Come Life, Shaker Life
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
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Lyrics:
Come, life, Shaker life!
Come, life eternal!
Shake shake out of me
All that is carnal.
I'll take nimble steps
I'll be a David
I'll show Michal twice
How he behav-ed.
Come, life, Shaker life!
Come, life eternal!
Shake shake out of me
All that is carnal.
"Come Life, Shaker Life" is a dance song was written by Elder Issachar Bates in<br> 1835, shortly after his return to the Lebanon, New York Shaker community after many years<br> in the Western Shaker communities of Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana.<br> The reference is to a scriptural passage often used by the Shakers to justify their<br> dancing practices, in 2 Samuel 6:1 4-1 6, in which David dances before the Ark, to the<br> disapproval of Michal, the daughter of King Saul.<br> This song is one of several Quick Dances of the Shakers. In these dances, the singers<br> stood along the side walls of the meeting hall and the dancers formed two circles, the<br> men on their side of the meeting hall and the women on theirs. During the first half of<br> the song, the men skipped or danced counterclockwise around their circle and the women<br> did the same clockwise in their circle. During the second half of the song, each group<br> faced the singers on their side of the room and stepped or shuffled in place. The texts<br> of the Quick Dance songs typically exhorted the worshippers to wake up, to dance, to be<br> alive. They were considered particularly appropriate toward the end of the meeting, when,<br> in the words of one participant, the people would dance "each like a living spark, as<br> David danced before the Ark".<br> I followed Alan Lomax's practice and supplied chords even though Shaker singing was always<br> unaccompanied.<br> It is included in the Roud Folk Song Index as #6669.<br> It was printed in Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America (1960),<br> Cook's Shaker Music: A Manifestation of American Folk Culture (1973) and<br> Andrews's The Gift to be Simple: Songs, Dances and Rituals of the American Shakers (1940).<br> It was recorded by Sister R. Mildred Barker on Early Shaker Spirituals (1977) and<br> Malcom Dalglish on A Winter's Solstice II (1988).<br>
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