Maggie -- Thank you so much. Hildebrand was so happy about getting that little drawing again. And we have an early date on the "Minnie the Mermaid" parody. Could it be that the two songs were linked as a medley by male-harmony singers, with no consideration for content?

It's interesting that 88 copies of "Minnie" variants were collected from the Midwest. Hildebrand remembers being told that "barbershop quartets" were particularly popular there.
Cheers, Joy
hildebrand here: mindful of the practice in elizabethan england of having a lute handy in the barbershop, so customers could have a twang while they were waiting, when i was in kabul in 1973 i went to get a haircut, and noticed that there was a rebab hanging on the wall of the shop. when i expressed interest in the instrument, the barber took it down and handed it to me, urging me to have a go, so i tried a bit of finger-picking on it, to the amusement of the barber and the other customers.
H