Includes fourteen-page booklet with notes on songs.
Includes unlimited streaming of Old-Time Songs
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about
“Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.” So Thomas Jefferson proclaimed in 1787. The association of farming with virtue and cities with vice originated among European and American intellectuals in the late-eighteenth century in response to the challenges of growing industrialization. In the nineteenth century, vast changes in the American landscape and economy before and, especially, after the Civil War – this song first appeared in 1871 -- gave the idea enormous popular resonance in a nation that was still overwhelmingly rural.
The fact is, it continues to resonate for many of us. It does for me. But the city indeed “has many attractions,” and my own contrary impulses are never resolved. That’s where my thoughts go when I sing this song.
I learned “Don’t Leave the Farm” from 100 WLS Barn Dance Favorites, a songbook published in 1935, in Chicago, an American city then second in size only to New York.
lyrics
Come boys, I have something to tell you.
Come near, I would whisper it low.
Are you thinking of leaving the homestead,
Don’t be in a hurry to go.
For the city has many attractions,
But think of the vices and sins.
When once in the vortex of fashion,
How soon the course downward begins.
Don’t be in a hurry to go,
Don’t be in a hurry to go.
Are you thinking of leaving the homestead?
Don’t be in a hurry to go.
Now, you talk of the mines of Australia
They’re wealthy with gold, without doubt.
But ah, there is gold on the farm, boys,
If only you’ll shovel it out.
Oh, the mercantile life is a hazard,
The goods are first high and then low.
Better risk the old farm a while longer,
And don’t be in a hurry to go.
Don’t be in a hurry to go….
Now the great, busy west has inducements,
And so has the busiest mart.
But wealth wasn’t made in day, boys,
So don’t be in a hurry to start.
The bankers and brokers are wealthy;
They take in their thousands or so,
But think on the frauds and deceptions,
And don’t be in a hurry to go.
Don’t be in a hurry to go….
So the farm is the safest and surest,
The orchards are loaded today.
You’re king of the air on the mountain,
And monarch of all you survey.
Better risk the old farm a while longer,
Though profits come in rather slow.
Remember you’ve nothing to lose, boys,
And don’t be in a hurry to go.
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