The Old Gray Mare
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-05-08

Day 53 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series  (folksongindex.com)

Sandburg writes: "Before the horseless carriage came, in the years when people went buggy-riding, there were more songs about horses than now. Oats for Dobbin was an expense then as gas is at the filling station now. Fodder for the mare her cost and foal money the same as oil, water and new wind shields do today. 

"The horse doctor earned his living as the crack mechanic at the garage does, by fixing the the ailing parts. We remember in our school readers the verse from Bayard Taylor, voicing of an Arab his sentiments to steed, "My beautiful, my beautiful, thou standest so meekly by." 

"The following poem is in a different vein and mood. It is keyed rather to the homely philosophy of an Iowa editor who was asked by a Kansas editor what he wanted on his gravestone. The answer was they could write, "He et what was sot before him!" 

"It is not as lofty in manner as the reply of an Iowa farmer asked about his first horse, a two-year-old given him by his father. "How was she? Well, she was stylish but she couldn't stand grief." 

"The melody here is directly appropriated from the negro spiritual, The Old Gray Mare Came Tearin' Out the Wilderness."

SONG NOTE:
Wiffletree:  the pivoted swinging bar to which the traces of a harness are fastened and by which a vehicle or implement is drawn.