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Jaybird Died with the Whooping Cough
Old-Time, Breakdown. USA; Tennessee, Virginia.
ARTIST: Girl Scout
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
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.
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.
Version 4 is sung by different scout troops both in the US and abroad. Note the similarity to the “Buck-Eye Jim/Limber Jim” songs.
“Sit down to sing, and when you say the word 'whoop' stand up swinging your arms. Watch people when saying 'head and tail': you will be surprised how many stand right up. It doesn't sound British, but it's popular with English Girl Guides.”
Here are the lyrics from scouts:
Way down south, not very far off,
A jaybird died of the whooping cough.
He whooped so hard of the whooping cough
That he whooped his head and tail right off!
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