The Good Old Man- Flora Lassiter c.1890s
[Child No. 274, Our Goodman has been widely known and collected in the US, but "Our Goodman" is rarely a local title. Those versions appearing under the title "Our Goodman," (Child's title came from Herd, "Hame came our goodman") have been assigned that title by collectors (only Mackenzie's 1928 NS version should be titled "Our Goodman"--several other US/Canadian titles have come close, "Home Came A Goodman" (TX), "Hame cam oor gudeman" (NS) etc). A curious case is the title "Arrow Goodman" which appears as version B in the Brown Collection Vol. 2 and several times in the music section (Brown; Volume 4). Since it was not sung nor is part of the text, it appears to be simply a mispronunciation (or just dialect) of the title given to the informant, who did not know the title to be "Our Goodman" in the first place!
Some of the versions collected were not printed or even included in collections because of the sexual topic matter and explicit language. Legmann and Randolph have published several of these "unprintable" versions (also see Gordon's two "Inferno" versions) and they will appear in my collection.
According to Joe Hickerson he "began gathering a collection of versions and variants of "Our Goodman" (Child 274) which now numbers well over 500." My grandfather, Maurice Matteson, collected a version titled "Four Nights" in North Carolina that he published in 1936 in his short book, Beech Mountain Ballads. It was a favorite ballad he would sing at programs.
R. Matteson 2014]
THE GOOD OLD MAN
1. In come the good old man,
As drunk as he could be,
And found a horse a-standing,
Where his horse ought to be.
2. A-calling to his loving wife,
"Oh loving wife," says he,
"Whose horse is a-standing in the stall,
Where my own horse ought to be?
3. "You old fool, you blind old fool,
And can't you ever see?
That's nothing but a milk cow
My mammy sent to me."
4. "I've traveled a hundred miles--
A thousand miles or more---
But a saddle on a milk cow
I never saw before."
5. In came the good old man,
As drunk as he could be,
And found a hat a-hanging on the bed
Where his own hat ought to be.
6. A-calling to his loving wife,
"Oh loving wife", says he,
"Whose hat is that a-hanging on the bed
Where my own hat ought to be?"
7. "You old fool, you blind old fool,
And can't you ever see?
That is nothing but a milk churn
My mammy sent to me."
8. "I've traveled a hundred miles--
A thousand miles or more---
But a ribbon 'round a milk churn
I never saw before."
9. In came the good old man,
As drunk as he could be,
And found a head a-lying in the bed
Where his own head ought to be.
10 A-calling to his loving wife,
"Oh loving wife," says he,
"Whose head is that a-lying in the bed
Where my own head ought to be?"
11 "You old fool, you blind old fool,
And can't you ever see?
That's nothing but a baby
My mammy sent to me."
12. "I've traveled a hundred miles--
A thousand miles or more---
But, whiskers on a baby's face
I never saw before."
Remembered by Mrs. L .L. McDowell , who says she has known it as above all her life, and can not remember who sang it for her in her childhood.