Uploaded November 2020 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Day 237 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "This is for cold weather, around the stove in the switch shanty."
[from The Traditional Ballad Index] The history of this song is a bit vague, as it has both clean and dirty forms. Sandburg prints a single stanza of a clean text (saying of it "This is for cold weather, around the stove in the switch shanty"). But the bawdy version seems to be much more widespread.
Which is original? The evidence available to me does not make it clear. The possibility that Sandburg's text is bowdlerized cannot be denied.
Day 237 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series
Sandburg writes: "This is for cold weather, around the stove in the switch shanty."
[from The Traditional Ballad Index] The history of this song is a bit vague, as it has both clean and dirty forms. Sandburg prints a single stanza of a clean text (saying of it "This is for cold weather, around the stove in the switch shanty"). But the bawdy version seems to be much more widespread.
Which is original? The evidence available to me does not make it clear. The possibility that Sandburg's text is bowdlerized cannot be denied.
