I actually haven’t heard many recorded versions of “I Wonder As I Wander” (is it not very popular?). But Barbra Streisand’s is very good. She’s anything but ornery, in either sense.
(4/4) So I like to think that when Annie Morgan got up in that mountain church in 1933 to sing about “poor ornery people,” she had both meanings in mind. We’re just ordinary folks, you and I, nothing fancy ... and some of us are mean, cantankerous sons-of-guns. Either way, Jesus came for people like us.
(3/4) Digging into the OED entry for “ornery” a bit more ... its secondary meaning of “mean, cantankerous, contrary” emerged in the late 19th century. A sample quote from 1849 describes “an old one-horned cow, mighty onnery lookin,” which the OED glosses as “ordinary.” Having known a few old cows, I’m not so sure. But by 1887, a quote about “an onery scamp of a Republican” definitely implies something more.
(2/4) As it turns out, “I Wonder As I Wander” has rural roots, too. It was written in 1933 by John Jacob Niles, a folklorist who claimed he heard a girl named Annie Morgan sing a scrap of the song in a church deep in the North Carolina mountains. He later expanded it into a full hymn.
So ... I wonder if the word “ornery” in 1930s Appalachia had the same meaning as “ornery” from my rural Midwest childhood?
More Christmas carol trivia! (1/4)
Have you ever noticed that unusual word in “I Wonder As I Wander” ... which says Jesus came “for poor ornery people like you and like I”?
The OED defines “ornery” as “ordinary,” a regional form dating from the 1700s in the American South. But in rural Nebraska, where I grew up, it meant “bad-tempered,” often in reference to animals: “Watch out for that bull, he’s ornery.” You might call a grumpy old guy an “ornery cuss.”
Ethan Campbell