when did the song cotton eye joe come out
Cotton-Eyed Joe The origins of this song are unclear, although it pre-dates the 1861–1865 American Civil War.[1] American folklorist Dorothy Scarborough (1878–1935) noted in her 1925 book On the Trail of Negro Folk-songs, that several people remember hearing the song before the war. Scarborough's account of the song came from her sister, Mrs. George Scarborough, who learned the song from "the Negroes on a plantation in Texas, and other parts from a man in Louisiana." The man in Louisiana knew the song from his earliest childhood and heard slaves singing it on plantations.[2] Both the dance and the song had many variants.[3] The first printed one dates from 1882[4]. American publishing house Harper and Brothers published a version in 1882, heard by author Louise Clarke Pyrnelle (born 1850) on the Alabama plantation of her father when she was a child,[5] that was later republished in 1910:[6]