Peg Leg Joe is a legendary sailor and underground railroad conductor, popularly associated with the song "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd". According to the folklorist H.B. Parks, who collected the song in the 1910s, Peg Leg Joe was an abolitionist who led enslaved people through the Underground Railroad to freedom during the last years of American slavery. In popular history, he is usually connected with an escape route which led from Alabama to the Ohio River. He may have been a real person or composite of people, but there is no reliable historical evidence of his existence. It is also possible that the story of Peg Leg Joe originates in the African mythical figure, Papa Legba. As his name suggests, Peg Leg Joe is depicted as having a prosthesis for his right leg. Follow the drinking gourd Peg Leg Joe is widely credited online and in popular history with authoring "Follow the Drinkin' Gourd", which was supposedly a set of instructions leading fugitive slaves to safety in the northern states. It is likely that African-Americans sang the tune in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century. The lyrics were first collected by H.B Parks, and published in 1928 in the journal of the Texas Folklore Society, with a slightly different version collected by Lee Hays and recorded in 1947. Modern popular interpretations of the song, based on Parks' initial account, suggest that it encodes a route from Alabama to the northern states; specifying the time of year in which the journey should be undertaken, guiding the fugitives along the Tombigbee River, across "the hills", then onto the Tennessee River and finally the Ohio River. These interpretations state that the escaped slaves would then be met by members of the Underground Railroad, possibly by Peg Leg Joe himself. The accounts also suggest that the song indicates that dead trees along the escape route may have been marked with a left foot and a peg foot sign, symbolising Peg Leg Joe. This interpretation relies on inferences from the obscure lyrics of the song as well as Parks' initial account of its collection. Parks' account The name Peg Leg Joe does not appear in the song, it instead mentions an "old man" who is waiting to "carry you to freedom", and includes the line "Left foot, peg foot, traveling on". Parks, in his 1928 article, stated that he had collected