“The Hog-Eye Man (I)”

Description

The Hog-Eye Man [read: "The Vagina-hungry Man"] meets Sally or Jenny or Molly who is lying in the grass or the sand and who does good service with him.

Notes

Ed Cray explains "hog-eye man" as one deeply interested in sex. Sandburg explains a "hog-eye" as the barges that traveled from the Atlantic ports around Cape Horn to San Francisco. A "hog-eye man" would therefore be a crewmember of such a barge.

Give the length of the voyage around the Horn in the 1850s, the two definitions may not be mutually exclusive. - RBW

"Oh, Who's Been Here?" is quoted by Hugill, from a shanty which Cecil Sharp gave in the Journal of the Folk Song Society. Hugill only quotes one line, which has the same melody and very similar words as "Hog-Eye Man" though not the usual "Hog-eye" chorus. - SL

Cross references

• cf. "Sally in the Garden" (the "clean" version of this piece)

References

1. Randolph-Legman I, pp. 401-404, "The Hog-Eye Man" (8 texts, 1 tune)
2. Colcord, p. 104, "The Hog-Eye Man" (1 text, 1 tune)
3. Harlow, pp. 54-55, "The Hog-Eye Man" (1 text, 1 tune)
4. Hugill, pp. 269-272, "The Hog-Eye Man" (3 texts & several fragments, 3 tunes) [AbEd, pp. 199-200]
5. Sharp-EFC, V, p. 6, "The Hog-Eyed Man" (1 text, 1 tune)
6. Sandburg, pp. 410-411, "The Hog-Eye Man" (1 fragment, 1 tune, evidently bowdlerized)
7. DT, HOGEYEMN*
8. ADDITIONAL: Captain John Robinson, "Songs of the Chantey Man," a series published July-August 1917 in the periodical _The Bellman_ (Minneapolis, MN, 1906-1919). "The Ox-eyed Man" is in Part 4, 8/4/1917.
9. Roud #331
10. BI, RL401