Lay Me Low

“Lay Me Low” is one of the most frequently performed arrangements from the Shaker Harmony collection. It was first published by Earthsongs in 1998, and is available on multiple recordings, including The Dale Warland Singers’ best-selling “Harvest Home.” In 2018, it was sung by The Joint Armed Forces Chorus at the State Funeral of President George H. W. Bush. “Lay Me Low” is arranged for 8-part chorus and is derived from a simple and haunting gift song by Addah Z. Potter (1809-1894), who lived at the New Lebanon Shaker community in upstate New York. Upon each repetition of the first section, a voice within the choral texture is “laid low” and is reduced to singing a drone on a single note, which results in a gradual build-up in the texture.

Words such as “low,” “little,” and “down” appear frequently in Shaker texts to signal or invoke humility, as in the popular Shaker song “Simple Gifts” - “tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.”

Lay me low,
lay me low,
lay me low.

Where the Lord can find me,
Where the Lord can own me,
Where the Lord can bless me.