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Buggerboo/Boogerboo/Bugaboo/ Booger Boo
Traditional Old-Time, Breakdown. Western North Carolina, Western Va.
ARTIST: Sung by Mrs. Samuel Harmon, Cade's Cove, Blount County, Tennessee, October, 1930; from Folk Songs from the Southern Highlands, published March 1938 by Mellinger Henry.
Listen: Joe Craft- (banjo solo #1) Booger Boo
Listen: Joe Craft- (banjo solo #2) Booger Boo
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes
DATE: 1800s (1930 this version)
RECORDING INFO: Buggerboo/Boogerboo [Laws O 3]
Us - Bugerboo
Boogerman [Me IV-E 14?]
Rt - Sandy Boys
Krassen, Miles. Krassen, Miles / Appalachian Fiddle, Oak, sof (1973), p30b
Krassen, Miles. Krassen, Miles / Clawhammer Banjo, Oak, sof (1974), p47b
Bugerboo [Laws O 3]
Rt - Foggy, Foggy Dew
Griffin, Mrs. G. A.. Morris, Alton C. / Folksongs of Florida, Univ. Florida, Bk (1950), p160/# 84 [1934-39] (Bugaboo)
Harmon, Mrs. Samuel. Emrich, Duncan / Folklore on the American Land, Little, Brown, sof (1972), p518 [1930] (Bugaboo)
Neal, Riley. Logsdon, Guy (ed.) / The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing and Other Songs.., U. Illinois, Bk (1989), P201/#39 [1968/08] (Boogaboo)
Red Clay Ramblers & Al McCanless. Red Clay Ramblers with Fiddlin' Al McCanless, Folkways FTS 31039, LP (1974), trk# 1 (Boogerboo)
Tate, Dan. Appalachia, The Old Traditions, Home Made Music LP-001, LP (1983), trk# A.05 [1979/08/11]
Unidentified Informant. Thompson, Harold W.(ed.) / Body, Boots & Britches, Dover, Bk (1939), p421 [1930s] (Buggery Boo)
RELATED: "Sandy Boys" "Foggy Dew"
OTHER NAMES: "Buggery Boo" "Bugaboo"
SOURCES: Vance Randolph; Wolk Folklore MP3; Folk Index; Kuntz, Fiddler's Companion, http://www.ceolas.org/tunes/fc;
NOTES: (Roud 558/1118, Laws O3) The song is related to Sandy Boys (See Sandy Boys) and a line in the chorus is "Waiting for the boogerboo." The song is also known as "boogerboo," which means usually boogerman or boogieman (also buggyman), an evil spirit or ghost, the devil. Boogerboo is usually pronounced buggerboo, bugaboo, buggyboo or boogieboo.
Further investigation shows BOOGERBOO: verb [1940s-60s] (US Black) to behave in an unpleasant manner, to be insincere. BOOGERBOO n. 1) An unpleasent situation or person. 2) commotion, as in- He raised a big boogerboo about nothing.
A song and tune are more recently from the repertoire of Pocahontas County, West Virginia, fiddler Edden Hammons. According to Kuntz, Gerry Milnes has found ribald words accompanying the tune in West Virginia. The modern “revival” or “festival” version may have stemmed from a ‘mislearning’ of Hammon’s tune by Bob Herring.
Some lyrics were given by Joe Craft--- They said:
Listen: Joe Craft- (banjo solo #1) Booger Boo
I courted here on a cold winter night,
The winter season too.
I jumped in the bed and covered over my head,
I's scared of the booger boo.
Listen: Joe Craft- (banjo solo #2) Booger Boo
Never told her of my faults
Dang me if I do
Every time the baby cries,
I think of the booger boo.
This second set of lyrics is also found in Sandy Boys.
Biography & Notes Mike Yeats: Dan Tate, who also sang Bugerboo, was born in 1896 and must at one time have known a phenomenal number of songs and banjo tunes. Though frail and almost totally blind, his welcome to a complete stranger was as warm and genuine as could be. After recording many of his songs in 1979 and 1980 I called to see him again in 1983. "Did I sing you Lily Monroe?" he asked when I walked through his doorway. "It must be about England, 'cause they send for a 'London' doctor to heal up his wounds." He also recounted how one recent snowfall had almost ended his life. "I thought I was a gonner, Mike. I woke up and it was quiet, real quiet; and cold, real cold. The stove had gone out and I had no wood inside. I tried to open the door but it just wouldn't open. The house had just about disappeared in the snow. Well...I wrapped some blankets around me and sat in the chair, expecting to die. And do you know? It wasn't long before I heard my friends coming to dig me out!" Strength of character, tenacity and sensitivity are words that I'd use to describe Dan and his neighbours.
Dan had been recorded for the Library of Congress by Professor Fletcher Collins, of Elon College, NC. Library records date these recording to 1941, although Dan was adamant that they had been made in 1938. I had heard one or two of Dan's recordings prior to meeting him and found that he still just loved to sing. One morning he began to talk about 'the war'. I thought that he was talking about the Great War, until he began to describe the American Civil War Battle of Shiloh. As a young man he had known people who had fought in the Civil War. Never before had history seemed so real!
In its original form, an apprentice seduces his master's daughter with the help of a friend disguised as a ghost (or bugaboo). Somehow or other the term bugaboo became changed - at least in English versions of the song - into the phrase the foggy dew, sparking off all kinds of fanciful explanations for the meaning of this term. A full, and far more accurate, history of the song will be found in Bob Thomson's article The Frightful Foggy Dew (Folk Music Journal IV:1. 1980 pp. 35-61). In Dan's version, verse 3 is a 'stray' from The Gypsy Laddie (Child 200). Dan's comment to me that the boatman 'must have been a Lord or something' suggests that the stanza was present when Dan first heard the song.
Doug Wallin sings his version of The Foggy Dew on Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40013, while an English version of the song can be heard on the album Songs of Seduction (Rounder 1778), where it is sung by Phil Hammond of Norfork. The accompanying booklet notes for the latter were clearly written without knowledge of the Thomson article mentioned above. Burl Ives' well-known recorded version of the song was probably learnt from Carl Sandburg's American Songbag (1927).
Notes Kuntz: BUGGERBOO and see “Booger-Boo.” Old‑Time, Fiddle Tune/Song. The title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. Mike Yates (2002) says that in its original form the ballad relates the seduction of a master’s daughter by an apprentice, with the aid of a friend disguised as a ghost, or bugaboo. It is this term bugaboo that was altered in the process of transmission to the famous “Foggy Dew” (See Bob Thompson’s article “The Frightful Foggy Dew”, Folk Music Journal IV:1, 1980 pp. 35-61). Musical Traditions MTCD321-2, Dan Tate (et al) – “Far in the Mountains, Volumes 1 & 2” (2002).
THE BUGABOO- Mrs. Samuel Harmon 1930
See Combs, Folk-Songs du Midi des£tats-Unis p. 214. "The Buggerboo." Obtained from Mrs. Samuel Harmon, Cade's Cove, Blount County, Tennessee, October, 1930.
1. My love come to my bed side;
So bitterly she did weep;
At last she jumped in the bed with me;
She was afraid of the buggerboo.
2. All in the first part of that night
Me and my love did play;
All in the latter part of that night
She rolled in my arms till day.
3. The night being gone
And the day a-coming on:
"Wake up, wake up, my own true love,
For the buggerboo done gone."
4. All in the first part of that year
She blushed in the face;
All in the latter part of that year
Grew thicker through the waist.
5. And about nine months afterwards
She brought forth me a fine son
And you can see as well as me
What the buggerboo has done.
6. In a year or two I married that girl;
She made me a virtuous wife;
I never told her of her faults
In all days of my life.
7. I never told her of her faults;
Bedog my eyes if I do!
But every time the baby cries
I think of the buggerboo.
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