Sigmund Spaeth. Read 'Em and Weep. The Songs you Forgot to Remember. New York: Halcyon House, [1926,] 1939.

40: Water Boy.
… But [along with Frankie and Johnny] there were other songs of the underworld that had a significance far beyond tehat of their text and background .At the top of the list stands the Negro convict lament, Water Boy, which has lately become a stand-by with concert singers of all kinds.

The first part, consisting of the convict's call for the water-boy, is a universal snatch of melody that eppears in an ancient Jewish marriage song, an Americna Indian tune, Cesar Cui's Orientale, Tschaikowsky's [six] Marche Slav, and a Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody. The second part, boasting of the might of the convict's hammer, and later denouncing the Jack fo Diamonds for its evil ways, is the duplicate of an old Bohemian melody,* which Jerome Kern unconsciously imitated in his Till the Clouds Roll By, some years ago.

*See Gerald Bordman, Jerome Kern: His Life and Music, p. 146; says it is based on six bars of the old German tune "Mendebras," later used as a hymn tune.