Oh Mary Don’t You Weep, sometimes known simply as “Mary, Don’t You Weep” is an African-American spiritual, a ‘slave song’. The Mary of the title is Mary of Bethany. Why is she mourning? For her brother Lazarus, whom Jesus is about to raise from the dead. The song features a collection of biblical allusions: as the enslaved Israelites are escaping from Egypt God parts the Red Sea to let them pass, but when the pursuing Egyptian try to cross the seas close over them. Hence, “Pharoah’s army got drownded”. The Israelites are free and, albeit after forty years in the wilderness, they will find their promised land. And after the great flood Noah is given, “the rainbow sign” that tells him that the waters are abaiting, and that a reborn world awaits him. Clearly the song focuses on the drama of achieving freedom and the promise of a better time to come – of rebirth. It’s difficult to escape the conclusion that these themes are embedded in its origin as a slave song. They also made it popular again during the American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, when it was performed by folk singers such as Pete Seeger. Oh Mary Don’t You Weep was included in Bruce Springsteen’s 2006 album, ‘We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions”.
Songs with Banjo from Harold Hagler
