I've checked with the tape again - and I got the title a bit wrong - it's actually "The Bears have got my Daddy".

To date it, it's from a instrument/machine called The Polyphon, coin-operated, in a Museum on the Islem of White at present. It was builty about 1898 atbtehy Polyphon Musicwerke Factory which was established in 1890 by Paul Reissner.

So, a sort of primitive juke-box. Most of the tunes sound as if they were put on at the time it was built - some I've come across, such as "My Irish Molly" and "Whistling Rufus", and some I'd love to find, such as "Three Women to Every Man" and "Three makes Jolly Fine Comopany" (that's two separate songs!)

But "The Bears Have Got My Daddy" is the one that's niggling at me. Perhaps it is a straight backwoods ballad about a nasty episode, as Ebbie suggests...Sort of material that the Carter Family might have used and transformed a generation later.