In June 1959 folksong collector Philip Kennedy attended a Tart family reunion in Benson, North Carolina, where he heard Carlie Tart and his sister leading a 3-verse song about Ginnie. He described the incident in his article "An Unusual Work-Song Found in North Carolina: "Ginnie's Gone to Ohio'," in North Carolina Folklore, volume 15, number 1, May 1967, pp. 30-34. The song was part of a family "group-singing" tradition going back at least a century and had originally been learned from black singers. The three verses began with "Ginnie's gone to Ohio, Ginnie's gone away," "Ginnie's a pretty girl, don't you know," and "Ginnie's dressed in her strings and rags." The chorus was "(Oh) Ginnie's gone away, Ginnie's gone to Ohio, Ginnie's gone away." In the article, Phil mentions two parallels to the song: "Jenny shake her toe at me, Jenny gone away," which was reported as early as 1839 from black singers on St. Simon's Island, Georgia; and the sea chantey, "Tom's Gone to Hilo."
I learned the song from Phil Kennedy in 1960. I soon added three verses and have performed it many times since, occasionally as "Jenny's Gone To Ohio." My melody with Kennedy's words and notes appeared in Sing Out!, vol. 17, no. 2, April-May 1967, pp. 16-17.
In 1977 Rich Kirby and Michael Kline recorded a version titled "Jenny's Gone Away" on their LP, June Appal JA 0012, They Can't Take It Back. This version is printed on p. 146 of Rise Up Singing: The Group-Singing Song Book (1988), with credit for new words by Rich and Michael. Their verses, based on experiences while working in Appalachia, include: ".... worked until her hair turned gray," "Jenny's man died in the Farmington mine ... company insurance didn't treat her so kind," and "Jenny didn't want to go away ... the company took her place to stay." (The local reference is to the Farmington mine in Marion County, West Virginia, where seventy-eight miners were killed in an explosion on November 20, 1968.)
Peggy recalls learning the song in England from an American singer. So, from wherever Ginnie or Ginny or Jenny started her journey to Ohio, her peregrinations (with added details from myself and others) eventually took her from the USA to England and back to the USA and, of course, to all those places good songs go. (Joe Hickerson, August 2003)
lyrics
Jenny's wearing strings and rags.
Jenny's gone away,
Jenny's wearing strings and rags,
Jenny's gone away,
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