"The Black Joak", also known as "Black Joker", "Black Jack", "Black Jake", "Black Jock", "The Black Joke", "But the House and Ben the House" (Shetland), "Coal-Black Joak", "The Scottish Lovers" or "Sprig of Shillelah" is an English, Scottish, Irish and Shetlands country dance, jig and morris dance tune in 6/8 time and G Major (Aird, Bacon, Carlin, Cooke, Mallinson, O'Farrell, Raven, Sumner, Thompson, Vickers) or A Major (Bacon, Gow, Merryweather & Seattle, O'Flannagan). The parts are played AB (Bacon {Stanton Harcourt}, Gow, Thompson), AAB (Aird, Bacon {Ilmington}, Carlin, Cooke (two versions), Mallinson {Adderbury version}), AABB (Hall & Stafford, Mallinson {Bledington version}, Merryweather & Seattle, Raven, Sumner, Vickers) and AABBCCDDEE (O'Farrell). "The Black Joke" was a widely popular street song in England in the early 1700's. It is irregular in form in many versions, its opening phrase has six measures, while the second has ten. The initial phrase in this Adderbury version brings to mind the sea chantey "Row, Bullies, Row". There is a suggestion, however, that the tune began in Dublin as the vehicle for a ballad opera. It was published on a song-sheet c. 1720 with the title "The Original Black Joke Sent from Dublin" and subsequently was included as "Coal-Black Joak" in the popular and successful The Beggar's Wedding: A New Opera, as it is acted at the Theatre in Dublin with Great Applause and at the Theatre in the Hay-market (1729). Early English printed collections (from London publishers) that contain the tune are Walsh's Third Collection of Lancashire Jiggs, Hornpipes, Joaks, etc. (c. 1730), Walsh's Twenty Four Dances for the Year 1730, Johnson's Wrights Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, vol. 1 (c. 1742) and Charles and Samuel Thompson's 200 Country Dances volume II (1765). It was included in the first volume of Allan Ramsay's popular Tea-Table Miscellany (1730). It is played today as the tune for the Lichfield Morris Dance called "The Barefooted Quaker" and for dances from other morris traditions. Mallinson's morris dance tune versions, for example, are from the Adderbury and Bledington areas of England's Cotswolds, while Bacon's are from the Adderbury, Ascot-under-Wychwood, Bledington, Ilmington, and Stanton Harcourt. It was printed sources in Aird's Selection of Scotch, English, Irish and Foreign Airs, vol. 2 (1785) (appears as "Black Jock"), Bacon's A Handbook of Morris Dances (1974), Carlin's The Master Collection of Dance Music for Violin (1984), Cooke's The Fiddle Tradition of the Shetland Isles (1986), Gow's Complete Repository, Part 4 (1817) (appears as "Black Jock"), Hall & Stafford's Charlton Memorial Tune Book (1956) (appears as "Black Jack"), Johnson's Scottish Fiddle Music in the 18th Century (1984), Kirkpatrick's John Kirkpatrick's English Choice (2003), Laybourn's Köhler's Violin Repository, vol. 3 (1885), Mallinson's Mally's Cotswold Morris Book, vol. 1 (1988), Merryweather & Seattle's Lawrence Leadley, the Fiddler of Helperby (1994), O'Farrell's Pocket Companion, vol. 2 (c. 1806), Offord's John of the Green: Ye Cheshire Way (1985), O'Flannagan's Hibernia Collection (1860), Oswald's Caledonian Pocket Companion, vol. 7 (1760), Raven's English Country Dance Tunes (1984) (Black Jack), Seattle/Vickers's Great Northern Tune Book, part 2 (1987), Sumner's Lincolnshire Collections, vol. 1: The Joshua Gibbons Manuscript (1997), Thompson's Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 2 (1765), Samuel, Anne & Peter Thompson's The Hibernian Muse (1787), Walsh's Complete Country Dancing-Master, Volume the Fourth (1740) and Wright's Compleat Collection of Celebrated Country Dances, vol. 1 (1740). It was recorded by Barry Phillips on The World Turned Upside Down (1992), Chris Bartram (et al) on The Traditional Morris Dance Music Album and John Kirkpatrick on Plain Capers (1976).