The Jolly Beggar- Terry (MO) c.1905 Randolph
Following are Randolph's notes:
THE JOLLY BEGGAR
This is a fragment of "The Jolly Beggar" ballad which Child (English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 1992-1999, No. 279, B) quotes from Herd's Ancient and Modern scots songs, 1769, p.46. There is a tradition that the song was written by James V of Scotland in 1534, but Child says that this has "no more plausibility than authority." It was printed in The Goose Hangs High Songster, published in Philadelphia by R. M. DeWitt in 1886. Barry (JAFL 22, 1909 p.79) reports a tune from New Hampshire. Cox (Traditional Ballads, 1939, pp. 50-51) has a text and tune from California, the last two stanzas corresponding to the 2d and 3d stanzas printed below. Cox remarks that he has not seen any other text of this ballad in America, although Reed Smith (Southern Folklore Quarterly 1, June, 1937, p. 11) listed it.
Sung by Mr. Fred Terry, Joplin, Mo., Jan. 30, 1933. Mr. Terry says that it was originally a very long ballad, which he heard sung by a man named Burkes in Argenta, Ark., about 1905.
The Jolly Beggar- Terry (MO) c.1905 Randolph
There was a jolly beg-gar
And a-beggln' he was bound,
He begged the farmers daughter
An' he come to Looney Town.
He then pulled up his blowin' horn
An' blowed so loud an' shrill
That four-an'-twenty gentlemen
Came ridin' over the hill.
He then cut off the tidy-string
An' let his duddies fall,
He was the biggest gentleman
That stood among them all.