Farewell to Ben and Grover

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And here it is, the last entry in the 1888 Harrison Log Cabin Song Book:

SET HIM THERE K-SOCK.

And they’s still another idy ‘at I ort to here append,
In a sort o’ nota beany, fer to taper off the end,
In a manner more befittin’ to a subject jes’ in view,
Regardin’ things in politics, and what we’re goin’ to do.

Along a little later, when affairs at Washington,
‘At’s been harassin’ us so long, has got so Harrison,
We’re goin’ to give the man a seat, and set him there k-sock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.

— James Whitcomb Riley.

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Notes:

“When the Frost is on the Punkin” is perhaps the best-known of American poet James Whitcomb Riley’s works, aothough these stanzas don’t appear in the standard text.

Unfortunately, it’s in dialect.  Idy=Idea.  Nota beany = Nota bene.  And so on.  Doubly unfortunately, the word “k-sock” doesn’t appear in any dictionary of slang or Americanisms that I’ve been able to reference–I have no idea what it means (though from context it’s probably on the order of kerplunk).

Harrison, of course, is Benjamin Harrison, the Republican candidate in 1888.

No tune was given; I doubt there was one.

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Next time: the advertising material at the back of the book.  Soon after, an index of titles and first lines!