Azizi, thanks for reminding me that the first time I heard this song was Odetta's singing. (Was that the LP "Odetta and Larry?" Joen Baez covered the Odettta arrangement exactly. It was some years later that I heard Uncle Dave's ur-text and years later that I found out that he had more or less put it together from floating rhymes that he had heard from blacks while growing up. I like whoever used that verb "Words ASSEMBLED by Uncle Dave"

Uncle Dave, David Harrison Macon. is an Interesting Character. Born 1870, son of a Confederate officer who ran a boardinghouse/hotel; he was one of the best banjo-playing entertainers of all time. His music so clearly shows the black influences that Jon Pankake quotes a story of an elderly black man in the 1940s (remember, the Opry is radio only!) on being told that DeFord Bailey was the only black on the Grand Ole Opry, said, indignantly, "What about Uncle Dave?" Since we have such fragmentary records of what black people were singing and playing in those years (and thanks to Talley for giving us all that he found!) much of what we know is filtered through Dave Macon.