Heather Cox Richardson’s latest installment of Letters from an American is about the creation of the Erie Canal. Which made me think of the Erie Canal song “Low Bridge, Everybody Down.” Here it is, all the way from 1912, via the National Jukebox. Also all the way from a 1960s childhood.
I was today years old when I realized that “Low bridge, everybody down” has nothing to do with drawbridges being raised and lowered. It has to do with people ducking as they travel under — you guessed it — a low bridge. The sheet music shows a fellow ducking as he rides his mule along the canal. But it makes better sense, as this page about the song suggests, to think of the words in relation to people traveling on a boat. “Everybody”: there are a number of people being cautioned. Everybody duck!
Either way, nothing to do with drawbridges.
More IWTYO
Kasie DC and the meme : Esso : Tums
Monday, October 27, 2025
IWTYO, Erie Canal edition
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comments: 4
I learned this song (in Upstate New York, but well south of the canal) in 4th grade. My misthinking was that I was convinced until really recently that it involved Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I had to read the lyrics twice to convince myself it did not. I somehow had come to believe his girl Sal was Babe..., and they were pulling the canal barge along the tow path. A truly wild bit of 9-year-old confabulation.
I guess that wouldn’t have been beyond Paul and Babe. And Babe was a good old pal, no? :)
Named Sal - somehow.
🐂 (No blue option.)
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