Includes fourteen-page booklet with notes on songs.
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about
This comes from the traditional singer Horton Barker, recorded for Folkways by Sandy Paton in 1961. The first three verses trace back to “Poor Old Horse,” a song found in various forms throughout England and Wales. The song is attached to an age-old British May Day ritual where a man costumed as a horse parades through the village, surrounded by dancing and singing revelers who continually restore him from death to life. The horse’s death marks the death of the old year. His revival celebrates the fertility of the coming season.
The verses that follow these first three are from the very different tradition of Brer Rabbit stories and songs, which long flourished among African-American, Creole and Cherokee communities throughout the American South. It’s the same tradition that Joel Chandler Harris popularized in his Uncle Remus stories, in the 1880s. Brer Rabbit is a savvy fellow who frees himself from difficulties through cunning and a wry wit. “‘Excuse me, but Ah don’t reckon Ah better go home wid you today, Brer dog,’” he says in one narrative from Zora Neale Hurston. It’s an endless chase in which Brer Rabbit always wins. We can be certain without being told that “Old Jack,” in this song, won’t fare any better than others before him.
How or when these two disparate threads came together in Barker’s native Tennessee and Virginia hills is a mystery of the folk process. What we do know is that they make a good song.
I added a guitar lead.
lyrics
Yonder comes a little man a-riding by.
I says, “Old man, your horse’ll die.
Hop, hop, hop, old rabbit, hop.
If he dies I’ll tan his skin;
If he lives, I’ll ride him again.
Hop, hop, hop….
Well, if he dies it’s no big loss;
If he lives, he’s my old hoss.
Hop, hop, hop….
Old Mister Rabbit, you’re looking might brave.
Yes, my lord, I’m huntin’ a cave.
Hop, hop, hop….
Old Mister Rabbit, you’re ears are mighty long.
Yes, my lord, their put on wrong.
Hop, hop, hop….
Old Mister Rabbit, you’ve got a bad habit,
Of getting in the garden and eating all the cabbage.
Hop, hop, hop….
I’ll get old Jack and put him on the track,
Run that rabbit from thunder and back.
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