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264 Ballads and Songs of Michigan
106 THE MOSSBACK.
The most common name of this debate song is "The Shanty-Boy and the Farmer's Son." Michigan A lacks several stanzas. For a discussion of the song and a text see Tolman and Eddy, JAFL, XXXV, 399-401. See also Eckstorm and Smyth, pp. 27-30; Rickaby, pp. 48-53; and Shoemaker, pp. 221-223.
Version A was sung in 1934 by Mr. Charles Muchler, Kalkaska; he learned the song in a lumber camp in the Black Forest in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania, where all the loggers believed it had been composed by one of the men in that camp. |
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i As I walked out one evening just as the sun went down, |
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I heard two maids conversing as I passed slowly by; One she loved a farmer's son, and the other a shanty boy.
2 The one that loved the farmer boy these words I heard her say, The reason why she loved him was that he at home would stay, At home with her in the winter time, to the shanty would not go; And when the spring it did come on, his land he'd plow and sow. |
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