Goober Peas

Composer	"P. Nutt, Esq.", see below
Lyricist	"A. Pindar, Esq."
Year Published	1866 officially
Type	Songs the Soldiers Sang
Comments	The "goober peas" of this extremely popular Confederate camp song are plain, old-fashioned peanuts. In the waning days of the war, Johnny Reb subsisted on increasingly short rations. For long stretches of time, his diet might consist solely of "goobers" - which wasn't very good for the digestion but helped produce one of the best songs of the Civil War. There is no record of the song having been published during the war, the first editions appearing in 1866, crediting the words to "A. Pindar, Esq." and the music to "P. Nutt, Esq." Every Southerner immediately recognized the names as obvious pseudonyms for "goobers." An Alabama woman who learned the song in childhood from her mother reports that the Georgia soldiers in the Civil War were always known as "goober grabbers." The Alabama version consists only of one verse and chorus, the verse close to but still somewhat different from the third verse of the original: 'Twas just before the battle, Before the fight begun, The general looked around him And swore he heard a gun, And what did he see before him Underneath the trees? But the Georgia militia Cracking goober peas. Crack, crack, crack, crack, Cracking goober peas, etc. Songs of the Civil War, p.168
	goober A derivative of the African word nguba, "goober" is a southern U.S. name for peanut. It's also referred to as a "goober pea." from The Food Lover's Companion, 2nd Edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst, Barron's Educational Services, Inc.