“Bile Them Cabbage Down” (also spelled “Boil Them Cabbage Down” or “Boil ‘Em Cabbage Down”) is one of the most ubiquitous tunes in American old-time and bluegrass repertoires — routinely the first tune a beginning fiddler or banjo player learns. Its origins are debated and probably mixed.
The folklorist Ralph Rinzler traced the tune to an early English country dance called “Smiling Polly,” in print as early as 1765. Alan Lomax, by contrast, identified the tune as having African origins, calling it “a negro reel tune which has become universally popular among white square dance musicians” and noting that early 20th-century song collections by White, Scarborough, and Brown documented the tune from black informants. The two readings aren’t necessarily exclusive: like much American folk music, “Bile Them Cabbage Down” likely combines European dance-tune structure with Black American rhythmic and melodic sensibility.
The song’s lyrics turn on a recurring image of cooking cabbage and cornbread — “bile them cabbage down, turn them hoecakes round” — with a hoecake being a thin cornmeal cake originally baked on a hoe. The tune has been recorded countless times since the early 20th century and is so widely played at jam sessions across old-time, bluegrass, and country traditions that it is sometimes used as a teaching piece for new players to enter their first jam.
