Six feet under the clay - Louis Collins

I was struck by the melody's similarity to Freight Train and how that plays into the idea that folk music is a product of sharing and tradition.  It's crazy to me how two songs about completely separate experiences (personal ones nonetheless) can share the same backbone.  I can imagine someone writing a song and only knowing that melody and just going with it and making it their own.

The angels laid him away
Laid him six feet under the clay
The angels laid him away

Most of the time when i'm deciding what song to base my week's piece on it is because of the lyrics. I read and reread the lyrics as if I was analyzing a passage of prose or poetry. Even though Louis Collins is (obviously) in English, the phrasing "angels laid him away" almost seems like a different language, a vernacular of a time and place I am not familiar with. Despite the fact that Louis Collins is about a death, its language is romantic to me.

For my piece I wanted to create something that represented the six layers of earth Louis was laid under. The gradient seemed like the right choice for two reasons: to convey the sense of getting deeper below the something (distance and time), and to allude to the transition from life to death (light to dark).