The Cambric Shirt- (NY) pre1940 Thompson
[From: Body, Boots, & Britches: Folktales, Ballads, and Speech from Country New York by Harold William Thompson. 1940; Thompson says it was, "Sung many years ago at a lumber camp near Lake George." Informant was Morris Wilson 1939 (ref. Roud).
R. Matteson 2014]
The Cambric Shirt- Morris Wilson 1940
Are you going to the fair?
Flum-alum-a-lee, casa loma lee,
Give my heart to a young girl there,
Ca-teedle-o, ca-teedle-o, casa-loma-lee.
Tell her to buy me a cambric shirt
Without one stitch of needle-work.
Tell her to wash it in an old dry well
Where there hasn't one drop of water fell.
Hang it on an old dry thorn
Where the sun ain't shone since Adam was born.
Are you going to the fair?
Give my love to a young man there.
Tell him to buy me an acre of land,
Between sea-salt and sea-salt sand.
Tell him to plow it with a ram's horn,
And sow it with a peppercorn.
Tell him to reap it with a pen-knife,
And draw it in with a yoke of mice.
And tell him to thresh it with a goose-quill,
And fan it through an old egg-shell.
When the fool has done his work,
Tell him to come and get his shirt.