Digital Tradition Mirror

Jim Crack Corn

(This score available as ABC, SongWright, PostScript, PNG, or PMW, or a MIDI file)
Pennywhistle notation and Dulcimer tab for this song is also available

Jim Crack Corn

Big old owl with eyes so bright,
On many a dark and starry night.
I've often heard my true love say,
Sing all night and sleep all day.
CHORUS:
     Jim crack corn, I don't care;
     Jim crack corn, I don't care,
     Jim crack corn, I don't care
     Old Master's gone away

Said the blackbird to the crow,
Down to the cornfield let us go;
Pulling up corn has been our trade,
Ever since Adam and Eve was made.

Said the sheldrake to the crane:
When do you think we'll have some rain?
The farm's so muddy and the brook so dry,
If it wasn't for tadpoles, we'd all die.

When I was a boy I used to wait
On Master's table and pass the plate,
Hand round the bottle when he got dry,
And brush away the blue-tailed fly.


Ruth Crawford Seeger in her book, "American Folk songs for Children"
included this version that has more emphasis on animals and less on
a story line.  A recording of this version by Mike & Peggy Seeger
is found on their collection of songs from the book. In the book
RC Seeger notes that she learned it from a phonograph recording of
an old man who said on the recording that he learned it from an aged banjo
picker when he (the old man) was a small boy.RR

RR
OCT98

Thanks to Mudcat for the Digital Tradition!