Ballads & Songs of Southern Michigan-songbook

A Collection of 200+ traditional songs & variations with commentaries including Lyrics & Sheet music

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	264         Ballads and Songs of Michigan 106 THE MOSSBACK. The most common name of this debate song is "The Shanty-Boy and the Farmer's Son." Michigan A lacks several stanzas. For a discussion of the song and a text see Tolman and Eddy, JAFL, XXXV, 399-401. See also Eckstorm and Smyth, pp. 27-30; Rickaby, pp. 48-53; and Shoemaker, pp. 221-223. Version A was sung in 1934 by Mr. Charles Muchler, Kalkaska; he learned the song in a lumber camp in the Black Forest in Lycoming County, Pennsyl­vania, where all the loggers believed it had been composed by one of the men in that camp.
	i As I walked out one evening just as the sun went down,
	I heard two maids conversing as I passed slowly by; One she loved a farmer's son, and the other a shanty boy. 2 The one that loved the farmer boy these words I heard her say, The reason why she loved him was that he at home would stay, At home with her in the winter time, to the shanty would not go; And when the spring it did come on, his land he'd plow and sow.