What are the lyrics to My Old Kentucky Home?
The Kentucky Derby is all about tradition and one of the most beloved is the singing of ‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ Here are the words.
There’s a moment at the Kentucky Derby, when the horses are led to the starting gates, when the University of Louisville marching band leads the gathered fans in singing “My Old Kentucky Home,” the state song of Kentucky and something of an anthem for the Derby. “My Old Kentucky Home” appears as snippets in promos and ads throughout the weekend.
The lyrics to “My Old Kentucky Home” have changed over the years — more on that later — and they only sing two verses at Derby day. Should you wish to sing along at home, are the words they’ll be singing at the 2018 Kentucky Derby.
My Old Kentucky Home
"The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,Tis summer, the people are gay;The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow’s in the bloomWhile the birds make music all the day.The young folks roll on the little cabin floorAll merry, all happy and bright;By ‘n by hard times comes a knocking at the doorThen my old Kentucky home, Good-night!Weep no more my lady.Oh! Weep no more today!We will sing one songFor my old Kentucky homeFor the old Kentucky home, far away."
Unfortunately and perhaps unsurprisingly, “My Old Kentucky Home” has a rather racist history. The lyrics they sing in 2018 are an updated version, revised in 1986 to change the use of “darky” and “darkies” to “people.” According to the Derby’s own website, the original song, written by Stephen Collins Foster, an Civil War-era songwriter, was allegedly inspired by Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a draft of the song was titled “Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night.” Additionally, the Washington Post reports that the song “is a lament by a slave who has been sold by his master and, bound for the Deep South, must say goodbye to his beloved birthplace.”
As the Kentucky poet laureate Frank X Walker told NPR in 2016, Foster “imagined, or he witnessed something that suggested that [Kentucky] was a great place to be a slave. My issue is that there was no good place to be a slave.”
The full original lyrics to the song are as follows:
"The head must bow and the back will have to bend,Wherever the darky may go;A few more days, and the trouble all will end,In the field where the sugar canes grow;A few more days for to tote the weary load,No matter, ’twill never be light;A few more days till we totter on the road,Then my old Kentucky home, good night."
"They hunt no more for the possum and the coon,On meadow, the hill and the shore,They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,On the bench by the old cabin door.The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart,With sorrow, where all was delight,The time has come when the darkies have to part,Then my old Kentucky home, good night."
"The head must bow and the back will have to bend,Wherever the darky may go;A few more days, and the trouble all will end,In the field where the sugar canes grow;A few more days for to tote the weary load,No matter, ’twill never be light;A few more days till we totter on the road,Then my old Kentucky home, good night."
Next: 20 short stories about the 2018 Kentucky Derby horses
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