The song is printed in Sing Out!, v33, #1, page 28 and the letter in v33, #3, page 128, a coincidence of figures. The full signature of the letter is Barney Baley, Cabo, MacKenzie-Papinnau Battalion, XV Brigade.Note above the song titled"Hi-Ho-Jerum" - A parody on a whole class of songs rather than a specific song "Hi-Ho-Jeru'm"makes use of "macromics"" -- nonsense words made to sound a little like Latin. The song was popular on American college campusus in the '20s. Sam Hinton learned this verion from the late Dr. Norris Rakestraw, who was aprofessor of marine chemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. The song is also printed in "The Abelard Folk Song Book" edited by Norman Cazden, publisher Abelars-Schumann, New York 1958, in part 2 "Songs for Saturday Night" Notes - Here is another example of bringing heavenly affairs diown to earth. The sprightly tune and Sunday-School moral are undoubtedly of Negro origin, and are appropriately akin to the parade-rhythm variety of spiritual. The highly mannered contrived rhymes show some relation to the technique found in "Peter Gray". "It is possible that the nonsense lines had something to do with the name of St. Jerome originally, but they are more likely just exuberant sounds on which to hang a melody". I have notes of the song being recorded by the Decormiers on their album Ballads and Folk Songs, Stinson SLP 68 and by Sam Hinton on Family Tree of Folk Songs, Decca DL 8418, neither of which I have. The 4:4 time makes it appropriate to march to like many other nonwarlike tunes.
Incidentally I have issues of Sing Out! from v. 11, #5 to date and three volumes of Sing Out reprints from earlier issues. - Charles