3666 - Black Betty

So the joke from yesterday...

~ So an African woman named Betty walked into a butcher shop and asked if they had beef.
The butcher replied, "No, Black Betty, ham or lamb?" ~

... was a take off on the song Black Betty. That's where things start to get fuzzy. There are several stories as to whom or what black Betty was. The legend that has been at the top of the pile seems to be that black Betty was a flintlock musket manufactured in Birmingham England. Birmingham was a gun manufacturing center years ago.

The song has changed many times over the years. The lyrics change a little depending on the situation being sung about.

Here's another version of the song.



This YouTube version came with this comment...

"This song is much older than this.  This was a British Army marching song and refers to the muskets carried by British soldiers which was called the Black Betty because of it's black painted stock. (It's replacement had a brown oiled stock and was referred to as the Brown Bess). BB had a child, the child went wild refers to the musket firing a ball which was not very accurate as rear firing lines often shot the forward lines on accident. Birmingham refers to Birmingham England where the muskets were made, not Alabama. There are many references to this in literature as far back as the early 1700s."

And then there was an Australian version of the song by a group called Spiderbait I'd never heard before. It made it to the top of the charts in Australia.  I like this one a lot. (The music. I'm not much into the videos on YouTube. I usually scroll the video off the screen.)