Went to the River (I)

DESCRIPTION: "I went to the river an' I couldn't get across, I jumped on a (log/alligator/nigger/possum/etc.) an' thought it was a horse."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1907 (Jekyll-JamaicanSongAndStory)
KEYWORDS: river floatingverses
FOUND IN: US(SE,So) West Indies(Jamaica) Ireland
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Randolph 258, "Ease that Trouble in the Mind" (1 fragment)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 193, "Went to the River and I Couldn't Get Across" (1 fragment)
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, pp. 184-185, (no title) (3 fragments plus an item entitled "Sister Cyarline" which has a chorus and might perhaps be something else)
Peirce-KeepTheKettleBoiling, p. 47, "(I went to a river)" (1 text)
Jekyll-JamaicanSongAndStory 130, ("Oh we went to the river an' we couldn' get across!") (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #374, "My mother cried me up to go wi my father's dinner-o" (1 text, which opens with "My Mother Said that I Must Go" and ends with "Went to the River (I)" or one of its variants)
MidwestFolklore, W. L. McAtee, "Some Folklore of Grant County, Indiana, in the Nineties," Volume 1, Number 4 (WInter 1951), p. 254, "(I Went to the River)" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Paul G Brewster, Archer Taylor, Bartlett Jere Whiting, George P Wilson, Stith Thompson, Eds, _The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, Volume One: Games and Rhymes, Beliefs and Customs, Riddles, Proverbs, Speech, Tales and Legends_, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1952), p. 190-192, "Went to the River" (3 texts)
Roud #469
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Johnny Booker (Mister Booger)" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Limber Jim" (floating lyrics)
cf. "Mary Mack (I)" (floating lyrics)
NOTES [211 words]: Another of those ubiquitous floating verses, filed separately because it so often *appears* separately.
Randolph's version of this has a chorus: "I went to the river an' I couldn't get across, Ease that trouble in the mind, I jumped on a log an' thought it was a horse, Ease that trouble in the mind." But he has only a single four-line stanza, so it's not clear if the verse floated into something else or if there is a complete song. - RBW
Opie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes 362, "My mother said that I never should" includes an "I came to a river and I couldn't get across" verse: "'I came to a river' has had a long life as a make-weight verse in American play-party and minstrel songs. It is first noted in 'Clare de Kitchen, or Old Virginia Never Tire' (c.1838)." (cf. "Charleston Gals (Clear the Kitchen)")
TakingOpie/Opie-OxfordDictionaryOfNurseryRhymes's lead, the Public Domain Music site has an entry from "Minstrel Songs, Old and New" (1883) pp 152-153 for "'Clare de Kitchen; or, De Kentucky Screamer' (1832) Words and Music by Thomas Dartmouth (Daddy) Rice, 1808-1860" with verse 2 "I went to de creek, I couldn't git across, I'd nobody wid me but an old blind horse; But old Jim Crow came riding by, Says he, 'old feller, your horse will die.'" - BS
Last updated in version 6.8
File: R258

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