Sitting in Mangrove Valley chasing light beams1
Everything wanders from baby to Z
Baby, baby, pretty, young on Tuesday
Old like a rum drinking demon at tea
Baby, baby, tell me what’s the matter
Why, why tell me, what’s your why now?
Tell me why will you never come home?
Tell me what’s your reason if you got a good one
Everywhere I go
The people all know
Everyone’s doin’ that rag
Take my line go fishing for a Tuesday
Maybe take my supper, eat it down by the sea
Gave my baby twenty, forty good reasons
Couldn’t find any better ones in the morning at three
Rain gonna come but the rain gonna go, you know
Stepping off sharply from the rank and file
Awful cold and dark like a dungeon
Maybe get a little bit darker ’fore the day
Hipsters, tripsters,2
real cool chicks, sir,
everyone’s doin’ that rag
You needn’t gild the lily, offer jewels to the sunset
No one is watching or standing in your shoes
Wash your lonely feet in the river in the morning
Everything promised is delivered to you
Don’t neglect to pick up what your share is
All the winter birds are winging home now
Hey Love, go and look around you
Nothing out there you haven’t seen before now
But you can wade in the water3
and never get wet
if you keep on doin’ that rag
One-eyed jacks and the deuces are wild4
The aces are crawling up and down your sleeve
Come back here, Baby Louise,
and tell me the name
of the game that you play
Is it all fall down?
Is it all go under?
Is it all fall down, down, down
Is it all go under?5
Everywhere I go
the people all know
everybody’s doin’ that rag
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
The mangrove is a species of tree (families Rhizophoraceae, Verbenaceae, Sonneratiaceae, and Arecaceae) growing in marshes or along tidal estuaries in dense clumps, with roots that are exposed.
African American slang dating from the 1930s and ’40s, denoting a person who is in the know, or hip. The word found its way into white American slang in the 1950s and ‘60s.
“Wade in the Water” is an American gospel tune:
Wade in the water
Wade in the water
Children wade in the water
God’s gonna trouble the water
Who’s that young girl dressed in red?
Wade in the water
Must be the children that Moses led
God’s gonna trouble the water
Wade in the water, wade in the water, children
Wade in the water,
God’s gonna trouble the water
Who’s that young girl dressed in white?
Wade in the water
Must be the children of the Israelite
Oh, God’s gonna trouble the water
Who’s that young girl dressed in blue?
Wade in the water
Must be the children that’s coming through
God’s gonna trouble the water, yeah
You don’t believe I’ve been redeemed
Wade in the water
Just so the whole lake goes looking for me
God’s gonna trouble the water
According to a study of the meaning of African American spirituals, Wade in the Water:
An example of a song composed for one purpose but used secretly for other, masked purposes is the familiar spiritual “Wade in the Water.” This song was created to accompany the rite of baptism, but Harriet Tubman used it to communicate to fugitives escaping to the North that they should be sure to “wade in the water” in order to throw bloodhounds off their scent.
and later in the same book:
In commenting on different versions of this song [“Wade in the Water”], observers have noted that it was sung in encouragement and celebration of the spirit of Africans in bondage as they participated in the Christian rite of baptism by immersion. However, these “Christian” baptismal ceremonies frequently served as a mask for a more traditional West African religious ceremony in which a tall cross, driven by a deacon into the river bottom, served as a bridge facilitating communication between the worlds of the living and the dead. In addition, the cross placed in the water in this manner also symbolized the four corners of the earth and the four winds of heaven. When the cross was utilized in this way by enslaved African worshipers, it was as if the sun in its orbit was mirrored, revealing the fullness of the Bakongo religion. And since those who lived a good life might experience rebirth in generations of grandchildren, the cycle of death and rebirth could hardly have been more suggestive than through the staff-cross—a symbol of communal renewal. (Jones) 27
Also the title of a folk song, with the lines:
She waded in the water
And she got her feet all wet.
But she didn’t get her (clap, clap) wet, yet
The jacks of hearts and spades are one-eyed; the jack of diamonds and clubs each have two eyes.
From a children’s rhyme, which, according to The Annotated Mother Goose, is not really all that old, dating back to Kate Greenaway’s 1881 Mother Goose. So much for all the theories claiming that the song refers to the Black Death. It’s basically a ring dance, where all the kids get to “dance and shake their bones” and fall down at the end. No heavy subtext.
There are many variations on the rhyme (interesting or unbelievable that they all should have developed since the 1880s.) Here are a few:
Ring-a-ring-r-roses,
A pocket full of posies;
Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush!
We’ve all tumbled down.
(The Annotated Mother Goose)
Ring-a-ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down.
The cows are in the meadow
Lying fast asleep,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all get up again.
(The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book)
A ring, a ring o’ roses,
A pocket full of posies,
Ash-a! Ash-a!
All stand still.
The king has sent his daughter
To fetch a pail of water,
Ash-a! Ash-a!
All bow down.
The bird upon the steeple
Sits high above the people,
Ash-a! Ash-a!
All kneel down.
The wedding bells are ringing,
The boys and girls are singing,
Ash-a! Ash-a!
All fall down.
(The Oxford Nursery Rhyme Book)
And the way I remember from childhood:
Ring a ring a rosies,
Pocket full of posies,
Ashes! Ashes!
All fall down!
Played as a game in a swimming pool, the final line “All go under” takes the place of “All fall down.”
Studio recording: Aoxomoxoa (June 20, 1969).
First documented performance: January 24, 1969. Dropped from the repertoire after 1969.
Quite a few songs in American popular music have had titles similar to this one:
“Doin’ the Ducky Wuck” (1935); words and music by Joe Penner and Hal Raynor.
“Doin’ the New Low-Down” (1928); words by Dorothy Fields, music by Jimmy McHugh.
“Doin’ the Raccoon” (1928); words by Raymond Klages, music by J. Fred Coots.
“Doin’ the Uptown Lowdown” (1933); words by Mack Gordon, music by Harry Revel.
“Doin’ What Comes Naturally” (1946); words and music by Irving Berlin.
And the most closely allied lyric is Irving Berlin’s 1911 hit, “Everybody’s Doing It Now”:
Ev’rybody’s doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it;
Ev’rybody’s doin’ it, doin, it, doin’ it.
See that ragtime couple over there,
Watch them throw their shoulder in the air,
Snap their finger, honey, I declare,
It’s a bear, it’s a bear, it’s a bear, there!
