Latest Revision - March 17, 2022
This is Part II of a three part pancocojams series about the African American corn husking song "Round De Corn, Sally".
Part II presents some background information about the song "Round The Corn, Sally" and presents four early text (word only) examples of "Around The Corn, Sally".
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2014/06/descriptions-of-corn-husking-corn-songs.html for Part I of this series. Part I provides excerpts from two online books about corn husking in the Southern United States during slavery. Part I also includes some comments about pre-mechanical corn husking in the United States apart from United States slavery.
Click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2014/06/three-examples-of-childrens-song-go.html for Part III of this series. Part III provides video examples and lyrics of the children's song "Go Around The Corn, Sally" which is adapted from the work song "Around The Corn ,Sally".
The content of this post is provided for historical, folkloric, and cultural purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the performers and collectors of this song. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.
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INFORMATION ABOUT THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WORK SONG "ROUND THE CORN SALLY"
Excerpt #1
From https://voices.pitt.edu/TeachersGuide/Unit1/Round%20the%20Corn(er)%20Sally.htm
Round the Corn(er), Sally
Traditional, 1700s
Song Background
Often novels and memoirs are the only sources for learning
the history of a song. Such is the case with “Round the Corn, Sally.” Because
it is mentioned in several early American novels, it is one of the earliest
known examples of an African American slave song. Dena Epstein notes the
presence of “Round the Corn, Sally” in one of the first novels of plantation
life, George Tucker’s The Valley of Shenandoah (1824). In the novel The
Old Plantation and What I Gathered There in an Autumn Month (1859), James
Hungerford cites it as a rowing song. It is also mentioned in Richard Dana’s Two
Years Before the Mast (1840).
Eileen Southern notes that “Round the Corn, Sally” was used
to coordinate the movements of work teams. Enslaved people loading cotton along
the Eastern Seaboard or Mississippi River likely sang “Round the Corn, Sally,”
where it was adapted by the seafaring population and turned into a sea chanty.
Interaction between various singing populations often gave rise to new songs.
The melodies and rhythms of the two versions are similar, and they share a
call-and-response structure. The expert chantyman improvised lyrics of the
repeating phrase, while the sailors, hard at work, would repeat the chorus.
This chanty was likely used to coordinate the crew’s movement raising sails, a
strenuous effort made easier by singing. This version of the sea chanty
probably dates from the mid-1800s (after California became a US territory), but
“Round the Corn, Sally” is a much earlier slave song."
-snip-
Pancocojams Editor's Note: "Round The Corner, Sally" is the title of the sea shanties (chanties) versions of "Round The Corn, Sally". Except for the refrain "round the corner, Sally", there are no fixed lyrics for that shanty. Some people believe that "the corner" that is referred to in that song is Cape Horn" at the tip of South America. Some people believe that "Sally" in this song is a general referent for sailors' girlfriends, and others believe that "Sally" is a referent for a loose woman who stands on street corners luring men.
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Excerpt #2 [Information about the shanty "Round The Corner, Sally"
From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNvk3gsCkok&ab_channel=hultonclint [from that YouTube video's summary]
..."Another
song is a candidate as a source for "Round the Corner, Sally." It appears in the text of a James Hungerford,
in which the author describes a visit to his cousin's plantation in Maryland in
1832. With it's musical notations, it is
considered to be the first extant text to contain slave songs. "Roun' De Corn, Sally" is described
in the context of rowing a boat, but properly attributed as a corn-husking
song. In his 1989 book, ORIGINS OF THE
POPULAR STYLE, pg.206, Peter Van der Merwe makes a connection between the
similar phrase in the slave song and the chantey, thinking that "round the
corn" was a corruption of the chantey phrase, due to confounding the
"corn" context with the original meaning. The original phrase, as supposed by Hugill,
was a sort of "gal on the street," later reinterpreted as a sailor's
lady-friend of locales that were around the "corner": Cape Horn. However, some recent interpreters seem to
suggest that the plantation song was a source"...
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EARLY EXAMPLES OF THE SONG "ROUND THE CORN, SALLY"
From http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/afro-american/afro-american-folksongs%20-%200148.htm Afro-American Folksongs, A Study In Racial And National Music by Henry Edward Krehbiel (1914, p. 48) [online book]
...“The paucity of secular working songs has already been commented on. Of songs referring to labor in the field the editors of "Slave Songs of the United States" were able to collect only two examples. Both of them are "corn songs," and the first is a mere fragment, the only words of which have been preserved being "Shock along, John." The second defied interpretation fifty years ago and is still incomprehensible:
Ho, round the corn, Sally I Here's your iggle-quarter and here's your count-aquils—
Ho round the corn, Sally] I can bank, 'ginny bank, 'gmny bank the weaver—
Ho, round the corn, Sally!" "
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Example #2
From http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/allen/fig111.html Slave Songs of the United States edited by William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison (1867)
[Musical Notation for "Round the Corn, Sally"]
68
"Five can’t catch me and ten can’t hold me
Ho, round the corn Sally
Ho, round the corn, round the corn, round the corn
Ho ,Ho, Ho round the corn Sally."
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Example #3:
From http://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=52717
Posted By: Charley Noble
23-Oct-02 - 11:27 AM
Thread Name: Origin: Johnny Come Down to Hilo
Subject: Lyr.Add. Round' de Corn, Sally
...Most of us nautical singers are familar with the old sea shanty "Round the Corner, Sally" in which the corner refered to has been ascribed to Cape Horn. Well, try this old plantation corn husking song on for size:
ROUN' DE CORN, SALLY
(corn husking song collected by slaveholder James Hungerford's The Old Plantation and What I Gathered There in an Autumn Month, c. 1832, quoted in THE MUSIC OF BLACK AMERICANS by Eileen Southern, pp. 180)
Grand Chorus:
Hooray, hooray, ho! Roun' de corn, Sally!
Hooray for all de lubly (lovely) ladies! Roun' de corn, Sally!
Hooray, hooray, ho! Roun' de corn, Sally!
Hooray for all de lubly ladies! Roun' de corn, Sally!
Dis lub's er (a) thing dat's sure to hab you, Roun' de corn, Sally!
He hole (hold) you tight, when once he grab you, Roun' de corn, Sally!
Un (an) ole (old) un (one) ugly, young un (one) pretty, Roun' de corn, Sally!
You needen try when once he git you, Roun' de corn, Sally! (CHO)
Dere's Mr. Travers lub Miss Jinny, Roun' de corn, Sally!
He thinks she is us (as) good us any, Roun' de corn, Sally!
He comes from church wid her er (on) Sunday, Roun' de corn, Sally!
Un (He) don't go back ter town till Monday, Roun' de corn, Sally! (CHO)
My interpretations in ()'s.
Cheerily,
Charley Noble
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Example #4:
[This excerpt of "Round De Corn, Sally" was documented to have been sung by Black people while they marched around the plantation as part of their Christmas festivities, after going to the main house to receive gifts from their former master/mistress.]
From http://books.google.com/books?id=SHRAAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236&dq=round+de+corn+sally&source=bl&ots=7d8Yta7mK6&sig=0WAtB-T5dvoAu1mzkfKSPlnZ-3k&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aHiYU47ZFIWdyATsx4KIBA&ved=0CCwQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=round%20de%20corn%20sally&f=false The Literary Digest, Volume 10 1895 “Christmas In The South Long Ago”[p 236]
Hooray, hooray, ho
Round de corn, Sally
Hooray for all de lubly ladies
Round de corn, Sally
Dere a Master Howard lub Miss Betty
Round de corn, Sally
I tell you what, she a mighty pretty
Round de corn, Sally...
-snip-
This is followed by other lines that are difficult for me to decipher. However, it appears that those lines are other complementary comments about other (White) people on the plantation.
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