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Sipping Cider Through a Straw

song composed by Carey Morgan and Lee David

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMar 27, 2024
Entity authorityQ16938598 ↗
Source-derived summary

"Sipping Cider Through a Straw" is a folk song of uncertain origin. A minstrel song titled "Sucking Cider Thro' a Straw", with words and music attributed to W. Freear, was published in 1894 by White-Smith in the United States; this composition may be the origin of the folk song, or may owe its own origin to the folk song.

W. Freear was a comic performer with Moore & Burgess's Minstrels in the late 19th century. His song "Suckin' Cider Thro' a Straw" was published in Great Britain by Charles Sheard & Co., and Sheard also held the U.S. copyright. It was noted in waltz time in the key of F. The first line is "The funniest girl that I ever saw, Was sucking cider thro' a straw". The lyrics go on to describe how a man ends up married because of sucking cider through a straw with a girl; the White-Smith sheet music advertised it as "drolly delivered to shrieks of laughter".

In The American Songbag (1927), Sandburg's sources reported "Sipping Cider" as a folk song, heard in Pickens County, Georgia by one and Taylorville, Illinois by the other.

"Sipping Cider Through a Straw", in numerous variations, has been part of the repertory at American summer camps for many years.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sipping Cider Through a Straw” as song composed by Carey Morgan and Lee David. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1894, 1927—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1919. The account is most persuasive where Sipping, Cider and Straw can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as song composed by Carey Morgan and Lee David. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 27, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q16938598. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1894 and 1927.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sipping Cider Through a Straw”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sipping Cider Through a Straw primary sources, Sipping Cider Through a Straw archive and Sipping research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sipping Cider Through a Straw”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Sipping Cider Through a Straw” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.