Harry Smith included "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground" on his Anthology of American Folk Music released by Folkways Records in 1952.
The notes for Smith's Anthology state that Lunsford learned this song from Fred Moody, a North Carolina neighbor, in 1901.
In an earlier version of this song (Okeh, 1925) the banjo is even more remarkable in its halting rhythms, and the singer decided he would "rather be a lizzard [sic]..." Lunsford, a lawyer of Asheville, North Carolina, writes that this song is a typical product of the Pigeon River Valley.
Bob Dylan, who listened to Smith's Anthology, echoed a line from this song; "'Cause a railroad man they'll kill you when he can/And drink up your blood like wine," as recorded in Lunsford's "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground", is echoed by Dylan's verse "Mona tried to tell me/To stay away from the train line/She said that all the railroad men/Just drink up your blood like wine" on his song "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again" on the album Blonde on Blonde, recorded in 1966.
The song is mentioned by Salman Rushdie's character Ormus in his work The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
[5] In his book Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century, the author Greil Marcus writes of Lunsford's recording of the song: Now what the singer wants is obvious, and almost impossible to comprehend.