Meaning of the word 'bart'

Subject: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Joybell
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 06:16 AM

In what seems to be a "floating" verse in a version of the song "Jim along Josie" the word bart appears.

Hitch the oxen to the cart
Drive to town and get a load of bart.   
Some was black and some was blacker
Some was the color of chaw tobacca.

Does anyone know what bart is? I note that Black Bart (Charles E Boles) the highway man was a bit of a wag. Is his name based on the same mystery substance?
My informant says he is sure it isn't bark.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Noreen
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 07:02 AM

No idea about the meaning in this song, but the name Bart is usually short for Bartholemew, or when it comes after a name it signifies the tlitle of baronet.

Not a lot of help...

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Mooh
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 08:02 AM

Does one barter for bart?

Could it be peat? I'm just guessing.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Mooh
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 08:06 AM

I meant to add the only other reference I found was in Partridge's Slang Dictionary. Aussie for girl, now fallen out of use (the word, not the girl), 1920s.

Mooh.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Noreen
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 08:15 AM

Drive to town and get a load of girls, fallen out of use

Hmmmm...

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Mooh
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 09:44 AM

Yeah I know, not too PC, then again it is folk music. Mooh.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Bob Bolton
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 09:57 AM

G'day Mooh,

No ideas on Joybell's "load of bart", but I've always understood the sense of 'bart' for a girl to be rhyming slang for "sweetheart" (and I've heard it suggested that "tart" is a simple contraction of "sweetheart").

Regards,

Bob Bolton

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 10:46 AM

'Black Bart' is apparently marijuana, although I'd suspect the usage to be too modern.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 10:54 AM

I'm trying to find a reference to it - but I can't - yet *somewhere* I seem to recall the term being used for foundry slag

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Joybell
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 06:37 PM

Lots of ideas I hadn't thought of. Thanks. I did wonder about Bartholemew for Black Bart's name but of course he was Charles E.
A load of girls is an interesting idea. And thanks Bob I did think I'd heard the term here in Australia. Foundry slang? Marijuana? Both worth a thought. You just never know.
The only small clue that I could add for what it's worth is that the performer Sam Cowell 1820-1864 who was raised in the American South always claimed to have written "Jim Along Josie". He probably didn't, but he is likely to have heard it during his childhood. He spent a lot of time among black musicians and also poor white ones. (his father was a poor entertainer and not a slave owner). It raises the possibility that "bart" is an African-American term.
Thanks again everyone. Perhaps I'm a bit closer.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 07:26 PM

Where did you find the version with "bart?" I have some versions, but not that verse. The song was originally American Minstrel, about 1840, but I don't have the original.
Could have been misheard bark, or?

Several versions in thread 52464: Jim Along Josie

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 10:01 PM

In this fragment, it is a load of bark. Scroll down to Elsworth Edwin Forchler, song
"Hitch the oxen to the cart,
Down the river to get a load of bark."

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 10:05 PM

Forgot the link: Forschler
Also mis-spelled Forschler.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: LadyJean
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 11:14 PM

I was thinking it was the English slang for baronet, as in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Ruddigore" "Whem I'm a bad bart I will tell tarradiddles." The singer is about to become one of the bad baronets of Ruddigore. I don't think that's what you'd put in your wagon, however.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 11:23 PM

Bart. is not slang, but an abbreviation for baronet, to supplement the prefixed Sir, as in Sir Wilfred Larson, Bart. Oxford English Dictionary. Its use goes back to the 18th C.

Of course it has nothing to do with the word in the song or verse "Hitch the Oxen...."

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 12:55 AM

BAY AREA RAPID TRANSIT

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: GUEST,Jeger
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 02:21 AM

Bart means Moustache in Norwegian. A load of wiskers does not fit the song though.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Joybell
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 04:02 AM

Thanks Q my old friend, The fragment I quoted came from a timber worker in New York State in the mid 1960s. My husband heard it on a record of field recordings soon after it was recorded. My H was either in America at the time or in Sweden but it was an American record.
It is an interesting couplet that you quote and it could be connected. Floating verses are common in these sorts of songs aren't they?
The one I quoted was definitely "bart", however, and my H and his friends were puzzled about it at the time. The thing is that it seems strange that you would go to TOWN to get a load of bark - down the river maybe - but town? I know that we can't be too literal with these old songs but still the "bart" intrigues me. I keep thinking that I'll find a reference somewhere to something like molasses being called bart.
The reference I gave about Sam Cowell came from the introduction to the book "The Cowells in America" and there is no documented evidence to back up the claims that he wrote(or rewrote)"Jim Along Josie". I note only that he said he did.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Joybell
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 04:09 AM

I think Mike may have something. Thanks Mike. And Lady Jean - I wonder if Black Bart fits with your idea rather than with the load of?

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 04:42 PM

You have to go to the sawmill to get a load of bark, which could well be in town (wrong side of the tracks, however). One would waste his time collecting bark "down river" because it would be rotten; full of fungus and bacteria. For use, the bark must be fresh.
Nowadays, one can go the the materials section of a plant nursery where they have it nicely bagged and sized for use as mulch or ground cover, as well as bags of selected bark from west coast sawmills for those of us who raise orchids.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: GUEST,Martin Gibson
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 04:44 PM

Bart is Homer's son.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Megan L
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 05:33 PM

Could this have been a verse local to one area? perhaps bart or bartholemews was a local bear or other comoditiy

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Joybell
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 07:05 PM

Yes could well have been local Megan. Homer's son -- Well Black Bart was a scholar.
Q, So you raise orchids. We have tiny remants of pre-white settlement grassland out here (mostly on the roadsides). The native orchids are flowering just now among the other wildflowers. They mostly refuse to be propagated and some of us are fighting hard to have these small areas protected. As for mulch (bart?) I beg what I can for my own revegetation work. Actually the more rotten the better for my purposes, Australian native plants need the fungus it seems. So many weeds so little time......

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 08:46 PM

The fragment of "bark" verse came from Minnesota.
It seems to be from a variant of "Jonny Boker or the Broken Yoke," 1840, and its allies "Goin' Down to (Lynchburg) Town," etc. and interwoven with "Jim Along Josie" and its allies. Variants wherever English is spoken. In collections of Negro songs as well.
See thread 47009: Lynchburg

Charles Bolles, who robbed Wells Fargo, seems to have taken (or been given) the name Black Bart from Bartholomew Roberts, the pirate.

Subject: RE: Meaning of the word 'bart'
From: Joybell
Date: 10 Oct 03 - 08:59 PM

Oh Great! Thanks Q. I wondered about Black Bart. More as a side issue -- but wondered all the same. I couldn't find out where he got his name. Of course a pirate's name would appeal to him, he being a bit of a romantic as I understand it.