Lucy Long (I)

DESCRIPTION: "If I had a scolding wife, As sure as you are born, I'd take her down to New Orleans And trade her off for corn."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: apparently 1854, when a "Lucy Long" tune was cited in Put's Golden Songster; Edwin Wolf 2nd, _American Song Sheets, Slip Ballads, and Political Broadsides 1850-1870_, Library Company of Philadelphia, 1963, p. 91, lists three nineteenth century broadsides
KEYWORDS: wife shrewishness
FOUND IN: US(SE,So)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Randolph 279, "If I Had a Scolding Wife" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 200, "If I Had a Scolding Wife" (1 fragment)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 415, "Lynchburg Town" (3 texts plus 2 fragments, 2 excerpts, and mention of 2 more, all with the "Lynchburg Town" chorus, but "A" and "B" have verses from "Raccoon" and "Possum Up a Gum Stump and "D" and "E" are partly "If I Had a Scolding Wife" ("Lucy Long (I)"); only "C" seems to be truly "Lynchburg Town")
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 415, "Lynchburg Town" (4 tunes plus text excerpts, corresponding to "A," "B," "E," and a "J" version that apparently is not cited in Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3)
Heart-Songs, p.289, "Miss Lucy Long" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #7413
NOTES [69 words]: Randolph and Brown both report this as a fragment of "Lucy Long," and I file it as such. It is interesting to note that both have the *same* single-stanza fragment; it seems likely enough that that one verse circulates on its own -- perhaps as the only traditional part of the song.
Also interesting is the fact that this single stanza, about the "scolding wife," is the *last* verse in the Heart-Songs version. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.0
File: R279

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