May Irwin's Frog Song (The Foolish Frog, Way Down Yonder)

DESCRIPTION: A bull frog "with nothin else to do" falls, jumps around, and falls in a well. The preacher warns that the Devil is looking for folks with "nothin else to do" If you want your wings, stay home with your family instead of going to other frogs' farms
AUTHOR: Credited to Charles E. Trevathan
EARLIEST DATE: 1907 (recording, May Irwin); Protobilly gives a composition date of 1896, but with no documentation
KEYWORDS: animal humorous talltale
FOUND IN: US(SE) West Indies(Bahamas) Ireland
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 189, "Way Down Yonder in Pasquotank" (1 fragment); also 435, "The Dummy Line" (2 short texts; the "B" version is a mixed text that seems to be mostly this with a "Some Folks Say a Nigger Won't Steal" verse)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 189, "Way Down Yonder in Pasquotank" (1 tune plus a text excerpt); 435, "The Dummy Line" (1 tune plus a text excerpt)
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, pp. 112-113, "Way down yonder in Yankety Yank" (1 text)
Roud #15891
RECORDINGS:
Blind Blake Higgs, "Foolish Frog" (on WIHIGGS01)
Frank Corso, "Foolish Frog" (Flying Lady, no number, 2017; on Protobilly) [Note: this is the Bahamas version]
May Irwin, "May Irwin's Frog Song" (Victor 5156, 1907; Victor 17253, 1913; on Protobilly)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Down on the Banks of the Hanky Tank" (lyrics)
NOTES [360 words]: This is a confusing situation. I have met this chorus only once in tradition, in the form quoted below from Brown. But folkies will know it from Pete Seeger's "Foolish Frog." That is apparently a tall tale concocted by Charles Seeger based on a vaudeville item called "May Irwin's Frog Song." Hence the title I use. Beyond that I cannot trace the piece.
May Irwin was a notable popular singer who was at the height of her powers in the 1890s; In Sigmund Spaeth's A History of Popular Music in America she is credited with the song, "Mamie, Come Kiss Your Honey Boy" (pp. 265-266), and with popularizing George M. Cohan's "Hot Tamale Alley"(pp. 282, 339) as well as such songs as "I Couldn't Stand to See My Baby Loose" (p. 347) and "Mister Johnson, Turn Me Loose" (p. 285). Her biggest success of all was apparently "May Irwin's Bully Song," written by Charles E. Trevathan; it is indexed as "The Bully of the Town [Laws I14]," though most folk versions are far removed from the May Irwin original.
According to Stanley Appelbaum, editor, Show Songs: from The Black Crook to The Red Mill, Dover Publications, 1974, pp. xxix, "May Irwin... did not use blackface. Her performancces, and those of Ben Harney, gave white urban audiences their first exhilarating taste of what was soon to be called ragtime, and eventually became jazz." She had her first starring role in "The Widow Jones," in which she sang "May Irwin's Bully Song," for which see "The Bully of the Town" [Laws I14]. That song also has more background on Irwin.
There is at least one book about Irwin, Sharon Ammen, May Irwin: Singing, Shouting, And The Shadow Of Minstrelsy, University of Illinois Press, 2016(?). - RBW
The description is from the May Irwin recording. The Higgs version is very close to Irwin, switching some lines from verse to verse, and adding another verse in the same vein: beware or you'll not be happy on Judgement Day.
The Brown version ("Way down yonder in Pasquotank, Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to bank, They jump so high they break their shank, The old grey goose went 'yankety-yank'") seems an early ("probably in 1913") parody of the Irwin recording. - BS
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Br3189

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