The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #107723   Message #2368066
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
17-Jun-08 - 03:25 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Shanghai
Subject: RE: Origins: Shanghai
Cluster(s?) is the right word. Perrow, Odum, et al. have printed a number of fragments or whole songs, and there are mudcat threads with these songs or parts thereof.
There must be dozens or reports of the 'knees-chicken sneeze' and 'way down yonder' verses from the late 19th-early 20th c, both white and black sources.

Songs from Christy's Minstrels (Songster, 1850), like:
Opossum up a gum tree
Cum Along John (chicken sneeze verse here, also milk in the dairy nine days old, jaybird jump..., just come down from ..., )
Uncle Gabriel (animal characteristics in verse)
Several other minstrel songsters, have similar verses.

Some seem to be based on stories told by blacks and whites, e. g.
Uncle Remus, etc.

Trying to impose some sort of order on these songs isn't a job I would like to have. So many people have added to, combined,
or rearranged these verses.