Sow Took The Measles: A Song History

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"The Sow Took the Measles" is a comic tall-tale song of unknown authorship in which the singer's sow catches the measles and dies, and he then puts her to practical use, turning her hide, tail and other parts into useful articles.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index gives its earliest date as 1931, when a text called "The Old Sow" appeared in Fuson's Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands, and it lists further versions from the Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina folklore, Linscott's Folk Songs of Old New England and Gardham's East Riding Songster, which prints it as "The Dead Pig."[1] The index gives it Roud number 17759 and compares its use-every-scrap theme to that of "The Red Herring."[2]

Etching of several pigs grazing beneath gnarled orchard trees

Henry Keller, Pigs in Orchard, etching, c. 1916. Pigs in an orchard, shown for the title; the etching has no connection to the song.

Wikipedia lists it among the songs on Burl Ives's 78-rpm album The Wayfaring Stranger,[3] which Smithsonian Folkways notes was first issued as Asch 345 and later appeared on the Stinson label.[4] It also appears in a 1945 Leeds Music folio of 21 folk songs and ballads based on Ives's renditions, compiled and edited by Herbert Haufrecht.[5] The Ballad Index further notes texts in Lomax's Folk Songs of North America and in the Silbers' Folksinger's Wordbook.[1]

Don Pedi arranges it in DGD tuning, the last song listed in Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose, a download published by Pedi himself of children's songs for the solo dulcimer player who also sings, with an MP3 recording of each song.[6]

Our book that contains the song "Sow Took The Measles"

Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "The Sow Took the Measles".
  2. Traditional Ballad Index (folklorist.org): "The Sow Took the Measles".
  3. Wikipedia: "The Wayfaring Stranger (album)".
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Woody Guthrie: This Land Is Your Land, The Asch Recordings, Vol. 1" (liner notes).
  5. New York Public Library Research Catalog: "The Wayfarin' Stranger, Burl Ives: A Collection of 21 Folk Songs and Ballads".
  6. Don Pedi: "Mountain Dulcimer Mother Goose - Old-Time Songs & Nursery Rhymes For All Ages".
  7. Image: Henry Keller, Pigs in Orchard, etching, c. 1916. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

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