unusual versions of the foggy dew

Subject: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 02:43 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLdYamFmM3g

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 02:44 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWuLMvGkKxU nick dow

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Joe Offer
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 03:52 AM

I really like the version you recorded in the first post, Dick - it's my favorite melody for the song. Where did you get it from? I thought I got it from a Martin Carthy recording of that version, but the Martin Carthy version I found today was different from anything I've heard before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQjc4TJ8sao

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 03:55 AM

it is so long ago joe that i cannot remember i thought it was a recording of a trad singer ,but i cannot find who it was

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 06:06 AM

Harry Cox I think. While we're on this subject, I'm not impressed with some of the explanations of the song. James Reeves has the most unconvincing. Foggy Dew = Virginity (Whaaat?) This seems to have stuck though.
As far as I can gather the Foggy Dew is a corruption of The Bug-a-Boo i.e. The Bogey Man, or Boggart.
The original story is of two young wags, one of whom dressed up as a ghost, and terrified the young girl into the bed of the other one. This explains why she was so terrified in the middle of the night. Good plan if you're a young and stupid bloke. Never worked for me though! (Bugger!)

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 08:48 AM

Not a corruption, I think, but a euphemism,

A "bugaboo" is an evil spirit. At least one singer along the line is likely to have felt uncomfortable singing about an evil spirit (maybe a demon or You-Know-Whom himelf).

So why not, ur-singer, try to make the song safer? Or safer for children? "Foggy dew" is a little weird, but why not?

Sounds like a dew that forms after fog. Maybe the night is really cold and damp: that could send her into his bed. Good enough!

Everyone presumably knew what "bugaboo" meant. So "corruption" by mishearing or sheer ignorance seems to me unlikely.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 09:02 AM

HarryCox sings a different version i think here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epHHcsDF_Qs

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 10:47 AM

Yes it is Dick.
Lighter, song has had a long history of censorship. Burl Ives did 30 days in jail for singing it, so you might have hit on something, re-foggy dew. Sounds plausible.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 03:00 PM

Thanks, Nick.

I believe that Ives spent just two nights in jail, in Mona, Utah (population 338 in 1930) for "The Foggy Foggy Dew."

BTW, The earliest reference I have for the song's presence in the U.S. (no text, unfortunately) is from an Alabama newspaper in 1868.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 03:10 PM

Since "foggy dew" scans as well as "foggy, foggy dew," I suspect the extra "foggy" is a later development.

The phrase may have been suggested by the Irish tune "The Foggy Dew."

Interestingly enough, a bay gelding of that name ran at the Perth Races on Oct. 7, 1814.

That's the earliest appearance of the "foggy dew" I know of.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 03:23 PM

The irish Foggy Dew is about the Easter Rising of 1916

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 03:28 PM

As written the song was obviously a comic piece of the 17th century. The change to the mysterious Foggy Dew is most likely a conscious rewrite, although gradual evolution shouldn't be ruled out just because we have no intervening versions. One suggestion: 'Bugaboo' sounds too much like 'bugger boo'. How old is the word 'bugger'? Bob Thompson set the appearance of the 'Foggy Dew' versions at 1775 or a little before that, as printed by the Dicey-Marshall dynasty in London.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 04:42 PM

The Irish tune that carries the rebel song appeared in print, in its current form, in 1909, and a bit differently in 1902.

The unnamed Irish air that carries William Kennedy's poem "The Irish Emigrant," in R. A. Smith's "Select Melodies" (1828) is also similar.

The other well-known Irish tune of that title was collected by Bunting in 1839.

The relevant sense of "bugger" was in print in 1540.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 06:33 PM

The word Bugger comes from the French Bougre. (I read somewhere!) and the Bougres were a sect who practiced that particular activity.
That thought could scare a maiden into the arms of her scheming boyfriend, however I think Bugga-Boo the ghost more likely.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Joe_F
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 06:38 PM

Needless to say, the meaning of "foggy dew" has been discussed extensively on the Mudcat. I agree emphatically with the opinion of Peter Kennedy that I quote on one thread, https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=147458#3420492: "There seems no end to what can be interpreted from the lines of folksongs".

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 11 Dec 20 - 06:58 PM

Your etymology is essentially correct. The Middle English "bougre" meant primarily a heretic, but the Bulgarian/Bogomil heretics were also accused of sodomy. So one thing led to another.

Does anyone know anything about the familiar American tune as sung by Ives, Carl Sandburg, and everyone else?

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 03:52 AM

Both Dick’s and Nick’s recordings sound very similar to the version I learned from a Bob Roberts EP that I bought back in the 60s. Slight variations in the tune and lyrics, but otherwise much the same, and he courted “a Suffolk maid “. ( She might have been fair and young too!?) Could this be the version you’re thinking of?

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: GUEST,Mike Yates
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 05:04 AM

For a 'Bugerboo' version, see Dan Tate (VA) on Musical Traditions 'Far in the Mountains' Vols. 1 & 2. (MTCD501-2). Probably only available today as a download.

Subject: ADD: Batchelor's Song (foggy dew)
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 05:19 AM

I posted the following in a 'parodies' thread back in 2004:

BATCHELOR'S SONG.
unattributed


When I was a Batchelor I lived in a tin with a hundred bright green peas
My grandmother said to keep from sin you must not part from these
But then one day the lid came off Horizons loomed in view
And a very obscene little brown baked bean said "I'm coming in with you".

I said to the little obscene baked bean I like your flipping sauce
To which she said "I'm very well bred Heinz 57 of course"
She wept, she cried, she damned near fried and said "What shall I do?
So I pulled her in the can just to save her from the pan and the threat of the Irish stew.

Now I am a Batchelor I live in a can with a hundred khaki peans
And when I clap my hands they march around the can singing we're a lot of in-betweens
Reminds me of the bad old days when I lived with my bright green brothers
Now I'm doing very nice just ignoring the advice given me by my grandmother.



Taken from the Bangor (N.Wales) Scout & Guide club songbook (pub March 1970)

NP

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: GUEST,Nick Dow
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 07:08 AM

I collected my version from Dick Corbett of Broadwindsor. Please see the current issue of Living Tradition for an article on the same.

Subject: ADD: Foggy Foggy (parody)
From: Howard Jones
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 08:27 AM

Of course undoubtedly the finest version is that by Rambling Sid Rumpo

When I was a young man I nadgered at my splod
as I nurked at the wogglers trade.
When suddenly I thought while trussing up my groats,
I'd whirdle with a fair young maid.
We whirdled through the summer time
until the winter came,
and the only, only thing that I ever did wrong
was to tell her my foggy foggy name.

Now I'm married
and I've put away my splod
and my son's at the woggler's trade.
Though sometimes I still think
as I'm trussing up my groats
of whirdling with a fair young maid.
I'd whirdle her in the winter time
I'd whirdle her for dear life-
But the only, only thing that I'd have to do
Is to keep it from the foggy foggy wife-Oh!

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 02:56 PM

Jon,
There are 2 versions in Sandberg's American Songbag. The version sung by Burl Ives appears to be the first one on p14. The other is at p.460. He got the first version from Arthur Sutherland and his Bold Buccaneers at the Eclectic Club of Wesleyan University. A middle verse was censored as 'being out of key and probably an interpolation'. Both versions have the same 2 stanzas 'When I was a bachelor' and 'Oh I am a bachelor and I live with my son' so the omitted verse was probably the 'jumped into bed' stanza.

I would guess that this version was probably part of the student repertoire along with pieces like 'My Bonny' and 'Landlord fill the Flowing Bowl' in the 1880s.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 04:26 PM

That seems likely, Steve.

Sandburg's "Weaver" (p. 460) contains the naughty lines, “And all night long I held her in my arms, / Just to shield her from the foggy, foggy dew.”

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 05:17 PM

My understanding was that what got people like Burl Ives in trouble was the line So now I am a bachelor, I live with my son, so it had to be changed to Again I am a bachelor.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 05:25 PM

Steve, "Landlord, Fill the Flowing Bowl" was evidently a popular convivial piece in America even before the 1880s.

Assistant Paymaster Lieutenant Casper Schenk, U.S. Navy, utilized the tune to lament the abolition of the Navy rum ration on September 1, 1862:


https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/research-guides/z-files/zv-miscellaneous-files-navy-department-library/farewell-to

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 06:03 PM

'My Bonny' predates 1872 but not by a lot. I used the arbitrary date 1880s as that seems to be the height of the student singing in America but I could be wrong. Top o' the head stuff. I have several American sheet music variants from that period and later.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 12 Dec 20 - 06:49 PM

I'd place it earlier, Steve.

C. Wistar Stevens's "College Song Book: A Collection of American College Songs" appeared as early as 1860 (though Come, Landlord" isn't in it).

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Dec 20 - 05:56 AM

Nicks article is"all the songs of the day" on page 28, he points out that traditional songs often come his way, ofteh supplied by the Gypsy Folk

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Mo the caller
Date: 13 Dec 20 - 08:20 AM

Could you really be imprisoned for singing about premarital sex? I can understand that in the UK the BBC might not have (?been allowed to??) broadcast it. But surely not imprisoned. Was it that different in US?

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Dec 20 - 08:22 AM

YES it happened to ives i thought it was for busking though

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: The Sandman
Date: 13 Dec 20 - 08:32 AM

Ives traveled about the U.S. as an itinerant singer during the early 1930s, earning his way by doing odd jobs and playing his banjo. He was jailed in Mona, Utah, for vagrancy and for singing "Foggy Dew" (an English folk song), which the authorities decided was a bawdy song.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Dec 20 - 09:32 AM

As in itinerant singer, he might have violated various local ordnances, including vagrancy.

Singing a bawdy song wouldn't have helped him. Presumably the song came up at the arraignment.

And yes, the standard version with the unspoken sex and illegitimate kid was at best borderline in many places in the U.S. at the time. And a tiny rural community like Mona, in Mormon country, would have been most unlikely to countenance it.

Especially from, well, a hobo.

The uncensored song was still considered "bawdy" into the 1950s.

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 13 Dec 20 - 09:58 AM

Jon, are you certain about 'My Bonny lies over the ocean' being in an 1860 edition of College Song Book? That edition? That would make Clifton's original before 1860 when he would have been 28 and not yet famous. The'Era' dates 'Send back my Barney' at 1866. Am I getting the songs mixed up?

Subject: RE: unusual versions of the foggy dew
From: Lighter
Date: 13 Dec 20 - 10:52 AM

Sorry for the vague pronoun, Steve. (It's the sort of thing that caused the charge of the Light Brigade.)

By "it" I meant only the convivial singing of college and drinking songs not, "My Barney."

Of course, phrased that way, "it" goes back to the Middle Ages.