Is Your Lamps Gone Out?

guitar and vocal-Dave; Autoharp and vocal-Cathy; vocal-Ellie and Leela For her 1944 collection of roustabout songs, Steamboatin' Days, Mary Wheeler got this spiritual from a woman who worked as a maid on packets on the Ohio, Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, specifically the Joe Fowler and the Nisbet. River minstrel Art Thieme attached the last verse. The "Egypt" reference could have an alternate meaning. The area of southern Illinois encompassing the towns of Cairo, Thebes and Karnak, where the Mississippi joins the Ohio, is known as Egypt.

Is your lamps gone out, is your lamps gone out? What you going to do in Egypt when your lamps gone out? Come along sister and go with me. What you going to do in Egypt when your lamps gone out? I'll show you the man who set me free. What you going to do in Egypt when your lamps gone out? If you get there before I do Tell all my people that I'm coming, too. There is a tree in Paradise. The Christians call it the Tree of Life. If religion were a thing that money could buy The rich would live, and the poor would die.