Over the years, many variants of text have appeared, but the basic narrative remains intact. On the surface, the song is a black slave’s lament over his master’s death. The song, however, has a subtext of rejoicing over that death, and possibly having caused it by deliberate negligence.[1] Most versions at least nod to idiomatic African American English, though sanitized, grammatically “correct” versions predominate today.

The blue-tail fly of the song is probably a Southern variant of the horsefly, which feeds on the blood of animals such as horses and cattle, as well as humans, and thus constitutes a prevalent pest in agricultural regions. Some horseflies have a blue-black abdomen, hence the name.