We start this chain at least as early as the
1830's, when the first known version of this song appears in print as
'My father kept a horse', immortalised with its own Roud Folk Song Index number (850), sometime between
1855-1861 with the first lines '
My father kept a horse and my mother kept a mare'...
This song is apparently of Gypsy origin, appearing in various folklore collections, one such, from
1904 claiming it as from
Britain(England(Lond,South)) but despite being commonly called the 'Irish Familie' it was 'never sung in Ireland', we also get some new lyrics:
"Me father had a horse/And me mother she'd a mare... So we'd a ride from father's horse/And a gallop from mother's mare."... "So the more we have to drink/And the merrier we shall be/For we all do belong/To an Irish family"
Something close to earliest extant melody here, under the name 'Father had a knife', where we hear the lyrics:
father had a knife, mother had a fork, sister had the bottle, and brother had the cork
But there are also Scottish (
My Faither's Gied's a Horse) and Cornish versions where it became popular as a children's song.
So far, nothing that unusual considering the twisted lineages of most folk music, but it gets interesting with the appearance of a 1920's New York Street Rhyme featuring the lyrics "
A Knife and a Fork and a Bottle and a Cork..." which then appears on a
1968 Disney album (6m:59) - this was not an obscure record, it's been copiously sampled.
If you know your reggae, you've probably guessed where this is going. We end up in
1976, with this Dillinger classic:
Digression: The bassline on the above comes from this
1974 tune (H/T to Section 5 for that info)
But anyway, that's how a South of England gypsy song from the early 19th century gradually shifted its lyrics through various interpretations, became a New York street rhyme, was popularised by a Disney album and finally appropriated by a Jamaican deejay in a funk reggae urban drug lament.
To end,
2014: The tune that threw me down the rabbit hole.