The next selection in the program is the traditional American ballad, A Lazy Farmer Boy more commonly known as The Young Man Who Wouldn’t Hoe Corn. The song has been collected throughout the United States under a number of different titles and variations. Since 1931, it’s been performed by a host of artists from different genres, including a jazz interpretation and a choral arrangement.

 

Folk singer Burl Ives was taught the song by an elderly African American man near Nashville who liked to sit in front of his house whittling and chewing tobacco. A college professor acquired the song from a family who lived between the Bald and Smokey Mountains of North Carolina.

 

The song chronicles a lazy young farmer who won’t hoe his corn (weed it), which results in the corn being choked by the weeds. And, since he delayed planting till the end of June, he lost his crop in a September frost. To add insult to injury, the lad was rejected by a potential wife due to his inaction.

 

Regarding the song’s pedigree, its lyrical theme may trace back to Proverbs 24:30-34, a cautionary tale about laziness and its consequences:

 

I walked past the field of a sluggard,

by the vineyard of someone who has no sense;

thorns had come up everywhere,

I saw the ground was covered with weeds,

and the stone wall was in ruins.

I applied my heart to what I observed,

              and learned a lesson from what I saw:

A little sleep, a little slumber,

a little folding of the hands to rest

and poverty will come on you like a thief

and scarcity like an armed man.

 

It’s been widely assumed that our song was traditionally passed down orally and originated in the U.S., dating to at least the middle of the 19^th century, a hypothesis that appears to be supported by historical evidence. The ballad appeared in a 1933 Indiana newspaper credited only to an unknown author. A similar version had surfaced in a 1931 Iowa newspaper submitted by a gentleman referencing an “old song of 1863 vintage.” Further validating this, a Vermont lady submitted a variant to a newspaper in 1932, exposing the song had been passed down through a few generations, confirming its deep roots. As for the ballad being a purely American creation, it is quite likely so, as corn as we know it is native to this hemisphere and not England or Europe. 

 

Although the song has been collected across multiple states, the earliest known version was documented in Missouri in 1905 by the American folklorist H. M. Belden. Another version was collected in Indiana in 1906 under the title, The Lazy Man.

 

In 1916 while collecting folk songs in southern Appalachia (including North Carolina and Virginia), prominent English folklorist Cecil Sharp transcribed a version of our song titled “Harm (Hiram) Link”, which he categorized as a nursery song, from a gentleman in Flag Pond, Tennessee, to wit:

 

“In July it was ankle high.

  In September he laid it by;

  In October there came a great frost:

  A sight to see the corn that Harm Link lost. 

 

A Lazy Farmer Boy was certainly known in the Appalachian region. In fact, in June of 1931 it was three rural musicians from the Piedmont area of North Carolina and Virginia, Buster Carter, William Preston Young and Posey Rorer who traveled to the Columbia recording studios on 5^th Avenue to make the first known recording of the song. 

 

In 1934, John Lomax, the curator of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress, recorded one Alec Moore, a retired, disabled cowpuncher working as a street vendor selling ice cream on the streets of Austin, Texas, singing a version of the song. In December of 1928, Al Hopkins and his Buckle Busters recorded a song with a similar melody, “West Virginia Gals”.   

 

Over the many years, the song has been adapted as an illustrated children’s book, a puppet show, a short film, and a folk operetta. It has also been performed at library recitals for children, theatrical productions, music club events, and in schools ranging from grade school to university programs.

 

In any event, the melody and lyrics of the A Lazy Farmer Boy are particularly beautiful and we hope you enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps our song is a distant relative of a poem published in 1852 by pastoral poet Josiah Deane Canning from Massachusetts titled Hoe Out Your Corn which enjoyed wide circulation in the middle of the 19^th century:

 

            One lazy day a farmer’s boy was hoeing out the corn

And moodily had listened long to the dinner horn

The welcome blast was heard at last, and down he dropped his hoe

But goodman shouted in his ear, “Hoe out your row! – O, Hoe out your row!

 

The rest of the poem told what a hard road it was that the boy was called on to finish, concluding with the thought that in the battle of life, all who will take the pains to “hoe out their row” will grow from strength to strength.