Hi, CCSS - you have to get used to the dating system used by the Traditional Ballad Index. Their "earliest date" is the earliest date of a song in the books covered by their index - but note that Randolph's source says he learned the song in 1900. If we keep looking, I wouldn't be surprised if we found an even earlier copy - but with such a variety of titles, it may be hard to find.

Is it an ethnic slur? I suppose that in today's climate, it might be viewed as such. Such songs and jokes were certainly common when I was a kid in the Midwest U.S. in the 1950's and 1960's. Oftentimes, it wasd a matter of "young moderns" making fun of their ethnic elders. I think of most of this stuff as harmless, but I suppose a person could read all sorts of animosity into it.

And yeah, when I was a kid in Detroit and in Wisconsin, I knew ethnic butchers who were fascinated with gadgets, people who might have invented just such a machine - or maybe the donut machine in the Homer Price story. I come from a long line of Rube Goldbergian engineers, and any one of them might have created such a machine. My dad is 84, and he's still coming up with crazy, complicated inventions. He has 17 patents to his name. He invented one of the first PCV valves - and if you remember the pollution control devices of the 1970's, you might recall how complicated they were.

-Joe Offer-