Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow

Lyrics

The lyrics below are preserved exactly as documented in nineteenth-century primary sources. Dialect, spelling, and phrasing reflect the living tradition of the communities who created and sang these songs. Standardizing the language would erase the historical record. See our editorial standards for more.

Historical Context

"Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow" is a Christmas spiritual — one of a smaller body of the tradition tied to the Nativity. It draws on the Gospel of Luke's account of the shepherds who, told by angels of the birth of Christ, leave their flocks to seek Him (Luke 2), fused with the star of the East that guides the wise men in Matthew's Gospel.

The song was documented in the collecting work of the early twentieth century, including the scholarship of John Wesley Work and the Hampton tradition preserved by R. Nathaniel Dett, and it was anthologized by James Weldon Johnson. An early transcription appears in a short story by Ruth McEnery Stuart in 1891, in which she seems to have set down a song she had heard sung by Black laborers.

Cultural Significance

The refrain's insistent command — "rise up... and follow" — turns the Christmas story into a call to action. The shepherds are told not merely to rejoice but to leave: to forget their flocks, to abandon their ewes and rams and lambs, to drop the whole apparatus of their livelihood and follow the star.

For an enslaved people, the image of leaving everything behind to follow a light that leads elsewhere carried a resonance beyond the Nativity. The song is, on its surface, entirely about Bethlehem — but its central action is departure, the willingness to abandon one's present circumstances at the summons of a promise. The star in the East, the light that leads toward deliverance, joined the tradition's rich symbolic geography of guiding lights and northward journeys.

The song's celebratory character also reflects the special place of Christmas in the enslaved community's calendar — one of the few periods of respite from labor, a time of gathering, music, and heightened worship.

Scholarly Notes

James Weldon Johnson included "Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow" among the spirituals that treated the Nativity, noting the tradition's tendency to render even joyful subjects as summons to movement and response.

R. Nathaniel Dett preserved the song in the Hampton performing tradition, part of his broader effort to carry the spirituals into the concert hall while honoring their folk roots.

At Fisk University, students traditionally sang Christmas spirituals in the pre-dawn dark of Christmas morning, moving from building to building — a practice that kept songs like this one alive as living worship, not merely as concert pieces. The song has since been recorded by artists as varied as Odetta and numerous concert and gospel choirs.