Jolly Shanty Boy, The

DESCRIPTION: Singer boasts of being a jolly (and jauntily dressed, if ragged) shanty boy, to whom women are always attracted. He sings, "For I don't care for rich or poor/I'm not for strife and grief/I'm ragged, fat and lousy, and/As tough as Spanish beef."
AUTHOR: John A. Stone ("Old Put") ?
EARLIEST DATE: 1858 (Put's Golden Songster, according to Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest)
KEYWORDS: bragging lumbering work logger poverty nonballad
FOUND IN: US(MW) Canada(Ont)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Beck-SongsOfTheMichiganLumberjacks 21, "The Jolly Shanty Boy" (1 text)
Beck-TheyKnewPaulBunyan, pp. 31-32, "The Jolly Shanty Boy" (1 text)
Beck-LoreOfTheLumberCamps 1, pp. 11-12, "The Jolly Shanty Boy" (1 text)
Fowke-LumberingSongsFromTheNorthernWoods #54, "The Gatineau Girls" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, p. 135, "The Happy Miner" (1 text)
ST Be021 (Partial)
Roud #4351
RECORDINGS:
O.J. Abbott, "The Jolly Shanty Boy" (on ONEFowke01)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "I Get in a Weaving Way" (tune, according to Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest)
NOTES [33 words]: This is a rather amorphous family, with both mining and shanty versions. The earliest version appears to be the Put's Golden Songster text, but I wouldn't bet too much on that being the original. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: Be021

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