Polly Put the Kettle On

A common East Tennessee reel that spread well beyond the mountains. The Atlanta Journal reported Wiley Harper of Monroe, Georgia, playing it at an Atlanta fiddlers' contest in April 1913, and Osey Helton, an influential western North Carolina fiddler from Tennessee, had it in his repertoire.

In 1921 an Alabama newspaper listed it, as "Sally Put the Kettle On," among tunes already being forgotten. Vance Randolph included it in his list of Ozark fiddle tunes published in 1954. The words come from the old nursery rhyme.