This is another one of those endlessly variable folk songs with about a hundred verses. You might ask, though, “Okay, but who’s the ‘she’ who’s comin’ round the mountain?” Good question. I originally made an assumption here, thinking that this was a literal woman, but she’s not that in the original at all. Guess what ‘she’ actually is? A chariot. That’s right. This song is drawn from a spiritual about the Second Coming of Christ, and the “she” refers to the chariot that “King Jesus” will be riding. As with many spirituals, though, there may be an underlying meaning about freedom and the Underground Railroad.
