Thursday, September 01, 2005

"Wasn't That A Mighty Storm"

I heard this song this morning on WXPN. Michaela Majoun of the Morning Show played it. She said when she heard about Katrina, this was the one song that kept rolling through her head. I could swear I heard in her voice that she was holding back tears.

The song is about the worst hurricane disaster to ever hit our country in modern recorded times. It was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. That hurricane wiped out over 6,000 lives.

The similarities between Galveston and New Orleans are frightening. Reading the history of both can make one actually shudder.

6,000 lives ... gone. Nothing more than a statistic in a sentence in a history book. And that's what makes me cry. Life is more than a number.

I only pray Katrina doesn't try to go for the record.



Wasn't That A Mighty Storm
(Traditional; Arrangement by Tom Rush & Eric Von Schmidt)

[Chorus:]

Wasn't that a mighty storm
Wasn't that a mighty storm in the morning, well
Wasn't that a mighty storm That blew all the people all away

You know the year of 1900
Children, many years ago
Death came howling on the ocean
Death calls, you got to go
Now Galveston had a seawall
To keep the water down, and a
High tide from the ocean
Spread the water over the town

[Chorus]

You know the trumpetS give them warning
You'd better leave this place
Now, no one thought of leaving
'til death stared them in the face
And the trains they all were loaded
The people were all leaving town
The trestle gave way to the water
And the trains they went on down

[Chorus]

Rain it was a' falling
Thunder began to roll
Lightning flashed like hell fire
The wind began to blow
Death the cruel master
When the wind began to blow
Rode in on a team of horses
T cried, "Death, won't you let me go".

[Chorus]

Hey, now trees fell on the island
And the houses give away
Some they strained and drowned
Some died in most every way
And the sea began to rolling
And the ships they could not stand
And I heard a captain crying
"God save a drowning man".

[Chorus]

Death your hands are clammy
You got them on my knee
You come and took my mother
Won't you come back after me
And the flood it took my neighbor
Took my brother too
I thought I heard my father calling
And I watched my mother go

[Chorus]

You know the year of 1900
Children, many years ago
Death came howling on the ocean
Death calls, you got to go

[Chorus 2x]

4 comments:

shannon said...

Beautiful song. Boy, this just makes a person feel small, doesn't it? Thanks for the lyrics.

Anonymous said...

Oink :@)

Your questions are ready at our place, dear.

Pax Romano said...

wow, was listening to WXPN this morning and heard this also...thanks for the lyrics...

Maidy said...

LB4UL - I felt the same thing. Nature takes back whatever she wants regardless of the era we live.

B&M - Thank you for sharing the story albeit it made me cry (again). I want to see if I can find books on the hurricane through B and N or Amazon. That and the Johnstown Flood.

P and T - Oink ... Done ... Oinky.

Pax - No prob. That song hit me really hard. Music has a tendency to do that to me.