The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #25527   Message #304323
Posted By: John Moulden
24-Sep-00 - 08:39 AM
Thread Name: Little Jimmy Murphy
Subject: RE: Little Jimmy Murphy
The Henry M Belden (ed) Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (Columbia, 2nd ed 1955) version is called Joe Jimmy Murphy and was "Communicated in 1911 to Miss Hamilton by Miss Agnes Shibley the Kirksville Teachers College who had it from her cousin, Sylvia Husted from Worthington, Putnam County [Missouri] who learned it from an old man who came from Tennessee."

On the banks of Kilcanny
Where a great row was resin
Is Joe Jimmy Murphy
Who is lost and forsaken

Then rall-a-bonely lass now
From the east to Dan Pathrow's
To entice poor Jimmy Murphy
From the green banks of the
Jam-spooder-fudle-ram-jam-fa-de-riddle-die-do,
Fa-da-riddle-die-do, tie-yi-a.

Oh, tomorrow he will ride
He will ride through the city
With his hands tied behind him
All ladies to pity

Oh, tomorrow he will hang;
But it's not for sheep stealing
But for courting a pretty girl
By the name of Moll Figen.

Now he is dead
And his troubles are over,
And the ladies and lasses
Will hold him in clover.

Belden suggests that "resin" could be raising" or "raging" and that Kilcanny is Kilkenny.

Dan's version of New York is clearly a parody and that's interesting in itself.