Origins: Funeral Request Songs

Subject: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GUEST,VagabondAppetite
Date: 11 Mar 24 - 01:45 PM

Hey there,

Haven't posted here before but I'm trying to follow a particular thread and wondering if anyone here has some ideas:

I was listening to the song "Lavender Coffin" by Lionel Hampton and it got me thinking about a particular style or type of folk/blues music where the singer is requesting things for their funeral.

The ones that jumped out at me aside from Lavender Coffin are

(Some renditions of) St. James Infirmary:

When I die bury me in a back box coat
In a John B Stetson hat
Put a 20 dollar gold piece on my watch chain
So my friends will know I died standing pat

Get 6 gamblers to carry my coffin
6 chorus girls to sing me a song
Put a jazz band on my hearse wagon
To raise hell as we roll along

as well as

the Irish trad toon Rosin the Beau/Bow:

Then get these half-dozen stout fellows,
And let them all stagger and go,
And dig a great hole in the meadow and
In it put Rosin the Bow.
And in it put Rosin the Bow,

Then get ye a couple of bottles,
Put one at me head and me toe,
With a diamond ring scratch upon them
The name of old Rosin the Bow.

Curious to know if there are other examples of this type of song since it apparently stretches back at least a few hundred years and across folk and blues traditions.

Thanks!

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 01:05 PM

Songs in the Unfortunate Rake / Bad Girl's Lament etc family include instructions about who are to carry the coffin, strewing roses to disguise the smell, etc.

Then there is the Tarpaulin Jacket family. The only one that I can quote from my head (instead of bothering to look online) is the Australian version with the chorus:
Dress me up in my stockwhip and saddle,
And bury me deep down below,
Where the dingoes and crows cannot find me [or "can't molest me"]
In the shade where the coolibahs grow.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: Bainbo
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 02:07 PM

The British folk song I Once Loved A Lass (you can find the lyrics in the DigiTrad, at the top of the Mudcat home page, as I Ainse Loved A Lass) contains the lines:

Go dig me a grave, both long, wide and deep / And cover it over wi florets sae sweet / And I'll turn in for to take a long sleep / And maybe in time I'll forget her

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: The Sandman
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 03:08 PM

The jug of Punch
And when I'm dead and in my grave
No costly tombstone will I have
Just lay me down in my native peat
With a jug of punch at my head and feet

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GerryM
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 04:42 PM

Does Steve Martin's King Tut count?

Now, when I die,
Don't think I'm a nut,
Don't want no fancy funeral,
Just one like ole king Tut.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GerryM
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 04:45 PM

Matt McGinn, The Rolling Hills of the Borders, the chorus starts,

When I die, bury me low
Where I can hear the bonny Tweed flow.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GerryM
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 04:52 PM

Lee Hays, In Dead Earnest (more a recitation than a song):

If I should die before I wake,
All my bone and sinew take:
Put them in the compost pile
To decompose a little while.
Sun, rain, and worms will have their way,
Reducing me to common clay.
All that I am will feed the trees
And little fishes in the seas.
When corn and radishes you munch,
You may be having me for lunch.
Then excrete me with a grin,
Chortling, “There goes Lee again!”
Twill be my happiest destiny
To die and live eternally.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 05:53 PM

Lord Thomas, in at least one of the versions, asks his mother to
Did my grave both wide and deep,
And place Fair Eleanor in my arms,
And the Brown Girl at my feet.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GerryM
Date: 12 Mar 24 - 10:10 PM

Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie has these instructions from the dying cowboy:

"O bury me not on the lone prairie
Where the wild coyote will howl o'er me
Where the buffalo roams the prairie sea
O bury me not on the lone prairie"

"I've often wished to be laid when I die
By the little church on the green hillside
By my father's grave, there let mine be
O bury me not on the lone prairie"

Spoiler: they bury him on the lone prairie.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 13 Mar 24 - 01:08 PM

Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred
Tan me hide when I'm dead.
So we tanned his hide when he died, Clyde
That's it hanging' on the shed.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

Welcome to the mud ... Vag ... you're bound to like it.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GUEST,Karen Impola
Date: 13 Mar 24 - 10:44 PM

Calypso singer Growling Tiger (a/k/a Neville Mercano) sings:

When I dead bury me clothes
I don't want no sweet man to wear me clothes
When I dead bury me clothes
500 dollars of fine clothes . . .

Listen on YouTube

And there's this one from the Bahamas:

Dig my grave both long and narrow
Make my coffin neat and strong (2x)
There's two to my head
Two to my feet
Two to carry me
Whenever I'm gone

Wanting to be buried with booze is pretty common, as in the French drinking song "Chevaliers da la table ronde"
(lyrics here)

Rough translation of the relevant part, with help from Google:

If I die, I want them to bury me
In a cellar where there is good wine
Both feet against the wall
And my head under the tap
And my bones, in this way
Will remain, soaked in wine
And the four biggest drunkards
Will carry the four corners of the sheet
On my tomb, I want them to inscribe
"Here lies the king of the drinkers"

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GUEST,Karen Impola
Date: 13 Mar 24 - 10:57 PM

Oh yeah, there's also Elizabeth Cotten's "Freight Train"

When I die, Lord, bury me deep
Way down on old Chestnut Street
So I can hear old Number Nine
As she comes rolling by

Merle Haggard's "Dark As a Dungeon"

I hope when I'm gone and the ages shall roll
My body will blacken and turn into coal
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home
And pity the miner a-diggin' my bones

Now I'm probably going to have more examples popping into my head all evening.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GerryM
Date: 14 Mar 24 - 12:46 AM

"Dark as a Dungeon" was Merle Travis, not Merle Haggard.

When Peter, Paul and Mary recorded Freight Train, they changed Chestnut Street to Bleecker Street, a street in Greenwich Village. Some years later, there was a Number Nine train on the Broadway IRT local line, making a stop within easy walking distance of Bleecker Street.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Mar 24 - 09:20 AM

Thanks, GerryM. My mistake. I was thinking of the right person, but the wrong name came out.

Subject: RE: Origins: Funeral Request Songs
From: GUEST,Peter Laban
Date: 14 Mar 24 - 09:31 AM

Staying with the train theme:

Woodie Guthrie - Little Black train