Lyr Req: Cat's got the measles

Subject: Cat's got the measles
From: GUEST,Mike
Date: 15 Mar 00 - 04:29 PM

Does anyone know the words or title to a song recorded by Mike Seeger (probably with the New Lost City Ramblers) whose first line is

The cat's got the measles and the dog's got the whooping cough doggone?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Cat's got the measles
From: Metchosin
Date: 16 Mar 00 - 01:40 PM

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Cat's got the measles
From: IanC
Date: 17 Mar 00 - 08:31 AM

Mike

The "Cat's got the measles" I know is a set of "nonsense words" sung to the dance tune "The Keel Row". There are lots of these, and there is at least one old thread about them (search for "nonsense"). The words I know are

The cat's got the measles, the measles, the measles. The cat's got the measles, the measles got the cat.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Cat's got the measles
From: Gern
Date: 17 Mar 00 - 09:38 AM

This is a song from Cousin Emmy, a Kentucky native and banjo hero of the 1940s (actually Cynthia Mae Carver) who was "re-discovered' by the New Lost City Ramblers in the early sixties. A recording can be found deep in the Smithsonian Folkways archives. The lyrics of Cousin Emmy's version were hardly nonsense, but rather surprising in their assertiveness: "Cat's got the measles, dog's got the whooping cough/ Cat's got the measles, dog's got the whooping cough/Doggone any woman who'd let a man be her boss."