Jon Bartlett Re:I'd like to know it's author
Your questioned was answered by STEWIE 20 Apr 05 - 08:47 PM

Before STEWIE'S quotation Cohen gives the remarkable credentials for its authenticity: Re: AUTHOR

From LSR by Cohen p 544.

One of California's most amazing men of letters was Charles F. Lummis (1859-1928). His long list of posts achievements included city editor of the Los Angeles Times (1885-87), director of the Los Angeles Public Library (1905-10), editor of Land of Sunshine and Out West magazine (1894-1909), founder of the Southwest Museum, and author of a score of books on the history of California, The Southwest, Mexico, and Peru. In addition, Lummis was a pioneer folklorist of note: as early as 1892 he published an article on New Mexico folksongs in Cosmopolitan magazine. In 1884, Lummis walked some thirty-five hundred miles across the continent from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, recount his experiences in a series of letters to the Los Angeles Times. During that journey he first heard a fragment of "Jerry, Go an' Ile That Car," and he expended considerable effort in later years to determine the complete song and the identity of the author. In about 1904, with the help of Arthur G. Wells, general manager of the Santa Fe lines from New Mexico westward, he concluded the following:

And then the quote recorded by: STEWIE 20 Apr 05 - 08:47 PM

Cohen notes (p 544-45) that from its Southwest origin it quickly spread eastward and northward. And, "The extent of variation exhibited over this thirty-year period was considerable." He then notes three distinctly different openings.

LUMMIS - (copied by John Lomax 1910 without attribution) ((Sandburg 1927 used Lummis text and tune) (((Alan Lomax gave attribution to Sandburg))) Same as MAC's recorded version noted in this thread.

R.W. Duncan, a foreman on the Santa Fe at Yampai, Arizona, wrote that he had learened the song in 1884 and supplied a text considerably different from the one given by Lummis:

DUNCAN
("Another Version of an Old Song," letter and text by R.W. Duncan, Santa Fe Employes' Magazine 2 (July, 1908), 601; reprinted in RR ManM 7 (Oct., 1908), 188-89.)

My name 'tis O'Larry Sullivan, a native the auld grane sod,
For twenty-foive long weary years I've worked upon the road;
I alsways made it a pint to keep up the jint be the force of the tampin' bar-r,
And whin I am dead, O let it be said that I niver hired a tar-r-r.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

(hired a tar-r-r???? )