Say, “All you rounders who want to flirt,
Here come a woman wid a hobble-skirt.”
John Henry say to his captain
Befo’ he lef’ town,
“If you give me ’nother drink o’ yo’ co’n,
I’ll beat yo’ steel drill down.”
It would take a large volume to record all of the ways in which John Henry is known to the Negro worker and singer. He is known far and wide in song and story and he is the hero of hundreds of thousands of black toilers. Negroes who do work that requires rhythmic movements, such as digging or driving steel, naturally like to dwell upon the thought of the great John Henry, and they make work songs about the great hero. The four songs which follow are not only good examples of this kind of work song, but reveal something of the worker’s feeling for John Henry.
Dis Here Hammer Kill John Henry
Dis here hammer, hammer
Kill John Henry,