Boil Them Cabbage Down
"Boil Them Cabbage Down" (or variants substituting dialectal "Bile" for "Boil," dialectal "Dem," "'Em" or "That" for "Them," and/or, less frequently, standard "Cabbages" for "Cabbage") is an American folk song.[1] The word "hoecakes" refers to small cornmeal cakes that were fried in the fire on the blade of a hoe. A breakfast of hoecakes and cabbage soup testifies to the humble origins of this song.
Notable versions of the song have been played by such artists as Pete Seeger[2], Ruby Jane Smith[3] and the Smothers Brothers.
Lyrics
This simple tune is often used in Old Time Music circles to teach young folks how to play the fiddle, banjo, mountain dulcimer and/or guitar. The following is the basic tune with the lyrics of the chorus. These tabs assumes you have a diatonically fretted instrument tuned to one of the 1-5-8 open tunings like G-D-G or D-A-D such as you might find on a mountain dulcimer or a stick dulcimer.
-
- 2 2 2 2 3 3
- Boil them cab-bage down, down.
-
- 2 2 2 2 1 1
- Turn them hoe-cakes 'round, 'round.
-
- 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 3
- The on-ly song that I can sing is
-
- 2 2 1 1 0
- Boil them cab-bage down.
Here's the same tune tabbed for a chromatically fretted instrument like a tenor guitar (or banjo) tuned GDgd (or other 1-5-8-12 tuning).
-
- 4 4 4 4 5 5
- Boil them cab-bage down, down.
-
- 4 4 4 4 2 2
- Turn them hoe-cakes 'round, 'round.
-
- 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 5
- The on-ly song that I can sing is
-
- 4 4 2 2 0
- Boil them cab-bage down.
There are many different verses to this song, and only a few popular ones are listed here:
-
- Went up on a mountain
- (To) give my horn a blow, blow.
- Thought I heard my true love say,
- "Yonder comes my beau."
- CHORUS:
- Boil them cabbage down, down.
- Turn them hoecakes 'round, 'round.
- The only song that I can sing is
- Boil them cabbage down.
-
- Possum in a 'simmon tree,
- Raccoon on the ground.
- Raccoon says, you son-of-a-gun,
- Shake some 'simmons down.
-
- (Chorus)
-
- Someone stole my old coon dog.
- Wish they'd bring him back.
- He chased the big hogs through the fence,
- And the little ones through the crack.
-
- (Chorus)
-
- Met a possum in the road,
- Blind as he cold be.
- Jumped the fence and whipped my dog
- And bristled up at me.
-
- (Chorus)
-
- Butter-fly, he has wings of gold.
- Fire-fly, wings of flame.
- Bed-bug, he got no wings at all,
- But he gets there just the same.
-
- (Chorus)
- (Traditional)
References