the night they drove ...

[famous beagle]

Ok, I'm interested to hear what y'all think the lyrics are:

I think he says "I swear by the mud below my feet..." but I've seen a lot of lyric pages that say "I swear by the blood below my feet..."

What do y'all think?

To me, besides the fact that it sounds like "mud," it makes more sense to me anyway. He just talked about working the land (another lyric that's often misquoted as "I'm a working man," but if you listen, it's clearly "I will work the land"), and as this point in the story, it's after the war's taken place.

Thoughts?

 

[Harvey Gerst]

Here are some reviewers takes on the subject:

Pat Brennan
The official lyrics have Virgil swearing by the mud below my feet. For thirty years, I've heard blood every time. There have been obvious errors in transcriptions of Dylan and The Band before, and I merely smiled at what I thought was another one. I've never heard of a 60s musician who did their own transcription. Usually the publisher sent a young music graduate off with a pen, manuscript paper and the record. Then after a discussion on misheard lyrics, this one came up and I then listened several times to the original and Rock of Ages versions, and I heard "mud". Damn near ruined the lyric for me.

You swear by blood, not "mud" unless you're doing a clever and ironic "swearing by mud" to contrast with the expected "swearing by blood". I think that'd be too clever for a song trying to communicate raw emotion. If you've just mentioned your brother being laid in a grave, you swear by the blood below your feet. Blood as the red stuff, and blood meaning kinfolk. Blood is the more resonant word for me, but it seems I'm wrong. It definitely appears to be mud, and you can give good reason for that as in this 1995 piece:

Art Dudley
In a tour-de-force vocal, Arkansan Levon Helm sings about the "Winter of 65" from the perspective of the vanquished. His performance is the antithesis of overblown rock pretension; in fact by deflating the narrative with his earthy delivery (I swear by the mud below my feet, he sings, when a lesser artist would've gone for the melodrama of blood) he only adds to the song's emotional punch.

If you're going with this line of thought, the most common literary reference for the dead and buried would be "dust", the "dust below my feet." You soak dust in blood and what do you get?

 

[famous beagle]

Hmmmm ... I'll have to disagree with Pat Brennan; I think "mud" is much more effective and does a better job conveying the sentiment of a simple farmer "working the land."

And who "swears by blood?" He says it as though it's as common an expression as "a bird in the hand." I've heard people say "I swear by God I'm gonna ...", but I've never heard anyone say "I swear by blood ..."

Am I missing something?

 

[famous beagle]

If you're going with this line of thought, the most common literary reference for the dead and buried would be "dust", the "dust below my feet." You soak dust in blood and what do you get?

And again, I don't think he was just referring to his dead-and-buried brother. I think he was talking about his property, his earth, his piece of the world.

 

[up-fiddler]

I have always taken it...

...as an artistic way to say that he swears on his brother's grave. I have sung 'blood' since the Joan Baez double album came out. I am too old to change.

 

[Chili]

I've always heard 'mud' and it's makes sense to me. The mud is his land, his living and his life. It was the land of his father and his brothers. It will be the land of his sons. It's what they were fighting for. It's tangible and can support generations of families. Outside of his family, it's probably the one thing that means the most to him.

Swearing on blood, bibles and 'your mother's grave' are symbolic. Swearing upon your land is offering up something more substantial.

What great insight to write a line like that.

Cool topic!!!

 

[stevieb]

...If you're going with this line of thought, the most common literary reference for the dead and buried would be "dust", the "dust below my feet."

Ahhh, it's all dust in the wind, anyway...

 

[up-fiddler]

History of mud....Or, I stand corrected.

The song has spawned a handful of cover versions, notably Joan Baez's top-10 version from 1971, which reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US, as well as spending five weeks atop the adult contemporary chart[4]. A version of this song was also recorded by Richie Havens. Johnny Cash covered the song on his 1975 album John R. Cash. In addition, it was a live staple of Jerry Garcia's various solo configurations.

Of interest is the lyrics change made by Baez, who has had a history throughout her career of altering lyrics. (Paul Simon refused to allow her to cover his song "The Dangling Conversation" unless she included a note on the album that she had changed one of the lines and including the original lyric.)[citation needed] A change on Baez's version is apparently a result of her mis-hearing the second line "Till Stoneman's cavalry came". Baez sings "Till so much cavalry came". She also changed "may the tenth" to "i took the train". On the second verse, she changes "I don't mind chopping wood" to "I don't mind, I'm chopping wood". In addition, the line "like my father before me, I will work the land" was changed to "like my father before me, I'm a working man", changing the narrator from a farmer to a laborer. In the last verse she changed "the mud below my feet" to "the blood below my feet". Baez later told Rolling Stone's Kurt Loder that she initially learned the song by listening to the recording on the Band's album, and had never seen the printed lyrics at the time she recorded it, and thus sang the lyrics as she'd (mis)heard them. In more recent years in her concerts, Baez has performed the song as originally written by Robertson. * Kurt Loder Rolling Stones Interview