OLD GREY GOOSE AND GANDER
(The Negro Forget-Me-Not Songster. Philadelphia: Turner and Fisher, 1844, 57; quoted in William J. Mahar, Behind the Burnt Cork Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture, U of Illinois Pr., pp. 324-325)

Verse 1
When I was a single man
I lived in peace and pleasure,
But now I am a married man,
I'm troubled out of measure.

Chorus
Den look here, look dare,
And look over yonder,
Don't you see the ole grey goose,
A smiling at de gander.

Verse 2
Every night when I go home,
She scolds or its a wonder,
And den she takes dat pewter mug,
And beats my head asunder.

Chorus

Verse 3
My old wife was taken sick,
De pain ob death came on her,
Some did cry, but I did laugh,
To see de breff go from her.

Chorus

Verse 4
Saturday night my old wife died,
Sunday she war buried,
Monday was my courting day,
On Tuesday I got married.

Chorus

Verse 5
My old wife has gone abroad,
Some evil spirit guide her,
I know she has not gone to church,
For de debil can't abide her.

Note (by Mahar, p. 408): Under the tilte "Grey Goose and Gander" or "Gray Goose and Gander," this song appears in NFM1, NFM2, CNS1, WSS1, NSO1, BHW1, JJO1, and CNS2. Nathan (Emmett, 461-62) shows a sheet music edition (Philadelphia: A. Fiot, 1844) with additional verses dealing with a "bery fat" Miss Dinah Rose. Only the first and second verses Nathan reprints are similar to the version quoted here. The others refer to the Miss Dinah of that song as "fat" and as having a "great big hole right in her stocking" and make the usual reference to the exposed heels of the blackface characters. This version was probably connected with a dance.

~Masato