“Sow ‘Em on the Mountain” is a traditional song with roots in nineteenth-century gospel. The Carter Family recorded it in 1931, and it draws on the old hymn imagery of sowing and reaping.
The song is a plain moral warning. Its refrain — you are going to reap just what you sow — follows a string of verses naming wrongs such as gambling, lying, and tattling; whatever a person plants on the mountain, the song insists, will come back as the harvest.
The song passed from the Carter Family into old-time and string-band music.
Assisted by AI.
Spot something off? Help us fix it.
