Hannah, the Sun

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, how you doing?

Hi, who’s this?

My name is Henry.

Hi, Henry, where are you calling from?

Hi, Henry.

I’m calling from Dallas, Texas.

All right, welcome to the program.

What can we help you with?

Well, I got a question about the word Hannah.

My parents refer to that as the son, and it’s been like that since I was a little boy.

And once my dad passed away maybe six years ago, I asked my mom, and she said she got it from my dad.

So I’m kind of still stuck, not knowing what that means or what it’s referring to.

Well, Henry, can you give us an example of how they’d use it?

Well, we’d be on a fishing trip or whatever, and the sun would be behind the clouds.

And my dad would always say, Hannah is coming out to get her man.

And it would always puzzle me, and I’d be like, what is Hannah?

And he would always say, the sun, boy.

And I’m like, what? The sun.

And I’m like, okay.

And that’s what it is.

I mean, they consider the son.

They have always called it Hannah.

Yeah, and have you ever heard anybody else use that?

I have not, and I’ve been all over the world.

I have not.

And now where are your father’s people from?

Where is he from?

Well, he’s from East Texas, and my mom is from actually like Southeast Texas, like the Galveston area.

Okay.

Henry, this is great.

So the word is Hannah.

This is like a woman’s name.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, because she would always say Hannah is coming to get her man.

So, you know, so I figured it had to be a woman name.

Yeah, Henry, this is great.

There’s some really good history behind this expression.

The term old Hannah is used almost exclusively in the English of African-Americans, for one thing.

You see the writer Zora Neale Hurston using it.

And the place that I’ve seen it most often is in a haunting song.

And you’ve got to find these recordings online.

There’s some great recordings of a song called Go Down Old Hannah.

Oh, okay.

And it’s a song that’s sung to the sun.

And it is taken from a time when the states in the Deep South, like East Texas and Mississippi, would lease out their prisoners to private plantation owners and work them unmercifully in the sun.

And there was this song that went, go down, old Hannah, don’t you rise no more.

Go down, old Hannah, don’t you rise no more.

And then the last line is, if you rise in the morning, bring judgment day.

So it’s like this work is unbearable and just go down.

I mean, you can imagine how hot it gets there, hot and sticky, and you’re working out in the sun and you want old Hannah to go down.

So the song is sung to the sun because she’s the most omnipresent thing while you’re out there working in the fields, right?

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

Wow, I had no idea.

Yeah, and you can find many recordings.

Just search for Old Hannah song or Old Hannah lyrics online, usually with an H at the end.

So H-A-N-N-A-H.

And you will even find a Lead Belly song.

He’s quoted as talking about this in the 1940s.

And in the Dictionary of American Regional English, there’s a great quote from somebody in Texas from 1933 where this fellow, he says, about three o’clock on a long summer day, the sun forgets to move and stops.

So then the men sing this song.

And it’s the old Hannah song.

It’s really interesting.

It’s a work song.

It’s a song for the workers in the field.

That’s amazing.

It is amazing.

And I don’t know why Hannah.

I don’t know why the name Hannah.

Sometimes you see Old Betsy, but usually it’s Old Hannah.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

Wow.

Well, listen, Henry, do us a favor.

Look that song up and see if that rings any bells.

Okay, I’ll do that.

I’ll do that.

Yeah, we’ll link to it on our website, waywordradio.org.

You can find them there.

Thanks, Henry.

Thank you, Henry.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

-huh.

There is history and language.

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You go down old-handed and don’t rise no more.

So if he rises in the morning, bring Judgment Day.