@alexhall@mastodon.social @BorrisInABox@fwoof.space No, Dinah is the captain's partner/wife/whatever. So his penis is her horn, that he wants her to blow for him. Also, the kitchen verse came from a different song. It was originally published as "Old Joe, or Somebody in the House with Dinah" around 1834 to 1845, music credited to J.H. Cave, and it got bolted onto the railroad song later. That song is explicitly about courting, if you look at the original lyrics. Sorry in advance for the blackface. But lyrics from that song, as published in Phil Rice's Banjo Instructor in 1858, include the singer suspecting that someone is "making lub wid my Dinah", and "somebody's in de house wid Dinah, a playin on de old banjo", before ending with a threat to "knock him on de head wid dis Banjo". I have not included the full 1894 text, as it includes an extremely racist verse about jail and regional stereotypes that I do not feel comfortable reproducing here. Anyway, the two songs eventually got merged at some point into the song we know today.