How Many Miles- Jones (MA) 1927 Gordon
[My title. From: The Robert W. Gordon "Inferno" Collection in the Archive of Folk Song, Library of Congress. I've created a typical verse from the fragment.
The 'Inferno' collection consists of original correspondence and typescript copies of letters (200 pages) that either Gordon or someone else separated out -- because of their bawdy and scatological subject matter -- from the materials he received and compiled as first head of the folklife department at the Library of Congress. Prefaced to the 'Inferno' collection is a 14 page index which lists informant, date, location and title of the texts. It can be viewed on-line here:
http://www.horntip.com/html/books_&_MSS/1910s/1917-1933_gordon_inferno_collection_(MSS)/index.htm
R. Matteson 2013]
How Many Miles- 2500; 4; Paul L. Jones, Waltham, Massachusetts, 1/28/27;
How many miles I have traveled, a thousand miles or more
But ballics on a rolling pin I never saw before.
Typical verse:
A old man came home one night, as drunk as he could be,
He found a thing, within the thing, where his thing ought to be.
"My dear wife, my sweet wife, my pretty wife," says he,
"What means this thing, within the thing, where my thing ought to be?"
"You poor fool, you old fool, you doddering fool," says she,
It's nothing but a rolling pin, my granny sent to me."
"How many miles I have traveled, a thousand miles or more
But ballics on a rolling pin I never saw before."