Um, testicles are balls–literally. So I don’t imagine that such an accurately descriptive word would be a modern invention.
I always heard it as “Like a sailor going home” Which we assumed was the duffel bag thrown over your shoulder when your going home…
It makes the most sense to me
I believe balls (or “ballocks”) was used by Elizabethan playwrights, like Shakespeare & Marlow, who wrote about 100-150 years before this song. So I’d think it certainly would have been a slang term by then.
My guess would be that the line “Like a Continental [or Regimental] soldier” resulted from an attempt to come up with something that rhymed and scanned with “Can you throw them over your shoulder,” and not from any actual military customs or practices.
There was an underware commercial that showed boxers and briefs hanging on the line while in the background, you heard, “Dooo yoouuur boys hang low? Do they wobble too and fro? . . .”
I had a clip of the commercial, but I can’t seem to find it.
I always thought it was a bowdlerization of the original `lousy fucking soldier’.
No, it is not a kid’s song. I figure it was sung by the troops when they were route-marching.
As a kid hearing this song the words “like a dead soldier” were used instead of “like a continental soldier”. This makes more sense as a dead soldier was often thrown over the shoulder to carry him.
That’s why it is funny, it is a humorous exaggeration.
So that’s where Willow Smith ripped her song off from: “I whip my hair back and forth, (like Continental soldier.)”
We sang it as “Yankee Doodle Soldier.”
As far as throwing them over your shoulder, doesn’t it make sense that it would be because if you threw something over your shoulder(s) it would look like their uniform in the back, with the white strap going down diagonally across the back from each shoulder?
Do zombies have balls?
Balls as slang for testicles dates to the 14th century.
The precise origins of this song are not clear, although it clearly was derived from Turkey in the Straw, a staple of the early 19th century minstrel circuit. It most likely dates to the civil war era, and the boobs/balls variations came later.
I always thought “Continental” referred to “The Continent”, Europe as opposed to Britain. The thought of Continental soldiers in the Revolutionary War did not cross my mind.
According to Online Etymology the term balls was used in 14th century. well before the continental war. so it is quite possible that the original lyrics were about balls, and during the continental war. And, as mentioned before, soldiers (or in fact any man) exaggerating the size of their junk is quite common and endures to today. balls | Search Online Etymology Dictionary
Well, I first learned “Do your balls hang low?” in the Army (US, that is) in 1945. The second verse, which was very common then was,
“Is your cock in line,
With the center of your spine,
Is it long, is it short,
Is it little liee mine?
Do your balls hang loooow?”