Lyrics Swanee River - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Swanee River

Way down upon de Swanee Ribber
Far, far away
Dere’s wha my heart is turning ebber
Dere’s wha de old folks stay
All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam
Still longing for de old plantation
And for de old folks at home
All de world am sad and dreary
Eb-rywhere I roam;
Oh, darkeys, how my heart grows weary
Far from de old folks at home!
2nd verse
All round de little farm I wandered
When I was young
Den many happy days I squandered
Many de songs I sung
When I was playing wid my brudder
Happy was I;
Oh, take me to my kind old mudder!
Dere let me live and die
3rd Verse
One little hut among de bushes
One dat I love
Still sadly to my memory rushes
No matter where I rove
When will I see de bees a-humming
All round de comb?
When will I hear de banjo strumming
Down in my good old home?
A little extra history of thay made the song
Stephen C. Foster, one of America’s Best-loved musical storytellers, wrote «The Swanee River (Old Folks at Home)» in 1851. A memorial center at White
Springs honors Foster, who authored about 200 songs during his prolific career
The Suwannee River flows southerly from the Okeefenokee Swamp in Georgia to the
Gulf of Mexico in Florida, topographically slicing the Florida panhandle from
the rest of the state
After Foster wrote «The Swanee River» in 1851, he sold it to famed minstrelman
E. P. Christy.
Foster is reported to have chosen the «Swanee» because its
two-syllable cadence fit nicely into the music he had composed.
It could not
have been due to a familiarity with the river’s Florida section,
since Foster never visited the state
Through House Concurrent Resolution No. 22 in 1935, S. P. Robineau of Miami
successfully entered «The Swanee River» as the official state song, replacing «Florida, My Florida,» which had been adopted as the State Song in 1913.
By 1935 Foster’s rightful position as a writer and composer had been
established