|
Jaybird Died with the Whooping Cough/Jaybird
Old-Time, Breakdown. USA; Tennessee, Virginia.
ARTIST: Kuntz - Ragged but Right
CATEGORY: Fiddle and Instrumental Tunes DATE: Mid 1800’s (1846)
RECORDING INFO: County 773, John Ashby and the Free State Ramblers - "Fiddling by the Hearth." Fretless 144, Double Decker String Band- "Giddyap Napoleon." Marimac 9008, The Lazy Aces - "Still Lazy After All These Years" (1986. Learned from John Ashby via Peter Honig). Ashby, John; and the Free State Ramblers. Fiddling by the Hearth, County 773, LP (1979), cut# 6.
OTHER NAMES: Jaybird Died of the Whooping Cough/ The Jaybird
FLOATING LYRICS: “Jaybird;” “Limber Jim;” “Bile Them Cabbage Down;” “Buck-eye Jim”
SOURCES: Wolfe states older printed sources include White (243), Brown (3:201), Browne (447), and an early Tennessee variant appears in the Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 2, pg. 30. John Ashby (1915-1979, north Va.) via the Double Decker String Band (Kuntz); John Ashby [Phillips]. Kuntz (Ragged But Right), 1987; pg. 347-348. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), Vol. 1, 1994; pg. 122.
NOTES: G Major. Standard. AABB. Charles Wolfe (1991) states that printed versions of this song/tune have been found as far back as 1846, and that it has been fairly widely collected from both black (See: Jaybird Died of the Whooping Cough- Version 2 and 3) and white sources. A similar line appears in the minstrel lyrics to Jim Along Josie:
Now way down south, not very far off,
A bullfrog died wid de hooping cough,
And de other side of Mississippi as you must know,
Dare’s where I was christen’d Jim Along Joe.
The common verse to “Jaybird Died with the Whooping Cough” is also found in Lomax’s “Bile Them Cabbage Down:”
Jaybird died of the whoopin' cough,
Sparrow died of the colic.
'Long come a frog with a fiddle on his back
Inquirin' his way to the frolic.
Another song that has the “whooping cough” lyrics is “Limber Jim:” Way down yonder in a sycamore trough/ An old lady died with the whoopin'-cough.
Here are the lyrics from Kuntz:
Jaybird died of the whooping cough,
Squirrel died of the colic;
'Long come a red bird sittin' on a fence,
Call all the young girls to frolic.
Put that mule back under o' the shed,
Yonder comes the owner;
Stole his horse and bought me a mule,
And I ain't gonna pay no more.
|