Darling Nelly Gray
First release by William Tuson (1897)
- Written by
- Benjamin Russell Hanby
- Publication date
- 1856
- Composition date
- 1856
- Language
- English
- ISWC
-
T-903.027.591-3 ISWC
- Comments
-
19th century anti-slavery ballad written from the point of view of an African-American male slave in Kentucky whose sweetheart has been taken away by slave-owners. The man mourns his beloved, who has been sold South to Georgia (where the slave’s life was conventionally regarded as harsher). He eventually dies and joins her in heaven. The song became popular in the years preceding the Civil War and helped promote support for the abolitionist cause.
There’s a low, green, valley on the old Kentucky shore
Where I’ve whiled many happy hours away,
Just a sitting and a singing by the little cottage door
Where lived my darling Nellie Gray
Oh! My poor Nelly Gray,
They have taken you away,
And I'll never see my darling any more.
I'm a sitting by the river
And I'm weeping all the day,
For you've gone from the
Old Kentucky shore. - Licensing
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