Songfacts®:

• Plant debuted this song on June 28 2014 at the UK's Glastonbury festival. He described it to Q magazine as a "trippy thing that starts off sounding like you're in (country music venue) the Ryman in Nashville, and then halfway through you find yourself in (city in South West England) Bristol."
• This is a reworking of the Appalachian folk song. Plant closes Lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar with another interpretation of the traditional tune in the guise of "Arbaden (Maggie's Babby)." Asked by Billboard magazine what attracted him to the song, Plant replied: "I wanted to do something that expressed my absolute connection with the American way -- despite the fact that I'm British, and despite the fact that halfway through I'm going to turn it into some strange sampled dirge that sounds like it's from Bristol, England. So we used electronics, a banjo, African instruments. It's all about getting hold of a song and messing with it."
• Asked by Uncut magazine about the meaning of the Lullaby And… The Ceaseless Roar album title, Plant replied: "It's explanatory of all life. Life has a dynamic. It's not always so dramatic, but the extremes are... Well, the extremes. It probably follows right the way through the story of my choices in music. Where I've been pleased to rest along the way in music, with people, with certain musical attitudes and enthusiasms – and sometimes the very opposite of that. It's just like, what a life!"