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Did
You Feed My Cow?
Category: Traditional Secular Slave Song
Source: Thomas Talley, "Negro Folk Rhymes"; and Multiple
music books
Leader:
Did you feed my cow?
Group:
Yes, Mam!
Leader:
Did you feed my cow?
Group:
Yes, Mam!
Leader:
Well, what did you feed her?
Group: Corn and hay.
Leader:
Well, what did you feed her?
Group:
Corn and hay.
Leader:
Did you milk her good?
Group:
Yes, Mam.
Leader:
Did you milk her like you should?
Group:
Yes, Mam!
Leader:
Well, how did you milk her?
Group: Swish! Swish!
Swish!
Leader:
Well, how did you milk her?
Group: Swish! Swish!
Swish!
“Did You Feed My Cow?”
is a traditional chant from African American slavery.
This call & response chant is included in Thomas W. Talley’s
1922 book "Negro Folk Rhymes". “Did
You Feed My Cow?”
is often included in contemporary American children’s folk music books
and recordings. However,
there is usually no mention of the chants’ African American origin.
“Did You Feed My Cow?”
usually has three
more verses in addition to those presented in the above.
The remaining three verses describe the cow dying of tick and the
buzzards coming to pick her bones. Children
act out the motions indicated by the words.
In the “milk the cow verse”, for instance, children perform a
milking motion and in the “buzzard verse” children sing “flop”,
“flop,” “flop” and move their arms up & down in a bird flying
motion. Few Pittsburgh children that I have surveyed know this song.
Maybe this is because it’s content is so foreign to children
living in urban areas (how many cows have they fed?).
Also nowadays, people don’t usually want to talk about death to
children, although death is a part of life.
See “I Never Been To College” in this collection for an example of another children’s rhyme that mentions death.
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