Froggy He Am a Queer Bird, The

DESCRIPTION: "The froggy he am a queer/wonderful bird, He ain't got no tail almost hardly, He run and he jump, And he land on his rump/stump Where he ain't got no tail almost hardly." The form of the verse varies greatly
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1921 (Willmar Tribune, according to Wikipedia -- but this is the "What a queer bird the frog are" version)
KEYWORDS: bird animal humorous | frog jump
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Pankake/Pankake-PrairieHomeCompanionFolkSongBook, p. 50, "Froggie He Am a Queer Bird" (1 text, tune referenced)
RECORDINGS:
Judy Cook, "The Froggy He Am a Queer Bird (with Variants)" (Piotr-Archive #363, recorded 11/23/2022; for the other songs Cook sang with this, see the SAME TUNE notes under "Blest Be the Tie that Binds")
Debra Tyler, "The Froggy He Am a Queer Bird" (Piotr-Archive #349, recorded 11/05/2022)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Blest Be the Tie that Binds" (tune)
NOTES [101 words]: The Wikipedia entry "What a queer bird" lists a number of versions of this from the 1920s, with no real attribution. (Several of them claim it was by a young Scandinavian, which would presumably justify the odd grammar, but this sounds much more like contrived than actual Scandinavian word order.) These early forms seem to have been quite distinct from the sung version (beginning "What a queer bird the frog are, When he sit he stand (almost)," but since Judy Cook and Debra Tyler had nearly identical versions, I think we can take the text quoted here as being fairly canonical for the sung version. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: DPio349

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