#Big Rock Candy Mountain

[sahonithereadwolf]

I went down another research hole the other night. Y'all might know about "Big Rock Candy Mountain" from O Brother, Where Art Thou...

But it, like most of the songs from that movie comes from a tradition of American folk songs. Big Rock Candy Mountains very specifically this tradition of hobo ballads. And, like setting aside the overtones of American colonialism that purvey all these sort of "there is a dreamland to the west for you to claim" songs, there is a cultural tradition of these. "Life is a struggle but there is a place where it's not if you can find it" is a very human sentiment.

There are plenty of medieval works on Cockaigne, which has a similar kinda tone to it. A land where the harsh realities of a blue collar or peasant class struggle can not exist.

But did you know about the secret gay lyrics of Big Rock Candy Mountain?

After Harry McClintoc recorded his version of this ballad, which he claimed he wrote in 1895 based off the stories he heard as a kid working on the railroad, a bunch of people took him to court because they claimed he stole and took parts of his song from a bunch of other hobo songs in the same traditions. Sweet Potato Mountain, Hobo's Heaven, An Appleknocker's Lament... As part of the court dispute, McClintock was told by the judge to perform the song. As art of the court record we have a last stanza which is not used in the cleaned up version used for records and "reputable venues". This was recorded as:

"The punk rolled up his big blue eyes And said to the jocker, "Sandy, I've hiked and hiked and wandered too, But I ain't seen any candy. I've hiked and hiked till my feet are sore And I'll be damned if I hike any more To be * * * * * * * * In the Big Rock Candy Mountains." Now NO ONE KNOWS what that last lyric is. However we can make some very educated inferences. This is about gay sex.

And it's not like "Big Rock Candy Mountains" is immune to commentary despite the more sanitized versions you'd see later from the likes of Burl Ives.

I'm thinking very specifically: "In The Big Rock Candy Mountains All the cops have wooden legs And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth" and

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains The jails are made of tin And you can walk right out again As soon as you are in There ain't no short-handle shovels No axes, saws or picks I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day Where they hung the jerk that invented work In The Big Rock Candy Mountains" Going back to the lyrics "The punk rolled up his big blue eyes"

Punk in this context and original use, especially in it's use in hobo culture refers to a younger man or boy being kept for sex and other menial task.

Which, you know, should put a whole new context to see how it's been used against other forms of youth culture. Hippies, greasers, punks,ect. And at least for me makes it's misuse feel even more slapdash and pathetic.

If you doubt this, it is quickly followed up by the term "Jocker" "And said to the jocker, 'Sandy," a slang term of the era referring to an aggressive and usually straight passing dom top, especially in the context of prison.

To be a little flippant, this is a twink grumbling to a daddy.

As I mentioned before, no one actually knows what that missing lyric is. Or at the very least it's never been made public.

But give it's proximity to "sore" and "more" a lot of guess tend to jump to the word "Whore".

Sam Eskin actually interviewed McClintock for Folkway Records and which, when asked about the lyrics said “the ambition of every hobo was to snare some kid to do his begging for him, among other things,”

This is something you see in a lot of early gay panic lit all the way up through the 80's. Especially as the moral authoritarianism of the Hayes code kicked in. But it also found itself in the early pulp lit where queerness could still exist (if behind a little mask and a performative, if dramatic, finger shake)

Queerness and homelessness were intertwined. Still are, both from my own personal experiences and if you look at the statistics. And it's not much of a leap to understand why. ---

But we do have some offered lyrics from other authors: "To be buggered sore like a hobo’s whore,” Is a popular one, which has it's origins from a 2002 folk music site called mudcat and waaaaay too British to read naturally if you ask me.

“And be cornholed till my ass is raw.” is another one you see passed around a lot. Which feels too forum humor.

George Milburn in 1930 offers "To be a homeguard with a lemonade card.” which is naive and sweet to say the least.

The fact is we still don't know this lyric, gay punchline (or at least gay panic) as it might be. All we know is that Big Rock Candy Mountain "Was never meant to be a parlor song" in McClintock's own words.

Well that and the insight it offers into social perceptions of queerness at the time and how it's shaped and shifted in the future.

What do you think this secret gay Big Rock Candy Mountain lyric is?

[anarchic-miscellany]

When did our species decide we didn't want Lisa Loeb anymore? She's still excellent, guys. For shame! (Her cover of "Big Rock Candy Mountain" is lovely.)

[rastronomicals]

8:00 AM EDT May 20, 2024:

Harry McClintock - "Big Rock Candy Mountain" From the Soundtrack album   O Brother, Where Art Thou? (December 5, 2000)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

[myimaginaryradio]

Big Rock Candy Mountain - Burl Ives - 1949

[ponds-of-ink]

So was anybody going to tell me that the original Big Rock Candy Mountain song was entering Public Domain today, or was I supposed to learn that by myself?

[entropyblog]

Big Rock Candy Mountains, The Worst Heaven 

Overall I consider myself a pessimist, I believe that it's always preferable to expect the worst outcome so that you aren't disappointed constantly. Granted, I'm also an unemployed ugly troglodyte so life advice from me is very damn worthless. One of my favorite things about pessimism is that it allows me to look at things that seem good and call it bullshit, that's how I survived living in rural America without joining a MLM. Recently I've been listening to music from the Great Depression, I believe that in trying times like the 2020's it's good to consult the past to gauge what behaviors are common. One song that many people find endearing comes form our hobo friends, "Big Rock Candy Mountains" is the song people sung to envision heaven as they rode box cars to their next seasonal job. I decided to annotate the song for Tumblr.

The last stanza is a controversial one, it's a stanza that's often left out both for copyright reasons and because it doesn't fit in with the song. It's also conditional and a later ad, as a folk song we don't know how original any of the lyrics are. As such I'll ignore it.

"One evening, as the sun went down And the jungle fire was burning Down the track came a hobo hiking And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning I'm headed for a land that's far away Beside's the crystal fountains So come with me, we'll go and see The Big Rock Candy Mountains"

In this verse we're introduced to a hiking hobo with a set path, the titular Big Rock Candy Mountains. The jungle fire probably refers to a big city fire, which were common in the late 19th century. If not that, jungle fires also refer to large uncontrolled fires in general, perhaps a fire the listeners are resting besides. I've read an interpretation that "rock candy" refers to meth, but this is almost certainly false as the song dates to 1895 and meth was mostly contained in Germany and Japan at this time.

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains There's a land that's fair and bright Where the handouts grow on bushes And you sleep out every night Where the boxcars all are empty And the sun shines every day

On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees The lemonade springs, where the bluebird sings

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

In this verse we start getting descriptions of the Big Rock Candy Mountains. The weather is always sunny, which suggests to me that they are located in the southwestern United States, which mostly house desert climates. The climate is so dry and warm that their homelessness isn't even an impediment as they can just sleep outside every night. I write this from Arizona, so I can attest that the weather isn't that good, it does get cold here and the wind chill makes winters almost chilly enough to be hazardous. So this seems like places like California and Nevada as envisioned by midwesterners and southerners who deal with more hazardous weather on a more regular basis. The boxcars are empty because you're still a hobo in hobo heaven and you must still leave for seasonal work. The handouts grow on bushes, meaning that people's generosity isn't needed anymore, and this place is so friendly that the trees grow ready and rolled cigarettes and lemonade comes from the ground like water.

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains All the cops have wooden legs And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs The farmers' trees are full of fruit And the barns are full of hay

Oh, I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow Where the rain don't fall, the wind don't blow

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

This is where this heaven really starts to get sad more than anything. Despite this being the perfect place for hobos to live, there are still cops and the cops still sick dogs on you for vagrancy. In fact, you're still so homeless that you have to sneak into barns to sleep (common at the time). It's just that hobo heaven just has cops that can't chase you, dogs that can't hurt you, you still have to steal food to survive, and the barns you sneak into are relatively comfy compared to the ground. The hens laying pre-made soft boiled eggs sounds actually heavenly to me though. As I said, the southwest has tough weather sometimes, the wind not blowing in particular makes this place seem entirely unreasonable to imagine as existing. As such it's only safe to say that the hobo at the start of the song is lying to get people to follow him for some reason, reasons that last verse I'm skipping suggest are very troublesome.

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains You never change your socks And the little streams of alcohol Come a-trickling down the rocks The brakemen have to tip their hats And the railway bulls are blind

There's a lake of stew, and of whiskey too You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

The weather is so perfect that you don't even change your socks, it's a place where you never worry about trench foot or parasites. Maybe BO but they're hobos so a bad smell stopped phasing them. What's really sad to me is the fact that they've reached heaven, a place perfectly suited to meet their every demand, but they still need alcohol. To the point that it has to trickle out the rocks and form a small lake. Brakemen were crew on the train, they were in charge of hitting the brakes and slowing the train down to get the train into the station, as such they didn't like hobos because they often stole from the train and attacked the crew. One way train companies tried to hamper hobos was employing train bulls, or big guys with weapons to scare and/or escort hobos off the train. In the mountains the brakemen are less hostile, letting the hobos hop on board, and the bulls are blind and thus won't bother you if you're silent. Again, the fact that it's heaven and there are still guys whose job it is to beat you up is just depressing in a way. The lake of stew was just more free food, it's important to know that these guys ate one meal a day if that so any source of free food was highly anticipated.

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains The jails are made of tin And you can walk right out again As soon as you are in There ain't no short-handled shovels No axes, saws nor picks

I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day Where they hung the jerk that invented work

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains

I'll see you all this comin' fall In the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

Another depressing thing about this being people's heavens is that jails are still a thing. Even where hobos get their spiritual and physical needs met in abundance they're still at rick of getting arrested, getting dogs on them, and having to run from railway bulls just makes me feel that they've practically given up hope. Even their wildest dreams are where these things still exist and are still hostile to them, just in less painful ways. Granted I imagine if this song was about a more thought out hobo heaven where they aren't hobos but rather get all their needs met without any struggle the song would be less fun, but still. The other lines are also about the absence of pain without much else, there are no weapons for which to hurt or kill them. Finally, the hung that they hung the jerk that invented work also suggests that their violent tendencies aren't at all medicated by the other pleasant factors. It's only natural, after all, to internalize your suffering to the point that you can only imagine less painful versions of it.

-TJ

[cheesetheory]

I saw two songs with similar names and had a devious idea

[nsidndnsb]

I wonder if Louis ended up on this mountain? The first time it was not taken because of grounding. Did his mother take him there in the future? What is known about this?

[sapporodoggie]

[goosedepartment]

in my mind this is where i am

[catgirlforeskin]

bro pull up rn. i'm sending you my location. this place is popping tf offff

📍big rock candy mountain

[rastronomicals]

6:04 PM EDT May 6, 2024:

Harry McClintock - "Big Rock Candy Mountain" From the Soundtrack album   O Brother, Where Art Thou? (December 5, 2000)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

[travsd]

Haywire Mac and The Big Rock Candy Mountains

Haywire Mac (Harry McClintock, 1884-1957) cleaned himself up for that photo above. Normally you see him in cowboy or hobo gear, and it wasn’t really a costume. He was a folk singer not unlike Woody Guthrie or Burl Ives though rougher and plainer and more prototypical than those entertainers. He really was of the “folk”, i.e. the singing and songwriting was just what he did for fun and…

[coupleofdays]

There's a lake of stew and of whiskey, too

You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe

In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

[unseenphil]

A new game jam about "Forbidden Zones" for Fist has given me terrible ideas so now I'm watching Oh Brother Where Art Thou again and plotting FIST archetypes for a game about trying to get to the place where there's lemonade springs and the bluebird sings.

[steampunkhobo]

They don’t want you to know this but you can have pesto pasta for dinner and make yourself a hot chocolate and drink it in the bath while you watch O Brother Where Art Thou. You can do this.