I encounter this meaning once in a blue moon. There was an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies in which Granny sang some kind of hymn with the line “back in the corner where you are,” and used the word “bar” at the end of the next line. And in his song “We Will All Go Together When We Go,” Tom Lehrer includes the lines, “We will all char together when we char; /And let there be no moaning of the bar…”
What does “bar” mean as it is used in these lyrics?
The Lehrer song sounds like a take-off of Tennyson’s poem, “Crossing the Bar,” a poem that uses a nautical metaphor for life and death.
The “bar” in the poem is a sandbar that may be the point of no return; when you have crossed the bar, you’re on your final voyage to death.
“Let there be no moaning at the bar /
When I put out to sea”
is a “don’t mourn for me; this is the natural end” kind of sentiment.
Here’s the full poem (mods, I assume it’s public domain, since Tennyson died in 1892).
Crossing the Bar
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
Thanks… looks like Lehrer did his research.
It’s Brighten the Corner Where You Are.
It’s the same metaphor: a ship passing over the bar at the mouth of a harbor.
It was a pretty well known in the past. I probably had to read it in high school. When Lehrer was writing he could assume that many of his listeners would be familiar with the phrase.
Thanks… looks like Lehrer did his research.
Apparently, the script writers of The Beverly Hillbillies did too. 
Personally, I would have thought Granny was singing about a bear. 
To Northern Piper: That line ‘no sadness of farewell’ reminds me of Steve Goodman’s song “A Dying Cub Fan’s Last Request,” in which the dying fan tells the people around him not to mourn; HE feels sorry for THEM. Still, I cried at the end of the song. 
Bear? That wouldn’t rhyme.
Granny was from the Ozarks, just like Daniel Boone, so I would have thought used the same pronunciation:
“Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear”?
I just realized you were thinking of Granny’s accent - and then I saw the post that you ninja’d in there, saying the same thing.
See 0:15 or so https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txcRQedoEyY for Fess Parker’s pronunciation.
Actually, the phrase was quite well known when he used it. It had to be: otherwise the audience would not get the reference.
I noted all kinds of classical references in his lyrics. He probably took quite a few intellectual courses in college. And he even knew Russian. (So did a lovely girl I went to school with; a beauty who I figure measures 120" around the brain. )
Damn. I didn’t even realize he’d been ill.
Yeah, it caught all of us by surprise.
“Ask not for whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.”
…and Hemingway obviously did plenty of research himself.
And I bet nobody had him in the 1892 Death Pool. Talk about missed opportunities.