Git Along, Little Dogies: A Song History

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"Git Along, Little Dogies" is a cowboy song, printed early on under the longer title "Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies."[1] The Traditional Ballad Index gives its earliest date as 1893, in the journal of Owen Wister.[2] Tom Isern of Prairie Public's Plains Folk places that earliest known text in Texas.[3] The dogies of the title are orphaned calves running with a herd on the range, though Merriam-Webster calls the word's origin unknown.[4] Some writers trace the song to the ballad "Rocking the Cradle (and the Child Not His Own)," but the Ballad Index editor, while granting clear similarities, stops short of calling either song descended from the other, so sources differ.[2]

Old photograph of a ranch: a wide, bare yard in front of a long, low ranch house behind a picket fence, with a large tree at left and hills beyond.

Carleton E. Watkins, Santa Margarita Ranch, albumen silver print from glass negative, 1876. A California ranch, shown for its setting; it has no connection to the song.

John A. Lomax included it in his 1910 collection Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, and he also quoted its refrain in the book's collector's note.[1] Victor recorded Harry K. McClintock, billed simply as "Mac," singing it as "Get Along, Little Doggies" on March 1, 1928.[5] The Ballad Index lists a run of other recordings from the late 1920s and 1930s, among them the Cartwright Brothers and the Girls of the Golden West.[2] Lomax himself sang it for Victor in New York in August 1939.[6]

Stephen Seifert includes it, in DAD tuning, in Cowboy Songs, his dulcimer book of 37 western songs that comes with an MP3 recording of each tune.[7]

Our book that contains the song "Git Along, Little Dogies"

Sources

  1. Internet Archive: "John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910)".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Get Along, Little Dogies".
  3. Prairie Public, Plains Folk: "Whoopie Ti-yi-o".
  4. Merriam-Webster: "Dogie".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor V-40016".
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-038186. Git along little doggies / John Avery Lomax".
  7. Stephen Seifert: "Cowboy Songs".
  8. Image: Carleton E. Watkins, Santa Margarita Ranch, albumen silver print from glass negative, 1876. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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