa Major, etc. I
> didn't
> find it in "Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers'
> Project, 1936-1938" at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mesnquery.html nor
> in
> "Slave testimony : two centuries of letters, speeches, interviews and
> autobiographies", edited by John W. Blassingame, but clearly, there are
> mountains of other materials out there.
>
> Thank you,
>
> Joel
>
>
>
> Joel Bresler
> 250 E. Emerson Rd.
> Lexington, MA 02420
> USA
>
> 781-862-4104 (Telephone & FAX)
> joel.br at verizon.net
>