You Old Fool- Hawkins (IO) 1870s; Bronson 12.
[My Title. This fragment with music appears as Bronson No. 12.]
You Old Fool ("Our Goodman")- Mrs. John Williams (nee Violet Selena Hawkins) Iowa City, Iowa, 1922. Learned from her half-brother Reed Hawkins in the late 1870's or early 1880's. Tune recorded June 7, 1930, by Miss Margaretha Rasmussen in Urbana, Ill. Words noted June 14, 1922. Communicated by Prof. Charles A. Williams.
"O wife, dearest wife,
Pray can you tell me,
Whose head is this within the bed
Where my head ought to be?"
"You old fool, you blind fool!
Why can't you ever see?
It's nothing but a cabbage head
That Granny sent to me."