Annotation:Jenny Run Away in the Mud

Back to Jenny Run Away in the Mud

JENNY RUN AWAY IN THE MUD. American, Reel (cut time). A Major/Mixolydian. EBeB, GDgd or AEae (fiddle). AAAABB. The tune/song is originally from an old recording by North Carolina fiddler Marcus Martin (1881-1974).

Words sung to the melody go:

Jenny run away in the mud in the night,
Jenny run away in the moonshine bright;
Jenny run away, combing up her hair,
Jenny run away with the barker at the fair.

The first line was originally "in the middle of the night," but a mishearing has produced "mud in the night." Similarly, the phrase "barker at the fair" was originally "jockey to the fair," the title of an old British Isles song of the same name. A Gloucester-collected version begins:

'Twas on the morn of sweet May-day,
When nature painted all things gay,
Taught birds to sing, and lambs to play,
And gild the meadows fair;
Young Jockey, early in the dawn,
Arose and tripped it o'er the lawn;
His Sunday clothes the youth put on,
For Jenny had vowed away to run
With Jockey to the fair;
For Jenny had vowed away to run
With Jockey to the fair.

Additional notes

Sources for notated versions: - Peter Honig [Phillips]; Marcus Martin (Milliner & Koken). \

Printed sources : - Milliner & Koken (Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes), 2011; p. 334. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes, vol. 1), 1994; p. 124.

Recorded sources: -Christian Wig & Mark Ward - "Come Back Boys and Feed the Horses: Fiddling on the Frontier." Library of Congress AFS 07894 A, Marcus Martin (recorded by Artus Moser in Swananoa, N.C.)

See also listing at:
Hear a recording of the tune by Rhys Jones [1]

Back to Jenny Run Away in the Mud