The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #80573   Message #1471908
Posted By: Q (Frank Staplin)
26-Apr-05 - 09:31 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Walking on the Green Grass
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Walking on the Green Grass
Interesting post, Azizi, because it shows that there are differences in what the same word means to white and to black, and that these differences have not been considered in the references at my disposal.
"Double trouble"- my grandmother (Irish) used to tell me that if I didn't stop mis-behaving, I would be in double trouble. Frequently heard because it rhymes.

"My Pretty Little Pink" appears in Newell, 1883 (see thread 34525 for lyrics). Pretty Little Pink
Azizi, never heard 'pink' applied to high yellow. To whites, 'pink' means red-headed, or reddish-blonde (or reddish-blond) white people. The term was more common in the 19th c, but it persists; in WW2 a sergeant in our group, with reddish hair and red-faced, was called Pink, and Pinky was the nickname we had for red-haired kids in the town where I went to school (no black children).

Not this song, but a 'hit' for the Foy Sisters in the 1870's was "My Little Pink," by S. N. Mitchell (words) and W. H. Delehanty (music), 1873 (American Memory).

Pink also was an English slang term for a pretty woman (17th-18th c.) and a slang term for someone dressed in the height of fashion (18th-19th c) and these usages persisted quite a while. "In the pink" now applies mostly to being in good health rather than in the latest fashions.

Ginger-haired is used among whites for reddish-brown; another frequent use is "she/he is full of ginger," meaning spirited, peppy (often was applied to a spirited, showy horse).
"Ginger Blue," however, seems to have a long history in Negro song, according to Vance Randolph and N. I. White. The latter said "Ginger Blue" apparently was a dangerous character whose history belongs to pre-minstrel obscurity." White, in "American Negro Folk Songs, p. 380-381, quotes a verse from "Tom Walker," in "Negro Singers' Own Book," c. 1846, p. 12:

He first was on de walk,
A nigga singing walk chalk,
Ginger Blue in de street,
He made nigger's gizzard beat.
Walk Tom Walker, etc.

Also quoted from p. 348, "Ginger Blue" verse 1, last two lines:
Walk, chalk, Ginger Blue,
get over double trouble,
And Old Varginny neber tire.

Randolph refers to a lengthy "Ginger Blue" song in "Richard Marsh's Selection, or Singing for the Million" (NY, 1854, part 2, p. 157); White quotes the entire song. If anyone is interested, I will post it.

To whites in the south and west, Ginger Blue is a near-mythical Osage chief. "Ginger Blue" also is a traditional fiddle tune.
See notes on "Ginger Blue" in "The Bluegrass Messengers." Ginger Blue

"Walk the chalk (line)" does have other usages. To make someone walk the chalk means to force him to obey. Frequent in the 19th c. and still used today. Now, most of us use "toe the line." In Lighter, I found a quote of its use by a former slave referring to a severe master: "If dat N--- didn't walk de chalk, he would put him on de block and sell him."

Although Lighter tried to make his "Dictionary of American Slang" comprehensive, it could never be complete. The use of 'pink' for 'high yellow,' and ginger blue, may not yet be recorded in any reference.