Said I, David Crocket, you're a Tennessee Screamah, He hauled off an' he hit me in the weemah. I drew back an' I hit him in de wizzen, He bit off mah head an' I swallowed his'n an' we both locked arms, But we nebba could agree fo t' leab each udder be, So... I knocked him to de happy land ob Hop-te-doo-den-doo.

This spontaneous tune is printed in Harlow’s excellent Making of a Sailor, 1928. While Harlow was learning the ropes, his ship’s African-American pilot made a lasting impression with this comical song and its accompanying pantomimes.

Davy Crockett was a Tennessee frontiersman and folk-hero (and in one popularly quoted almanac, embodied the “backwoods screamer”). John Russell Bartlett’s Dictionary of Americanisms defines

SCREAMER: A bouncing [vigorous, healthy] fellow or girl. This, like the word roarer, is one of the words transferred from animals to men by the hunters of the West.

The David Crockett was a clipper unrelated to Tennessee.

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