See Aunt Dinah

DESCRIPTION: Call and response. The response lines are "See Aunt Dinah ... See my Lord." The leader lines are couplets, frequently floaters like "Some of these morning and it won't be long ... Look for me and I'll be gone."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1959 (LomaxCD1713)
KEYWORDS: floatingverses nonballad
FOUND IN: US(SE)
Roud #21450
RECORDINGS:
Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers, "See Aunt Dinah" (on LomaxCD1713)
NOTES [95 words]: Alan Lomax and Anna L. Chairetakis, liner notes for LomaxCD1713 have this as "a ring play, in which black dancers swung and swapped partners ... version of the Virginia reel"
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 487, indexed here as "Old Aunt Dinah," shares a couplet, "I'm going away," but the structure and use are different. "Aunt Dinah" is itself a floating reference. In Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3, for example, "Aunt Dinah" appears in #430 D "Ain't Gonna Rain No More" and #475 "Hung My Bucket on de White Folks' Fence." - BS
Last updated in version 6.7
File: RcSeAuDi

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.