thumb|Lane –1875
thumb|Later illustration of Lane
George Martin Lane (December 24, 1823 – June 30, 1897) The song is set to the tune of an old song titled "Sipping Cider Through a Straw".
According to Morgan, the song is based upon an actual experience of Lane's at a restaurant in Boston, although the reality involved a half-portion of macaroni, rather than a fish ball. The song goes on to relate the impoverished diner's embarrassment at the hands of a disdainful waiter. After becoming popular among Harvard undergraduates, it was translated into a mock Italian operetta, Il Pesceballo, by faculty members Francis James Child, James Russell Lowell and John Knowles Paine, set to a pastiche of grand opera music and performed in Boston and Cambridge to raise funds for the Union Army. A fish ball, in New England, was fish and potatoes, pan fried together for breakfast.
In 1944, the song was revived by Tin Pan Alley songwriters Hy Zaret and Lou Singer in a more bluesy format as "One Meat Ball" and popularized by Tony Pastor: The recording by Josh White later became one of the biggest hits of the early part of the American folk music revival. Lightnin' Hopkins, Lonnie Donegan, Dave Van Ronk, Ry Cooder, Washboard Jungle, Tom Paxton, Shinehead, Ann Rabson, Calvin Russell, Josh White, among others.