[Ads-l] Most have probably forgotten about this...

[Wilson Gray]

from eleven years ago, though it seems like only yesterday:

Horse v. mule
listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2005-November/055485.html
Nov 29, 2005 - ... especially if it contains the phrase, "Fie on thy
cuckold face," [which in fact, is, "Shame (be)fa(ll) your cuckold face."
Still, considering that I've heard the song read, only once, in the fall of
1950, when I was a 13-y.o., first-year high-schooler...] which the wife
introduces her explanations of what her husband thinks ...

IAC, here is the straight poop.

A version of the original folksong:

Scotish [sic] Song: in 2 volumes - Volume the First - Page 231 - Song XXIII
[Untitled]
https://books.google.com/books?id=2KpkAAAAcAAJ
London: ... MDCCXIV [1714]

The version by the Texas bluesman, Coley Jones, a relative of my
grandmother, Willie Jones Garrett:

Drunkard's Special
http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Coley_Jones:Drunkard's_Special
-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org