THE MOUNTAIN WHIPPOORWILL

Stephen Vincent Benet

All: Up in the mountains, it’s lonesome all the time

Sof’ win’ slewin’ thu’ the sweet-potato vine.

Up in the mountains, it’s lonesome for a child.

Whippoorwill’s a-callin’ when the sap runs wild.

Up in the mountains, mountains in the fog,

Everythin’s as lazy as an old houn’ dog,

Born in the mountains, lonesome-born,

Raised runnin’ ragged thu’ the cockleburrs and corn.

Boys: Never knew his pappy, mebbe never should

Thinks he was a fiddle made of mountain laurel-wood.

Girls: Never had a mammy to teach him pretty-please.

Thinks she was a whippoorwill, a skittin’ thu’ the trees

All: Never had a brother ner a whole pair of pants.

Solo 1: But when I start to fiddle, why, yuh got to start

to dance!

Listen to my fiddle

All: Kingdom Come—Kingdom Come!

Solo 1: Hear the frogs a-chunkin!

All: Jug o’ rum, Jug o’ rum!”

Solo 1: Hear the mountain whippoorwill be lonesome in the air,

An’ I’ll tell yuh how I traveled to the Essex

County Fair.

Solo 2: Essex County has a mighty pretty fair,

All the smarty fiddlers from the South come there

Elbows flyin’ as they resin up the bow

For the First Prize Contest in the Georgia Fiddler’s

Show.

Solo 3: Old Dan Wheeling, with his whiskers in his ears,

King-pin fiddler for nearly twenty years.

Solo 4: Big Tom Sargent, with his blue wall-eye.

Solo 5: An’ little Jimmy Weezer that can make a fiddle cry.

All: All sittin’ roun’, spittin’ high an’ struttin’ proud.

Solo 1: Listen, little whippoorwill, yuh better bug your eyes!

All: Tun-a-tun-a-tunin’ while the jedges told the crowd

Jedges: Them that got the mostest claps ‘ll win the

bestest prize

All: Everybody waitin’ for the first tweedle-dee,

Solo 1: When in comes a-stumbln’—hill-billy me!

Solo 6: Bowed right pretty to the jedges an’ the rest,

Tuk a silver dollar from a hole inside his vest.

Plunked it on the table an’ said,

Solo 1: “There’s my callin’ card! An’ anyone that licks

me-well,

He’s got to fiddle hard!”

Solo 3: Old Dan Wheeling, he was laughin; fit to holler,

All: Little Jimmy Weezer said,

Solo 5: “There’s one dead dollar!”

Solo 4: Big Tom Sargent had a yaller toothy grin.

Solo 1: But I tucked my little whippoorwill spang underneath

my chin and petted it and tuned it till the jedges said,

Jedges: “Begin.”

Solo 4: Big Tom Sargent was the first in line;

All: He could fiddle all the bugs off a sweet-potato vine.

He could fiddle down a possum from a mile-high tree.

He could fiddle up a whale from the bottom of the sea.

Yuh could hear hands spankin’ till they spanked

each other raw,

When he finished variations on “Turkey in the Straw.”

Solo 5: Little Jimmy Weezer was the next to play;

All: He could fiddle all night, he could fiddle all day.

He could fiddle chills, he could fiddle fever.

He could make a fiddle rustle like a lowland river.

He could make a fiddle croon like a lovin’ woman.

An’ they clapped like thunder when he’d finished strumming.

Solo 7: Then came the ruck of the bob-tailed fiddlers,

The let’s-go-easies, the fair-to-mddlers.

They got their claps an’ they lost their bicker,

An’ settled back for some more corn-licker.

All: An’ the crowd was tired of their no-count squealing,

Solo 3: When out in the center stepped Old Dan Wheeeling.

All: He fiddled high and fiddled low,

Solo 1: (Listen little whippoorwill; yuh got to spread yore wing.)

All: He fiddled with a cherrywood bow.

Solo 1: (Old Dan Wheeling;s got bee-honey in his strings.)

Solo 8: He fiddled the wind by the lonesome moon,

All: He fiddled a most almighty tune.

Solo 8: He started fiddling like a ghost.

All: He ended fiddling like a host.

Solo 8: He fiddled north an’ he fiddled south,

All: He fiddled the heart right out of yore mouth.

Solo 8: He fiddled here an’ he fiddled there.

All: He fiddled salvation everywhere.

When he had finished, the crowd cut loose,

Solo 1: (Whippoorwill, they’s rain on yore breast.)

All: An’ he stood there wonderin’,

Solo 1: “What’s the use?”

(Whippoorwill, fly home to yore nest.)

But I stood up pert an’ I took my bow,

An’ my fiddle went to my shoulder, so.

An’—they wasn’t no crowd to get me fazed—

But I was alone where I was raised.

All: Up in the mountains, so still it makes yuh skeered.

Where God lies sleepin’ in his big white beard.

Solo 1: An’ I heard the sound of the squirrel in the pine,

An’ I heard the earth a-breathin’ thu’ the long

night-time.

All: They’ve fiddled the rose, an’ they’ve fiddled the thorn,

Solo 1: But they haven’t fiddled the mountain corn.

All: They’ve fiddled sinful an’ fiddled moral,

Solo 1: But they haven’t fiddled the brushwood-laurel.

All: They’ve fiddled loud, an’ they’ve fiddled still,

Solo 1: But they haven’t fiddled the whippoorwill.

I started off with a dum-diddle-dum,

All: (Oh, hell’s broke loose in Georgia!)

Solo 1: Skunk-cabbage growin’ by the bee-gum stump,

All: (Whippoorwill, yo’re singin’ now!)

Solo 1: Oh, Georgia booze is mighty fine booze,

The best yuh ever poured yuh

But it eats the soles right offen yore shoes.

All: For hell’s broke loose in Georgia.

Solo 1: My mammy was a whippoorwill pert,

My pappy, he was lazy,

But I’m hell broke loose in a new store shirt

To fiddle all Georgia crazy.

Swing yore partners—up an’ down the middle!

Sashay now

All: -- oh listen to that fiddle!

Solo 1: Flapjacks flippin’ on a red-hot griddle,

All: An’ hell’s broke loose,

Hell’s broke loose,

Solo 1: Fire on the mountains—snakes in the grass.

Satans here a-bilin’, O Lawdy, let me pass!

Pop goes the weasel thu’ the old Red Sea!

Go down Moses, set my people free,

Jonah sittin’ on a hickory-bough,

Up jumps a whale—an’ where’s yore prophet now?

Rabbit in the pea-patch, possum in the pot,

Try an’ stop my fiddle, now my fiddle’s getting’ hot!

All: Whippoorwill singin’ thu’ the mountain hush,

Whippoorwill, shoutin’ from the burning bush,

Whippoorwill cryin’ in the stable door,

Sing tonight as yuh never sang before!

Solo 1: Hell’s broke loose like a stompin’ mountain-shoat,

All: Sing till yuh bust the gold in yore throat!

Solo 1: Hell’s broke loose for forty miles aroun’

All: Bound to stop yore music if yuh don’t sing it down.

Solo 1: Sing on the mountains, little whippoorwill,

Sing to the valleys, an’ slap ‘em with a hill,

For I’m struttin’ high as an eagle’s quill,

All: An’ hell’s broke loose,

Hell’s broke loose,

Hell’s broke loose in Georgia!

Solo 1: They wasn’t a sound when I stopped bowin’.

All: Whippoorwill you can’t sing no more,

Solo 1: But somewhere the dawn was a-growin’.

All: “Oh mountain whippoorwill,” and he thought---

Solo 1: I’ve fiddled all night and lost.

Yo’re a good hillbilly, but you’ve been bossed…

So I went to congratulate ole man Dan

But he puts his fiddle into my han’!

All: And then the noise of the crowd began!