by Dave Van Ronk · 2024
The song “Hang Me, Oh Hang Me” by Dave Van Ronk is about a condemned man reflecting on his life, travels, and impending execution, expressing acceptance of his fate while lamenting the loneliness and hardship he has endured.
This song has been Shazamed over 69,380 times. As of this writing, Hang Me, Oh Hang Me is ranked 113
‘Hang Me, Oh Hang Me’ by Dave Van Ronk is a song from the 1960s that tells a story about a man facing his fate with sadness and acceptance. We’re going to look at what this song really means and why it still matters today. ⬇️
️ The whole song feels heavy and a little dusty, like an old photograph found in a forgotten drawer. The music and words together create a mood of weary acceptance, as if the singer is taking us along on his last journey.
In the chorus, “Hang me, oh hang me, I’ll be dead and gone… Wouldn’t mind the hanging, but the laying in the grave so long,” we hear the real ache: it’s not death itself that haunts him, but the slow, endless rest afterward. We get a sense of resignation—a man who’s made peace with his sentence but can’t shake the dread of what follows. And isn’t that a little bit like how we all sometimes fear the unknown more than the ending itself?
️ The verses wander through landscapes and memories—Cape Girardeau, Arkansas, lonely mountains—with each line painting a map of desperation, hunger, and defiance. “Got so goddamn hungry I could hide behind a straw,” he sings, a raw, oddball image that sticks in your teeth; then, “Rifle on my shoulder and a dagger in my hand,” he’s both hunted and hunter, standing on the edge of survival and surrender. The repetition of “poor boy, I’ve been all around this world” feels like both a boast and a confession, as if distance traveled never truly outruns fate.
The final verses turn almost ghostly—“Put the rope around my neck, hung me up so high”—and the last words echo in the air, chilling and matter-of-fact: “Won’t be long now ’fore you die.” Each refrain circles back, relentless, like the turning of the world itself; it’s a lullaby for the condemned, sung with the cracked wisdom of someone who has seen too much and slept too little.
At its core, Van Ronk’s song isn’t just about dying—it’s about the strange, stubborn dignity in facing what we fear most, and finding a battered kind of beauty in the telling.
Writer(s) of Hang Me, Oh Hang Me:
