Parallel Anthology Track 63

Track 63: Bascom Lamar Lunsford - I Wish I was a Mole in the Ground  Brunswick 219-B; Recorded in Ashland, Kentucky, April 1928

Record label does not assign authorship, nor do the notes in either Anthology booklet or www.78discography.com.

The Roud Folksong Index classifies this song as a version of Roud 4957. A Roud number search returns only one version which pre-dates Lunsford's 1924 recording of the same song on Okeh 40155.

Lunsford said of this song, "I've known it since 1901 when I heard Fred Moody, then a high school boy, sing it down in Burke County." , calling it "a fine type of indigenous American banjo song extant in the Great Smoky and Blue Ridge mountain region of the south, and has numerous unrelated stanzas born out of the hilarity of mountain banjo 'picking." 

These are good grounds for treating this composition as public domain.

Parallel anthology main index page

Alternative Versions
Mole in the Ground by Logan English   album released in 1962 (according to folkways.si.edu): Spotify   According to this album's liner notes, credit for this version is assigned to Bascom Lamar Lunsford, with the exception to the lyrics of the last verse.

Mole in the Ground by Basom Lamar Lunsford   album released in 1953 (according to folkways.si.edu): Spotify   Lunsford never claimed credit for writing or arranging this song (see above)