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The Underground Railroad, a widespread group of people including escaped American slaves and helpers during the 19th century, formed a secret organisation to conduct escaping slaves north to Canada, south to Mexico and into US states where slavery was illegal. Songs sung by African Americans in this period are said to have contained coded instructions and maps to find the way to freedom. Such claims of coded messages in slave songs are popular and persistent, but the evidence is often disputed and the claims have been challenged by recent scholarship. == Songs == One reportedly coded song of the Underground Railroad is "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd". The song's title is said to refer to the star formation (an ''asterism'') known in America as the Big Dipper and in Europe as The Plough. The pointer stars of the Big Dipper align with the North Star. In this song the repeated line "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd" is thus often interpreted as instructions to escaping slaves to travel north by following the North Star, leading them to the northern states, Canada, and freedom: The song ostensibly encodes escape instructions and a map from Mobile, Alabama up the Tombigbee River, over the divide to the Tennessee River, then downriver to where the Tennessee and Ohio rivers meet in Paducah, Kentucky. 〔() Retrieved October 18, 2010〕 Another song with a reportedly secret meaning is ''Now Let Me Fly'' 〔(song lyrics ) Retrieved August 9, 2010〕 which references the biblical story of Ezekiel's Wheels.〔() Retrieved August 9, 2010〕 The song talks mostly of a promised land. This song might have boosted the morale and spirit of the slaves, giving them hope that there was a place waiting that was better than where they were. ''Go Down Moses'', a spiritual that depicts the biblical story of Moses in Exodus leading his people to freedom, is believed by some to be a coded reference to the conductors on the Underground Railroad. The oppressor in the song is the pharaoh, but in real life would have been the slave owner. Music is important in the religion of African Americans today, as it was in the telling of freedom. 〔Kenneth Curry, Gladys Menzies, and Robert Curry, ''The Legend of the Dancing Trees, Teachers Resource,'' Curry Brothers Publishing (2006)〕〔Gwendolin Sims Warren, ''Ev'ry Time I Feel the Spirit: 101 Best-Loved Psalms, Gospel Hymns & Spiritual Songs of the African-American Church,'' Owl Books (1999), p. 16: ''Three of the songs in this spirituals section, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "Go Down, Moses," and "Steal Away,"〕〔Craig Werner, ''A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America University of Michigan Press (2006), p. 7:〕〔Claude, A Green, Jr., ''OurStory: Putting Color Back Into His-Story: What We Dragged Out of Slavery'', Infinity Publishing (2006), P. 47: "Songs like, "Wade in the water", "Good news, de chariot's coming", "Swing low sweet chariot" and "Steal away" were all supposed to have a coded meanings."〕〔William C. Kashatus, ''Just over the Line: Chester County and the Underground Railroad,'' Chester County Historical Society (2002), p. 18: "According to folklorists, some slaves communicated their intention of escape through songs whose words containing secret messages. .., "Follow the Drinking Gourd" ... "Wade in the Water, Children" .. "Let Us Break Bread Together" ..."〕〔Oliver Trager, ''Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia,'' Billboard Books (2004), p. 665: "Gospelologists cite "Wade in the Water" as an example of song composed for one purpose and used secretly for another. Slaves recited it to accompany the rite of baptism, but it was used by Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman (dubbed "a woman name Moses") to communicate to fugitive slaves escaping to the North that they should "wade in the water" to throw bloodhounds off their scent."〕〔Marc Aronson, "(History That Never Happened )", School Library Journal (April 1, 2007)〕 Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave and abolitionist author. In his 19th-century autobiography, ''Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave'' (1845), Douglass gives examples of how the songs sung by slaves had multiple meanings. His examples are sometimes quoted to support the claim of coded slave songs. Douglass similarly offers interesting comments but not clear evidence in ''My Bondage and Freedom'': "A keen observer might have detected in our repeated singing of 'O Canaan, sweet Canaan, I am bound for the land of Canaan' something more than a hope of reaching heaven. We meant to reach the north – and the north was our Canaan. ''I thought I heard them say,/ There were lions in the way,/ I don’t expect to stay/ Much longer here/'' was a favorite air and had a double meaning. In the lips of some, it meant the expectation of a speedy summons to a world of spirits; but in the lips of our company, it simply meant a speedy pilgrimage toward a free state, and deliverance from all the evils and dangers of slavery." Douglass' observations here likewise do not serve as clear evidence of the successful use of coded song lyrics to aid escaping slaves; he is writing here only of his small group of slaves who are encouraging each other as they finalize their plans to escape, not of widespread use of codes in song lyrics. At the beginning of this same paragraph, he writes that the slave owner may very well have seen through the simple code they were using: "I am the more inclined to think that he suspected us, because… we did many silly things, very well calculated to awaken suspicion." Douglass immediately goes on to discuss how their repeated singing of freedom was one of those "many silly things". 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Songs of the Underground Railroad」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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