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Band 6, Item 3
Rabbit
Four girls, vocals. Recorded 1939 in Amory, Miss., by Herbert Halpert. Library
of Congress Archive of American Folk Song AFS 2975 A4.
"Rabbit" 's rhythm and tune are reminiscent of marching calls and auctioneering.
In black country schools, Bessie Jones
recalls, children were taught "drills"-chanting, marching, and changing
formations. Such drills, and games that sound like
drills, may have originated in the teachers and children expressing their pride
in the military training of black troops who
figured decisively in the Civil War.
The sentiment expressed in the text, that a a rabbit would make a good pot of
stew, probably derives from the fact that
farmers cooked many wild animals. Bessie Jones recalls that she and her
childhood friends sometimes shot small birds and
cleaned, cooked, and ate them, just like grown-ups.
In American Ballads and Folk Songs (New York: Macmillan, 1934), Alan and John
Lomax give a game text with variations of
lines of this song, to be accompanied with "hambone" percussion-clapping hands
and slapping thighs and face.
Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit,
See that rabbit sticking in the sand,
I wish I had him in my pan.
Ol' rabbit skipped,
Ol' rabbit hopped,
Ol' rabbit jumped
Right in my pot.
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