Over the Waterfall

Henry Reed (1884 to 1968) of Glen Lyn, Virginia, told Alan Jabbour he got it from "Teets's Show" when he was five or six, possibly from a circus calliope. Jabbour learned it from Reed and spread it through the Hollow Rock String Band's recording in the late 1960s.

The melody is older than Reed. It carried a mid-19th century comic song, "The Fellow That Looks Like Me," credited to New York songwriter John F. Poole, and Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters recorded it in the late 1920s. Jabbour also linked it to the British song "Eggs and Marrowbones."