Dan Dhu- Sickler (KS-NJ) c.1870 Etherton
[My title, replacing the generic "Wife Wrapt." This version came to Kansas from New Jersey.]
From: Kansas Version of Child No. 277
by Linda L. Etherton
Western Folklore, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Oct., 1967), pp. 271-273
Kansas Version of Child No. 277.- I heard this version of "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" last summer when my mother, Mrs. Irma R. Etherton, and her older sister, Mrs. Ethel R. Jones, were reminiscing about their girlhood days in Derby, Kansas, near Wichita, and singing the songs their parents had taught them. Most of the songs were hymns from the Evangelical United Brethren hymnal, or composed popular songs. But along with the composed songs they both remembered snatches of "Young Charlotte." When I asked them if they remembered any other songs that weren't written down, they began to recall stanzas from "Dan Dhu," as their mother, Mrs. Charlotte Maupin, and grandfather, Napoleon B. Sickler, had sung it. My mother had taught the song to her grade school pupils in rural Kansas and Colorado communities during the early twenties; I dimly remember her singing at least the nonsense lines to me when I was small.
Eventually Mother and Aunt Ethel were able to remember the whole ballad, except for the line in parentheses in the second stanza. My mother suspects that she made the line herself to accord with the story detail that had to be there. Her grandfather Sickler had known the ballad in his youth in New Jersey, and had probably taught it to his daughter Charlotte about 1870. My mother remembers that both her mother and grandfather had explained to her how "Dan Dhu" should be spelled. They presumed that it was a Scottish personal name. Aside fromt his matter of spelling, the present version resembles rather closely t hree v ersions o f the "Dandoo" type recorded in the Journal of American Folklore (XIX [1906], 298; XXXIX [1926], 109; XLVIII [1935], 309). Her grandfather, my mother notes, was the only one in the family who sang the last verse the way it is given here.
WIFE WRAPT IN WETHER'S SKIN
1. There was an old man and he lived out west,
Dan Dhu, Dan Dhu.
There was an old man and he lived out west,
And he had an old wife who was none of the best,
With a harum scarum nicky harum,
Clarmango climity clash and a-climbo.
2. Now this old man came in from the sheepfold,
(Saying, "Wife, I am both hungry and cold.")
3. "There's a piece of bread upon the shelf,
If you want any more you can get it yourself."
4. Now this old man went out to his sheepfold,
And killed him an old wetherskin fat as a mole.
5. He put the wetherskin on his wife's back,
And he made the old hickories go whickety whack whack.
6. "Now I'm goin' home tell Mam, Dad'n all my kin,
That you been a-beatin' me as hard as you kin."
7. "Now you go home tell Mam, Dad'n all your kin,
Damn you, damn you,
Now you go home tell Mam, Dad'n all your kin
That I been a-tannin' the old wetherskin,"
With a harum scarum nicky harum,
Clarmango climity clash and a-climbo.
LINDA L. ETHERTON
Washburn University of Topeka, Kansas