“Blue-Tail Fly”

Cultural  

1. A popular nineteenth-century American song; the speaker in the song is an African-American slave. Its refrain is: “Jimmy crack corn, and I don't care; / My master's gone away.”

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Example Sentences

About five years ago tubby troubadour Burl Ives first heard The Blue-Tail Fly: When I was young I used to wait On master and give him his plate, And pass the bottle when he got dry, And brush away the blue-tail fly.

From Time Magazine Archive

One chanced to bite him on the thigh; The devil take the blue-tail fly!

From Time Magazine Archive

He died and the jury wondered why The verdict was the blue-tail fly.

From Time Magazine Archive

Ives managed to talk 20th Century-Fox out of tampering with The Blue-Tail Fly, though he did have to bowdlerize his other favorite, Foggy, Foggy Dew, an old Irish ballad.

From Time Magazine Archive