mayomick wrote: was Stephen foster thinking of the "he played a tune and he danced aroond " part of the Mcpherson chorus when writing Jeannie with the Light Brown hair ?

If you look up the biographies of Stephen Foster (I've read three), the main thing you learn is that we know almost nothing reliable about Foster's inspirations (and not all that much about his life). But I think it unlikely; he had little exposure to anything British.