Thanks for the note on "Rosabella", Lighter. That looks promising. And your "Hill-up, boys, hilo" is a nice addition, too, Charlie. And Gibb, a little good whiskey is always welcome.

I want to turn to Part 4 of "Shallow Brown".

Charlie's "Hilo" reminded me that there was one other connection between SB and "hilo" that I wanted to bring in here. Hugill has a note on pp. 260-261 about a song fragment from "Bill Adams" (wish he had said more about this!) that goes:

   "Oh, Johnny's gone, what shall I do?
    Ch. Shiloh, Shiloh Brown,
   Oh Johnny's gone, what shall I don?
    Ch. Johnny's gone to Rio!

Hugill says, "It is fairly ceertain that the tune of this would be "Tom's Gone to Hilo". So we have a connection between SB and this song as well. To recap for a moment, we see already that "Shallow Brown" had relationships with "Blow, Boys, Blow", "Hilo, Boys, Hilo", and "Tom's Gone to Hilo". Some of this is based on tune similarity and some on thematic similarity. I hear some tune similarity to "Tom's Gone" as well.

The Bill Adams fragment introduces another interesting theme, which is "Shiloh Brown". There are two other almost completely unrelated versions of "Shallow Brown" that also have "Shiloh" or "Shilo" instead of "Shallow". One is from the Georgia Sea Islands in Lydia Parrish's collection here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=awOzMKju54QC&pg=PA219&lpg=PA219&dq=Lydia+Parrish+-+%22Shilo+Brown%22&source=bl&ots=AM4MjsOCxm&s

And the other is from Edith Fowke's Nova Scotia collection here:

thread.cfm?threadid=7955&messages=42#2892411

As I said, the only thing these three songs have in common is the "Shiloh" part. The tune for the Parrish version is quite different from what we usually think of in relation to "Shallow Brown" (but then so was Short's tune as well). There was no tune for the Adams' fragment, and I haven't seen the tune from Fowke. There are some thematic overlaps.

The "Shilo, Ah wonduh what's tuh mattuh?" phrase from the Georgia Sea Islands shows up in a version sung by William Fender, which was collected by Carpenter. The "baby" theme from the GSI version also shows up in Richard Maitland's version, although in a different guise. The Nova Scotia version from Fowke is definitely related to the nursery rhyme "Soloman Grundy" (was this nursery rhyme named after the Jamaican condiment or vice-versa?), here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=aJOpr9g47_AC&pg=PP9&dq=solomon+grundy+nursery+rhyme&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

I think there are a couple of interesting things about the "Shiloh" variation. First of all it shows up in at least two different places, Nova Scotia and the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia. Secondly, there is the business of sound. There may be no difference between "shiloh" and "shallow" other than *how* one hears the sound. This refects back on "hilo"/"hollow" as well.

The Parrish version was collected from ex-slaves in 1909. This would take the memory quotient back quite a ways into the 1800's. Unfortunately, she doesn't really say how far. But it is a definitely link to slavery. The second verse establishes a definite link with stevedores:

   "Stevedore's in trouble,
      Shilo, Shilo Brown,
   Stevedore's in trouble,
      Shilo, Shilo Brown.

In fact, the singer, if I recall correctly, named R. Mac Gimsey, was a stevedore. The third verse probably also refers to dock work:

   "Take yo' time and drive 'em,
      Shilo, Shilo Brown,
   Take yo' time and drive 'em,
      Shilo, Shilo Brown.