Last month, Lyle gave us a supernatural, or at least a strange and hard-to-understand, song. Such items are rare in American tradition; it's well-known that the supernatural ballads imported from Britain had a tendency to "rationalize" and drop their supernatural elements upon coming to America -- as, for instance, the old Daemon Lover became a mere former lover, and the ship in which he lures the House Carpenter's Wife away becomes merely a ship sinking in a storm.
But I think that was a sort of historical artifact; it likely wouldn't happen today. At the time the United States was founded, it was the world's most secular society, stressing not just toleration but genuine independence of mind. We've seen a curious shift over the past century or so, as Europe -- once full of states which imposed religion on their peoples -- has become not merely secular but generally non-believing. The United States is not merely the most Christian country in the developed world, but the nation most accustomed to odd variants on Christianity. If Olde America was the home of freethinking, New America is the home of a great rise in spiritualism (as well as oddities such as Wiccan or Shamanist beliefs). What was unthinkable a century ago is now normal.
And so I think that this song is sort of the New Dispensation of songs like Nottamun Town -- much more explicit in its implications, and very supernatural (in the technical sense of the term).
I find it hard to believe that this song really would influence a secularist toward Christianity (true, in fact, of every "We're gonna nail you, sucker, once you're dead" song I've ever met). The voice of tradition seems to agree: It's been collected only a couple of times, once by Vance Randolph in the Ozarks and once in Alabama. It seems possible that both of these collections come straight from the 1930 Carter Family recording I learned it from (Victor V-40293, reissued on The Carter Family 1927-1934, JSP CD 7701 -- a wonderfully inexpensive set featuring 127 Carter Family cuts on five CDs for under $30. The sound quality isn't as good as some reissues, but it isn't too bad; if you don't have much of a Carter collection, it's a great place to start). But if the song isn't well-known in its own right, it's still significant for its tune -- because this is the melody Woody Guthrie used to construct This Land Is Your Land (a much more Old Dispensation song, since Woody's original version was unquestionably Socialist). So, even though I'm not all that fond of When the World's On Fire, I thought it was time to include it here.
The Carter recording has other interesting aspects -- notably the fact that A. P. sang lead. The pronunciation can be a bit tricky: "fire" is to be pronounced "fey-er."
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Complete Lyrics:
Oh my loving mother, when the world's on fire,
Don't you want God's bosom to be your pillow?
Hide me over in the rock of ages,
Rock of ages, cleft for me.
I'm going to heaven when the world's on fire
And I want God's bosom to be my pillow.
Hide me over in the rock of ages,
Rock of ages, cleft for me.
Oh my loving brother, when the world's on fire,
Don't you want God's bosom to be your pillow?
Hide me over in the rock of ages,
Rock of ages, cleft for me.
Oh my loving sinner, when the world's on fire,
Don't you want God's bosom to be your pillow?
Hide me over in the rock of ages,
Rock of ages, cleft for me.
Don't you want to go to heaven when the world's on fire,
Don't you want God's bosom to be your pillow?
Hide me over in the rock of ages,
Rock of ages, cleft for me.