The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #1739 Message #3227795
Posted By: Lighter
23-Sep-11 - 12:17 PM
Thread Name: 'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...
Subject: RE: 'Aha' She Cried and Waved Her Wooden Leg...
I can't deny the similarity, M.
The parodist must have been a fairly literate person, in that case.
From Charles J. Finger's "Frontier Ballads" (1927):
"When sailors sang sea-songs, they refused to sing the song as it was written if there was the slightest chance to distort it. Take 'Nancy Lee,' which ran in part:
See how she stands upon the quay
And waves her hands to me.
"It was always rendered:
See how she stands upon her hands
And waves her legs to me."
Finger was on shipboard in the 1890s.