# Help me make sense of the lyrics to "Shenandoah" **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 20, 2005, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463 "2005-03-20T20:58:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2005, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/1 "2005-03-20T20:58:01Z")
From (one of several versions of) the American folk song “Shenandoah”: Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you And hear your rolling river Oh, Shenandoah, I long to see you Away We’re bound away 'Cross the wide Missouri 'Cross the wide Missouri When first I took A ramblin’ notion To leave your rolling river I went to sail The briny ocean Away We’re bound away 'Cross the wide Missouri ‘Cross the wide Missouri The Shenandoah River runs through Virginia and West Virginia. If I lived in the Shenandoah Valley, and took a ramblin’ notion to sail the briny ocean, I would go east to the nearest seacoast – not west, to the Missouri River, which runs through the Great Plains and fetches up nowhere near any briny ocean. What gives? ---
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2005, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/2 "2005-03-20T21:07:53Z")
You’ll find lots of discussion of this on the [Mudcat Cafe Forums](http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=4257). ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2005, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/3 "2005-03-20T22:00:21Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > The Shenandoah River runs through Virginia and West Virginia. If I lived in the Shenandoah Valley, and took a ramblin’ notion to sail the briny ocean, I would go east to the nearest seacoast – not west, to the Missouri River, which runs through the Great Plains and fetches up nowhere near any briny ocean. What gives? Maybe his ramblin’ notion was to cross the Missouri river, and the quickest way to do that was to take the Shenandoah river to the Potomac, into the Cheasapeake bay, into the atlantic over to the gulf, up the Mississippi, and then up the Missouri? ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2005, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/4 "2005-03-20T23:19:47Z")
When I was in college, I sang this song with the Men’s Chorus (did it again in Pacific Chorale, sme eighteen years later), and the Jesuit who acted as emcee for our concerts described it as a “sea chanty.” Never mind that it didn’t have the tempo or the time signature I generally assocate with sea chanties, I just pushed the “I Believe” button, and moved on the the Jester Hairston chart. I tne context of _Shenandoah_ being a sea chanty, I’d like to point out that these are provided for the use of the guys who pull the ropes. It’s the Captain and his line staff who need to know something about geography. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2005, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/5 "2005-03-20T23:58:28Z")
And what’s with “I love your daughter” stuff? If you love her that much, why don’t you just marry her? ---
**Author:** ![Patio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b782af/32.png) [@Patio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patio)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2015, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/6 "2015-07-31T01:40:24Z")
About Shenandoah Until the nineteenth century only adventurers who sought their fortunes as trappers and traders of beaver fur ventured as far west as the Missouri River. Most of these men were loners who became friendly with, and sometimes married, Native Americans. Shenandoah is said to have originated with French voyageurs traveling down the Missouri River. The lyrics tell the story of a trader who fell in love with the daughter of an Algonquian chief, Shenandoah. American sailors heading down the Mississippi River picked up the song and made it a capstan shanty that they sang while hauling in the anchor. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2015, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/7 "2015-07-31T04:27:56Z")
Took just ten years, not too shabby… ---
**Author:** ![What\_the](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f4b2a3/32.png) [@What\_the](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_the)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2015, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/8 "2015-07-31T11:53:46Z")
> [@Patio](#): > > About Shenandoah > > Until the nineteenth century only adventurers who sought their fortunes as trappers and traders of beaver fur ventured as far west as the Missouri River. Most of these men were loners who became friendly with, and sometimes married, Native Americans. > Shenandoah is said to have originated with French voyageurs traveling down the Missouri River. The lyrics tell the story of a trader who fell in love with the daughter of an Algonquian chief, Shenandoah. American sailors heading down the Mississippi River picked up the song and made it a capstan shanty that they sang while hauling in the anchor. That would explain “down the wide Missouri”…not " 'cross " it. ---
**Author:** ![Grestarian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grestarian/32/3227_2.png) [@Grestarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grestarian)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2015, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-me-make-sense-of-the-lyrics-to-shenandoah/295463/9 "2015-08-06T23:13:03Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Took just ten years, not too shabby… Sorry. Had I seen this OP (it predates my arrival here by 3 or 4 years) I would have responded similarly. My encounters with the tune were \*Oh, Shenandoah I love your daughter Away You rolling river Oh, Shenandoah I long to court her Away I’m bound away 'cross the wide Missouri \* …which I always understood to be a man singing mournfully about the fact that he loves the daughter of a Native American chief (Shenandoah) and there was too much social stigma to pursue the infatuation, so he was leaving in the other direction to get away from the pain of seeing and pining for her and he was conflicted between relief about leaving and wanting the river/barrier eliminated so he could easily reach her. My first encounters with the tune were vinyl recordings on 1950’s records that I had been given in the very late 1960’s. Twenty years later, my choir instructor had the girls’ chorus rehearsing the song and I happened to be an office assistant assigned to him during that hour. The girls were singing the same song with the OP’s lyrics, instructed to make it especially wistfully mournful and Aaron Copeland-y. I kept screwing up the rehearsals because I’d sit in the office and counter-point their efforts with a quiet but deep baritone rendition of their lyrics while I was filing papers or sorting sheet music. It wasn’t until I took a sick day that the choir instructor realized what sounded _off_ when the girls were rehearsing.:smack: After that I had to close the office door when I they rehearsed Shenandoah.:mad: –G!