Annotation:Chicken-Foot and Sparrow-Grass
Tune properties and standard notation
CHICKEN-FOOT AND SPARROW-GRASS. AKA and see "Dandy Jim from/of Caroline [1]," "Dandy Jim [1]," "Old Aunt Jenny," "American Air" (Kerr). American, Reel. USA, southwestern Pa. E Flat Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The tune is better known by the first two alternate titles, the first of which is the title minstrel composer Dan Emmett gave the tune. The 'B' part has also been collected in play party traditions. A couplet was collected in Missouri by Vance Randolph from the singing of a Missouri woman in 1938, who had learned it in the 1890's in that state as "part of a long, rollicking song." Unfortunately, the lines below were all she could remember:
Chicken-foot and sparrow-grass,
Old woman died with a rag in her ass;
Rag blew out, an' the wind blew in,
Damned old bitch is livin' ag'in.
Source for notated version: Hiram White (elderly fiddler from Greene County, Pa., 1930's) [Bayard].
Printed source: Bayard (Dance to Fiddle), 1981; No. 326 B, p. 291.