"Shortnin' Bread" (also spelled "Shortenin' Bread", "Short'nin'
Bread" or "Sho'tnin' Bread") is a song written by James Whitcomb
Riley in 1900. A folk version titled "Shortened Bread", was collected
from East Tennessee in 1912 and published by E.C. Perrow in 1915.
Shortening bread refers to a fried batter bread, made of corn meal,
flour, hot water, eggs, baking powder, milk and shortening.
Riley's original lyrics were set in the faux Negro dialect of the
minstrel era:
Two little niggers lyin’ in bed,
One of ’em sick an’ de odder mos’ dead.
Call for de doctor an’ de doctor said,
Feed dem darkies on short’nin' bread.
It is song #4209 in the Roud Folk Song Index. It was printed in John Lomax's
American Ballads and Folk Songs and in Alan Lomax's Folk Songs of North America.
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