The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #43935   Message #3883132
Posted By: Jim Dixon
18-Oct-17 - 05:06 PM
Thread Name: Lyr/Chords Req: Snake Baked a Hoecake
Subject: RE: Lyr/Chords Req: Snake Baked a Hoecake
From an article "Folk Songs of the South" in The School Journal, Vol. 77, No. 8 (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., April, 1910), page 322:

Snake baked a hoecake,
  Set ole frog to hol' it;
Frog got to noddin',
  Lizard came an' stole it.
Bring back mah hoecake,
  Yo' lizard, col' an' clammy.
Bring it back this minute,
  Or I'll go an' tell yo' mammy!
    (But he got away.)

Coon foun' a 'possum
  Hidin' in de cellar.
Coon had his whiskers
  Painted green and yeller.
Come, Mister 'Possum,
  I know yo' been a-stealin',
Spooks'll come an' ketch yo'
  An' they'll grab yo' troo de ceilin'.
    (And they did.)

When Miss Kitty Cheatham scored one of her successes by singing the above recently few of her audience knew that the song had any particular significance, says the New York Sun, that it was more than a pleasing combination of nonsense words and an air of a catching, tuneful type. This indeed the song may have been, but there was more to it. "It Sho' 'Nuff Happened," for such is its title, traces its ancestry away back to the earliest North Carolina days and the jingles thereof. It is really entitled to a coat-of-arms.

The North Carolina jingle is but one of the many that Harvey Worthington Loomis has been busy ferreting out of the rapidly disappearing debris of old Southern folklore....