The Blue Tail Fly appears in the "Ethiopian Glee Book printed in Boston 1848. Lomax says it may have originated from the old ring games and that the ballad was written by an Abolitionist & popular & well used by the minstrials prior to the civil war. Much of the minstrial repertoir wasn't genuine in fact most was pro-slavery. Dam Emmett, "Pickaninny" Coleman & "Jim Crow" Rice shows the Black to be indolent, ignorant, slyly thieving, disloyal, bestial, inanely joyful & boisterous- was calculated to show that their race was happy in it's present state & unworthy of better. Quoted from Lomax & Viking Book Of Folk Ballads. Barry