183. Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow

The Story Behind the Hymn

Like most African American spirituals represented throughout this collection, this carol’s original author and composer are unknown.

It developed anonymously through oral tradition among enslaved and later free Black communities in the American South during the nineteenth century, before eventually being transcribed and published in written musical notation.

The carol draws on the Gospel account of the shepherds near Bethlehem, in Luke 2, who receive news of Christ’s birth from an angel and immediately leave their flocks to go and see the newborn child for themselves.

The spiritual’s repeated command to ‘leave your sheep and leave your lambs’ — abandoning even valuable livestock without hesitation, in order to respond immediately to the angel’s announcement — places unusual emphasis on the shepherds’ complete, unhesitating willingness to drop everything and follow. That theme of total, immediate response recurs across a number of spirituals in this broader tradition.

The carol’s structure is built around a simple, repeated command addressed directly to the shepherd figure — and, by clear extension, to the singer as well.

That reflects the characteristic call-and-response and direct-address patterns common throughout African American spiritual singing more broadly — a style well suited to communal, participatory singing, without requiring written music or advance rehearsal.

Like the related spiritual ‘Go, Tell It on the Mountain’, this carol was preserved and brought to wider public attention primarily through early twentieth-century collection and publication efforts, including work associated with Fisk University.

That work helped ensure that a carol originally passed down entirely through oral performance within specific enslaved and freed communities survived into written form and continued congregational use, long after the original singers who first developed it.