What's the history behind the kid song that starts with "Do your ears hang low"?

Question

Who originally wrote it and when?

I know the words, by the way, I just want any verifiable history.

Answer 1

Just as "ring around the rosie" was a child's song that had its origins in the grisly history of the Black Death in England, so this song was about the Spanish influenza of 1918. Its deadly toll on soldiers demobbed after the first world war is well known, but less so the fact that they died in such numbers that in army hospitals they were only tagged on the ear with their serial number. Army medics assigned to dispatching of the bodies hummed a funereal song to make their revolting work lighter as they stacked the ear-tagged bodies. In this song they pretend they are talking with the influenza victims and making fun of their ears. This is likely to have been an adaptive response on the orderlies part, as the bodies of those succumbed to influenza were often mightily bloated and many died with facial rictus.

The song likely began first at Army posts in the Delaware region, but was first written down in memoirs of Corporal Austin Cooper, who was later to serve as first head of the United States Army Infectious Disease Research Laboratories ( later USAMRID). The earliest known recording was in 1922- sheet music with slightly divergent lyrics from 1925 is in the Library of Congress.

Answer 2

The melody of that song is the first half of the melody from "Turkey in the straw", a song that was first published in 1834. According to the link below, THAT melody came from an older Irish song "The Old Rose Tree"

I have heard that melody used as the title for a french tv show for children called Patof (a clown). The words were:

Quand j'etais petit - When I was small
J'avais un petit nez - I had a small nose
Un jour, en tombant - One day, while falling
Je me suis tout congee - I got pretty banged up
Il deviendait rouge - It (the nose) became red
Et tros gros pour moi - And too big for me
C'a me faire rien, parce que - But I don't mind because
On m'aime bien comme ca - Everyone likes me like that

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
What's the history behind the kid song that starts with "Do your ears hang low"?
Who originally wrote it and when?

Answer 4

My "ALL" knowing mother in law once told me that it was a civil war song, and the words are actually "Do your balls hang low, do they wabble to and fro".......It's a riot that they turned it into a kids song

Answer 5

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do yo chang hang low do it wabble to a flo does it shine in the light is it platinuim is it gold can yo throw it ova shoulda like big sack o gold do ya chang hang lo thats my version hahha i dont know the history but i thought that was funny

Answer 6

I don't have the answer, but just wanted to say that this was actually one of the RARE moments that I learned something.

Answer 7

Do your ears (balls, boobs) hang low?
Do they wobble to & fro?
Can you tie them in a knot?
Can you tie them in a bow?
Can you throw them o'er your shoulder
like a Continental Soldier?
Do your ears (balls, boobs) hang low?

Answer 8

dont kno'..hehk but i like the song..

do your ears hang low,
do they wobble to and fro,
can u tie them in a knot,
can u tie them in a bow,

muahahahah..
but meb they want the kids to use thier IMAGINATION..heh!