Old Dan Tucker?

Posted by ESC on January 31, 2003

In Reply to: Old Dan Tucker? posted by Fort Briscoe on January 30, 2003

: My mother uses this phrase occasionally-"...mad as Old Dan Tucker." I suspect a southern US origin

All I know about is the song. Didn't you sing that in school?

Daniel Emmett, 1843
OLD DAN TUCKER
(Daniel Decatur Emmett)
www.fifedrum.org/ wnyfm/olddantucker.html

chorus: Get out the way for old Dan Tucker,
He's too late to have his supper,
Supper's over, dinner's a-cookin',
(alternate: Pot's on the fire and dinner's cooking)
But Old Dan Tucker's just standin' there lookin'.

Old Dan Tucker's a fine old man,
Washed his face in a frying pan,
Combed his hair with a wagon wheel,
Died of toothache in his heel.

Old Dan Tucker he come to town,
Riding on a billygoat, leading a hound,
Hound dog bark and the billygoat jump,
Throwed Dan Tucker on top of a stump.

Old Dan Tucker, he got drunk,
Fell in the fire and he kicked up a chunk,
Red hot coal got in his shoe,
Oh my Lawdy how the ashes flew.

Old Dan Tucker, he come to town,
Swinging the ladies round and round,
First to the right and then to the left
And then to the gal that he loved best.

I come to town the other night,
To hear the noise and see the fight
The people, they was running around (or: watchman, he was..)
Cryin' Old Dan Tucker's come to town.

Ol' Dan and me we did fall out,
An' what do you reckon it was about?
He stepped on my corn, I kicked him on the shin,
An' that's the way this row begin.

(And 3 less well-known verses:)

Ol' Dan Tucker clumb a tree,
His Lord and Master for to see,
The limb it broke and Dan got a fall,
Never got to see his Lord at all.

Ol' Dan Tucker went to the mill,
To git some meal to put in the swill;
The miller swore by the p'int of his knife
He never seed such a man in his life.

Dan Tucker begun in early life
To play the banjo and the fife;
He'd play the boys and gals to sleep
And then into some bunk he'd creep.