I hope the right mudcatter stumbles onto this thread...

Anyway...
Okay, so I was a few miles off. He grew up in New Haven in the 1920s and 1930s (his father having come from the Hartford area). The Adirondacks in the summers. Of mostly English descent, I believe. (He was a Latin teacher, and his father was in the oil business. My grandfather's uncle (who I believe he spent a fair amount of time with) was the Rev. Joseph Twichell (who lived in West Hartford and was very close friends with Samuel Clemens, I have photos of them on riverboats together, and loafing around on porches, which is fun. But obviously is unrelated).

I remember him singing it to my brother and I at bedtime when we were little, and in the car. (As did my mother).

The family members I've asked so far have no idea where he might have picked up the song. Nobody remembers anyone in the family being particularly "musical," as they put it. And so their best guess is that it came from a nanny or an odd family friend. I'm going to keep digging around. I know that this is not much help.

I do have a vinyl recording of him singing it, at age 28, which he made for my mother for her 4th birthday while he was away for awhile. (The flip side is "Workin' on the Railway :)

Also, my aunt's memory of the lyrics differs slightly from mine. Here they are... and they must be more correct than mine... First of all, things rhyme where they are supposed to, and also I've spent plenty of years wondering what a "240 Coat" was. "Drove a 240 Horse" makes far more sense...LOL :

Oh, I'll tell you now a tale
Of a gay young cavalier who
Not many years ago,
Lived in this town right here
His name was Charles Augustus
And divinely he could sing
And he was a clerk at a dry goods store
And he wore a diamond ring.

CHORUS:

Whack!
Tilly fa-lie fa-lay
Fa-lie fa-lay fa-lay whack!
Tilly fa-lie fa-lay, and he wore a diamond ring.

He'd a handsome black moustache
His hair hung down in curls, oh!
What a man to smash
Those unsuspecting girls.
As he passed them on the street
Sly glances they would fling
What a handsome ladies man
With his elegant diamond ring

(chorus)

To parties he would go
And with the ladies flirt
Oh, what a handsome beau
the girls would all assert
He had plenty of cash on hand
And all that sort of thing
And he drove a 240 horse
And he flashed his diamond ring

(chorus)

Well at last suspicion came
To his employer's mind
That Charles Augustus' clothes
Were all together too fine
So a watch was set on him
To prevent that sort of thing
And they caught that handsome clerk
Doing "this" with his diamond ring

(chorus)

Well they had him up in court
And before a jury tried,
But since the case was plain
No guilt was there denied;
So they sent him for his health
To the village of sing-sing
To play checkers with his nose
Without any diamond ring

(chorus)