Sugar in the Gourd

Several different tunes carry this name. This one is kin to "Turkey in the Straw" and older than it: Charles Wolfe noted that words to it were printed in the 1830s. A writer named William Byrne described hearing West Virginia's "Old Sol" Nelson, known along the Elk River as the Fiddler of the Wilderness, play it on a fishing trip around 1880.

The meaning of the title is unclear. One old explanation is that dancers kept sugar in gourds to sprinkle on a sticky floor, though sand would have been cheaper. Others read it as a bawdy joke, or just a reference to the gourds households kept sugar in.