The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #28483   Message #3545836
Posted By: Azizi
05-Aug-13 - 03:14 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: Sweet Jenny Jones (Morris Dance)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Sweet Jenny Jones (Morris Dance)
For those here who may be interested, I just published a four part series on my pancocojams cultural blog about the folk song "Jenny Jones" (including "Sweet Jenny Jones" & "Jennie Jenkins", the African American playground rhyme "Aunt Jenny Died", and the Jamaican Mento song "Come To See Janie".

The source for that Jamaican song was given by Q in his post in this Mudcat thread: http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=40845 "jamaican folk music"

That source is "p. 50, with musical score.
Olive Lewin, Coll., 1973, Forty Folk Songs of Jamaica, General Secretariat of the Organization of American States, Washington, D.C."

"Come To See Janie" is like "Jenny Jones" in that the lyrics are about a suitor who comes to the woman's house, is told that the woman can't see him because she's engaged in some household activity, and is eventually told that the woman is dead. Also, like "Jenny Jones", "Come To See Janie" includes rhyming verses about the woman wearing a dress of one color after another. However, besides the fact Janie" is a variant form of the female name "Jennie" ("Jenny"), the only similarity that the Jamaican song "Come To See Janie" has to the African American rhyme "Aunt Jenny Died" is that the central woman character dies in both of those compositions.

Btw, in that series I included a hyperlink to that above mentioned Mudcat thread, as well as a hyperlink to this Mudcat thread (and others). I also quoted Margaret V Date: 08 Dec 00 - 06:52 PM in Part II of that series http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/08/jenny-jones-and-other-related-folk-songs.html and also included a video of a Morris dance group singing & dancing to "Sweet Jenny Jones."

My thanks to all those whose comments I quoted.