This post is about snakes...

I think that the black snake in "Frog Went-a Courtin" is just a snake. I also think that the black snake in "Old Bill The Rolling Pin" is also just a snake, though "Old Bill, the Rolling Pin" is a coded reference for the White patrollers/vigilantes who were active during the end of African American slavery.

See this excerpt from one of my post in another Mudcat thread:

OLD BILL THE ROLLING PIN

Bessie Jones, Bess Lomax Hawes,"Step It Down" {University of Georgia Press, 1972, p. 208}

Mister Frog went swimming down the lake this morning.
Mister Frog went swimming down the lake this morning.
Mister Frog went swimming down the lake.
But he got swallowed by a big black snake this morning.

Now, Old Bill the Rolling Pin this morning.
Now, Old Bill the Rolling Pin this morning.
Now, Old Bill the Rolling Pin,
He's up the road and back again.
Big eyes and double chin this morning.

-snip-

Mrs Jones say that Old Bill was a "patterroller" and that people made this song up to make fun of him. During slavery, when Negroes were not allowed to leave their home plantation without a pass, "patterollers" were armed guards, hired to patrol the roads at night, enforcing the pass system. This particular 'patteroller' had "big eyes and a double chin", apparently reminding the singers of Mister Frog {the same one who went a-courting and who got "struck by a big black snake"}. The mule,who dances instead of working,is not as extraneous as he may seem either."

thread.cfm?threadid=81179#1486850 Subject: RE: African American Secular Folk Songs