Edited by Azizi Powell
Part II is an almost complete reprint of a 2013 pancocojams post which continues the presentation of information about the history and early examples of the dance song "Whoa Mule" and the African American singing game "Peep Squirrel".
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/07/blog-post.html for Part I of this pancocojams series. That post compares "Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On) with two other songs: the 19th century Southern Black American song/old time banjo (Bluegrass) song "Whoa Mule Whoa" and the 19th century African American game song "Peep Squirrel". Part I also presents one sound file and two text (word only) versions of "Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On)".
Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2026/07/sound-file-lyrics-auto-generated.html for Part III of this pancocojams series. Part III is a 2026 pancocojams post that showcases a 1950 sound file of Celina Lewis singing "Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On"). That post also includes the lyrics for that rendition and Celina Lewis' comments about that song. In addition, that post includes my re-wording into standard English of Celina Lewis' comments.
Click __ for Part IV of this pancocojams series. Part IV is a 2026 pancocojams post that showcases several YouTube videos of the 21st century African American originated game song "Ride That Pony". That post also presents some versions of lyrics for "Ride That Pony" as well as some comments about that game song. In addition, selected comments about "Ride That Pony" are included in that post along with my speculation that "Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On") and "Peep Squirrel" are 19th century precursors of "Ride That Pony".
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The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, socio-cultural, and recreational purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to the unknown composers of this song. Thanks to Celina Lewis, Bessie Jones, and others whose renditions and comments about this song were documented by folklorist. Thanks to the folklorists who collected & recorded this song,
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EXAMPLES OF WHOA MULE (CAN'T GET THE SADDLE ON)
(The numbers assigned to these examples continue from Part I of this series).
Example #3:
From Bessie Jones and Bess Lomax Hawes Step It Down, Games, Plays, Songs & Stories from the Afro-American Heritage University of Georgia Press, 1972; p. 214.
Peep Squirrel
Ya di da di deedy dum
Peep Squirrel
Ya di da di deedy dum
Hop Squirrel
Ya di da di deedy dum
(each line is repeated as above)
Run Squirrel
Come here, mule.
Whoa, mule
I can’t get the saddle on.
Hold that mule,
I can’t get the saddle on.
Go that mule
I can’t get the saddle on.
Go that mule
Ya di da di deedy dum, a
Ya di da di deedy dum, dum!
-snip-
Comment written by Bess Lomax Hawes:
“You can sing “Peep Squirrel” while the children dance, or while you’re bouncing a child on your knees; or at a slower pace, it makes a fine song for a tired baby and a warm lap and a rocking chair. Mrs. Jones said that the “Ya di da di deedy dum” is the sound of the squirrel’s feet scuffling in the leaves"...
-snip-
The Cd Put Your Hand on Your Hip and Let Your Backbone Slip includes a recording of Bessie Jones singing "Peep Squirrel".
http://www.last.fm/music/Bessie+Jones/_/Peep+Squirrel
The length of that song is given as 2:32.
A 30 second mp3 sample is provided on that website. That sample is a recording of Bessie Jones explaining why the mule is including in the "Peep Squirrel" song. My summary of her comments is that a man trying to get a mule to catch a squirrel, but he’s too little to put the saddle on the mule and the saddle was too heavy.
In my opinion, the words to "Whoa Mule (Can't Get The Saddle On)" were combined with "Peep Squirrel" because those two songs are have very similar lyric patterns, if not the same or similar tunes & tempos. My comparison of the lyric pattern of those two songs is found in Part I of this series.
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Example #4
From Harold Courlander Negro Folk Music U.S.A, Courier Dover Publications, 1963, p. 160 [Google Books]
Whoa Mule Can’t Get The Saddle On
“One song taken from an elderly informant was described as “as real grown up playparty”. Other than that it was “a kind of wild game that could get you thrown out of church”, no no information was given about the activity that accompanied the song.
Whoa mule Can’t Get The Saddle On (2x)
Stop that mule Can’t Get The Saddle On (2x)
Whoa mule Can’t Get The Saddle On(2x)
Run mule Can’t Get The Saddle On (2x)
Catch that mule Can’t Get The Saddle On (4x)
You go that mule Can’t Get The Saddle On
Go that mule Can’t Get The Saddle On
-snip-
Speculation about the risque nature of the performance of "Whoa Mule: Saddle" is given in the Addendum below.
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Example #5: Margaret McKee Beale Black & Blue: Life and Music on Black America's Main Street, p. 189 [Google Books]
[In this excerpt an African American Bluesman talks about the way that enslaved Black people used songs during slavery to express feelings that the couldn't openly express, and to make coded comments about their treatment by White people & about their oppressive living conditions.]
“I’ll tell you why the blues come about. It’s an expression that a person have –he want to tell you something, and he can’t tell you in his words, he’ll sing it to you. See back in-well, I’ll just bring it right out plain where anybody can see it, in olden days, if a white man do a colored man wrong, he couldn’t tell him he was wrong. He’d go off on a mule or something, and sing back to that man, the blues, like, singing it to him. That’s the way a plenty of them songs come up.
Take my daddy. When he playing his fiddle in the slavery time, he wouldn’t want to play, but he had to play. So he’d go along and make things up and holler it out in the fields where the old boss man could hear him, just singing away. Now that’s what he meant – he’s tired of playing nearly every night and then working in the daytime.
[Asked for an example, he sang]
“Hey Liza, little Liza Jane.
Oh Liza, little Liza Jane,
Can’t get the saddle on the ole gray mule
Can’t get the saddle on the ole gray mule.
Whoa, whoa, mule, can’t get the saddle on the ole gray mule.
He’s saying that the white man done worked him so ‘til he can’t even put a saddle on the ole gray mule.* That’s what he’s talkin about.
Chicken in the bread pan
Pickin at the dough
When he gets through picking
He stratch for more.
That’s what they be singing to the white folks what wasn’t giving ‘em enough to eat. Yeah, in slavery time. All them things come out of slavery time. All that happened in them days."
-snip-
*I think that some words are implied in this sentence. For instance, the above sentence would read “the white man done worked him so hard ‘til he can’t [even] get the saddle on the ole gray mule."
"Get the saddle on" means "to put the saddle on" (the mule).
On another page of this book the man speaking indicates that his father carried his fiddle to the fields. I believe that the implication is that his father was required to play the fiddle during the night for the White master’s entertainment, and then also required to play the fiddle during the day to help pace the work of other field hands.
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ADDENDUM
Example #2 (in Part I of this series) and Example #4 (above) allude to people labeling the way that "Whoa Mule:Saddle" was performed as being risque (sexually suggestive). Example #4 indicates that if the "wild" behavior that adults did while singing that song were known- it would get them thrown out of their church. It seems likely that that performance activity verged on sexualized horse play. Perhaps the men and women couples did piggyback rides when they sung "Ride the mule". Unless there is more documentation out there, we'll never know what was so risque about the movements that were done while singing that song that before singing her version (Example #2) Celina Hall had to basically tell church people to mind their own business.
I don't think that "Peep Squirel" or "Whoa Mule. Can't Get The Saddle On" are still being sung or played by children or by adults since at least around the mid 1960s. However, I'm intrigued by the possibility that the circle game song "Here We Go Ride That Pony" may be an updated version of one or both of these songs.
The earliest example of that (probably African American originated) game song that I've come across online is 2006 [Unfortunately, the YouTube video of this game song that was published in 2006 is no longer availanle.] I'm not sayind that the performance activities of either of those 19th century songs are the same as the performance activity of "Ride That Pony". But all three of those songs include references to players doing specific movements such as running, chasing, trying to catch something or someone, trying to put a saddle on a pony (or on someone who represents a pony), and/or dancing in front of, back to back with someone, or besides someone else.
-snip-
The original Addendum for this post continues with information about and an example of the 21st century singing game "Ride That Pony". That information/example is now included in Part III of this pancocojams series.
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This concludes Part II of this pancocojams series.
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