My Dear Old Buffalo Boy: A Song History

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"Buffalo Boy" is a comic courting dialogue: a young woman presses her suitor with questions about their wedding until his answer about whom he will bring reveals that he already has children, and she calls the match off.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index notes that Peter Kennedy, in his Folksongs of Britain and Ireland, treated it as a form of the English "Country Courtship" (also known as "When Shall We Get Married?"), and that the Roud Folk Song Index files the two under one number, although the Index's own editors list them separately, pointing to the different punch line.[1][2][3] For that English relative, the Index gives an earliest date of 1776.[2]

Japanese ink painting of water buffalo wading across a river under a willow tree, driven by young herdsmen with ropes

Kawanabe Kyōsai, Buffalo and Herdsman, album leaf; ink and color on silk, ca. 1887. Water buffalo and their young herders, shown in fun; it has no connection to the song.

The oldest date the Index gives for the American song is a 1927 record by Ernest V. Stoneman and his wife Hattie, issued as "The Mountaineer's Courtship."[1][4] The Discography of American Historical Recordings shows that the couple cut it in New York on May 12, 1927, as a duet with guitar and harmonica for OKeh 45125.[4] On July 25, 1927, in Bristol, Tennessee, at a session supervised by Ralph Peer, Stoneman recorded it again for Victor in a trio with Uncle Eck Dunford and Irma Frost.[5] Harry Smith placed the OKeh disc on his 1952 Anthology of American Folk Music, and the reissue's notes list later revival versions under the title "Buffalo Boy" by Sam Hinton and by the Bergerfolk.[6] The Index also cites printed texts, among them "My Dear Old Innocent Boy" in Loyal Jones's book on Bascom Lamar Lunsford and "Buffalo Boy" in Alan Lomax's The Folk Songs of North America.[1][3]

Maureen Sellers includes it, as "My Dear Old Buffalo Boy," in My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume Two, a 56-page instruction book for the mountain dulcimer that pairs playing basics with a selection of tunes, published by Fingers Of Steel.[7]

Our books that contain the song "My Dear Old Buffalo Boy"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Buffalo Boy".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Country Courtship".
  3. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Bibliography".
  4. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "OKeh matrix W81080. The mountaineer's courtship / Ernest V. Stoneman ; Hattie Stoneman".
  5. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BVE-39702. Mountaineer's courtship / Uncle Eck Dunford ; Irma Frost ; Ernest V. Stoneman".
  6. Smithsonian Folkways: "Anthology of American Folk Music" (SFW 40090 liner notes).
  7. Fingers Of Steel: "Maureen Sellers, My Teaching Book For Appalachian Dulcimer, Volume Two".
  8. Image: Kawanabe Kyōsai, Buffalo and Herdsman, album leaf; ink and color on silk, ca. 1887. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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