[Warning: derogatory racial terms. Original presented as music history.]
A popular song from 1888.
Words and music by Sam Devere.
The sheet music:
Lyrics
1. Oh! I’ve seen, in my time, some very funny folks
But the funniest of all I know
Is a colored individual as sure as you’re alive
As black as any black crow
You can talk until you’re tired, but you’ll never get a word
From this very funny, queer old coon
He’s a knock-kneed, double-jointed, hunkey-plunky moke
And he’s happy when he whistles this tune
2. Oh! he’s got a pair of lips like a pound of liver, split
And a nose like an injun-rubber shoe
He’s a limpy, happy, chuckle-headed, huckleberry nig
And he whistles like a happy “killy loo”
He’s an independent, free-and-easy, fat and greasy ham
With a cranium like a big baboon
Oh! I never heard him talk to anybody in my life
But he’s happy when he whistles this tune
3. Oh! he’d whistle in the morning, through the day and through the night
And he’d whistle, like the devil, going to bed
Oh! he whistles like a locomotive engine in his sleep
And he whistles when his wife was dead
One day a fellow hit him with a brick upon the mouth
And his jaw swelled up like a balloon
Now he, shaking, goes along like a monkey in a fit
And this is how he whistles that tune
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Sung here by Fred Feild: