Miss Lucy Long - Lyrics

Lyrics

Many different "Miss Lucy Long" texts are known. They all feature a male singer who describes his desire for the title character. In the style of many folk song narratives, most versions begin with the singer's introduction:

Oh! I just come afore you,

To sing a little song;

I plays it on de Banjo,

And dey calls it Lucy Long.

Compare this later recorded version by Joe Ayers:

I've come again to see you,

I'll sing another song,

Just listen to my story,

It isn't very long.

For nineteenth-century audiences, the comedy of "Lucy Long" came from several different quarters. Eric Lott argues that race is paramount. The lyrics are in an exaggerated form of Black Vernacular English, and the degrading and racist depictions of Lucy—often described as having "huge feet" or "corncob teeth"—make the male singer the butt of the joke for desiring someone whom white audiences would find so unattractive. However, in many variants, Lucy is desirable—tall, with good teeth and "winning eyes". Musicologist William J. Mahar thus argues that, while the song does address race, its misogyny is in fact more important. "Miss Lucy Long" is a "'public expressions of male resentment toward a spouse or lover who will not be subservient, a woman's indecision, and the real or imagined constraints placed on male behaviors by law, custom, and religion." The song reaffirms a man's supposed right to sexual freedom and satirizes courtship and marriage. Still, the fact that the minstrel on stage would desire someone the audience knew to be another man was a source of comic dramatic irony.

The refrain is simple:

Oh! Take your time Miss Lucy,

Take your time Miss Lucy Long!

Oh! Take your time Miss Lucy,

Take your time Miss Lucy Long!

However, its meaning is more difficult to identify and varies depending on the preceding verse. For example:

I axed her for to marry,

Myself de toder day;

She said she'd rather tarry,

So I let her habe her way.

The verse makes Lucy out to be a "sexual aggressor who prefers 'tarrying' (casual sex, we may infer) to marrying . . . ." The singer for his part seems to be in agreement with the notion. Thus, Lucy is in some way in charge of their relationship. Of course, audiences could easily take "tarry" as either a sexual reference or an indication of a prim and reserved Lucy Long.

However, other verses put the power back in the male's hands. For example, this verse makes Lucy no better than a traded commodity:

If she makes a scolding wife,

As sure as she was born,

I'll tote her down to Georgia,

And trade her off for corn.

In the Ayers version of the song, Miss Lucy and the male singer are already married. The lyrics further subvert Lucy's ability to control the sexual side of the relationship:

And now that we are married,

I expect to have some fun,

And if Lucy doesn't mind me,

This fellow will cut and run.

The singer later promises to "fly o'er de river, / To see Miss Sally King." He is the head of the relationship, and Lucy is powerless to stop him from engaging in an extramarital affair. Lucy's social freedom is limited to dancing the cachuca and staying home to "rock the cradle".

"Miss Lucy Long and Her Answer", a version published in 1843 by the Charles H. Keith company of Boston, Massachusetts, separates the song into four stanzas from the point of view of Lucy's lover and four from Lucy herself. She ultimately shuns "de gemman Dat wrote dat little song, Who dare to make so public De name ob Lucy Long" and claims to prefer "De 'stinguished Jimmy Crow."