SWING low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home;
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
I looked over Jordan and what did I see,
Coming for to carry me home,
A band of angels coming after me,
Coming for to carry me home.
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home;
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Coming for to carry me home.
This famous song, beloved of England rugby fans, was originally written in 1862 by Wallis Willis, a freed slave of the Choctaw Indians of Oklahoma State. The official story goes that one day, as he was working in the cotton fields at Doaksville, on the banks of the Red River, Willis, homesick for his previous home along the Mississippi, made up the words of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ off the top of his head and began singing them. He then made up more verses over the years that followed. However, as with Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, this is no straightforward working song.
Some believe that the story of the song is simply based on Wallis’s dream that God would carry him away to heaven, like the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament. Elijah’s dramatic departure from Earth comes immediately after the waters of the river Jordan part, providing him with a path across (I looked over Jordan and what did I see, / Coming for to carry me home), after which a chariot and horses of fire appear and, in a whirlwind, lift the prophet to heaven. (Incidentally, it has been suggested that this is the Old Testament’s alien abduction story: the chariot of fire could easily be an eighth-century bc description of a UFO, but that’s another story.)
Although there are definite references to the story of Elijah, these are being used as a smokescreen to obscure the real message of the song. Willis was not the simple songwriter he pretended to be. His lyrics are couched in the language and style of straightforward spirituals but they’re full of hidden meaning. Another very popular song of his was ‘Steal Away’, which was sung quietly by slaves who intended to break for freedom, in the hope of attracting other workers along with them:
Steal away, steal away,
Steal away to Jesus;
Steal away, steal away,
I ain’t got long to stay here.
Seen in this light, ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ might in fact be a coded message about one of the best-kept secrets of the nineteenth century – the Underground Railroad. This was an informal network of secret routes and safe houses used by black slaves in the United States to escape to freedom with the aid of the abolitionists who were sympathetic to their cause. It was initially a network of routes from the Deep South to the northern states, but in 1850, after the Fugitive Slave Act allowed owners to pursue and recapture runaway slaves through the northern states of the Union, the Underground Railroad was extended to the Canadian border.
Support came from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Baptist Church, the Scottish Presbyterian movement and the Quakers, who all provided food and shelter along the way, at great risk to themselves. The network was known as a ‘railroad’ because of its use of coded messages based on railway terminology. Individuals were often organized into small, independent groups, with little knowledge of each other beyond sister groups and connecting routes in the vicinity, which helped to maintain secrecy. The resting spots where the runaways could sleep and eat were given the code names ‘stations’ and ‘depots’, which were held by ‘station masters’. There were also the ‘conductors’ who moved the runaways from station to station. These were often freed slaves from the North risking their own safety and liberty.
There are all kinds of colourful stories about how the coded messages were transmitted securely. It was too dangerous to write anything down and, besides, not all of the slaves were literate. Unusual and unexpected methods had to be employed. One theory is that fugitives were given quilts (primarily for bedding) whose designs provided coded maps to help direct them to stations. But an easier way was through song.
Many spirituals and other songs of the time contain information intended to help escaped slaves navigate the Railroad. One famous example is ‘Follow the Drinking Gourd’:
When the sun comes back and the first quail calls,
Follow the Drinkin’ Gourd;
For the old man’s waitin’ for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the Drinkin’ Gourd.
This song’s message was to look to the skies. The constellation known as the Plough in Britain and the Big Dipper in North America was commonly called by its African name, the Drinking Gourd, by the slaves. The Drinking Gourd’s ‘bowl’ points towards the North Star, hence the North and freedom.
‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ therefore tells the story of a slave waiting to be shipped to freedom, calling on the Underground Railroad to carry me home. As if mimicking the way that the movement used the terminology of railways to disguise their actions, the song uses the archaic terminology of the Bible – after all, a chariot is about as near as the Old Testament gets to a railway train. As there are no angels in the story of Elijah, the band of angels… coming for to carry me home could well be describing the religious organizations who were involved in the Railroad or even, as Canada and the North were already commonly referred to as the ‘Promised Land’, everyone who dwelt there already.
Another four verses take the story of the journey further. They hint at the perils of the journey (Sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down) and are full of motivating reminders of that new life ahead (my soul feels heavenly bound… Jesus washed my sins away):
Sometimes I’m up and sometimes I’m down,
Coming for to carry me home;
But still my soul feels heavenly bound,
Coming for to carry me home.
The brightest day that I can say,
Coming for to carry me home,
When Jesus washed my sins away,
Coming for to carry me home.
If I get there before you do,
Coming for to carry me home,
I’ll cut a hole and pull you through,
Coming for to carry me home.
If you get there before I do,
Coming for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I’m coming too,
Coming for to carry me home.
The penultimate verse makes a promise that the singer will physically come back and help those who remain behind (If I get there before you do… I’ll cut a hole and pull you through), as the slave audience would know that most of the ‘conductors’ on the Underground Railroad were former slaves, like Wallis Willis himself. The final verse is all about the importance of spreading the message of hope to all those slaves who weren’t yet on their way to freedom (Tell all my friends I’m coming). The Underground Railroad would make sure they were all eventually freed.