“Fod”
Description
"As I went down to the mowin' field Hu-ri tu-ri fod-a-link-a-di-do, As I went down... Fod! As I went down... A big black snake got me by the heel." The injured singer sits down and watches a woodchuck fight a skunk (and complains about the smell)
Supplemental text
Fod
Complete text(s)
*** A ***
Collected by Todd and Sonkin from Henry King in a migrant farm
worker camp in Visalia, California, in 1941. Transcribed by Lyle
Lofgren.
As I went down to the mowin' field,
Too-rye-too-rye-fod-a-link-ee-dye-doe;
As I went down to the mowin' field,
Fod!
As I went down to the mowin' field,
A big black snake grabbed me by the heel,
Too-oo-rod-dee-day.
Similarly:
I fell down upon the ground,
I Shut both eyes and looked all around.
I set upon a stump to take my rest,
I Looked like a woodchuck on his nest.
The woodchuck blammed a banjo song,
When up stepped a skunk with his britches on.
The woodchuck and skunk got into a fight,
The fumes was so strong that they put out the light.
They danced and they played till the tune began to rust,
It's hard to tell which smelled the worst.
Notes
Roud catalogs this as a version of Springfield Mountain. Oy.
I stuck Fuson's single stanza ("As I went down to my old field, I heard a mighty maulin'; The seed-ticks was a-splittin' rails, The chiggers was a-haulin'") here because it sounds like it might be a loose verse of something similar, and because there is nothing else much like it. Round gives it its own number, 16395, but it's probably a floating verse from something. - RBW
Cross references
- cf. "(I Can't Be) Satisfied" (words)
- cf. "Springfield Mountain" (words)
Recordings
- Henry King, "Fod!" (AAFS 8)
- Henry King & family, "Fod" (AFS 5141 B2, 1941; on LC02)
References
- Lomax-FSNA 213, "Fod" (1 text, 1 tune)
- Cohen/Seeger/Wood, p. 222, "Fod" (1 text, 1 tune)
- Fuson, p. 159, "A Mighty Maulin'" (twelfth of 12 single-stanza jigs) (1 text, perhaps from this though it's just a loose verse)
- ST LoF213 (Full)
- Roud #431
- BI, LoF213