“Rabbit in the Log” and “Feast Here Tonight” are two names for one Southern folk song. The singer has found a rabbit hiding in a log but has no dog to flush it out, so he works out how to catch it with a twisted briar, roast it over a fire and feast while the moon shines. Other verses follow him down the railroad track with a chicken on his back and his shoes nearly worn through, looking for a farmer’s shed to sleep in. The Traditional Ballad Index describes him as poor, a rambler and perhaps a poacher. Its earliest date for the song is 1913, a fragment in the Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina folklore.
The song reached records in the 1930s under its feast title. A record called “Gonna Have a Big Feast Here Tonight” came out on the ARC labels in May 1935, listed with the Prairie Ramblers, who broadcast on the WLS National Barn Dance. The Fiddler’s Companion thinks the Monroe Brothers probably learned the song from the Ramblers. Charlie and Bill Monroe recorded “Have a Feast Here Tonight” for Bluebird at the Hotel Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 28 January 1938, with Charlie singing lead and playing guitar and Bill singing tenor and playing mandolin. The label credited the song to Charles Monroe.
The two titles have stayed in use side by side. The Stanley Brothers sang it as “Rabbit in the Log” at the University of Chicago Folk Festival on 5 February 1961, with Carter Stanley singing lead and Ralph singing tenor. That performance appeared on the Folkways LP Friends of Old Time Music in 1964. Jim and Jesse recorded it in Nashville on 30 December 1964, with Jesse McReynolds singing lead and Jim the tenor, and Allen Shelton on banjo, Jim Brock on fiddle and Ray Edenton on second guitar. It came out on their Epic LP Y’all Come! in March 1965. Bill Monroe returned to it on 8 February 1978 at Bradley’s Barn, with his son James singing lead, and he and Doc Watson sang it together on Bill & Doc Sing Country Songs (FBN, 1975). The Lilly Brothers, Walter Forbes and David Grisman have also recorded it.
