Origins: FOD

Subject: FOD
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 09:35 AM

Does anyone sing this song any more?

I used to have an album with Peggy and Mike Seeger singing it together.
And later I remember seeing a Dictionary of Folk Music a letter from Mike and Peggy as little kids to Earl Scruggs requesting that he sang it on the radio.

Its a bluegrass variant of the folksong Springfield Mountain. Theres only a very drippy version of Springfield Mountain on Youtube.

someone mentioned a woodchuck in the bs thread about nutria and I seem to remember a woodchuck in the lyrics of FOD.

Subject: RE: FOD
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 11:51 AM

Tom Paley used to do this song and you might find it on one of his albums. Personally I have never heard a bluegrass version and can't remember hearing anyone other than Peggy, Mike or Tom doing it.

Subject: RE: FOD
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 02:10 PM

Not sure how many will be able to view it but:

YT: Erik Darling- Fod

Subject: RE: FOD
From: GUEST,Gerry
Date: 27 Feb 18 - 07:32 PM

Fod was the first track on Clay Jones with Gail Gillespie Rogers, Simple Gifts For The Dulcimer, Sunny Mountain Records EB 1009, released in 1979, an album I very much enjoyed. Never released on CD, so far as I know.

Subject: RE: FOD
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 05:09 AM

I've wondered where to put this song. I think I'll group it with "Springfield Mountain" until I find a better home for it.

Here's the Traditional Ballad Index entry on this song:

Fod

DESCRIPTION: "As I went down to the mowin' field Hu-ri tu-ri fod-a-link-a-di-do, As I went down... Fod! As I went down... A big black snake got me by the heel." The injured singer sits down and watches a woodchuck fight a skunk (and complains about the smell)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1941 (recording, Henry King & family)
KEYWORDS: animal nonsense humorous injury dancing fight
FOUND IN: US(So,SW)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Warner-Eastern, pp. 44-45, "Fod" (1 text)
Lomax-FSNA 213, "Fod" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen/Seeger/Wood, p. 222, "Fod" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuson, p. 159, "A Mighty Maulin'" (twelfth of 12 single-stanza jigs) (1 text, perhaps from this though it's just a loose verse)
ST LoF213 (Full)
Roud #431
RECORDINGS:
Henry King, "Fod!" (AAFS 8)
Henry King & family, "Fod" (AFS 5141 B2, 1941; on LC02)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "(I Can't Be) Satisfied" (words)
cf. "Springfield Mountain" (words)
NOTES: Roud catalogs this as a version of Springfield Mountain. Oy. (Admittedly Warner-Eastern thinks it's a lost ending of "Springfield Mountain.")
I stuck Fuson's single stanza ("As I went down to my old field, I heard a mighty maulin'; The seed-ticks was a-splittin' rails, The chiggers was a-haulin'") here because it sounds like it might be a loose verse of something similar, and because there is nothing else much like it. Roud gives it its own number, 16395, but it's probably a floating verse from something. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.2
File: LoF213

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Thread #10108   Message #1173373
Posted By: Joe Offer
28-Apr-04 - 02:47 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Rattlesnake Mountain/Springfield Mountain
Subject: ADD: FOD

FOD

1. As I went down to the mowin' field,
Hu-rye, tu-rye, fod-a-link-a-dye-do
As I went down to the mowin' field, Fod!
As I went down to the mowin' field,
A big black snake got me by the heel,
Tu-rolly-day.


2. Well, I fell down upon the ground, (3 times)
I shut both eyes and looked all around.

3. I set upon a stump to take my rest, (3)
I (It??) looked like a woodchuck on his nest.

4. The woodchuck grinned a banjo song (3)
And up stepped a skunk with the britches on.

5. The woodchuck and skunk got into a fight, (3)
The fumes was so strong they put out the light.

6. They danced and they played till the chimney begin to rust, (3)
It was hard to tell which smelt the wust.

Source: Alan Lomax, The Folk Songs of North America

Collected by C. Todd and R. Sonkin as adapted and arranged by the King Family, Visalia, Calif., Okie emigrants to Calif. from Missouri. AAFS 8 BI. see: Botkin V, 792; Brown III, 221; White, 203. This is a white remake of Negro animal jingles popular in blackface minstrel era. Tune is one of the Middlewestern variants of the Rattlesnake Song, which has also contributed to Fod.

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There is an identical version of the song in Old-Time String Band Songbook (Cohen/Seeger/Wood), except that the third verse has

It looked like a woodchuck on his nest.

Could it be that the King Family is the only source for this song?

Library of Congress field recordings: https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000350/

Subject: RE: Origins: FOD
From: Joe Offer
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 05:14 AM

Once upon a time, I used to spend a lot of time in aircraft repair hangars of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force. I really loved being able to wander freely around the hangars. I was free to gawk as long and as much as I wanted.

All the hangars had banners and posters about preventing FOD, as if it were some sort of drug addiction or venereal disease or other horrible immorality. It took me a while to find out that FOD means "foreign object damage" to aircraft technicians. A pair of pliers or a socket wrench, sucked into a jet engine, creates one heck of a mess.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: Origins: FOD
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 28 Feb 18 - 08:12 AM

Or, on the south Wales / England border, it's the beautiful area of the "Forest Of Dean"

Subject: RE: Origins: FOD
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 03 Mar 18 - 06:22 AM

GUEST,Hootenanny said
> Tom Paley used to do this song and you might find it on one of his albums. Personally I have never heard a bluegrass version and can't remember hearing anyone other than Peggy, Mike or Tom doing it.

FOD isn't on any of Tom's CDs that I have, but it could be on one that I don't have. It was one of his regular songs at Sharp's Folk Club (and probably elsewhere) in the last few years. As far as I can recall he had no explanation of what "FOD" meant (if anything!). I do have a recording of him at Sharp's that I made back in 1996, but it's one of many tapes still awaiting indexing, so I don't know whether he sang FOD back then.

Subject: RE: Origins: FOD
From: GUEST,Hootenanny
Date: 03 Mar 18 - 06:53 AM

Richard,

I didn't say that Tom had recorded it only that he might have. I played alongside him almost every week for around 18 years. Having known him for many more years than that I had heard him play and sing it a number of times.

I think that Joe's assumption above about the King Family being the origin is probably correct. However in this musical field we are still making discoveries so It's quite possible that there were earlier versions.

Subject: RE: Origins: FOD
From: Richard Mellish
Date: 03 Mar 18 - 03:22 PM

> I didn't say that Tom had recorded it only that he might have.

I didn't mean to imply that I believe it is on any of his CDs, only that it could be.