Found A Peanut: A Song History

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"Found a Peanut" is a comic song of unknown authorship, classed by the Ballad Index as a camp song and sung to the tune of "Clementine."[1] Each verse repeats a short line several times, and together the verses build a cheerfully grim chain of events that begins with a peanut that turns out to be rotten and in some versions loops back to the start.[1] It is number 12779 in the Roud Folk Song Index, and the earliest dated text the Ballad Index cites appeared in Gloria Dickens's article "Childhood Songs from North Carolina" in the North Carolina Folklore Journal in April 1973.[1] The James T. Callow Folklore Archive at the University of Detroit Mercy, built from students' field notes, holds what appears to be the same song under the title "The Peanut Song," from a contributor who learned it as a Girl Scout in Detroit; the record gives December 1969 as the date learned.[2] Neither date marks the song's origin, and none of the sources consulted here says when or where it began.[1][2] The Index also finds it in Marcia and Jon Pankake's A Prairie Home Companion Folk Song Book (1988) and in Patricia Averill's Camp Songs, Folk Songs (2014), a study of camp songs.[1][3]

Red and cream clay stirrup-spout bottle shaped as a figure whose body is a peanut shell

Moche artist(s), Stirrup-spout bottle with peanut figure, ceramic, slip, 500–800 CE. An ancient peanut figure, shown in fun; it has no connection to the song.

The borrowed melody is that of "Oh, My Darling Clementine." According to the Ballad Index, its words first appeared in 1863 in "Down by the River Lived a Maiden," a song by H. S. Thompson, and its familiar tune arrived in 1884 in a version credited to Percy Montrose; both were issued by the Boston publisher Oliver Ditson.[4][5][6] The Index doubts that the authorship question can be resolved, and it lists "Found a Peanut" among the songs that borrow the tune.[4] Judy House includes it in Jam Across America, a 178-page jam book for mountain dulcimer clubs whose songs were selected from the playlists that clubs around the country post online, all arranged in DAD tuning.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Found A Peanut"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Found a Peanut".
  2. University of Detroit Mercy Libraries, James T. Callow Folklore Archive: "The Peanut Song".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Bibliography".
  4. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Clementine".
  5. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Down by the river lived a maiden: song and chorus".
  6. The Morgan Library & Museum: "Oh, my darling Clementine: song and chorus".
  7. Judy House: "Jam Across America".
  8. Image: Moche artist(s), Stirrup-spout bottle with peanut figure, ceramic, slip, 500–800 CE. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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