"Don't Bet Your Money on the Shanghai!"

Last weekend my girlfriend Michele and I went to see The Stephen Foster Story at My Old Kentucky Home State Park in Bardstown. During the musical, they played and sang a catchy Foster tune that I hadn't heard before called, "Don't Bet Your Money on the Shanghai." Like most of Foster's songs, this one was meant for the minstrel crowd, and also like many of his songs, it was written in slave dialect. The lyrics to the song are:

De Shanghai chicken, when you put him in de pit,
He'll eat a loaf of bread up, but he can't fight a bit.
De Shanghai fiddle is a funny little thing,
And ebry time you tune him up he goes ching ching.

Oh! de Shanghai!Don't bet your money on de Shanghai,
Take de little chicken in de middle ob de ring
But don't bet your money on de Shanghai.

I go to de fair for to see de funny fowls,
De double headed pigeon an de one eyed owls.
De old lame goose wid no web between his toes,
He kills himself a laughing when de Shanghai crows.

Oh! de Shanghai!Don't bet your money on de Shanghai,
Take de little chicken in de middle ob de ring,
But don't bet your money on de Shanghai.

De Shanghai's tall but his appetite is small,
He'll only swallow ebry thing that he can overhaul.
Four bags of wheat just as certain as your born,
A bushel of potatoes and a tub full of corn.

Oh! de Shanghai!Don't bet your money on de Shanghai,
Take de little chicken in de middle ob de ring,
But don't bet your money on de Shanghai. (1861)

Of course, the topic of the song is cockfighting. Pitting fighting roosters against one another has an ancient history, and is still very popular in countries such as Mexico, India, Pakistan, and the Philippines. Cockfighting is now outlawed in every state in America; Louisiana, in 2007, was the last to abolish the sport. But, in the 19th century it was a very popular form of sporting entertainment. Like horse racing, another favorite sport of the South, cockfighting offered the opportunity to gamble. Small fortunes were won and lost on the ability of one rooster to spur and peck to death another. In the fictional book Roots, Chicken George was an expert fighting trainer who lost his opportunity for freedom when his master lost a cockfight and had to sell George.

These birds are trained and conditioned to increase their stamina and killing ability. Roosters are innately aggressive toward other males of their species, and it doesn't take much to make them fight to the death.

Travelers to the South in the 19th century often commented on cockfighting, which must say something to is commonness. One traveler moving through eastern North Carolina in 1857, observed that, "a crowd of shabby-looking white men and negroes collected behind an open space behind the stable, placing wagers of ten to twenty-five cents on the outcome of the match."

Although outlawed, cockfights, just like dogfights (see Michael Vick), still happen illegally in our present times. In barns and sheds, not only in the South, but throughout the United States, stakes are still wagered on the fighting merits of birds. I think this says something to the nature of traditions in United States. History dies hard sometimes.