Amen, Brother Ben!

Hello, welcome to A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Angel Skinner from South Carolina.

Hi, Angel. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Angel.

My grandfather, who was born in around 1900, lived in Manning, South Carolina, which we call the Low Country.

And he became a pastor along the way.

And one of the things that he used to say was, Amen, Brother Ben, shot a rooster, killed a hen.

So I always wondered where in the world that came from.

Is it something he came up with? Was it something that other people said? Or was it just something that in that region they did?

When would you hear this from him?

When my dad was about three, that was about 1948.

He recorded a record at one of those like, stores where they let you record your record and he had my dad at three years old say this for the record amen brother Ben shot a rooster killed a hen and we have the record still and we’ve played it it’s one of those big gigantic records and it’s really thick material but they they played it for us when we’re all grown up and I said here’s the record and we we listened to it and we could barely tell what my dad was saying but he said I said amen brother Ben shot a rooster killed a hen it’s something that Papa used to say. So I just wondered what the origin of that was. And he was three years old at the time?

Right. He was 1948 or 49. You know, that makes a lot of sense to me because so often we see versions of Amen, Brother Ben as kind of a joking version of a prayer, the way that kids learn to say grace at the table. So that makes a lot of sense to me. There are lots of versions like Amen, Brother Ben shot a rooster, killed a hen, rooster died, chicken cried, and everybody was mortified or everybody was satisfied.

That’s a lot longer than I have seen.

Well, a shorter version is, Amen, Brother Ben, pass the butter, let’s begin. Meaning, you know, let’s get the prayer before the meal out of the way and dig in.

In fact, there’s another one, Amen, Brother Ben, back your ears and dive in.

That’s the one I was going to say.

Dive into that big plate of food.

And, you know, as a preacher’s kid myself, I can really appreciate this.

I remember when my nephew Drew was really, really small, and he was called on to say grace by my father, who was a minister.

And he looked pretty nervous because I don’t think he’d been asked to do that before.

And so he said, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies.

And then he kind of hesitated and said, if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Amen.

It was so cute.

Because he knew it was going to be something, you know, something formulaic.

And that was the only thing he could think of as a little cute little guy.

He did his best.

But that phrase, Amen, Brother Ben, has been around for quite a while and used in different contexts as well.

Yeah, and Americanism dating to the 1880s at least, probably earlier.

I had never heard it except for my grandfather, so that is really neat.

It’s around.

Well, what a gift that you have that record.

That is amazing.

Your father at three.

Yeah, it was really neat to hear him.

And he sounded a lot like my then little tiny one that I heard.

Well, Angel, thank you for sharing these memories with us.

I’m sure we’ll get a lot of those made-up prayers, those not-quite-real prayers.

I remember we were so proud of ourselves for saying, Buddha, Buddha, thanks for the food.

Trying to be ecumenical.

Oh, no.

Well, at my house, it’s what you say, well, it’s what I say to my kids when they say something that I really agree with.

Amen, Brother Ben, shot a rooster, killed a hen.

And we just use that as an encouragement.

Yep, that’s right.

Aw, that’s so sweet that you’re carrying it on.

Take care now, Angel.

Thanks for calling.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

There’s the real grace, the real prayers you say at a meal, and just the jokey ones you say when the parents aren’t paying attention.

We’d like to hear the latter, 877-929-9673, or tell us an email, words@waywordradio.org.