Origins: Monkey's Wedding

Subject: Origins: Monkey's Wedding
From: GUEST,diplocase
Date: 23 May 23 - 12:58 AM

Our own Max Spiegel posted an American folksong on YT, called "The Monkey's Wedding", which he learned from the singing of Dan Zanes.   
The Monkey's Wedding

The song "family" of The Monkey's Wedding has some fascinating branches scattered around the internet,
which I would like us to bring together in this thread. I will start by giving you what documentation I've found so far.

1. MUSIC HALL STYLE SONG - CIRCA 1860

A song called "The Monkey's Wedding" appears in THE SHILLING SONG BOOK:
A COLLECTION OF 175 OF THE MOST FAVORITE NATIONAL, PATRIOTIC, SENTIMENTAL, AND COMIC BALLADS OF THE DAY.
(Niagara Falls: W. E Tunis, 1860), page 16

You can read it here:
The Shilling Songbook - The Monkey's Wedding

THE MONKEY'S WEDDING.

The monkey married the baboon's sister;
Smacked his lips, and then he kissed her;
He kissed so hard he raised a blister;
She set up a yell.
The bridesmaid stuck on some court-plaster;
It stuck so fast it couldn't stick faster;
Surely 'twas a sad disaster;
But it soon got well.

What do you think the bride was dressed in?
White gauze veil, and a green glass breastpin,
Red kid shoes, — she was quite interesting;
She was quite a belle.
The bridegroom swelled with a blue shirt-collar
Black silk stock that cost a dollar,
Large false whiskers, the fashion to follow;
He cut a monstrous swell.

What do you think they had for supper?
Black-eyed peas, and bread and butter,
Ducks in the duck-house all in a flutter,
Pickled oysters too;
Chestnuts raw and boiled and roasted,
Apples sliced, and onions toasted;
Music in the corner posted,
Waiting for the cue.

What do you think was the tune they danced to?
"The Drunken Sailor," sometimes "Jim Crow;"
Tails in the way, and some got pinched, too,
'Cause they were too long.
What do you think they had for a fiddle?
An old banjo with a hole in the middle,
A tambourine made out of a riddle, —
And that's the end of my song.

2. An undated American broadside or song sheet of the same text can be seen here:
Song Sheet of The Monkey's Wedding ca 1860
Other song sheets by the same New York printer are dated around 1860.

3. The Monkey's Wedding had entered oral tradition in the US by the time Carl Sandburg included it in The American Songbag 1927, on p. 113.
Probably due to the existence of written sources, the lyrics remained pretty stable.   See it here:
Sandburg's American Songbag - The Monkey's Wedding

Meanwhile, the song family was pursuing a different track in the Caribbean. That will be in the next post.

Subject: Origins: Monkey's Wedding
From: Joe Offer
Date: 23 May 23 - 06:22 PM

Here's the Traditional Ballad Index entry on "The Monkey's Wedding":

Monkey's Wedding, The

DESCRIPTION: "The monkey married the baboon's sister, Gave her a ring and then he kissed her, He kissed so hard he raised a blister, She set up a yell." Verses, often nonsensical, about the proceedings at the wedding
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1865 (broadside, LOCSinging sb30342a); sheet music was published by Firth & Hall of New York some time after 1832
KEYWORDS: animal wedding nonsense humorous
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber)) US(Ap,MA,MW,NE,SE,So) West Indies(Bahamas)
REFERENCES (13 citations):
Greig/Duncan8 1903, "A Monkey's Wedding" (1 text)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 181, "The Monkey Married the Baboon's Sister" (1 short text plus 2 excerpts)
Richardson/Spaeth-AmericanMountainSongs, pp. 86-87, "The Monkey's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol5, pp. 54-55, "The Monkey's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan 197, "The Monkey's Wedding" (1 text)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 241-243, "The Monkey's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sandburg-TheAmericanSongbag, p. 113, "The Monkey's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, p. 180, (no title) (1 text)
Spaeth-ReadEmAndWeep, pp. 68-69, [no title] (1 text, 1 tune)
Gilbert-LostChords, p. 114, [no title] (1 text)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #1455, p. 98, "The Monkey's Wedding" (2 references)
ADDITIONAL: Harry Dichter and Elliott Shapiro, _Early American Sheet Music: Its Lure and Its Lore, 1768-1889_, R. R. Bowker, 1941, p. 101, has a description of the earliest known sheet music
Elsie Clews Parsons, Folk-Tales of Andros Island Bahamas (Lancaster: American Folk-Lore Society, 1918 ("Digitized by Internet Archive")), #115, pp. 166-167, "The Baboon's Sister" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST San113 (Partial)
Roud #3123
BROADSIDES:
LOCSinging, sb30342a, "The Monkey's Wedding" ("The monkey married the baboon's sister"), H. De Marsan (New York), 1861-1864
NOTES [62 words]: Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland lists this as being sung to "The Drunken Sailor," and it will fit that tune -- but her tune is not quite the usual "Drunken Sailor." - RBW
Broadside LOCSinging sb30342a: H. De Marsan dating per Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS
Last updated in version 6.0
File: San113

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The Digitalk Tradition lyrics are from Sandburg's American Songbag:

THE MONKEY'S WEDDING (DT Lyrics)

The monkey married the baboon's sister,
Gave her a ring and then he kissed her.
She set up a yell.
The bridesmaid stuck on some court-plaster.
It stuck so fast it couldn't stick faster.
Surely 'twas a sad disaster,
But it soon got well.

What do you think the bride was dressed in?
White gauze veil and a green glass breast-pin,
Red kid shoes, quite interestin'.
She was quite a belle.
The bridegroom blazed with a blue shirt-collar,
Black silk stock that cost a dollar,
Large false whiskers the fashion to follow,
He cut a monstrous swell.

What do you think they had for supper?
Chestnuts raw and boiled and roasted,
Apples sliced and onions toasted,
Peanuts not a few.
What do you think they had for a fiddle?
An old banjo with a hole in the middle,
A tambourine and a worn-out griddle,
Hurdy-gurdy too.

What do you think were the tunes they danced to?
What were the figures they advanced to?
Up and down as they chanced to,
Tails they were too long.
"Duck In The Kitchen," "Old Aunt Sally,"
Plain cotillion, "Who Keeps Tally."
Up and down they charge and rally.
Ended is my song.

[From Carl Sandburg's "American Songbag".]
@animal @wedding
filename[ MONKWED

Here's a performance by Dan Zanes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MESbRYvPmDc

Subject: RE: Origins: Monkey's Wedding
From: GUEST
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 12:00 AM

Now some Caribbean branchings of The Monkey's Wedding. As usual, it's unclear whether the Music Hall song "The Monkey's Wedding" was inspired by hearing and elaborating on a song from the oral tradition, or whether the Caribbean work songs were a matter of tailoring to local needs an imperfectly recalled Music Hall song heard somewhere else by a sailor. They could both be independently descended from an as-yet unidentified common ancestor, perhaps a spontaneous work chant by people who knew African work songs.

I'm going to post a couple of Caribbean versions. Here is the first one.

DIANA HEY, DIANA HO - rowing song from a Tobago singer, recorded in Trinidad
Alan Lomax recorded Diana Hey Diana Ho from lead singer Peter Campbell at a "bongo" or wake, in the Trinidad port of Rampanalgas, May 1962. In the recording the singer and the song are identified as being from Tobago.

The modern country of Trinidad and Tobago is composed of two islands having two different cultural histories. On the larger one, Trinidad, the majority of the population are descendants of indentured people from India, who were brought in to work in the sugarcane industry. On the smaller island, Tobago, the population are mostly descendants of enslaved people from Africa. Britain arbitrarily attached the two for administrative reasons when they were both Crown colonies. They each speak a different English-based creole, Trinidadian Creole (influenced by French, Spanish, and Hindi) and Tobagonian Creole (Influenced by languages of the other Lesser Antilles islands.)   The T&T government runs on a standardized written version of Trinidadian creole, but in general the two spoken languages are not written down much. This results in quite variable spelling. I have omitted what the Scots often call the “apologetic apostrophes” since a creole is a language, not a dialect or 'corruption' of English. [more on that: about creoles ]

Interestingly, I found a few words of introduction to this song mislabeled as belonging to the previous song in the collection. a href=" https://archive.culturalequity.org/field-work/caribbean-1962/rampanalgas-562/interview-rawlingson-hector-about-call-ellen-me">into Diana Hey   Here is a transcription:
Audience member:    "Peter! Peter Campbell! A Tobago song, Diana Hey Diana Ho."
Campbell:                  "Mosquito marry to sandfly..."
Audience member gleefully completes sentence: "...daughta!"
Campbell:                  "A old salaud from Tobago learn me that song..." [laughter] Campbell sings the refrain softly to himself. [In the background, someone interprets the word salaud loudly: "Bastard!"]   
Audience member: "Right, you going now!"

A hell of a wedding across the rivah Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito marry to sandfly daughta Diana hey, Diana ho

O what you ting they had for dinnah Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito livah and sandfly gizzard Diana hey, Diana ho

Hell of a wedding across the rivah, Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito marry to sand-fly daughta, Diana hey, Diana ho

O what you ting they had for dinnah Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito leg and sandfly leg-o Diana hey, Diana ho

Hell of a wedding across the rivah, Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito marry to sand-fly daughta, Diana hey, Diana ho

O what you ting they had for dinnah Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito liver and sandfly [unintelligible] Diana hey, Diana ho!

Hell of a wedding across the rivah, Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito marry to sand-fly daughta, Diana hey, Diana ho

O what you ting they had for dinnah Diana hey, Diana ho
Mosquito leg and sandfly livah, Diana hey, Diana ho.

Listen to it here: Diana Hey Diana Ho

Subject: RE: Origins: Monkey's Wedding
From: GUEST,diplocase
Date: 04 Jun 23 - 12:06 AM

reposting the link to the mis-labeled introduction to Diana Hey Diana Ho in the Alan Lomax collection:
intro to Diana Hey Diana Ho