"Hog Eye and a Tater", also known as "Hog Eye", "Hog Eyed Man", "Granny Will Your Dog Bite?", "Fire on the Mountain" or "Boating Up Sandy" is an old-time breakdown known in southwestern Pennsylvania in A Dorian ('A' part) & A Mixolydian or Major ('B' part). The parts are played AB.
It is a widespread modal tune and song with several variants and titles in the upland South that shifts between dorian and mixolydian and, in some cases, dipping into major tonality. Researcher Gus Meade found it published under the title “Hog-Eye Jig” as early as 1853 in Septimus Winner’s Winner’s Collection for the Violin. It was first recorded by Crockett’s Kentucky Mountaineers in November 1928.
It was collected from Irvin Yaugher Jr. of Mt. Independence, PA on October 19, 1943. He learned it from his great-uncle. Glen Lynn, Virginia, fiddler Henry Reed's version is quite close to the one played by Irvin Yaugher.
This is not the melody which accompanies the well known and often recorded sea shanty called "Hog eye" nor is it the play party song tune with a similar name known farther south (found in Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. The tune is very similar to "Sally in the Garden" which is also known by some of the same aliases as this.
In Fayette County, this tune has the following associated rhyme:
I went down to Sally's house
'Bout ten o'clock or later;
All she had to give to me
Was a hog-eye and a 'tater.
The rhyme accompanying the set known in Greene County is:
As I was going down the street,
A pretty little girl I chanced to meet;
I stepped right up and kissed her sweet,
And asked her for some hog-eye meat.
It was printed in Bayard's Hill Country Tunes (1944) and Milliner & Koken's Milliner-Koken Collection of American Fiddle Tunes (2011).