Annotation:Buggerboo
X:0 T: No Score C: The Traditional Tune Archive M: K: x
BUGGERBOO. AKA and see "Booger-Boo." Old-Time, Fiddle Tune/Song. The title appears in a list of traditional Ozarks Mountains fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published in 1954. Dan Tate (b. 1896), of Fancy Gap, Carroll County, Virginia, sang verses to the tune, the first three of which go:
Come all you jolly boatman boys,'
Who want to learn my trade.
The very first wrong I ever done,
Was courting of a maid.
I courted her the winter's night,
And a summer season too;
And when I gained her free good will,
I knew not what to do.
Last night I lay in a fine feather bed,
With the squire and a baby;
Tonight I'll lay in a barn of hay,
In the arms of Egyptian Daisy.
Mike Yates (2002) says that in its original form the ballad relates the seduction of a master's daughter by an apprentice, with the aid of a friend disguised as a ghost, or bugaboo. It is this term bugaboo that was altered in the process of transmission to the famous "Foggy Dew" (See Bob Thompson's article "The Frightful Foggy Dew", Folk Music Journal IV:1, 1980 pp. 35-61).