The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #16400 Message #4106796
Posted By: Jim Dixon
20-May-21 - 01:40 PM
Thread Name: Animal Songs
Subject: Lyr Add: FAY TEMPLETON'S WOODCHUCK SONG
This song seems to be the origin of the familiar tongue-twister:
Lyrics transcribed by me from the sheet music images at Baylor University. I was not able to find a recording of the song.
FAY TEMPLETON'S WOODCHUCK SONG
“Sung by Miss Fay Templeton in Messrs. Schubert and Nixon & Zimmerman’s Production ‘The Runaways’ at the Casino Theatre, New York”
Words by Robert Hobart Davis, music by Theodore F. Morse, ©1903.
1. There am heaps of knowledge in old Yale College,
And in Harvard Universitee,
But I ain’t yet found, nowhere around,
Not even down in Tuskegee,
A full-fledged college graduate
What could right offhand ‘lucidate
Or anywheres near stipulate to me—
CHORUS: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck,
If a woodchuck would chuck wood?
And how much wood would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck only could?
If a woodchuck could make good and would—
But dere ain’t no reason why he should—
But how much wood would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck would chuck wood?
2. I’se a strong suspicion, a supposition,
That some white man surely ought to know,
Fo’ when I shout, dere ain’t no doubt
I’m heard clean out to Chicago,
Where dose professors speculate,
And figure and anticipate,
And git right down and calculate to show—CHORUS
3. I’se an intimation dat education
Am something ev’ryone don’t sell,
But I’m de moke what tried to soak
Dis woodchuck joke on old Cornell.
Dem students couldn’t regulate
On dis hyear problem complicate;
You ought to seen dem hesitate to tell—CHORUS