The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #111013   Message #2602965
Posted By: Jim Dixon
02-Apr-09 - 07:50 AM
Thread Name: Origins: Too Much of a Name / Longest Name Song
Subject: Lyr Add: LONGEST NAME SONG (Newfoundland)
From Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland by Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf, Grace Yarrow Mansfield (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1933):

LONGEST NAME SONG
Words from Mr. Charles Earle, tune from Mrs. Fred Earle, Change Island and Fogo, 1929.

1. My father and mother were excellent folks;
They spent half their time in practical jokes;
And when I was born they were both of one mind,—
They said I should have all the names they could find;
So they considered as wise as could be,
And this is the handle they stuck onto me:

CHORUS: Jonathan, Joseph, Jeremiah,
Timothy, Titus, Obadiah,
William, Henry, Walter, Sim,
Reuben Rufus, Solomon, Jim,
Nathaniel, Daniel, Abraham,
Roderick, Frederick, peter, Sam,
Hyman, Tyman, Nicholas tat,
Christopher, David, Jehosaphat.

2. I joined the societies there in the town;
My name on the rolls it was all written down;
The clerk in the meeting was calling the roll;
When he got through my name, there wasn't a soul
For to wait for the ending, they were all so vext,
They said they'd go home and come back for the next.

3. When I came to get married, the case was as bad;
The parson stared at me, he thought I was mad:
"That your parents denied you a sensible name,"
Said he, "young man, that's a very great shame;
But we'll say nothing more, for reasons of mine,
But you'll have to get married a bit at a time."

A variant of a once popular music-hall song, "Jonathan, Joseph, Jeremiah." See, for example, Harry Beckwith's America's Own Comique Songster (New York, A. J. Fisher, copyright 1878), p. 28.