Billy's Dream

DESCRIPTION: "I had a fight with Satan last night, As I lay half awake, Ole Satan came to my bedside, And he began to shake." He offers Uncle Billy riches in return for his soul. "Poor Black Bill" defies Satan; the Devil vanishes, and Billy is rewarded in heaven
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1938 (Neely/Spargo-TalesAndSongsOfSouthernIllinois); c. 1885 (Wehman's ... No. 6: see NOTES)
KEYWORDS: dream death devil Hell
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Neely/Spargo-TalesAndSongsOfSouthernIllinois, pp. 215-216, "Billy's Dream" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Wehman's [Universal Songster] Collection of 96 Songs No. 6 (New York, n.d., digitized by Internet Archive), p. 31, "Billy's Dream" [see notes re source]
Roud #4323
NOTES [104 words]: Apparently a pop song associated with Billy Arnold which gained a faint foothold in tradition. - RBW
Regarding Wehman's Collection Norm Cohen writes, "Songbook #6 was undated, but most likely 1884-5." Each page except the first is headed Wehman's Universal Songster. The first page is undated but states, "Published Quarterly -- January, April, July and October. Norm Cohen's Finding List ... has WE29, Universal Songster as "monthly serial ... [beginning] 1881 (Norm Cohen, A Finding List of American Secular Songsters Published Between 1860 and 1899 (Middle Tennessee State University,Murfreesboro,2002), p. 150). - BS
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