another idiom in a song

[cmic]

Hello.

I'm back with another excerpt from the song "Kicking mule"

The verse goes like this :

"I went down to the huckleberry picninc
Dinner all over the ground.
Skippers in the meat where nine foot deep,
And the green flies walking all around"

And the sons continues with the story of mule, a lady. Double sense ...

I would like to understand "Skippers (or may be Skeppers ?) in the meat where nine foot deep"

You can fint the lyrics on bluegrasslyrics.com

Any hint appreciated
TYA
--
michel marcon (aka cmic) banjo player

[BobK]

I've no idea what skippers are - probably some sort of food. 'Where' seems to be a mistranslation of were.

b

[5jj]

They appear to be something as undesirable as bugs - The New England farmer - Thomas Greene Fessenden - Google Books

If they were nine feet deep, they had bored themselves well into the meat!

[cmic]

I've no idea what skippers are - probably some sort of food. 'Where' seems to be a mistranslation of were.

b

Oops. My bad. this is a typo. You should read were, not where.

--
cmic

[cmic]

They appear to be something as undesirable as bugs -

If they were nine feet deep, they had bored themselves well into the meat!

How come you find these words in an obscure book? Anyway. This is what I suspected: skippers (or skeppers) are worms or something like this. The next verse is about green flies, which proves, once again, that the meat is not... very fresh

Thanks for your answer.
--
cmic

[5jj]

How come you find these words in an obscure book?

One answer could be that I am extremely well read.

The other could be that Google is not perfect, but it's pretty useful most of the time..

[TheEditor]

I could only guess what "skeppers" (i.e., skippers) were -- I assumed they were some sort of insect. And I got my answer from a University of Kentucky Web page that identifies skippers as the larval stages of small flies.

They get their name from the way they move -- and they're scavengers that consume organic wastes.

So ... "skeppers in the meat ... nine foot deep" describes a very unsanitary condition of the food.