Red as her lips, and taper as her waist,
She walks the round, and culls one favored beau,
Who leaps the luscious tribute to bestow.”
In “traits of American humor” a writer said, “there was a corn husking, and I went along with Sol. Stebbins. There was all the gals and boys setting around and I got sot down so near Sal Babit that I’ll be darned if I didn’t kiss her before I knowed what I was about.” In the South the corn husk was called a shuck, and President Lincoln showed his familiarity with southern terms, when, after his conference at Fortress Monroe with Alexander H. Stephens, the vice president of the Confederacy, who was a very small man, weighing not more than ninety or a hundred pounds, and on that occasion wore an immense borrowed overcoat, which came down to his heels, he described Mr. Stevens as the smallest ear in the largest shuck he had ever seen.
Husking time among the negroes of North Carolina was always a season of relaxation and frolic. The following now no longer heard was among the husking songs they sang.
“Oh boys! Come along and shuck the corn;
Oh boys! Come along to the rattle of the horn!
We’ll shuck and sing to the coming of the moon,
And den we’ll ford the river.
Oh Bob Ridley, O! O! O!