We know that any true folk song will always have multiple versions, since they weren’t composed in any formal way and were passed down orally for some time before being written. One aspect or the other of the original may be prominent in each variant. “Cindy” has an almost infinite variety of verses and also has the characteristic of having been built at least partly from “call and response,” which in this case has someone start out with a line and then others in the group have to come up with a second line that rhymes with the first, whether or not the lines add up to a coherent story. (This type of activity is also common in some churches in which the preacher says something that is clearly asking for a response, even if it’s just “amen.” My favorite such line is something I heard at a wedding I attended many years ago; when the preacher performing the ceremony started to feel that he wasn’t getting enough feedback, he’d say, “Am I talkin’ to anybody out there?” which would be greeted with a chorus of “amens.”)
Okay. Back to Cindy. She’s quite a character, isn’t she? Once you realize that none of the verses is necessarily supposed to make much sense since most of them were probably made up on the fly, the whole song becomes easier to understand. The earliest printed version that has been found dates to the early 1900’s in a collection of African-American folk tales:
I’se gwine down ter Richmond,
I’ll tell you w’a hit’s for:
I’se gwine down ter Richmond,
Fer ter try an’ end dis war.
An’-a you good-by, Cindy, Cindy
Good-by, Cindy Ann;
An’-a you good-by, Cindy, Cindy
I’se gwine ter Rappahan.
This song is in a tale called “How Mr. Terrapin Lost His Beard” that was published in 1904. Sounds like a “Just-So” story, doesn’t it? I did look the original up, but most of it is written in such heavy dialect that it’s almost impossible to get through. The song is quite long (I included only one verse) and has nothing to do with Mr. Terrapin; it’s just something that the plantation slaves are singing after supper in the cookhouse, after which “Aunt Nancy” tells the story. None of this reads very well today, needless to say.
But the point is that this must have been a well-known song long before the story was written down, since it’s simply included as something that would have been commonly heard at the time. It clearly refers to the Civil War and seems to be written from a Confederate soldier’s point of view. He’s going to go sign up to fight, and the South’s capital was Richmond, which is on the Rappahan(nock) River, so there you are. If you realize that at least one version is that of a soldier going off to war and saying good-bye to his sweetheart, then the constant refrain of “get along home” fits into the story. I always kind of vaguely thought that maybe Cindy was too young to get married and thus she needed to go back home until “someday” when she was old enough. But no. She needs to go home and wait for the soldier to come back.
But the commonly-sung versions of the song are very different from the one in the book. What has clearly happened is that Cindy has escaped from the original, if indeed any can be called that. She’s Everywoman, as it were. So a few of the most interesting ideas to be included are:
Her lover wishes he were an apple so that she could take a bite out of him. (Shades of “Oh that I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek!” from Romeo and Juliet.)
He wishes he could “sew that girl to my coat-tail, and down the road I’d go,” so she’s permanently attached to him. (We still use the expression “riding on someone’s coattails,” although it’s usually meant in a negative rather than a romantic manner, implying that one person has taken advantage of another’s popularity.)
He first met her when she was barefoot, with her “feet all over the floor.” I think this is one of those verses that was never supposed to make sense. (Was someone thinking of a girl with big feet? Beats me.) But she can be pretty assertive and forward about declaring her feelings: “She throwed her arms around him, he thought his time had come.” One version I ran across says,
My Cindy is a pretty girl,
My Cindy is a peach;
She throws her arms around my neck
And hangs on like a leech.
Not very complimentary, is it?
I do want to talk a little bit about the lines with Cindy at “the preachin’”:
Now Cindy went to the preachin’
She swung around and round,
She got so full of glory,
She knocked the preacher down.
Now Cindy got religion,
She thought her time had come,
She walked right up to the preacher,
And chewed her chewin’ gum
What’s all that about? We’re obviously not talking about some decorous church service here, but probably an old-fashioned revival meeting, the ones that were usually held in a tent. Some of them could get pretty raucous, which is clearly what is going on here. And why on earth does Cindy chew her gum in the preacher’s face? I can see the scene where there’s a group singing this song and making up verses, and the person who has the last line can’t think of anything to rhyme with “come” except “gum,” so he blurts out “And chewed her chewin’ gum.”
The tune is the same as the old spiritual “Gospel Train” or “Get on Board, Little Chillun.” Bet you didn’t realize that, did you? Neither did I.
Here’s a pretty classy performance by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with orchestral accompaniment:
Here’s at least one version of the lyrics:
And everytime my sweetheart passed
She’d take a bite off me.She told me that she loved me
She called me sugar plum
She threw her arms around me
I thought my time had come.
Get along home, Cindy, Cindy
Get along home, Cindy, Cindy
I’ll marry you sometime.
As fine as I could sew
I’d sew her in my pocket
And down the road I go.Cindy hugged and kissed me
She wrung her hands and cried
Swore I was the prettiest thing
That ever lived or died.
Get along home, Cindy, Cindy
Get along home, Cindy, Cindy
I’ll marry you sometime
© Debi Simons
