American Ballads and Folk Songs: page - 0327

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FOLLER DE DRINKIN' GOU'D *
"One of my great-uncles, who was connected with the railroad movement, remembered that in the records of the Anti-Slavery So­ciety there was a story of a peg-leg sailor, known as Peg-Leg Joe, who made a number of trips through the South and induced young Negroes to run away and escape. . • . The main scene of his activities was in the country north of Mobile, and the trail described in the song fol­lowed northward to the headwaters of the Tombigbee River, thence over the divide and down the Ohio River to Ohio . . . the, peg-leg sailor would . . . teach this song to the young slaves and show them the mark of his natural left foot and the round hole made by his peg-leg. He would then go ahead of them northward and leave a print made with charcoal and mud of the outline of a human left foot and a round spot in place of the right foot. . . . Nothing more could be found relative to the man. . . . 'Drinkin' gou'd' is the Great Dipper. . . . 'The grea' big un,? the Ohio." *
wnen ae sun come Daac, When de firs' quail call, Den de time is come— Foller de drinkin' gou'd.
»H. B. Parks in Volume VII of the Publications of the Texas Folk-Lore Society*
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