Alec, thanks for that information. This is the value of an international folk music forum.

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Btw, I also heard "Cows in the sugar bowl/shoo fly shoo" . Also, "I was playin in the water, and I lost my shoe" etc. I think both of these verses were in the Zydeco song I mentioned earlier.

Of course, this song propably was meant to be open-ended with other short verses being improvised as long as they fit the rhyming pattern.

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Q, I'm glad things have changed since 1888: "If you can't get a white girl, a black girl'll do/If you can't get a red bird, a black bird'll do."