Keep Your Hand On The Plow: A Song History
"Keep Your Hand On The Plow," also known as "Hold On," is a religious folk song by an unknown author, with a refrain urging the singer to hold on and keep a hand on the plow.[1] Meant to hearten people in trouble, its verses recall Paul and Silas in prison, Jesus washing his disciples' feet, and a chain linked to Mary, an image the Traditional Ballad Index considers apocryphal.[1] The Index's earliest date for it is 1917, from the Cecil Sharp collection, and it cites printings in Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians and in two Lomax books, Our Singing Country and Folk Song U.S.A.[1] Writer Benjamin Hedin calls it "a spiritual common to both black and white church singing."[2]
Charles-Émile Jacque, Ploughing, etching, 1864. A ploughman with his hands on the plough, shown for the song's title; it has no connection to the song.
On August 12, 1930, the Hall Johnson Choir recorded for Victor in New York a side of spirituals that the Discography of American Historical Recordings files under "Ezekiel saw de wheel," with "Keep yo' hand on the plough" among its additional titles; Victor issued it on the twelve-inch disc 36020.[3] Pete Seeger recorded the song as "Hold On," and the Index lists his version on several albums, one of them made with Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon and Bill McAdoo.[1]
Guy Carawan, who had learned the song from Pete Seeger in the 1950s, was singing it on Johns Island, South Carolina, when a resident, Alice Wine, told him she knew another version, "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize."[4][5] Sources differ on the year: the Association for Cultural Equity places the exchange in 1959, when Carawan was helping Septima Clark set up a Citizenship School on the island, while Hedin dates it to 1960.[5][2] Carawan carried the new words to the April 1960 meeting at Shaw University in Raleigh where the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was founded, and Wine is today credited on the copyright.[2] A civil rights version that keeps the plow wording, recorded by the Montgomery Improvement Association High School Trio, is indexed with the older song.[1] Larry Conger includes it, in DAD tuning, in American Spirituals, a 29-page mountain dulcimer book published by Fingers Of Steel that its listing describes as one of Conger's "classic" books.[6]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Keep Your Hand on the Plow".
- Oxford American: "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize" (Benjamin Hedin).
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix CVE-62379. Ezekiel saw de wheel / Hall Johnson Choir".
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Keep Your Eyes on the Prize".
- Association for Cultural Equity: "Guy Carawan" (Ellen Harold and Peter Stone).
- Fingers Of Steel: "Larry Conger, American Spirituals Tab Book".
- Image: Charles-Émile Jacque, Ploughing, etching, 1864. The Cleveland Museum of Art.