Sally up, Sally down

"Flower” by Moby - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Lz4o3KNCk

My memory of this song is inextricably intertwined with the movie “Gone in 60 seconds”. I just recently heard this song during a workout session and it triggered a response strong enough for me to listen to this song for 2 days straight (still playing..) and read its lyrics. 

Workout music, I suppose - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aurfJ4miHT0

Queue the astonishment and embarrassment at missing out the essence of the lyrics through all these years. 

While gym rats use this as a cadence to do muscle breaking workout sequences, it points to something much darker - someone being buried, possibly in context of African-American slavery given the clapping and lyrical choices.

The lyrics come from an old African American song called Green Sally. 

Green Sally up, Green Sally down, 

Last one squat, gotta tear the ground. 

Courtesy of some knowledgeable strangers on the internet - https://songmeanings.com/threads/c/73015871580/

'Green Sally' means 'little girl,' hence the first two lines direct the children to rise up and then squat down in rhythm with the song. "Last one squat gotta tear the ground" means, quite plainly, that the last child to squat has to help the adults with the cotton picking. It's assumed that this was not a literal rule of the game, but a threat of the "last one home is a rotten egg" variety. The lines, "Old Miss Lucy's dead and gone, left me here to weep and moan" is indeed a reference to the death of a slave 'owner', and in the original song is followed by the lines, "If you hate it, fold your arms; if you love it, clap your hands," which was a signal for those listening to indicate their feelings towards their 'master' by either joining in the rhythmic clapping that accompanies the song, or by refraining from doing so, which would indicate a measure of love/respect/complacency that the individual may have had for the 'owner'.

Listen to the original here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPBJRwp7eEQ

As in anything worthwhile created by humans, this contains multitudes.