Three Jolly Huntsmen

This song is of respectable antiquity, though it is now known largely in an expurgated children's form.  According to G. Legman, it can be dated to 1613 and Fletcher and Shakespeare's joint production of Two Noble Knights in which a character sings:

There were three fooles, fell out about an howlet,
The one said it was an owle, the other he said, Nay,
The third he said it was a hawke, and her bels were cut
	away.

[ A ]

Andrew M. Turner of Berkeley, California, mailed a text of this song to Robert W. Gordon on December 12, 1925.  Turner wrote that he learned the song in Australia.  It is contained in the Gordon California Collection in the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress.

Three jolly men went a-hunting
And nothing could they find.
They came unto a cow dung
And that they left behind.
The Scotchman says, "That's a cow dung."
The Englishman says, "Nay."
And Paddy says, "That's a custard pie
With the custard blown away."

Three jolly men went a-hunting
And nothing could they find.
They came unto a pumpkin
And that they left behind.
The Scotchman says, "That's a pumpkin."
The Englishman says, "Nay."
And Paddy says, "That's a tater
But it's in the family way."

Three jolly men went a-hunting
And nothing could they find.
They came unto a knothole
And that they left behind.
The Scotchman says, "That's a knothole."
The Englishman, he says, "Nay."
And Paddy says, "That's a horse's arse
But the horse has run away."

For a full discussion of the song, see Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer, pp. 570-573, and their accompanying Notes, pp. 111-112.  Legman's historical notes accompany the only other bawdy version of this to see print, in Vance Randolph, Roll Me in Your Arms, "Unprintable" Ozark Folksongs and Folklore," edited with an introduction by G. Legman, Volume I, (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1992), pp. 306-307.