en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton-Eyed_Joe

The origins of this song are unclear, although it predates the 1861–1865 American Civil War. American folklorist Dorothy Scarborough (1878–1935) noted in her 1925 book On the Trail of Negro Folk-songs that several people remembered hearing the song before the war. Scarborough’s account of the song came from her sister, Mrs. George Scarborough, who learned the song from “the Negroes on a plantation in Texas, and other parts from a man in Louisiana”. The man in Louisiana knew the song from his earliest childhood and heard slaves singing it on plantations. Both the dance and the song had many variants.

The melody of the song may have originated in Ireland. Paddy Moloney of The Chieftains was on tour in Texas when he heard the song and immediately identified it as an old Irish folk melody, “The Mountain Top”.

A number of possible meanings of the term “cotton-eyed” have been proposed. The phrase may refer to: being drunk on moonshine, or having been blinded by drinking wood alcohol, turning the eyes milky white; a black person with very light blue eyes; miners covered in dirt with the exception of their white eyes; someone whose eyes were milky white from bacterial infections of trachoma or syphilis, cataracts or glaucoma; or the contrast of dark skin tone around white eyeballs in black people.

📺 The Chieftains - The Mountain Top/Cotton Eyed Joe - Norwegian TV 1993