This is the first of six songs the author suspects is performed by Lawrence Older. In the aforementioned documentary, Pete Seeger, the boundless performer and steward of folk music, speaks to the uniqueness of Older’s version of this much loved song.

Older, unlike many other New World performers of the song, inserts lines reminiscent of the traditions of Irish lilting and English diddling in his refrains. This lyrical choice is heard in Work in the Woods. It perhaps speaks to Older’s own ancestry and the influence of the same on his music. More about these traditions will be said in the ensuing section.

This song is alternatively known as “Wraggle-Taggle Gypsy,” “Gypsum Davy,” “Black Jack Davy,” and many more. Regardless of title and specific lyrics employed by a given performer, the song at the core is Child ballad #200. The Child ballads are a collection of ballads originating from the British Isles compiled by Harvard professor Francis James Child in the 1890s. The ballad’s first appearance was in 1740 in Tea-Table Miscellany, a collection of Scots and English songs published by Allan Ramsey, an Enlightenment era artist and publisher.1

In the succeeding centuries since its first appearance, the tune has been an enduring presence in American traditional music. No doubt lumbermen of English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry, whether by way of those countries directly or by America or Canada, were all well acquainted with song, making it a comforting and bittersweet presence; its sad lyrics giving a chance to brood on loved ones imperceptible past the thick woods.