"Oh Dark Angel riding high, I can see through you"

September 5, 2024 4:23 PM

"You learned your tricks by the River Styx, where the Devil gets his due." Thus runs the chorus of a bluegrass song I have been unable to find online, which was taped from a public radio folk music program (not sure which one, although Sing Out Songbag or Mountain Stage or the Folk Sampler would all be good guesses) in the 1980s or early 1990s. Does anybody recall this song, who wrote it, and what the title was? Is it perhaps a parody of some better-known song?

The song as a whole had five verses. To stay within reasonable fair use parameters, here are the first and last verses as I recall them:

I was born in Carolina, I was raised back in the pine.
I left home as a young man, my fortune for to find.
Went down to New Orleans, where I gambled for a spell --
'Til one night they caught me cheating, and they hauled me off to jail.

[...]

That night I prayed thanksgiving for the lesson I'd been shown
I knew I'd found the way of living I'd searched for all along
I've cheated men at poker, and I've held them up for gold --
Now I rob them with a Bible and a chance to buy their soul.

posted by Not A Thing to Media & Arts