Introduction

Common Knowledge
The general documentation found is that composer Frank Panella's song is an old folk song. Published in 1915, it is considered a children's tune and has been used to underscore anything featuring an old horse. Popular perspective is that the song refers to a horse - and to people - that are past their prime.

The Song & Lady Suffolk
Do the math, and you realize that Lady Suffolk died 60 years before the song was published. Since she raced for 16 years starting at the age of 4, she raced until she was 20 years old. Since she died in 1855, her last race was in 1853. Play with your calculator a little more and you figure Lady Suffolk was 22 years of age when she died, which is verified in most Lady Suffolk information bytes.

In the 1940's, Mr. Panella was in his 60's. Means he had to be born near the time of Lady Suffolk's death in the late 1880's. So now you have to ask the question: why would a composer, who played saxophone in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, write a folk ditty based on a OLD & beloved New York sports legend of a horse, who died about the same time he was in diapers?

There's a famous picture by Currier & Ives of Lady Suffolk racing Lady Moscow in Philadelphia at Hunting Park course in June of 1850. Remember our calculator? She had to be 17 years old for that race - and in the picture, she was winning. So I guess that in her old age, she was doing just fine!

The Music
The Old Gray Mare / Whiffletree Song, published in 1915, was the time of World War I, ragtime and Irving Berlin. Robert Maine, Richard A. Reublin, & Beverly Maine, of PARLOR SONGS, state that solid evidence exists to indicate Panella was not the creator of the song. They elaborate:

"According to A History of Popular Music in America (1948 by Sigmund Spaeth), the song actually has its origins in an 1858 song by J. Warner titled, Down in Alabam'. According to Spaeth, this song was the original version of what is now known as the Old Grey Mare. Its words dealt with an "old hoss" that "came tearin' out de wilderness" and the tune is very nearly identical with what has become one of the world's most familiar basic melodies. Other resources credit the final version of the melody we know today to Panella but the origins of the words are still shrouded in mystery ... I think it just might be that Mr. Panella borrowed a tune from the past."

Panella may not have composed the music, nor written the lyrics. Was he simply the first to write down a popular tune and then got it published? Did he know of words that fit the tune and knew he couldn't claim the lyrics as his own, but still included them with his musical score and left the interpretation to the sheet music buyers?

Now, if you forget Panella, let's consider the original melody & lyrics. You're left with an "old hoss" that came "came tearin' out de wilderness" in 1858, three years after Lady Suffolk's death in Vermont. Makes you wonder about the identity of the "old hoss" in Alabama. The southern based lyrics probably don't have anything to do with a famous gray mare who raced up in the land of the Yankee.

About Horses
1915 was also the beginning of the automobile revolution & WWI. While the caissons kept rolling along, many of them were horse driven & horses were still widely used for transportation and hauling goods. And just like the inevitable demise of an old car, the reduced usefulness of a good horse as it aged was something to be lamented, especially after many years of steady service.