"Nine Pound Hammer", also known as "Take This Hammer" is a prison, logging and railroad work song. It is similar to "Swannanoa Tunnel", also known as "Ashville Junction". Together, this group of songs are referred to as "hammer songs" or "roll songs" (after a group of wheelbarrow-hauling songs with much the same structure, though not mentioning hammers). Numerous bluegrass bands and singers like Mississippi John Hurt recorded commercial versions of this song, nearly all of them containing verses about the legendary spike driver, John Henry. For almost a hundred years after the abolition of slavery, convicts, mostly African American, were leased to work as forced labor in the mines, railroad camps, brickyards, turpentine farms and then on road gangs of the American South. Forced labor on chain gangs, levees, and huge, plantation-like prison farms continued well into the twentieth century. It was not unusual for work songs like "Take this Hammer" and its "floating verses" to drift between occupations along with the itinerant laborers who sang them. This song and the other members of this song family are examples of how black music influenced and were adopted by white singers in the South. It is included in the Roud Index as #4299. It is printed in the New Lost City Ramblers Song Book. It was recorded by Merle Travis, The Monroe Brothers, the New Lost City Ramblers and many others.