Going Home on the Morning Train - Gwyneth Walker

"Going Home on the Morning Train" by Gwyneth Walker Copyright © 2012 by E. C. Schirmer Music Company, Inc. (ASCAP), a division of ECS Publishing Group. www.ecspublishing.com All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Recorded at Emmanuel Episcopal Church in LaGrange, IL - 04/30/2023

Going Home on the Morning Train

I’m going home on the morning train.
If you don’t see me, you can hear me singing,
All my sins been taken away.
Sister Mary wore three links of chain.
And on each link was Freedom’s name.
All my sins been taken away.

Going home on the morning train.
The devil has got a slipp’ry shoe.
Yes, the devil has got a slipp’ry shoe.
If you don’t watch out, she’ll slip it on you.
That’s what she does!

Keep your hand on that plow! Hold on!
Going home to the Promised Land.
I’m going home to the Promised Land!
Lord God Almighty, please hold my hand!
All my sins been taken away!

Lord God Almighty, please hold my hand!

This is a song about the dream for freedom. It is the first of a set of four songs by Gwyneth Walker about trains (entitled The Morning Train). "Going Home on the Morning Train" is a setting of a spiritual about the dream of freedom in a new “Promised Land.” The “morning train” certainly refers to the Underground Railroad, through which African Americans in the antebellum South could travel north to freedom. This spiritual has been performed by many different artists, such as The Skylarks and Peter, Paul & Mary, and it exists in many different forms.

Some of the lyrics here have appeared in a number of spirituals, and no definite meanings have emerged. “Sister Mary wore three links of chain” is particularly enigmatic. One possibility is that “Sister Mary” might be a reference to Miriam, the sister of Moses, and that this evokes the story of the Exodus, which African Americans particularly identified with because it was a story of freedom from slavery. Another possibility is that “Sister Mary” is Mary Magdalene, who was freed from “slavery” by Jesus. “The Devil has got a slipp’ry shoe” probably refers to the insidious obstacles that African Americans would face in their flight to freedom, and “Keep your hand on the plow” is most likely a metaphor for remaining focused on the liberation from enslavement.

Gwyneth Walker comments about this piece, “A train whistle (high notes in piano or piccolo) is heard in the distance. Then, the train draws closer as the music grows in dynamics and tempo. By the time that the chorus enters, the music is filled with energy. This is a celebratory song of going home ‘to the Promised Land...(where) all my sins been taken away!’” One of the striking features of Gwyneth Walker’s setting is how the voices mimic the sound of train whistles.

Widely performed throughout the country, the music of Gwyneth Walker is beloved by performers and audiences alike. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Hartt School of Music, and she is a former faculty member of the Oberlin College Conservatory. In 1982 she resigned from academic employment in order to pursue a career as a full-time composer. For nearly 30 years, she lived on a dairy farm in Braintree, Vermont before returning to live in her childhood hometown of New Canaan, Connecticut.


Artistic Director: Dr. Mary Hopper
Accompanist: Kathy Christian