From American Ballads and Folk Songs by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax (New York: Dover, 1994; a reprint of New York: Macmillan Co., 1934), page 351, where it appears with its tune.


DARKY SUNDAY SCHOOL
Text furnished by Paul B. Camp and John W. Loveland, Jr.

1. Jonah was an immigrant; so runs the Bible tale.
He took a steerage passage in a transatlantic whale.
Now, Jonah in the belly of the whale was quite compressed,
So Jonah pressed the button, and the whale he did the rest.

CHORUS: Young folks, old folks, everybody come.
Join our darky Sunday School, and make yourself to hum.
There's a place to check your chewing gum and razors at the door,
And hear such Bible stories as you never heard before.

2. Adam was the first man that ever was invented.
He lived all his life and he never was contented.
He was made out of mud in the days gone by,
And hung on the fence in the sun to get him dry.

3. The good book says Cain killed his brother Abel.
He hit him on the head with the leg of a table.
Then along came Jonah in the belly of the whale,
The first submarine boat that ever did sail.

4. Esau was a cowboy of the wild and woolly make.
Half the farm belonged to him and half to Brother Jake.
Now, Esau thought his title to the farm was none to clear,
So he sold it to his brother for a sandwich and a beer.

5. Noah was a mariner, who sailed around the sea
With half a dozen wives and a big menagerie.
He failed the first season when it rained for forty days,
For in that sort of weather no circus ever pays.

6. Elijah was a prophet, who attended country fairs.
He advertised his business with a pair of dancing bears.
He held a sale of prophecies most every afternoon,
And went up in the evening in a painted fire balloon.

7. Then down came Peter, the Keeper of the Gates.
He came down cheap on excursion rates.
Then along came Noah a-stumblin' in the dark.
He found a hatchet and some nails and built himself an ark.

8. David was a shepherd and a scrappy little cuss.
Along came Goliath just a-spoilin' for a muss.
Now, David didn't want to fight, but thought he must or bust,
So he cotched up a cobblestone and busted in his crust.

9. Ahab had a wife, and her name was Jezebel.
She went out in the vineyard to hang the clothes and fell.
She's gone to the dogs, the people told the king.
Ahab said he'd never heard of such an awful thing.

10. Samson was a strong man of the John L. Sullivan school.
He slew ten thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a mule;
But Delilah captured him and filled him full of gin,
Slashed off his hair, and the coppers run him in.

11. Samson was husky guy, as everyone should know.
He used to lift five hundred pounds as strong man in his show.
One week the bill was rotten; all the actors had a souse;
But the strong-man act of Samson's, it just brought down the house.

12. Salome was a chorus girl, who had a winning way.
She was the star attraction in King Herod's Cabaret.
Although you can hardly say discretion was her rule,
She's the favorite Bible figure in the Gertrude Hoffman school.

13. There are plenty of these Bible tales. I'll tell you one tomorrow,
How Lot, his wife, and family fled from Sodom and Gomorrah;
But his wife she turned to rubber, and got stuck upon the spot,
And became a salty monument, and missed a happy Lot.

14. Now Joey was unhappy in the bowels of the soil.
He lost his pretty rainbow coat because he wouldn't toil.
He hollered, howled, and bellowed until far into the night,
But of course you couldn't see him, for he was out of sight.

15. It happened that a caravan was passing by the place,
Laden down with frankincense and imitation lace.
They heard the Sheeney yelling and pulled him from the well.
If this ain't a proper ending, then you can go to Harvard.