American Folk Songs 2 volumes : A Regional Encyclopedia

American Folk Songs

American Folk Songs A Regional Encyclopedia

Norm Cohen

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cohen, Norm, 1936– American folk songs : a regional encyclopedia / Norm Cohen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–34047–5 (set) ISBN 978–0–313–34048–2 (volume 1 : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–313–34049–9 (volume 2 : alk. paper) 1. Folk songs, English—United States—History and criticism. I. Title. ML3551.C55 2008 782.42162'13—dc22 2008019924 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2008 by Norm Cohen All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008019924 ISBN: 978–0–313–34047–5 (set) 978–0–313–34048–2 (vol. 1) 978–0–313–34049–9 (vol. 2) First published in 2008 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.greenwood.com Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

To my parents, of blessed memory; one in Iowa born, the other in the Ukraine; They brought together the traditions of the New World and the Old—and so do the songs in this collection.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

Political Chronology

1. New England 2. Midland ( North Atlantic)

xix

1 95

3. Upper South

185

4. Deep South and the Ozarks

292

5. Great Lakes

389

6. Midwest Plains

472

7.

508

Southwest

8. Mountain Region

559

9. Far West and Pacific

620

viii

CONTENTS

Appendix: Songs Excluded

699

Bibliography

711

Song Index

723

Index

737

Acknowledgments

The information revolution of recent decades has dramatically altered the conduct of library research, shortening by orders of magnitude the time required for processing loans and copying requests. The proliferation of specialized library catalogs online enable virtual visits to substitute physical ones—though with the concomitant loss of the pleasure of actually seeing and handling the physical artifacts. When I was able to visit the institutions, I was rewarded with the cooperation, understanding, patience, and knowledge of the respective staff members. I think in particular of my visits to the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University, Hay Library at Brown University, the Boston Athenaeum, the New York Historical Society and New York Public Library, the Randall Mills Archive at the University of Oregon, and the Ethnomusicology Archive at UCLA. Other staff members have greatly facilitated my research from a distance: the American Antiquarian Society, the Arizona State Library, the Beinicke Library at Yale University, the California State Library at Sacramento, the County of El Dorado Historical Museum at Placerville, California, the William Clements Library at the University of Michigan, the Duke University Library’s Special Collections, the Fife Archive at Utah State University, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Lilly Library at Indiana University, the Special Collections Department at Johns Hopkins University, Minnesota Historical Society, and the Rhode Island Historical Society. Curating rare and valuable printed materials or manuscripts can potentially inspire a degree of possessiveness that hinders accessibility, but invariably the staffs at these institutions displayed a heartwarming spirit of helpfulness and cooperation. I am grateful to them all. I have a special word of praise for the Interlibrary Loan staff of the Multnomah County Library. They have shown exemplary resourcefulness, efficiency, and speed in locating and securing obscure and scarce publications when called upon.

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A number of friends and colleagues have provided help and advice: Lew Becker, Paul Charosh, David Cohen, Ron Cohen, Ed Cray, Archie Green, Jim Griffith, Pekka Gronow, David Kemp, Jim Leary, Richard Lingenfelter, Guy Logsdon, Anne Dhu McLucas, Bill Murlin, Harry Stein, Saul Schniderman, and Bob Waltz. My thanks to all of you—and apologies to others whose names have slipped my mind. My gratitude also to Debra Adams at Greenwood, for initiating this project and supporting it enthusiastically. To the memories of D. K. Wilgus and Ed Kahn, who did much to start my path of inquiry that eventually led to this book, I pause to pay my respects. To my wife and best friend, whose patience and sympathies I have often taxed unreasonably, I offer love and thanks.

Introduction

“What did Delaware, boys, what did Delaware? I ask you again as a personal friend, what did Delaware?” “She wore a New Jersey, boys, she wore a New Jersey I tell you again as a personal friend, She wore a New Jersey.”

So begins a folk song of the early twentieth century, long sung at summer camps, community sings, and in children’s groups. Though it may be best remembered as a hit recording by Perry Como in the 1960s, it was traditional well before that, and still inspires homemade variations. (Successive stanzas invoke puns on other state names: “What did Tennessee? She saw what Arkansaw,” “What did Ida-hoe? She hoed her Maryland,” etc.) But—taking the opening question in a slightly different vein—we can ask, what did the early Delawareans wear? As recently emigrated settlers to a strange and mysterious continent, they surely wore whatever was the style among the British (or Dutch, or Swedish) towns and villages whence they came. Similarly for America’s other first-generation immigrants: they wore the clothing of late-seventeenth- or early-eighteenth-century Europe or Africa. The voluntary immigrants probably brought a few trunks with some additional clothing; one assumes the Africans were not offered such an opportunity. Once in America, these people would have worn out the clothing they brought and then, if they could have afforded, continued to import finished garments from their mother countries. By the late eighteenth century, as Americans developed a sense of their own identity, not only political but also social and cultural, they would have inclined more to make their own clothes or purchase from local tailors or dressmakers. Different circumstances of climate, occupation, and availability would necessarily have prompted changes in their clothing styles. However, the fact that clothing serves well-defined purposes, regardless of where and when the

xii

INTRODUCTION

wearers dwell, means the unessential features—color, decoration, frills, material—might change, but a sixteenth-century pilgrim would have no trouble recognizing a twenty-firstcentury pair of trousers for what they are. To a considerable extent, much the same can be said for other immigrant cultural baggage, whether worn, manipulated, read, or sung. Those brave souls brought some songs with them and continued to sing them in America. But changing conditions—occupation, climate, politics, mores, technology, interests—made some of their traditional songs lose their appeal, and occasioned their replacement with newer songs. Of course, we are presupposing that they sang something. To twenty-first-century urbanites, this may not be entirely obvious, in view of the extent to which we now, as a society, rely on electronic and mechanical devices to bathe us with what passes for music. For the past millennium (if not longer), Western societies have enjoyed entertainment by professional songwriters and music makers; that in itself is not a new phenomenon. It is safe to say, though, that as greater numbers of us could afford professional entertainment (in person or via electronic media), we have concurrently chosen to abdicate personal music making in their favor. Today, public music making is not a uniformly distributed vocation or avocation. Young children sing in school yards; teens put together rock bands; elders sing in churches and temples; parents and schoolteachers croon to youngsters; and we can all chime in on “Star Spangled Banner” at a baseball game or “Happy Birthday to You” when the table next to us at the restaurant fetes one of its participants. Yet outside of these brief experiences, for many of us, public music making is a rare event. The transformation did not come suddenly. Nor can we lay the blame at television’s door, much as some critics would like. Musical self-entertainment has declined as a result of a succession of innovations of the last century and a half that have offered enticing alternatives, starting with the minstrel stage and vaudeville, then the player piano and gramophone/phonograph, then the recreational automobile and the motion pictures, then radio and television, and finally, the newer electronic media so compact that we can hide them away in our pockets, purses, and ears. So let it be acknowledged that folk music is not driven out by education or urbanization, but it certainly is a delicate and precious bloom that is easily crowded out by vigorous and hardy commercial competitors. There are various ways to define a folk or traditional song. I take the perspective that these are songs that survive in a community without the need for commercial media. In other words, it matters not who made the song, or how it was first disseminated; if, at some time in its existence, it was perpetuated by transmission from person to person or community to community by noncommercial means (generally orally, but some other media can serve), then during that period, it was a folk song. A song can start out as a popular or concert song and be transmitted mainly or exclusively in sheet music, song sheets (broadsides), cheap print, recordings, or public concerts. It can then lose general popularity (the sheet music and books and CDs fall out of print; the copyrights expire), but still enjoy some currency in particular groups or communities. In that phase it is a folk song, and can so endure for decades, or even centuries. Quite possibly, at some later date, some professional singer, performer, or songwriter might take a fancy to the piece and resurrect it—republish it, rearrange it, perform it—and suddenly, it again becomes a pop(ular) song. This is not a completely hypothetical life cycle; many American songs have traversed just such a trajectory: imported ballads, such as “Barbara Allen,” and native products, such as “Casey Jones”—and perhaps even “What Did Delaware?” These two volumes constitute a collection of songs associated with individual states (or, in some cases, regions) of the United States. To the best of our knowledge (but see subsequent discussion), they were all folk songs at one time or other; some have been long

INTRODUCTION

xiii

forgotten but are still of interest to historians, folklorists, musicologists, and sociologists concerned with the various turns of American culture and style. In the same way, we long to know what the first Delawareans wore, not necessarily so we can don such garments ourselves, but so we will appreciate all the better their lives and experiences. I have hedged a bit by asserting that “to the best of our knowledge,” they were all folk songs. While there is by no means universal agreement on what is a folk song (compare the contents of bins labeled “folk” in music stores today with the songs in a published scholarly collection of folk songs), most individuals who have studied the subject in depth concur that persistence in oral tradition for some (unspecified) duration is a sine qua non for identification as a folk song. It isn’t difficult to verify that characteristic for songs that have been recorded by folk song collectors in the last century. But what about songs of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? If oral tradition is a hallmark, are we left helpless when all the echoes of that tradition have died away? If we have no direct evidence—no recordings, no incontrovertible documentation that such items were sung and perpetuated through oral tradition—what, then, is our basis for asserting that such and such a song is or was a folk song? There are several possible kinds. In the first place, there are manuscript collections: songs written down by folks who wanted to remember texts that they liked. Many singers in the United States and England have made such ballad books (often called “ballet” or “ballit” books), some of which have found their way into libraries, archives, and personal collections. There are the logs of whaling ships. In the nineteenth century, many sailors and whalers kept journals at sea and would write down songs to while away the hours. Similarly, there are diaries of land-bound individuals, including travelers (such as westward-bound pioneers) who noted down the songs that were sung around campfires or at other social gatherings—or, better yet, wrote down the song texts themselves. There are notebooks of prisoners with little to do and lots of time to do it. There are numerous nineteenth- (and also twentieth-) century newspapers that featured regular song /poem columns, in which readers would ask for the words to a particular favorite and some other reader would supply same. When such a text does not exist in a published version, or where it differs significantly from the published version, we can be confident that the writer was reporting from memory, rather than from print. Then there is a commercial means of dissemination that is practically extinct today: the cheap print media of broadsides (also called “songsheets”), songsters, chapbooks, and almanacs—all publications that were sold by itinerant peddlers in local fairs, on street corners, or even (toward the end of their heyday) by mail from a publisher. Broadsides are single sheets of paper printed on one side and cheaply sold by the means indicated. They could have announcements, news items, religious texts, or—more pertinent to our interest—the lyrics to songs. Songsters and chapbooks were booklets, usually pocket-sized and in paper covers, ranging from 4 to 64 pages (though some songsters were 256 pages in hard cover), primarily filled with song texts, but occasionally supplemented by jokes, anecdotes, advertisements, recipes, and other matters. They rarely included printed music—generally too costly for such cheap products. The song texts were in some cases purchased or leased from legitimate music publishers, but more often, they were cribbed from other, undesignated, sources. We speculate that the printers may have written some themselves, or hired songwriters to write for them; in other cases they printed up old songs that they themselves knew, or that other folks brought them to have printed. Knowledgeable readers perusing this collection will note that (and perhaps wonder why) I have frequently selected examples from cheap print of the nineteenth century, even when traditional versions are available in folk song collections. My reasons are three: (1) most

xiv

INTRODUCTION

important, these cheap print versions are often hard to find today, and by providing them I hope to restore them to the discourse of interested parties; (2) the printed versions are almost always older and more complete texts, thus bringing us closer to the song as it was originally disseminated; and (3) the problem of copyrights is avoided (see subsequent discussion)—and incidentally, the validity of some copyrights attached to versions in folk song collections is weakened. Since Father Time marched westward with the pioneers, there are parallel shifts in the dissemination media that accompany migrations in longitude. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in New England, the broadside was the preeminent medium of cheap publication—apparently even more so than in coeval southern seaboard colonies such as the Carolinas and Virginia. By the late nineteenth century, out West, songs and poems were to be found in local newspapers and trade journals of cattlemen and farmers. By the early twentieth century, the number of phonographic recordings of local ballads and songs began to spin out of control. The appearance of a song in just one of these media is insufficient grounds for concluding that the song was a folk or traditional song, but multiple sightings in different media may cumulatively constitute a convincing case. The experienced eye of the knowledgeable song historian is essential in sorting out the reliable from the questionable evidence—and no one is error-free in making such judgments. Some songs taken from early printed sources are included mainly on the basis of textual style (they are similar to other songs of verifiable oral tradition) or tune (they are set to a traditional tune, rather than an original one). Some may pass stylistic criteria yet lack proof that they were actually sung. It is, to be sure, an imperfect process, but it is more likely to exclude traditional songs than it is to include nontraditional ones. I have resorted to plucking the fruits from these borderline trees only where the center of the orchard is too barren to yield sufficient delectables. Readers will find, as they sift through the song lore of the states, that a different aspect of history is often presented from what is encountered in our formal histories and textbooks. Folk songs and popular songs lean more toward attitudes and opinions than toward so-called historical facts. Even ballads that purport to present factual accounts may rely on second- or thirdhand sources, sometimes years old. And when the ballads present verifiable historical accounts, we are likely to find that they probe history at a level beneath that of the so-called official version. The events that singers and songwriters tend to create and remember are not necessarily the ones that deserved the newspaper headlines—nor, more to the point, careful treatments in history books an age later. If a folk song commemorates a major war battle, it is more likely to deal with the heroics or tragic death of a favorite son than with the political or tactical implications of the conflict. We should no more incline to accept the old broadsides as reliable chroniclers of past events than we would today’s supermarket tabloids. Over the years, historians have shifted from a position of ignoring popular culture documents to parading them as valuable chips of the fragmentary historical record. But the question whether songs reflect public attitudes is often not easily answered. We need more information: who wrote the song, and for what purpose and what audience? Some songs were intended as propaganda; some were wishful thinking on the part of the writers; some were written merely because the author/publisher thought they would turn a quick dollar (or shilling). Even in the past few decades, one can find pairs of songs that present diametrically opposing attitudes toward a particular social issue: divorce, fidelity, workplace, immigration, war, abortion. Songs—even the very popular or widely selling ones—are

INTRODUCTION

xv

not polls or surveys of public sentiment. Occasionally, social historians have been eager to infer preponderance of one faction or another over some social issue on the basis of a handful of published songs. Such conclusions are not always justified: the lyrics of a song surely represent somebody’s opinion, but almost certainly not nearly everybody’s. I have tried to select songs that—in their day—reflected important moments or movements in their respective states’ histories, rather than only songs that are still remembered and sung. There will thus be a systematic trend in the ages of the songs that reflects geography: the original colonies are epitomized by some songs as old as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, whereas states of the far Northwest offer little song lore from before the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. This is not so say that songs originating or popular in Vermont and Massachusetts were completely unknown west of the Mississippi; songs, like other cultural artifacts, migrate with the people, and good songs (like “Barbara Allen” and “Froggie Went a Courtin’ ”) have crossed many national boundaries and state lines and have endured for three or four centuries. But popularity and endurance are not our primary criteria in this discussion, so such songs, unless they earn special consideration on account of the way a particular community has adapted them, may be passed over. While the associations between most of the songs and their designated states are unimpeachable, readers may be inclined to quibble with a few assignments. Does the fact that a song concerns a disaster that occurred off the coast of New Jersey make it a New Jersey song? Is a song about an event that took place in a city that was, at the time, part of Virginia, but is now part of West Virginia, to be considered a Virginia song or a West Virginia song? In which state do we place a ballad about a badman born in Kentucky and hanged in West Virginia, with a life of crime unselfishly divided between the two? Readers will encounter all of these and several others where the placements can be questioned. Folklore’s respect for state lines is less consistent than the decisions of a court of arbitration. There are also instances of songs that have served the good folk of more than one state with little more than the alteration of a handful of words. “Come All You Virginia Gals” and its kin is a good example; it shows up in a dozen different states, and several variants are included here. In most states, English-language songs will predominate—we may swim in a melting pot, but most of the ingredients were dug out of fertile British soil. Nevertheless, the pot has been seasoned from thyme to thyme with extraction from many other cultural gardens. Hence there are songs reflecting the particular circumstances of Hispanic American, Franco American, and other communities as well. In some locations—Albuquerque, New Orleans, or Honolulu, for example—non-English songs will remind us that not all our nonAnglo neighbors are recent arrivals but may descend from immigrants who have been in the New World for centuries. Living at a time when too many citizens exhibit little patience for immigrant groups, we had best be well informed on the matter of who are the newcomers. And as for those Americans to whom all European Americans are newcomers: sadly, few Native American songs are textually of the sort that we are seeking in this survey. Nevertheless, to ignore them completely would perpetuate an injustice that has already continued longer than forgivable. The collection emphasizes the songs as texts since this is their aspect that informs us most readily, though it cannot be denied that a folk song without its tune is considerably disadvantaged. Where the music is not well-known abundant references are provided to books, recordings, and online sources where the music (and more examples) can be found. So what kinds of songs do we find in this survey of state-specific songs? A handful of categories stand out:

xvi

INTRODUCTION

War songs. A few from the colonial period ( French and Indian War), but mostly from the wars with Britain ( Revolutionary War and War of 1812) and the Civil War. Songs about local historical events (other than war) or institutions. These include labor disputes and mine closures, local festivals and celebrations, and noteworthy incidents, mostly the kind that do not get noticed far from the place of occurrence. Songs about local crimes and criminals. Some about prominent badmen (Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Bonnie and Clyde), others about less widely known local ne’er-do-wells. Songs about local tragedies and disasters, including occupational accidents. Train wrecks, shipwrecks, logging accidents, mining disasters, floods, fires, earthquakes, and so on. Songs in praise of, or describing, the state or its inhabitants. These include so-called booster songs— designed to lure prospective settlers to a particular town, region, or state—and also the songs of folks just puffing their chests out in a little self-congratulation. Ethnic songs (in a language other than English and /or about a minority ethnic community). These represent the Native Americans, the Spanish Americans, the Chinese and Japanese, the Franco Americans, and others—their experiences as immigrants, special events within their communities, and so on.

This classification scheme is not flawless, inasmuch as some of the songs could easily fit more than one category, and it fails to account for a sizeable number of songs that fit none of these categories. Nevertheless, the distribution of songs is as follows: CHAPTER

TYPE War Historical Crime Tragedies

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

New England Midland Upper South Deep South Great Lakes Midwest Southwest Mountain Region Far West

Total

Descriptive

Ethnic Other Total

11 13 12 13 4 1 0 2 0

2 3 14 8 7 7 5 15 10

8 9 25 18 13 2 3 3 5

11 10 13 9 12 3 0 0 2

4 3 3 3 4 5 0 3 2

0 4 0 5 3 1 6 0 9

13 8 8 18 16 13 19 32 32

49 50 75 74 59 32 33 55 60

56

71

86

60

27

28

159

487

The distribution is much less even than one might like, but the preserved record has not treated all regions of the country equally, nor is it unreasonable to conclude that some regions have just been more fecund in the generation of folk songs and ballads. There are very few copyright notices affixed to the song texts presented: this is as it should be. Only a few of the more recent songs deserve copyright protection by virtue of being the original product of one (or a few) person’s creativity within the legally prescribed time interval. Many songs in modern folk song collections have accumulated questionable copyright notices. These are defended by their presenters on the grounds that: 1. The editor “collected” the song and deserves remuneration for preserving it for posterity. 2. The arranger has artfully added some accompaniment that entitles him or her to claim compensation via copyright. 3. The song is undeniably “p.d.” (in the public domain), but no one will notice or contest a copyright claim.

INTRODUCTION

xvii

In the first two cases, the editor or arranger who has thus contributed something worthwhile to the community justly deserves financial reward, but the current mechanism of copyright protection may not be the best means for according it. Anglo American copyright laws were developed centuries ago to protect personal intellectual property rights and stimulate creativity. They were not conceived with material such as folk songs—originating in the remote past and then modified by a succession of anonymous tinkers—in mind, and the efforts to subsume traditional lore under the copyright umbrella have brought a hard rain down on many legal minds, to say nothing of those of the folk song scholars. The claim to a copyright (whether formally filed or not—a requirement deleted from the latest copyright law revisions) is no more than a claim; it is not evidence that anyone has researched the song’s history and determined (as is supposed to be done in the case of a patent claim) that good grounds exist for the claimant’s declaration. Otherwise, the more than 100 current copyrights on “Barbara Allen” (demonstrably as old as the seventeenth century) or the more than 250 on “John Henry” (from the late 1800s) would have been subject to considerable litigation. Songs in this collection without individual copyright statements are believed to be in the public domain, regardless of any assertions elsewhere to the contrary.

Political Chronology

1607 1609 1620 1633 1635 1636 1653 1664 1670 1680 1682 1689–1697 1701 1701 1702–1713 1733 1741 1744–1748 1754–1763 1763 1775–1783 1778 1781

Jamestown, Virginia, settled Santa Fe, New Mexico, founded Pilgrims land at Plymouth, Massachusetts Maryland colony settled Hartford, Connecticut, established by Puritans Providence, Rhode Island, founded by Roger Williams North Carolina settled New Netherlands seized from Dutch and renamed New York Charleston, South Carolina, founded New Hampshire made a separate colony Pennsylvania settled by William Penn King William’s War (also called the first of the four wars of the French and Indian War) Military post of Detroit, Michigan, founded Delaware chartered as separate colony Queen Anne’s War (second French and Indian War) Colony of Georgia established by Oglethorpe and others Alaska discovered by Russian explorer Vitus Bering King George’s War (third French and Indian War) French and Indian War ( part of European Seven Years’ War) Great Britain gains New France ( Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, part of Minnesota east of Mississippi River) and Spanish Florida American Revolutionary War Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii visited by English explorer James Cook General Cornwallis surrenders to American and French forces at Yorktown, effectively ending the Revolutionary War

xx

1783

1787 1787 1790 1792 1798 1800 1803 1804–1806 1805 1805 1809 1812 1812–1815 1817 1819 1819 1819 1820 1820 1821 1822 1825 1836 1836 1838 1844 1844 1845 1846 1846 1848

1848 1849 1850 1850

POLITICAL CHRONOLOGY

Treaty of Paris formally concludes Revolutionary War: Britain recognizes American independence and cedes Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and parts of Minnesota east of Mississippi River to United States; Florida is returned to Spain Northwest Territory acquired Ohio Territory established Tennessee Territory established Columbia River ( Washington and Oregon) discovered by Captain Robert Gray Mississippi becomes a territory Indiana Territory established, including Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota Louisiana Territory purchased from France President Jefferson requests Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest Michigan Territory organized Louisiana becomes a territory Illinois organized as separate territory, including eastern part of Minnesota Missouri becomes a territory War of 1812 Alabama becomes a territory U.S. claim to Texas relinquished by treaty with Spain; Texas becomes a province of Mexico; Spain withdraws claims from Oregon Arkansas becomes a territory United States acquires Spanish Florida Missouri Compromise determines limits of slavery in new territories and states Hawaii first visited by American Christian missionaries New Mexico becomes part of Mexico Florida becomes a territory Russia withdraws claims from Oregon Wisconsin Territory organized (including part of Iowa) Republic of Texas established Iowa Territory organized, including parts of Minnesota and Dakotas Hawaiian independence recognized by United States, Great Britain, and France Anti-Irish riots in Philadelphia Texas (including part of New Mexico) admitted to Union Mexican province of California conquered by United States Oregon Treaty with Great Britain establishes 49th parallel as border between U.S. and Canada Mexican War concluded by Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo; Texas-Mexico boundary fixed along Rio Grande; New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, and parts of Colorado ceded to United States Gold discovered at Sutter’s Fort, California Minnesota Territory organized New Mexico (including Arizona and part of Colorado) organized as a territory Texas transfers its claim on Wyoming to United States

POLITICAL CHRONOLOGY

1850 1853 1853 1854 1855–1856 1858 1859 1860 1860 1861 1861 1861 1863 1863 1864 1865 1867 1868 1870 1874 1889 1889 1890 1894 1896 1898 1900 1903 1907 1912

xxi

Utah Territory (including Nevada) organized Gadsden purchase from Mexico expands Arizona and New Mexico Washington (including portion of Idaho north of the 46th parallel) organized as Washington Territory Kansas-Nebraska Act creates separate Kansas and Nebraska territories; repeals Missouri Compromise of 1820 Indian War in Washington Territory Gold discovered at Cherry Creek, Colorado Silver discovered at Nevada’s Comstock Lode Gold discovered in Idaho South Carolina becomes first state to secede from Union Dakota (including much of Wyoming and Montana) organized as Dakota Territory Colorado and Nevada organized as separate territories Confederate forces attack Fort Sumter, South Carolina, beginning Civil War Arizona and Idaho both organized as separate territories West Virginia secedes from Virginia and is granted statehood Montana organized as Montana Territory General Lee’s surrender at Appomattox ends Civil War Alaska ceded by Russia to United States Wyoming Territory organized Texas readmitted to Union Gold discovered in North Dakota’s Black Hills Dakota divided into North and South Dakota; each is granted statehood Part of Oklahoma opened to white settlement Western part of Oklahoma organized as Oklahoma Territory Hawaii becomes a republic Gold discovered in Alaska War fought with Spain (Spanish-American War); Hawaii annexed by United States Hawaii established as U.S. territory Disputed Alaska–British Columbia boundary arbitrated in favor of United States Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory merge, making state of Oklahoma Alaska given territorial status

1 New England

New England was named by Captain John Smith, who explored its shores in 1614 on behalf of a group of London merchants. It was early settled by industrious English Puritans, whose work ethic was well suited to the new country, where the work was long and life too short. During the seventeenth century the population’s high esteem for education led to the development of now-honored institutions of higher learning, including Harvard (1636), Yale (1701), Brown (1764), and Dartmouth (1769). Isolated from the mother country, New England colonies evolved representative governments, stressing town meetings, an expanded franchise, and civil liberties. The area was initially distinguished by the selfsufficient farm, but its abundant forests, streams, and harbors soon promoted the growth of a vigorous shipbuilding industry as well as maritime commerce. Parts of the region were claimed by both the French and English crowns, resulting in intermittent battles between the English, the Indians, and the French from 1613 until 1763, when the British conquered the French in eastern Canada. Phases of this conflict in America were separately designated King William’s War (1689–1697), Queen Anne’s War (1702– 1713), King George’s War (1744–1748), and then the French and Indian War (1754–1763)— the American phase of the Seven Years’ War. New England’s settlement occurred mainly in 1629–1640, during which approximately 21,000 souls emigrated from East Anglia. More than half of them were artisans, and a third were farmers. Some 90 percent came in families—a much larger percentage than characterized immigration to other regions. New England remained the most “English” American region for over a century: at the time of the first national census in 1790, between 76 and 91 percent of the white population claimed English (as distinct from Scots, Irish, or European) ancestry.1

2

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

MAINE Coastal Maine is the traditional home of the “Down East Yankees”—originally English and Scotch Irish Protestant immigrants who founded the most substantial and persistent early European settlements in Maine. They set the style of dour and taciturn industry and dry wit that is characteristic of Maine legends and stories. From the 1650s until 1820, what is now Maine was virtually an annex to Massachusetts. The northeast boundary of the territory long remained a matter of serious controversy between the United States and Britain. The Treaty of Paris (1783) identified the boundary in part as extending along the middle of the St. Croix River to its source and from there north to highlands running northwest to the “head of the Connecticut river.” Identifying these highlands proved to be difficult. Efforts at arbitration failed in 1831, and the disputed area was the scene of the so-called Aroostook War of 1838–1839. In March 1839, General Winfield Scott arranged a truce calling for joint occupancy of the disputed territory. This remained in effect until 1842, when a settlement was reached that divided the territory virtually in half. Two groups of French descent make up the second largest ethnic bloc in the state. The Acadians, originally from Brittany and Normandy, were driven out of Nova Scotia in 1763 by the British; many of them settled in the St. John valley, which now forms the northern border of Maine, while others made the long trip to Louisiana. The second French Canadian migration from Quebec province began with the growth of the lumber and textile industries following the American Civil War. French is the primary language in much of the St. John Valley, and it is the second language in Maine’s industrial cities. Irish immigration to the state began in the eighteenth century, and the Irish and the French make up the bulk of Maine’s Roman Catholic population. French Huguenot and German settlements were established early near the coast. During the 1870s the state encouraged the building of a Swedish settlement in Aroostook County as part of a program for agricultural development and population growth.2 By 1790, more than three-fourths of the population of the region that was to become the state of Maine originated in England, with half of the remainder coming from Ireland (either Ulster or Irish Free State). Maine was separated from Massachusetts and admitted to the Union as the 23rd state in 1820. Lovewell’s Fight Of worthy Captain Lovewell I purpose now to sing, How valiantly he fought for his country and his king; He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide, And hardships they endured to quell the Indians’ pride. ’Twas night unto Pigwacket upon the eighth of May, They spied a rebel Indian soon after break of day; He on a bank was standing, upon a neck of land, That leads into a pond as we’re made to understand. Our men resolv’d to have him, and travell’d two miles round, Until they met the Indian, who boldly stood his ground; Then up spoke Captain Lovewell, “Take you good heed,” said he. “This rogue is to decoy us I very plainly see. “The Indians lie in ambush, in some place nigh at hand, In order to surround us upon this neck of land;

NEW ENGLAND

Therefore we’ll march in order, and each man leave his pack, That we might better fight them when they make their attack.” They came unto this Indian, who did them thus defy, As soon as they came nigh him, two guns he did let fly, Which wounded Captain Lovewell, and likewise one man more, But when this rogue was running, they laid him in his gore. Then having scalp’d this Indian, they went back to the spot here they had left their packs, but there they found them not; For the Indians having spy’d them when they them down did lay, Did seize them for their plunder and carry them away. These rebels lay in ambush, this very place hard by, So that an English soldier did one of them espy, And cried out, “Here’s an Indian,” With that they started out; As fiercely as old lions, and hideously did shout. Then spake up Captain Lovewell, when first the fight began, “Fight on, my gallant heroes! you see they fall like rain.” For as we are inform’d, the Indians were so thick A man could scarcely fire a gun and not some of them hit. .... ’Twas ten o’clock in the morning when first the fight begun, And fiercely did continue until the setting sun; Excepting that the Indians, some hours before ’twas night, Drew off into the bushes and ceas’d a while to fight. But soon again returned, in fierce and furious mood, Shouting as in the morning, but yet not half so loud; For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell, Scarce twenty of their number, at night did get home well. And that our valiant English, ’til midnight there did stay, To see whether the rebels would have another fray; But they no more returning, they made off towards their home, And brought away their wounded as far as they could come. Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four, And of the rebel Indians, there were about fourscore, And sixteen of our English did safely home return, The rest were kill’d and wounded, for which we all must mourn. Our worthy Captain Lovewell among them there did die; They killed Lieutenant Robbins and wounded good young Frye, Who was our English Chaplain, he many Indians slew, And some of them he scalp’d when bullets round him flew. Young Fullam too I’ll mention because he fought so well; Endeavouring to save a man a sacrifice he fell. But yet our valiant English in fight were ne’er dismayed, But still they kept their motion, and Wyman’s Captain made. Who shot the old chief Paugus, which did the foe defeat, Then set his men in order, and brought off the retreat; And braving many dangers and hardships in the way, They safe arriv’d at Dunstable the thirteenth day of May.3

3

4

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The above ballad was written to commemorate the deaths of several brave British soldiers (they would not yet be calling themselves American) killed by Indians in a skirmish in May 1725. The worthy Captain Lovewell had left from Dunstable, Massachusetts, in April, on an Indian raid. The Indian village of Pigwacket was located near the present-day village of Fryeburg, Maine. There, Lovewell and his patrol of some 40 men saw a lone Indian, whom they attacked and scalped. A careful reading reveals that there was probably a tactical blunder on the part of Captain Lovewell: he walked into an ambush that could have been avoided. In fact, folklorist Fannie Hardy Eckstorm concluded that there was some scandal associated with this battle, and certain details were covered up and some so-called facts altered. In the twenty-first century we are certainly familiar with reports of brave battles in wars fought on foreign soil, which we later learn were distorted to cover up errors on the part of our own troops. Evidence discussed by Eckstorm suggests that the ballad must have been written between May 24 and 27, just a few weeks after the events described. It is probably the ballad advertised by James Franklin’s print shop in the New-England Courant on May 31, “The Voluntier’s March; being a full and true Account of the bloody Fight which happen’d between Capt. Lovewell’s Company and the Indians at Pigwoket.” James Franklin was Benjamin Franklin’s brother, and Ben worked in James’s shop for several years. It was suspected that the ballad was authored by one of these Franklins, but Eckstorm argues that it was more likely the product of another Ben Franklin, our Ben’s uncle, who died in Boston in 1726. The Aroostook War Ye soldiers of Maine, Your bright weapons prepare; On your frontier’s arising The clouds of grim war. Your country’s invaded, Invaded the soil That your fathers have purchased With life blood and toil. Then “Hail the British!” Does anyone cry? “Move not the old landmarks,” The settlers reply. “Move not the old landmarks,” The scriptures enjoin, For our sons of Columbia Are west of the line.4

Folk song collector Roland Gray recovered three songs stemming from the border dispute between Maine and New Brunswick in 1839. Gray wrote, Rufus McIntire, the Maine land agent, was seized by armed New Brunswickers in the night of February 12, 1839, and taken to Frederickton jail. On the 13th, Sir John Harvey, Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick, issued a proclamation stating that the province had been invaded and calling for a draft of soldiers. This was regarded as a declaration of war, and within a week a large number of Maine men had taken up arms, acting under orders from Governor Fairfield. On the 17th, McLaughlin,

NEW ENGLAND

5

warden of public lands in New Brunswick, and Captain Tibbets of the Tibique settlement, were brought as prisoners to Bangor. Negotiations, however, led to the withdrawal of the Maine troops in March and April, and no blood was shed. The question was settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842. . . . These verses were found among the papers of the late Colonel Charles Jarvis of Ellsworth, Maine, who, in 1839, was appointed by Governor Fairfield to take charge of affairs on the Aroostok River after McIntire had been kidnapped. One of the men wrote these lines while sitting by the campfire one winter night. These facts are supplied by Mary A. Greely of Ellsworth, 1916.5 Canada-I-O Come all ye jolly lumbermen, and listen to my song, But do not get discouraged, the length it is not long, Concerning of some lumbermen, who did agree to go To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada I O. It happened late one season in the fall of fifty-three, A preacher of the gospel one morning came to me; Said he, “My jolly fellow, how would you like to go To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada I O?” To him I quickly made reply, and unto him did say: “In going out to Canada depends upon the pay. If you will pay good wages, my passage to and fro, I think I’ll go along with you to Canada I O.” “Yes, we will pay good wages, and will pay your passage out, Provided you sign papers that you will stay the route; But if you do get homesick, and swear that home you’ll go, We never can your passage pay from Canada I O. “And if you get dissatisfied, and do not wish to stay, We do not wish to bind you, no, not one single day; You just refund the money we had to pay, you know, Then you can leave that bonny place called Canada I O.” It was by his gift of flattery he enlisted quite a train, Some twenty-five or thirty, both well and able men; We had a pleasant journey o’er the road we had to go, Till we landed at Three Rivers, up in Canada I O. But there our joys were ended, and our sorrows did begin; Fields, Phillips and Norcross they then came marching in; They sent us all directions, some where I do not know, Among those jabbering Frenchmen up in Canada I O. After we had suffered there some eight or ten long weeks, We arrived at headquarters, up among the lakes; We thought we’d find a paradise, at least they told us so— God grant there may be no worse hell than Canada I O. To describe what we have suffered is past the art of man, But to give a fair description, I will do the best I can; Our food the dogs would snarl at, our beds were on the snow; We suffered worse than murderers up in Canada I O. Our hearts were made of iron and our souls were cased with steel, The hardships of that winter could never make us yield;

6

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Fields, Phillips and Norcross they found their match, I know, Among the boys that went from Maine to Canada I O. But now our lumbering is over and we are returning home, To greet our wives and sweethearts and never more to roam, To greet our friends and neighbors; we’ll tell them not to go Unto that God-forsaken place called Canada I O.6

This song depicting the harsher side of the lumberman’s experiences was written by Ephraim Braley, a lumberman who lived in Hudson, Maine, in about 1856. In 1853 Braley and others hired out to Fields, Phillips and Norcross, lumbermen, to go to Three Rivers, Quebec, to work in the woods. Braley used an older song, “Canada I O,” printed in the 1840s in the Forget Me Not Songster, as his model. That song was in turn a recomposition of a British love song, “Caledonia,” first printed before 1800. Several other folk poets have recomposed “Canada I O” to fit other conditions: “Michigan-I-O” (see chapter 5) describes the experiences of lumbermen in Saginaw, Michigan; “Buffalo Skinners” (chapter 7) moves the song to the southwest in the 1870s; and “Way Out in Idaho” (chapter 8) is a derivative railroading song from 1882–1884. It is characteristic of folk songs that the names of persons involved are introduced without a thought of explanation: in songs intended only for local consumption, any elaboration is unnecessary. Henry K. Sawyer It was on last Sunday morning, of June the eighth day, When Henry K. Sawyer from home went away; When Henry K. Sawyer, a man of renown, Took a seat on the tender to ride to Oldtown. ’Twas down near Stillwater, they ran off the track; The wood on the tender struck him on the back; The engine capsized and sad to relate, Which placed this poor man in a horrible state. The weight of the engine confin-ed him down, While steam and hot water gave him his death wound; In this situation thirty minutes he lay, Till at length they released him by digging away. And when they survived him, brought tears to their eyes; His shrieks met the air, his poor groans met the skies; He cries, “God have mercy and suffer my life, And suffer me once more to see my dear wife.” A car then was taken from the rear of the train, And on this same car the poor sufferer was lain. Six men took the car and they ran it for their life, And he did once more work and converse with his wife. They ran it six miles in three-fourths of an hour, Until they were released by the strength of horse power; But when they arrived at the depot they saw His poor distressed wife standing in agony. There was many there collected to see his sad face, Which pain would have relieved but it was then too late;

NEW ENGLAND

7

He was taken from the car, carried into a room, And in a short time this poor man met his doom. This happened at seven; he expired at noon. In the morning no one thought of his dying so soon; He turned to his wife, saying, “Jane, I must die.” With a calm resignation he bade her good-bye. ’Twas twelve years or better he had worked on this track; He never was known once a duty to lack. Now think on this widow, and on her distress, And make her a present and God will you bless.7

Henry K. Sawyer was a superintendent of repairs on the Bangor and Piscataquis Canal and Railroad Company, later often called the “General Veazie Railroad.” On June 8, 1848, while he was riding the train headed for Oldtown, the train jumped the track near Stillwater, pinning him to the ground. He was brought back to Bangor but died shortly after.8 The ballad was well known after the accident occurred, but by the 1930s, when the editors of the New Green Mountain Songster (NGMS ) were collecting songs in New England, they found only three individuals who could recall any part of it. This rendition shows possible signs of memory loss: in the sixth stanza, the third line, “see” rather than “saw” would preserve the rhyme scheme, as would, in the first line of the seventh stanza, “fate” rather than “face.” The final stanza suggests that the ballad was written in part to encourage donations to help Sawyer’s widow, Mary J. Sawyer, who eventually was buried alongside her husband in the Stillwater Cemetery. Away Down East There’s a famous fabled country never seen by mortal eyes, Where the pumpkins they are growing, and the sun is said to rise, Which man doth not inhabit, neither reptile, bird, nor beast. And this fabled, famous country is away down east. It is called a land of notions, of apple-sauce and greens, A paradise of pumpkin pies, a land of pork and beans. But where it is who knoweth? neither mortal, man, nor beast. But one thing we’re assured of, ’tis away down east. Once a man in Indiana took his bundle in his hand, And came to New York city, to seek this fabled land; But how he stared on learning what is new to him at least: That this famous fabled land is further Down East. They away he puts to Boston, with all his main and might, And puts up at the Tremont House, quite sure that he was right, But they tell him in the morning, a curious fact at least, That he hadn’t yet began to get away Down East. Then he hurried off to Portland, with his bundle in his hand, And sees Mount Joy, great joy for him, for this must be the land; Poh, man, you’re crazy! for doubt not in the least, You go a long chalk further e’er you find Down East. Then away through mud to Bangor, by which he soiled his drabs, And the first that greets his vision is a pyramid of slabs;

8

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Why, this, says he is Egypt, here’s a pyramid, at least, And he thought that with a vengeance, he had found Down East. Goodness, gracious! yes, he’s found it! see how he cuts his pranks, He’s sure he can’t get further, for the piles of boards and planks; So pompously he questions, a Pat of humble caste, Who tells him he was never yate away Down Aste. But soon he spied a Native, who was up to snuff, I ween, Who pointing at a precipice says, don’t you see something green? Then off he jumped to rise no more, except he lives on yeast, And this I think should be his drink away Down East. And now has anxious mother whose tears will ever run, Is ever on the lookout to see her rising son, But she will strain her eyes in vain I calculate at least, Her son has set in regions yet away Down East.9

The expression “down east” refers to Maine and the maritime provinces of Canada. A “down-easter” is either a person or a vessel from that region. The term has been used at least since the 1820s. “Away Down East” was a favorite song of the Hutchinson Family, a singing troupe that concertized through New England and the eastern states in the 1840s and 1850s, often supporting such social causes as temperance and abolition. “The pyramid of slabs” refers to the piles of waste boards near the sawmills, which, with the advent of steam, replaced water as power for the vast lumber operations. “Drabs” was colloquial for clothes made of yellowish brown homespun. This can be sung to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Large sailing and whaling ships required tall, straight timbers for masts, and so Maine woodsmen began to harvest the state’s abundant virgin forests. Ballads and songs of lumberjacks were widespread, as expected considering the importance of this occupation in the nineteenth century, at first, especially in Maine, then gradually moving westward as forests were depleted from extensive timber cutting. The Logger’s Boast Come, all ye sons of freedom throughout the State of Maine, Come, all ye gallant lumberman, and listen to my strain; On the banks of the Penobscot, where the rapid waters flow, O! we’ll range the wild woods over, and a lumbering will go; Refrain: And a lumbering we’ll go, so a lumbering will go, O! we’ll range the wild woods over, and a lumbering will go. When the white frost gilds the valley, the cold congeals the flood; When many men have naught to do to earn their families bread; When the swollen streams are frozen, and the hills are clad with snow, O! we’ll range the wild woods over, and a lumbering will go. Refrain. When you pass through the dense city, and pity all you meet, To hear their teeth chattering as they hurry down the street; In the red frost-proof flannel we’re incased from top to toe, O! we’ll range the wild woods over, and a lumbering will go. Refrain. You may boast of your gay parties, your pleasures, and your plays, And pity us poor lumbermen while dashing in your sleighs;

NEW ENGLAND

9

We want no better pastime than to chase the buck and doe; O! we’ll range the wild woods over, and a lumbering will go. Refrain. The music of our burnished ax shall make the woods resound, And many a lofty ancient pine will tumble to the ground; At night, ho! round our good camp-fire we will sing while the rude winds blow, O! we’ll range the wild woods over, and a lumbering will go. Refrain. When winter’s snows are melted, and the ice-bound streams are free, We’ll run our logs to market, then haste our friends to see; How kindly true hearts welcome us, our wives and children too, We will spend with these the summer, and once more a lumbering go. Refrain. And when upon the long-hid soil the white pines disappear, We will cut the other forest trees, and sow whereon we clear; Our grain shall wave o’er valleys rich, our herds bedot the hills, When our feet no more are hurried on to tend the driving mills; Then no more a lumbering go, so no more a lumbering go, When our feet no more are hurried on to tend the driving mills. When our youthful days are ended, we will cease from winter toils, And each one through the summer warm will till the virgin soil; We’ve enough to eat, to drink, to wear, content through life to go, Then we’ll tell our wild adventures o’er, and no more a lumbering go; And no more a lumbering go, so no more a lumbering go, O! we’ll tell our wild adventures o’er, and no more a lumbering go.10

The author(s) of this sentimental piece from the mid-nineteenth century capsulize the life and times of the Maine lumberjack in a handful of picturesque stanzas. Lumbering is described as a wintertime occupation, when farming men could not work their soil; then with the melting of the snows, home they trudged to farms and families for the next seasons. While depicting the harsh conditions of the woods, the authors clearly show that the lumbermen loved their work, their recreation, and their camaraderie. In the Tunnel Riding up from Bangor, on the Pullman train, From a six weeks’ shooting in the woods of Maine; Quite extensive whiskers, beard, moustache as well, Sat a “student feller,” tall and fine and swell. Empty seat behind him, no one at his side, To a pleasant station now the train doth glide; Enter aged couple, take the hinder seat, Enter gentle maiden, beautiful, petite. Blushing she falters, “Is the seat engaged?” (See the aged couple properly enraged.) Student, quite ecstatic, sees her ticket’s “through”; Thinks of the long tunnel,—knows what he will do. So they sit and chatter, while the cinders fly, Till that “student feller” gets one in his eye; And the gentle maiden quickly turns about, “May I, if you please, sir, try to get it out?”

10

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Happy “student feller” feels a dainty touch, Hears a gentle whisper,—“Does it hurt you much?” Fizz! ding, dong! a moment in the tunnel quite, And a glorious darkness black as Egypt’s night. Out into the daylight darts the Pullman train, Student’s beaver ruffled just the merest grain; Maiden’s hair is tumbled, and there soon appeared, Cunning little ear-ring caught in student’s beard.11

This skillfully written poem is composed almost as a series of stage directions. Immensely popular during the 1890s, it has been variously titled “The Eastern Train,” “Riding Down from Bangor” (clearly “up” would make more sense than “down,” as given here), “On the Pullman Train,” “The Harvard Student,” and as titled here. Its first appearance was in an 1871 issue of the Harvard Advocate, where it was credited (somewhat unhelpfully) to “S.O.L.” It has also been attributed to Louis Shreve Osborne, a poet at Harvard and later a minister and public speaker. The Burning of Henry K. Robinson’s Camp in 1873 Come all you rambling young men and listen unto me, While I relate a story that happened in seventy-three; We hired with Henry K. Robinson into the woods to go, For to pass away the winter, through stormy sleet and snow. It was early in December, on Wednesday the third day, That myself and Jimmy Grady we started on our way; We hoped that night, if all was right, the Iron Works to gain, And the next day to Roach River go, through stormy sleet and rain. And early the next morning, before it was quite light, We started for the Grant Farm unto Weymouth’s camp that night; Our legs being tired and weary, the fourth day on the road, It was our delight when we hove in sight of the place of our abode. The next day being Sunday, which God has given to us, That we might love and worship him and in his mercy trust; All things he has prepared for us, no doubt as he thought best, When he gave us six days to labor and the seventh we might rest. And early the next morning, before it was quite light, Mr. Robinson looked around the camp to see if all was right; He called the boss up to him and unto him did say: “Come, George, you are my leading man, come show the boys the way.” There was Grady and Deplissey and likewise George and Al, They were chosen out of our number the timber for to fall; They started for the forest to find the trees that’s sound, And soon they brought their lofty tops all tumbling to the ground. All the names I will not mention, as you may understand, There were twenty-five or thirty, all good and able men; All working with good courage while scattered to and fro, And it was their delight, coming home at night, to see the landings grow.

NEW ENGLAND

11

But soon misfortune came to us, as you will all soon hear, It was in the month of January, just twelve days from New Year; When Charlie came and told us that our camp had burned down, That our clothing and our bedding laid in ashes on the ground. And when the boys all heard the news, they all looked very sad, Saying, “We’ve lost our place of shelter and all the clothes we had.” A cold night coming on and nowhere for to go, The sky it was our covering and our bed was in the snow. But all that night by good moonlight, for cold we did not fear, We hovered there, with watchful care, till daylight did appear; And when the daylight came at last, like ravens we were fed, When Georgie stepped out in the yard and unto us he said: “Come, boys, at last this night is past, with many a chill and pain, Let us all take hold like heroes bold, and build our camp again.” Three days of hard labor, each man he done his best, For to have his camp built up again and have a chance to rest; And the third night, by good moonlight, we moved into our camp once more, We settled down, both safe and sound, as we were once before. And now that camp is finished and we have settled down again, I will give you the initials that you may guess my name; There is “H” for “hard,” and “N” for “none,” and “R” for “royal” role, Just add “YE” and you will see my Christian name is told. Then there is “T” to take each letter and place it where it belongs, And then proceed to “OMP” for “H” will not go wrong; Then spell the sun that rules the day, gives forth its silvery light— Those letters told, my name unfold, if you will just place them right. And to conclude and finish, this winter’s nearly gone, And springtime is a-coming when we will all return home; For to greet our wives and sweethearts—how happy it will seem, And we’ll go no more on the rapid shore of Rapogenus Stream.12

Fires may not have been a frequent problem in the wintry lumber camps of the Northeast, but they did occur, as this factual account relates. The ballad’s author, Henry K. Thompson, makes only a feeble pretense at concealing his identity from his readers. Though the language is not eloquent, Thompson has made an effort to maintain the internal rhyme, which may have been partly lost—along with two lines—in the five decades between his composition and its subsequent recollection. Ripogenus now designates a gorge, a lake, and a dam in northern Maine.

NEW HAMPSHIRE The New Hampshire region was included in a series of grants made by the English crown to John Mason and others during the 1620s. A fishing and trading settlement was established in 1623, and in 1629 the name “New Hampshire,” after the English county of Hampshire, was applied to a grant for a region between the Merrimack and Piscataqua rivers.

12

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

From 1641 to 1679 the region was administered by the colonial government of Massachusetts. Following territorial and religious disputes between Massachusetts and Mason’s heirs, New Hampshire became a separate royal province in 1679. Boundary feuds with Massachusetts and New York over that part of the New Hampshire grant that became Vermont continued almost until the American Revolution. As antagonisms festered between the colonials and the British motherland, citizens of New Hampshire were overwhelmingly in sympathy with the aims of the revolutionary leaders. New Hampshire officially became a state in 1776 and, in June, issued its own declaration of independence from Great Britain three weeks before the national Declaration of July 4. New Hampshire was the ninth colony to ratify the proposed Constitution of the United States in 1788, thus providing the requisite number for the document to take effect.13 Joel Baker Come all young lovers far and near, A dismal story you shall hear, A young man did in Alstead dwell, Who lov’d a fair maid passing well. To her he went with tears ’tis said, And many solemn vows they made; She false girl, fill’d his heart with wo, Which sent him to the shades below. And when so cruel she did prove, And thus her true love did abuse, By choosing of another one, He cried I’m utterly undone. To her he went and thus he cried, Dear Sally, will you be my bride? For sure our vows must end the strife Or cut the brittle thread of life. No answer from her could he gain To ease him from his bitter pain; He said you’ve pierc’d my tender heart, Alas, this world and I must part! Now when her parents this did hear, They said we fear his death draws near With scornfulness the damsel spoke— I soon will send him to a rope. ’Twas on July, the second day, Oh, when the sun had roll’d away; Then by a musket’s dismal sound, His body by some friends was found. His body did lay on the floor, And from it ran the purple gore; Three deadly groans he gave, ’tis true, Then bid this sinful world adieu. ’Tis said the young man he was poor, ’Tis true, he had no great in store;

NEW ENGLAND

13

I think I hear that fame does say, What the other gains is by the way. Now her new will I shall not name, Although he said there’s none to blame; Oh, from my heart I wish them well, For none but God alone can tell. Scarce had a month then pass’d away, When she with her new love did stay; Much would they dread and greatly fear, Then should his frightful ghost appear. Now lovers all, I pray be true, Don’t break your vows, what ere you do; The God above rules all below, May punish you with nameless wo. Some passed by his grave, ’tis said, And there cast slurs upon the dead; The time will come and soon will be, They must lie there as well as he. Now to conclude and make an end; I sat me down—these lines I’ve pen’d— God grant it may a warning be, To all who do these verses see.14

The Green Mountain Songster, from which this text was copied, is a hand-written song compilation made by a Vermont Revolutionary War veteran in 1823, of which only one copy is known. It is thus one of the earliest surviving American collections—and a unique one—of traditional songs, and of great interest on those counts alone. The events are placed in Alstead, New Hampshire, across the state border from Bellows Falls, Vermont, in the town of Rockingham. The story of unrequited love is not uncommon in ballad lore— compare, for example, the widely known “Barbara Allen,” in which Barbara spurns her lover because of a perceived slight on his part, and he dies of a broken heart as a result. At first, she laughs over his death, but soon suffers a turnabout of heart and dies of grief also. “Joel Baker” is a more unusual combination of elements: Baker’s unnamed sweetheart falls in love with another, and he, with characteristic despondency, threatens to take his own life. Far from repentant, she offers him a rope to hang himself. The announcement that she and her new love fear the return of Joel’s ghost is an unfulfilled teaser; whether the spirit materialized we are not told, but instead are warned with the customary farewell moral to be true to our vows. The tune has not survived, but, as the editors of the NGMS observed, any common tune such as “The Butcher Boy” would fit the text quite well. (The spelling “wo” for what we now usually spell “woe” was common in former times.) The Old Granite State (As sung with rapturous applause, by the Hutchinson Family) We have come from the mountains, (2) Of the old Granite State, We’re a band of brothers, (2) And we live among the hills;

14

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

With a band of music, (2) We are passing ’round the world. We have left our aged parents, (2) In the old Granite State; We obtained their blessing, (2) And we blessed them in return; Good old fashioned singers, (2) They can make the air resound. We have eight other brothers, And of sisters just another, Besides our father and mother, In the old Granite State; With our present number, (2) There are fifteen in the tribe, Thirteen sons and daughters, (2) And their history we bring. Yes, while the air is ringing, With the wild mountain singing, We the news to you are bringing, From the old Granite State; ’Tis the tribe of Jesse, (2) And their several names we sing, ’Tis the tribe of Jesse, And their several names we sing. David, Noah, Andrew, Zeppy, Caleb, Joshua, Jess, and Benny, Judson, Rhoda, John, and Asa, And Abbey are our names; We’re the sons of Mary, Of the tribe of Jesse, And we now address ye, With our native mountain song; We’re the sons of Mary, Of the tribe of Jesse, And we now address ye, With our native mountain song; We are all real Yankees, (2) From the old Granite State, And by prudent guessing, (2) We shall whittle through the world; And by prudent guessing, We shall whittle through the world. We are all Washingtonians, Yes, we’re all Washingtonians, Heaven bless the Washingtonians, Of the old Granite State; We are all teetotalers. (2) And have signed the temperance pledge.

NEW ENGLAND

15

We are all teetotalers. (2) And have signed the temperance pledge. Now three cheers altogether, Shout Columbia’s people ever, Yankee hearts none can sever, In the old Granite State. Like our sires before us, We will swell the chorus, Till the heavens o’er us, Shall rebound the loud hurrah. Like our sires before us, We will swell the chorus, Till the heavens o’er us, Shall rebound the loud hurrah. Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!15

Born and reared in Milford, New Hampshire, three brothers—Judson Hutchinson, tenor (1817–1859); John, a baritone who could sing falsetto (1821–1908); Asa, bass (1823– 1884)—and their youngest sister, Abby, contralto (1829–1892), formed a quartet and began concertizing in New England in 1841. Initially, their repertoire centered around conventional melodramatic songs, but the Hutchinsons’ contacts with Frederick Douglass and with the Washingtonian movement of reformed alcoholics led a fourth brother, Jesse, to invent original lyrics with abolitionist and temperance themes to familiar hymns and folk songs. The quartet sang at antislavery rallies, including a Boston rally that drew 20,000 people, as well as in concerts in the eastern and midwestern United States and spent much of 1845–1846 touring the British Isles. Despite a decline in popularity after the departure of Abby in 1849, the trio of brothers continued to tour together, sometimes attracting controversy, even violence, until 1855. In subsequent years the families of each brother formed several Hutchinson Family groups. They supported Abraham Lincoln’s presidential campaigns, backed the North in the Civil War, performed slave songs to call attention to the predicament of black Americans during the postwar period, and sang in support of women’s rights. Although several of the Hutchinsons wrote songs, most of the songs were based upon existing tunes; Abby, after leaving the quartet, was noted for writing songs and for her arrangements of spirituals. In their day, however, the Hutchinsons were best known for performing material composed by other songwriters, such as “John Brown’s Body” and “Tenting on the Old Camp Ground.”16 According to popular music historian Sigmund Spaeth, they wrote “The Old Granite State” in 1843. Other once-popular songs of theirs were “Get Off the Track,” “The Slave Mother,” “Excelsior” (with Longfellow), “Go Call the Doctor (or Anti-Calomel),” “Good Old Days of Yore,” “The Spider and the Fly,” “The Cottage of My Mother,” “The Bachelor’s Lament,” “Bingen on the Rhine,” “Cape Ann,” “Eight Dollars a Day,” “Go Call the Doctor and Be Quick,” “If I Were a Voice,” “My Mother’s Bible,” “Recollections of Home,” “Zeekel and Hully,” and “Mrs. Lofty and I.” The Factory Girl When I set out for Manchester, Some factory for to find,

16

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

I left my native country, And all my friends behind. Refrain: Sing ter re a re I re O. But now I am in Manchester And summoned by the bell, I think more of the factory girls Than of my native dell. The factory bell begins to ring, And we must all obey, And to our old employment go, Or else be turned away. My overseer has cut my wages down To ten-and-six a week, And before I’ll work for that My true love’s heart I’ll seek. I do not like my overseer, I do not mean to stay, I mean to hire some depot cab To carry me away. No more I’ll oil my picker rod, No more I’ll brush my loom, No more I’ll scour my nasty floor, All in the weaving-room. No more I’ll draw the thread All through the harness eye, No more I’ll say, “My work goes so, O dear me, I shall die.” No more they’ll come to me and say, “Your ends they are all down, While I am up in the middle of the room, Or acting out the clown.” No more I’ll go to my overseer To come and fix my loom; No more I’ll go to him and say, “May I stay out til noon?” No more they’ll see me read, No more they’ll see me sew, No more they’ll come to me and say, “This work I sha’n’t allow.” No more I’ll hear the factory bell, That calls me from my bed; No more I’ll wash those dusty drums As they roll o’er my head. The factory life is a harass’d life, As I suppose you know, Do only think in the winter How much we undergo.

One of several broadsides from various New England towns in the 1840s complaining about the life of the factory girls. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

18

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

No more will I tread the snow To get into the mill; No longer will I work so hard To get one dollar bill. No more I’ll put my bonnet on And hasten to the mill, While other girls are working hard, And I am sitting still. Come all ye pretty factory girls, I’ll have you understand, I’m going to leave the factory And return to my native land. By and by you’ll see me settle down With a pretty little man, They I will say to the factory girls, Come and see me when you can.17

American colonists mostly spun and wove their own textile materials; their few machinemade fabrics were imported from Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War, English immigrant Samuel Slater established the first water-powered cotton spinning and carding mill in America in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1790. (They were called “mills” because they required water power to turn the machinery and therefore were always located on rivers, preferably near waterfalls, where hydropower was abundant.) Incentives to further development of a domestic textile industry were the British Embargo Act of 1807 and the War of 1812, both of which interrupted commerce between England or Europe and the new nation. In 1814 Bostonian Francis Cabot Lowell, having returned from England with the details of English mill machinery fixed in his photographic memory, established a mill at Waltham, just west of Boston, on the Charles River—the first to integrate all textile operations in a single building. Lowell and his partners, the Boston Manufacturing Company (or Waltham Co.), concentrated on the production of coarse but durable cotton cloth—a fabric that perfectly suited frontier Americans—and found a ready and profitable market. Because the mills soon outgrew the limited water power of the Charles, in about 1822, after Lowell’s death, his partners broke ground on another mill near Chelmsford, on the Merrimack River north of Boston. The new site was named “Lowell” in honor of the recently deceased textile pioneer and was turning out cloth by 1823. By 1840, the same group of investors had established eight major mills in Lowell. Children lacking the skills to handle the complicated machinery and young men being needed for work on the family farm, Lowell’s mill owners conceived a novel plan to recruit young New England women, offering them better wages than they could obtain in other occupations open to them (such as seamstress, house maid, or schoolteacher). To avoid the inhumane circumstances of labor in English and European mills, the entrepreneurs envisioned a system whereby young middle-class women could work for a few years in the mills and then return to their homes, thus circumventing the establishment of a permanent working class. Knowing that potential employees and their families would be concerned with working and living conditions, the owners instituted company-run boarding houses adjacent to the mills, managed by upstanding women (often widows), to ensure their

NEW ENGLAND

19

operatives’ security and propriety. Rooming and boarding expenses were deducted from the employees’ weekly pay. These acts were not entirely altruistic because going wages for women were considerably less than men expected, so overhead costs could be reduced substantially. Also, owners anticipated that in case of serious illness, their workers would return to their New England homes and not become a burden on the corporation. Thanks to this vision, textiles soon became a major industry of the region. Whatever the corporations’ motives, the result was that in the early years, the women workers were young, bright, literate, and from sturdy New England stock, living under conditions that, if not the most conducive to good health, were certainly morally flawless. In stark contrast, female factory workers in England were poor and uneducated, often harassed by unscrupulous and immoral men. Many English songs about factory girls slaving in the “dark Satanic mills” portrayed them as the unwilling objects of amorous or lustful attention from the opposite sex. In spite of the original intentions, early mills workers labored under difficult conditions: long hours, noisy factory environment, inadequate ventilation (windows were nailed shut and the rooms periodically sprayed with water to keep the threads from drying out and breaking), cotton fibers and dust in the air, crowding and lack of privacy in the boarding houses, and insufficient time “for manners” at meals, as one operative complained. Nevertheless, there were advantages: they were paid regularly and reliably—and in cash, unlike other mills, which often paid in company scrip, redeemable only at companyowned stores—they put their money in savings, and there were many educational opportunities (such as libraries and lectures) of which the women were eager to take advantage. As for the long hours, intolerable by today’s standards, they were no more than was expected of a typical domestic servant or farmworker. The average mill workweek in the 1830s and 1840s was 73 hours; a Lowell factory time table for 1853 declared the workweek to consist of 66 hours. In reality, the Lowell women were not inclined to complain about long hours because they were eager to earn as much money as possible; when they were exhausted by the conditions, they had pleasant country homes awaiting them. Many, in fact, protested about organized movements to shorten hours; it was reductions in pay, not long hours, that riled them. Women operatives in the late 1830s earned less than $2.00 a week; men earned almost twice as much. Young children were paid considerably less.18 Three-quarters of the typical antebellum workforce consisted of women, most of whom were 15–25 years of age and averaged three to four years of work in the mill before they returned home, married, or moved to other employment. Many of the women labored to help their economically challenged farming families; others sought to earn some spending money for themselves or to put aside money for a dowry. Probably a greater number worked to enable a brother or sweetheart to obtain a higher education. While conditions in the 1820s and early 1830s were generally tolerable, they steadily deteriorated in later years—partly in response to periodic economic downturns, but also owing to corporate greed. Working hours steadily lengthened, wages were occasionally cut, and workers were put in charge of greater numbers of spindles (“the stretch-out”) that were operated at great rates (the “speed-up”). Starting in the mid-1840s, a so-called premium system was inaugurated, by which overseers were paid extra for any production exceeding the normal. One means to overproduction consisted in turning back the clock in the evening to delay the ringing of the quitting bell. One positive result of the Lowell system was that overseers learned that the better-educated women generally learned faster and were more productive; hence it was to their advantage to encourage educational

20

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

opportunities and to prefer middle-class New England women to uneducated foreigners. While different overseers had different attitudes toward reading during work, one universal proscription regarded complaints about hours or wages; these were immediate cause for dismissal. Songs complaining about textile factory life (titled “The Factory Girl/Maid” or something similar) were widespread in the 1840s, and several broadsides have survived that are set in Lowell, Massachusetts, or Manchester or Great Falls, New Hampshire. Versions have also been collected from oral tradition set in Lewiston and Winchendon, Maine. The song clearly belongs to all of New England. New Hampshire’s Manchester was named in 1810 in hopes that the booming mill town would emulate England’s Manchester. The Amoskeag Mill Cotton and Woolen Mfg. Co. contributed to the city’s growth by the 1810s. In the early 1830s, a larger mill was built modeled after the Lowell complex, with nearby accommodations for workers in both tenements and boarding houses. Soon, the city was served by the new Concord Railroad, which opened in 1842. By the following decade, the company was relying less on local labor than on imported skilled weavers from Scotland, Sweden, and Germany. The Brookfield Murder The Brookfield murder has come to light, By a young man rather short of sight; Joe Buzzell he hired and drove young Cook, To shoot the girl, so it seems to look. She sued for damage which if he’d paid Would have saved the time while in jail he laid. But he with murder born in his heart Soon caused young Susan to depart. On Monday evening as we tell, Miss Susan Hanson was known full well, Sat at her table doing some work, She little thought death so near did lurk. The thief and murderer with gun in hand Beside the house outside did stand. Discharged his gun through windowpane, And thus the promised bride was slain. It was a dreadful shock to the aged mother, The lamp was lit by the son and brother, There lay the daughter once so fair In death cold arms and bloodstained hair. No farewell words to her friends could say, But shot dead on the floor did lay. So young and fair and in life’s bloom, To be hurried away so soon to the tomb. Come, all young ladies, a warning take, And shun such reptiles for Susan’s sake. For he who shot this lady gay, Would burn your home while in bed you lay.19

NEW ENGLAND

21

According to folk song collector Linscott, this murder took place in 1847. Joseph Buzzell, upon being sued by his former sweetheart, Susan Hanson, after he jilted her, hired Charles Cook to kill her. But shortly afterward he had a change of heart, leaped on his horse, and galloped off to Miss Hanson’s home in Brookfield to avert the murder. Alas, he arrived too late. After some five years, Buzzell was hanged and his accomplice imprisoned for life. In spite of preserving many factual details, the ballad is rather undistinguished. It is the kind of song that we would expect to be remembered only in the vicinity of the crime by those familiar with the characters involved. The final stanza, containing the obligatory moral, makes little sense: it would make no difference to the deceased Susan whether or not such “reptiles” are shunned. The Suncook Town Tragedy Come all young people, now draw near; Attend awhile and you shall hear, How a young person of renown Was murdered in fair Suncook Town. It was in the morning very cool When Josie started for her school, And many the time that road she passed But little thought she it would be her last. It was at the foot of Pembrook Street La Page lay ambushed with a stick; Long time ago his plans were laid To take the life of the fair maid. The mother watched with eager air, Hoping her daughter would appear, But when the shades of night drew near Her darling child did not appear. The weeping father and the son All thro’ the woods their search begun, And found at last to their surprise The murdered child before their eyes. Her head was from her body tore, Her clothes were all a crimson gore, And on her body marks did show Some skillful hand had dealt the blow. This monster now so deep in crime, He thought the peoples’ eyes to blind, But found at last to his mistake, They had him fast behind the grate. It was at Concord he was tried. Unto the last his crime denied, But he was found to guilty be, And the judge said, “Death is your plea. “And now, La Page, your work is done And you like Eveuse must be hung,

22

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

For we must all examples make Till crime shall cease in the Granite State.”20

In 1728 the Honorable House of Representatives of His Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England granted six square miles of land to the survivors and heirs of nonsurvivors of Captain John Lovewell’s band of Indian fighters. Shortly afterward, the town took the name Suncook, the Indian name of the river flowing through the area. When the town was incorporated in 1759, it was given the name Pembroke in honor of Henry Herbert, ninth Earl of Pembroke in southern Wales.21 Miss Josie A. Langmaid, a 17-year-old student at Pembroke Academy in Pembroke, New Hampshire, failed to appear at school on the morning of October 4, 1875. When her whereabouts could not be accounted for in the evening, a search was conducted. Her headless, battered, bloody, and ravished body was found in the woods. Her head was found the next day, some distance away, concealed by her cloak. William Drew was arrested soon after on flimsy evidence and nearly lynched, so certain was the community of his guilt, but he was found to have a credible alibi. Some days later, the town elders of nearby St. Albans, Vermont, informed Pembroke authorities that a 42-year-old French Canadian named Joseph Lapage (or LePage or LaPagette) had been suspected of a similar murder of a young girl, Marietta Ball, a year previously but was released for want of sufficient evidence; Lapage had moved to Pembroke. Lapage’s trial commenced in Concord on January 4, 1876, and, in spite of scant evidence (and what later proved purjured testimony), was found guilty. The conviction was overturned two years later by the New Hampshire supreme court (insufficient evidence), and a retrial was held—with the same results. On March 14, 1878, the night preceding his hanging, Lapage broke down and confessed to both crimes. Pembroke was horror-struck by the murder and its aftermath. A broadside ballad was published soon afterward.22 A typical murdered girl ballad, from the “come-all-ye” incipit to the moralizing conclusion, this local ballad was certainly not distinguished enough to take root outside the locale of the events described and has not been collected outside of Vermont. Between 1875 and 1889, three books were published about the murder.23 In 2002 New Hampshire Public Television produced a 75-minute documentary on the murder, calling it “the most notorious New Hampshire crime of the 19th century.” In 2004 the recording from which this text was transcribed was added to the National Recording Registry. Ben Deane Good people all both great and small, read these lines penned by me; These lines were written by a man deprived of liberty, Who is serving out a sentence for a deed that I have done, And it’s here I fear I will remain ’til my race on earth is run. My name is Benjamin Deane and my age is forty-one, I was born in New Brunswick in the city of St. John, Nearly the Bay of Fundy where the seagulls loudly call, As they rock with pride on the silvery tide as the billows rise and fall. My parents reared me tenderly, brought me up in the fear of God, But long have they been slumbering beneath their native sod; Side by side they slumber in a quiet cemetery, Where the willows bow before the breeze from off the deep blue sea.

NEW ENGLAND

Farewell unto my happy home, I ne’er shall see it more, No more I’ll watch the billows break upon its rock-bound shore; No more I’ll watch those ships go by with sails as white as snow, Bound for some port far o’er the sea, before the winds that blow. When I arrived in Berlin Falls some twenty years ago, The town was then about one-half as large as it is now; And laboring men of every nationality were there, For work was plenty, wages good, each man could get a share. The businessmen of Berlin then were making money fast, I thought that I too would invest before the boom had passed; A building leased on Mason Street and into business went, I kept a fruit and candy shop, likewise a restaurant. My business proved successful for I was beloved by all, I gained the favor of the great, the rich, the poor, and small; To my surprise, before a year had fully rolled around, In glittering gold I did possess more than a thousand pound. The coming year I wed with one, the fairest of the fair, Her eyes were of the heavenly blue and light brown was her hair; Her cheeks were like the dawn of morn, her form graceful and fair, Her smile as bright as morning light, her step as light as air. She was born of good parents and they reared her tenderly, ’Twas little did they ever think she would be slain by me; The night I gained her promise and her hand to me she gave, It would have been better far for her if she lay in her grave. I own I loved my fair young bride, which proved a prudent wife, ’Tis little did I think that I one day would take her life; But as the years rolled swiftly by upon the wings of time, I found the paths of pleasure had led to the fields of crime. I soon began a wild career caused by the thirst for gold, My property on Mason Street for a goodly sum I sold; I bought a building on Main Street, which cost a handsome sum, I ran a free-and-easy house and went to selling rum. My fair young wife would often beg me my steps to retrace, She told me that the path I trod led to death and disgrace; Had I but heeded her warning, I wouldn’t be here now, And she might still be living with no brand upon her brow. I soon began to associate with men of low degree, And my business kept me constantly in their base company; I quickly went from bad to worse, did many a deed of crime That never will be brought to light in future years of time. My fair young wife then fled with one whose name I will not write, Whose character was blacker than the darkest hour of night; To persuade her to return to me, it was my whole intent, So to the house where she then dwelt my steps I quickly bent. I cautiously approached the house and opened the hall door, I found the way to my wife’s room upon an upper floor;

23

24

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The sight that fell upon my gaze is stamped upon my mind, For on the bosom of a man my fair wife’s head reclined. The very fiends of hell, it seemed, my being did possess, I drew a loaded pistol and I aimed it at her breast; And when she saw the weapon, ’twas loudly she did cry, “For God’s sake, do not shoot me, Ben, for I’m not fit to die!” The bullet pierced her snowy breast, in a moment she was dead, “For God’s sake, you have shot me!” were the last words that she said; The trigger of that weapon either moved too fast or slow, Or else another would have passed with her to weal or woe. The last time that I saw my wife she lay upon the floor, Her long and light brown wavy hair was stained with crimson gore; The sun shone through the window on her cold and lifeless face, As the officers led me away from that polluted place. I have two daughters living, they’re orphans in a way, And should you chance to meet them, treat them kindly, I pray; Don’t charge them with their father’s sin, for on them there will rest A crimson stain long after I am mouldering back to dust.24

The events recalled in this ballad occurred in Berlin Falls (now Berlin), New Hampshire, at the end of the nineteenth century. Benjamin F. Deane was born in St. John, New Brunswick, in 1854, and moved to Berlin Falls in about 1880. As the ballad tells, he married a respectable local girl and went into business. In 1898, his wife left him. On May 4, Deane accosted his wife in a neighbor’s sitting room with another man, John Darling. Deane asked her to come home with him and she refused. He pulled a revolver; Darling grappled with him, the gun went off, and Mrs. Deane was shot, crying, “Oh, my God, you’ve killed me.” She fell over and died within minutes. Deane was tried, pled guilty, was convicted of second-degree murder, and was sentenced to 25 years in the state prison. He was released in less than 10; he remarried, settled down, and continued to live a respectable life until his death in 1924.25 Folklorist Edward “Sandy” Ives, who researched the matter fully, had concluded that the ballad was written by well-known poet and woodsman Joe Scott, and later, in corroboration, found a broadside on which Scott published his poem at some unknown date. Ives has also collected more than two dozen versions, most from retired woodsmen, in Maine, New York, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Scott was born in New Brunswick in 1867 and worked in the Maine woods in the late 1880s. Ives encountered many older northeastern woodsmen who remembered Scott as a great singer and songwriter; he died in 1918.26 It is apparent from a comparison of the ballad with the facts of the events that Scott was familiar with Berlin Falls and either knew the Deane family or gathered information from other locals; whether he deliberately chose to change the details of the crime or was misled by hearsay accounts is uncertain, but the former seems more likely. What he produced is a romanticized account, much more in keeping with the tradition of the young man properly brought up who goes astray, turns to a life of crime, and ultimately dies for his misdeeds. The balladist portrays Deane as the one who strayed from the righteous path; there is no indication that the wife had any guilt. And moving the murder scene from a neighbor’s sitting room to the bed of an adulteress’s paramour certainly makes for a more dramatic

NEW ENGLAND

25

story. Though the ballad doesn’t conclude with the typical gallows scene, there is a strong implication that the penitent narrator is about to be executed for his crime.

VERMONT European exploration of the area of Vermont began early in the seventeenth century. In 1609 the French explorer Samuel de Champlain discovered a lake there, to which he gave his name. The first permanent European settlement was established by the French in 1666 on Isle La Motte, an island in northern Lake Champlain. The name “Vermont” is derived from the French vert and mont (“green mountains”—hence the name of the Green Mountain Boys), reflecting the heavy coniferous forests that kept Vermont’s mountains green year-round. Unlike the original 13 colonies, Vermont’s early development began not as a chartered royal colony, but as a territory, the possession of which was disputed by New Hampshire and New York. In the decades before the Revolution, disputes arose when land grants by New Hampshire conflicted with similar grants issued by New York. Between 1770 and 1775, many early settlers joined Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys and fought off the Yorkers who tried to control Vermont. Later, when the American Revolution began, the same Green Mountain Boys were an important element in the fight for independence from England. Their successful assault on Fort Ticonderoga, on the New York side of Lake Champlain in May 1775, was perhaps the first offensive action of the Revolution. In 1777 the Vermonters created an independent republic—first as New Connecticut, then as Vermont—and they remained independent until they joined the Union on March 4, 1791, as the 14th state.27 Riflemen’s Song at Bennington Why come ye hither, Redcoats? Your mind what madness fills? In our valleys there is danger, and there’s danger in our hills! Oh, hear ye not the singing of the bugle wild and free? Full soon ye’ll know the ringing of the rifle from the tree! Chorus: For the rifle (clap, clap)— The rifle (clap, clap) In our hands will prove no trifle! Ye ride a goodly steed; ye may know another master. Ye forward come with speed, but ye’ll learn to back much faster, When ye meet our mountain boys and their leader, Johnny Stark, Lads who make but little noise, lads who always hit the mark! Chorus. Had ye no graves at home across the briny water, That hither ye must come like bullocks to the slaughter? If we the work must do, why, the sooner ’tis begun, If flint and trigger hold but true, the quicker ’twill be done. Chorus.28

The battle of Bennington took place on August 16, 1777, several miles west of Bennington, Vermont (actually in the state of New York). The objective of the Americans was to defend colonial military stores in Bennington. Brigadier General John Stark’s 1,600 militiamen (gathered together by Ethan Allen and Seth Warner) ambushed the enemy force of 800 British, Hessians, loyalists, and Indians, taking more than 700 prisoner. The battle is

26

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

commemorated by an historic park near Walloomsac[k], New York, where the battle took place, and by a 306-foot obelisk in Old Bennington, Vermont.29 Maple Sweet, or, Vermont Sugar-Maker’s Song When you see the vapor pillars link the forest and the sky, You may know the days of sugar-making then are drawing nigh. Frosty night and thawy day make the maple pulses play Till congested with their sweetness, they delight to bleed away. Chorus: Then, bubble, bubble, bubble goes the pan. Furnish better music for the season if you can! See the golden billows! Watch their ebb and flow! Sweetest joys indeed we sugar-makers know! When the farmer comes a-trudging with his dripping buckets home You may know the days of sugar-making then have fully come; As the fragrant odors pour through the open kitchen door, How the eager children rally, ever loudly calling “more!” Chorus. You may wax it, you may grain it, fix it anyhow to eat, You will always smack your lips and say, “This very, sweet!” O, had David tasted some, ’neath his cedar palace dome, Maple sweet had got the praises of the honey and the comb. Do you say you don’t believe it? Take your saucer and a spoon; Though you’re sourer than a lemon, you’ll be sweeter very soon. Why! the greenest leaves you see on the spreading maple tree, Let they sip and sip all summer—will the autumn beauties be. Chorus.30

Few natural products are more strongly associated with the Northeast than maple syrup, maple sugar, and related products, and Vermont is still the state leading in maple syrup production. The preceding delightful song was written by Reverend Perrin B. Fiske, in Peacham, Vermont, in 1858. The circumstances of its composition are not known, but one can well imagine that it was written for some local festival or pageant and somehow managed to survive beyond its expected useful lifetime. The Song of the Vermonters —1779 Ho—all to the borders! Vermonters, come down, With your breeches of deerskin and jackets of brown; With your red woolen caps, and your moccasins, come, To the gathering summons of trumpet and drum. Come down with your rifles! Let grey wolf and fox Howl on in the shade of their primitive rocks; Let the bear feed securely from pig-pen and stall; Here’s two-legged game for your powder and ball. On our south came the Dutchmen, enveloped in grease; And arming for battle while canting of peace; On our east crafty Meshech has gathered his band To hang up our leaders and eat up our land.

This broadside printing of Whittier’s “Song of the Vermonters” is unusual in the extensive accompanying annotations. It probably dates from the mid-nineteenth century. William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan.

28

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Ho—all to the rescue! For Satan shall work No gain for his legions of Hampshire and York! They claim our possessions—the pitiful knaves— The tribute we pay shall be prisons and graves! Let Clinton and Ten Broek, with bribes in their hands, Still seek to divide and parcel our lands; We’ve coats for our traitors, whoever they are; The warp is of feathers—the filling of tar. Does the “old Bay State” threaten? Does Congress complain? Swarms Hampshire in arms on our borders again? Bark the war-dogs of Britain aloud on the lake— Let ’em come; what they can they are welcome to take. What seek they among us? The pride of our wealth Is comfort, contentment, and labor, and health, And lands which, as Freemen, we only have trod, Independent of all, save the mercies of God. Yet we owe no allegiance, we bow to no throne, Our ruler is law, and the law is our own; Our leaders themselves are our own fellow-men, Who can handle the sword, or the scythe, or the pen. Our wives are all true, and our daughters are fair, With their blue eyes of smiles and their light flowing hair, All brisk at their wheels till the dark even-fall, Then blithe at the sleigh-ride, the husking, and ball! We’ve sheep on the hillsides, we’ve cows on the plain, And gay-tasselled corn-fields and rank growing grain; There are deer on the mountains, and wood-pigeons fly From the crack of our muskets, like clouds in the sky. And there’s fish in our streamlets and rivers which take Their course from the hills to our broad-bosomed lake; Through rock-arched Winooski and salmon leaps free, And the portly shad follows all fresh from the sea. Like a sunbeam the pickerel glides through the pool, And the spotted trout sleeps where the water is cool, Or darts from his shelter of rock and of root At the beaver’s quick plunge, or the angler’s pursuit. And ours are the mountains, which awfully rise, Till they rest their green heads on the blue of the skies; And ours are the forests unwasted, unshorn, Save where the wild path of the tempest is torn. And though savage and wild be this climate of ours, And brief be our season of fruits and of flowers, Far dearer the blast round our mountains which raves, Than the sweet summer zephyr which breathes over slaves! Hurrah for Vermont! For the land which we till Must have sons to defend her from valley and hill;

NEW ENGLAND

29

Leave the harvest to rot on the fields where it grows, And the reaping of wheat for the reaping of foes. From far Michiscom’s wild valley, to where Poosoonsuck steals down from his wood-circled lair, From Shocticook River to Lutterlock town— Ho—all to the rescue! Vermonters, come down! Come York or come Hampshire, come traitors or knaves, If ye rule o’er our land, ye shall rule o’er our graves; Our vow is recorded—our banner unfurled, In the name of Vermont we defy all the world!31

The original text of this song is a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892), born near Haverhill, Massachusetts, and one of America’s most popular poets in the early nineteenth century. Like his parents, Whittier was a Quaker, and he devoted more than three decades to the abolition of slavery in the United States. Because of his opposition to war, he never acknowledged authorship of this poem until late in life. The Green Mountain Boys It was on one Monday morning in eighteen hundred and seventy-five, I thought myself quite happy to find myself alive. I harnessed up my horses, my business to pursue, And I went to hauling cordwood as I always used to do. The taverns being opened and the whisky running free, As soon as one glass was empty another was filled for me. Instead of hauling eight loads I didn’t haul but four, For I got so very drunk that I couldn’t haul no more. It was there I met my old companion—her name I will not tell. She told me that night where the dance was to be held. ’Twas hard to be persuaded, but with her I did agree For to meet her there that night where the fiddler was to be. I took my saddle on my arm and I traveled to the barn. I saddled up old Gray, not thinking of any harm. I saddled up old Gray and I rode away so quick That I hadn’t scarcely thought before I reached Greenlandville. My father followed after me as I heard the people say. He must have had a pile of tail, he never found the way. He peeked through every keyhole where he could spy a light ’Til his old grey locks were wet by the dew of the night. Fourteen of the Green Mountain boys were up on the floor to dance, As many of the prettiest girls that ever sailed from France. The fiddler, being Irish, and his elbow being strong, He played the grounds of Ireland for five hours long. “It’s past five o’clock, boys, we’ve all danced enough. Our pockets are empty making change those old cuffs. We’ll go home to our plows, boys, we’ll whistle, dance and sing, And we never shall be caught in such a drunken scrape again.

30

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

“Come all ye good old women who tattle-tale about, Don’t add anything to this, for it’s bad enough without. Don’t add anything to this, or try to raise a fuss, For you’re guilt of the same, and perhaps a great deal worse.”32

The singer from whom the above song was recorded said that three or four men in the Chaffee Lumber Camp, Rutland-Chittenden, made up this song. It has also been collected in North Dakota, New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. The Pennsylvania source said the song was sung in lumber camps there in the 1850s and 1860s, and in some versions, the date is 1805, rather than 1875. Possibly this version is a recomposition of an older piece. The Woodstock Bridge Disaster (The Hartford Wreck) In our country far or near, each day we read and hear, Of shocking accidents on land and sea; Your attention now I’ll call to the latest of them all, The Central Vermont railroad tragedy. As the Montreal Express was speeding at its best, Near Woodstock bridge it struck a broken rail; And with a fearful crash, down the dark abyss was dashed, New few survive to tell that awful tale. Chorus: ’Twas in the dead of night, and no words can paint that sight; The sleeping cars were filled with living freight; This ill-fated train was dashed to the river bed with a crash, And a hundred souls went down to meet their fate. Soon the wreck was in a blaze, horror met the victims’ gaze, Their frantic cries for help were sad to hear; None responded to their call, they must perish, one and all, Alas, kind friends no help for them was near. ’Tis shocking to relate, and sad to contemplate; No words can paint a picture of that sight; Little thought they death so nigh, when they bid their friends good-bye, Ere leaving home upon that fatal night. There’s one who’ll ne’er forget, that’s little Joe Maigret, He was with his father on the fatal train; Although wounded by the fall, when he heard his father’s call, To free him from the wreck he tried in vain. “ ’Tis no use, my boy,” said he, “There is no help for me!” Just then, the burning flames around him curled; Little Joe began to cry, as his father said “good-bye, We’ll meet again up in the other world!”33 The Montreal Express left Springfield, Massachusetts, at 8.15, February 4, 1887. The accident, due to a broken rail, occurred while the train was crossing the White River Bridge, at Hartford, Vermont, four miles beyond White River Junction. The engine, baggage and mail cars crossed the bridge safely; the passenger cars ran off the abutment of the bridge and down a fifty-foot chasm. Just as the cars left the rails, someone gave the emergency stop signal. Engineer Charles H. Pierce set the brakes and looked out of the cab window in time to witness the disaster, and with his fireman was the first to go to the rescue of the victims. Conductor Smith Sturtevant was pinned under the burning wreckage: Pierce saved him from burning to death on the spot, but the conductor died later of his injuries. Of the

NEW ENGLAND

31

eighty-five persons on the train, including the crew, thirty-two were killed outright, thirty-six injured, and seventeen escaped unhurt.34

One of the passengers, Dieu Donne Maigret, of Shawinigan, Quebec, was pinned in the wreck; his son Joseph tried in vain to drag him from the advancing smoke and flames. The Boston Transcript quoted Joseph as saying that his father’s last words were, “Tell your mother good-bye.” The White Captive The moon had gone down o’er the hills of the West; Its last beam had faded on Moosilauk crest. ’Twas a midnight of horror! the red meteor flashed, And hoarse down the mountain, and hoarse down the mountain the cataract dashed. At intervals came, ’mid the hollow wind’s sigh, The hoot of the owl, and the catamount’s cry; The howl of the wolf from its lone granite cell, And the crash of the dead (2) forest tree as it fell. Amanda, the pride of her village and home, Far, far up the Merrimac waters had come; In war, led a captive, unfriended, forlorn, Her feet bathed in blood, and her garments all torn. At the foot of a hemlock the wild game was flung; Above, from its branches, the rude armor hung; From battle and plunder the warriors reposed— The toils of the day, which the evening had closed. Ere blushes of morning again should return, In torture Amanda was destined to burn! She courted the vengeance and wrath of her foes, And sighed for the hour when her sufferings should close. The watch fire was lighted, and fanned by the breeze, Its light shone around on the evergreen trees; And fiercer the look of the plumed savage seemed, As the light on his features of bronze dimly gleamed. The pile was constructed—its red embers glared; Amanda was bound, and her white bosom bared; Around her stood waiting the merciless throng, Impatient to join in the war-dance and song. Young Albin, the chief of the warriors, drew near, With the eye of the eagle, the foot of the deer; And a soul that would scorn from a foeman to crave, A sigh for his suffering—a tear o’er his grave. One moment he hung on the charms of the fair, Her bright hazel eye now uplifted in prayer; Her dark raven locks, which in ringlets below, Half hid from the gazer her bosom of snow. “Forbear!” cried the chieftain, “Your torture forbear! Amanda shall live! By my wampum I swear!

32

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Tonight, if a victim must burn at the tree, Young Albin, your leader, your victim shall be.” To rescue Amanda, as forward he rushed, The revelry ceased, and all tumult was hushed; And mute stood the circle of warriors around, As Albin, the cords of Amanda unbound. On Pemigewasset, at dawning of day, Their birchen canoe was seen gliding away; As swift as the wild duck that swam by its side, In silence their bark down the river did glide. At dusk of the evening a white cot was seen, The smoke curling blue o’er the willowy green; A moment of parting was seen on the shore, And Albin, the warrior, was heard of no more. Amanda returned to her village and home, And Albin once more to his warriors has gone; And long may the banner of peace o’er them wave— Amanda the captive, and Albin the brave!35

Phillips Barry, one of America’s most distinguished folklore scholars, concluded that this poem (in the original, the warrior’s name was Olban, not Albin) was written in his youth by the Reverend Thomas C. Upham, afterward minister of the Congregational Church in Rochester, New Hampshire, and professor of moral philosophy and metaphysics at Bowdoin College from 1825 to 1867. It was first printed for the author in the Columbian Sentinel (Boston) on September 19, 1818. The final stanza is not in the original, but was added by someone borrowing (claimed Barry, though not convincingly) from Matthew Lewis’s ballad “Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogine” (included in his gothic novel The Monk [1796]). The collected text shows some other differences from the original 1818 text: the “bright hazel eye” and “dark raven locks” were originally a “dark hazel eye” and “bright sunny locks.” It should be noted that Barry’s conclusions regarding authorship were based on internal evidence only; the poem as originally printed bore only a pseudonymous attribution. Barry also noted that the reference in the first stanza to a meteor may have been the only factual part of the account: such a spectacular object was indeed seen in Middlebury, Vermont, on the night of July 17, 1818. Truth or not, the poem-song captured the fancy of singers across the country and was collected as far away as Texas and Oklahoma in the early 1900s. Barry further remarked that the ballad’s author unfairly denigrates northeastern Indians, who may have tortured enemy warriors, but not women.36 The Pemigewasset is a river, wilderness area, and mountain in New Hampshire. Moosilauk is not a real place name, but is a reasonable derivation (according to Barry and his coauthor, Fanny Hardy Eckstorm) from Maine Indian moos (moose) and aukee (place). The Stratton Mountain Tragedy Cold swept the mountain’s high, Dreary was the pathless wild; Amid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child; As through the drifts of snow she pressed, The babe was sleeping ’neath her breast.

Cover to the original sheet music for “The Snow Storm” (1843), the source for the ballad, “The Stratton Mountain Tragedy.” The lithographed illustration is by F. F. Oakley of Boston. Author’s collection.

34

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Bitter blew the chilly winds, Darker hours of night came on; Deeper grew the drifts of snow, Her limbs were chilled, her strength was gone; “Oh God,” she cried in accents wild “If I must perish, save my child.” She took the mantle from her breast And bared her bosom to the storm; As round the babe she wrapped her vest She smiled to think that it was warm. One cold kiss, one tear she shed, And sank upon the snowy bed. A stranger passing by next morn, Saw her ’neath the snowy veil; The frost of death was in her eye, Her cheek was hard and cold and pale. He took the robe from off the child, The babe looked up and sweetly smiled.37

The preceding song is derived from a poem by Seba Smith originally titled “The Snow Storm,” set to music by Lyman Heath and performed in concerts by the celebrated Hutchinson Family. The sheet music cover bears the following inscription: In the month of December, 1821, a Mr. Blake, with his wife and an infant, was passing over the Green Mountain, in a sleigh. The drifting snow rendered it impossible for the horse to proceed. Mr. B. set off on foot in search of assistance, and perished in the storm. The mother, alarmed (as is supposed) at his long absence, went in quest of him with the infant in her arms. She was found in the morning, dead, a short distance from the sleigh. The child was wrapped in her cloak, and survived the perils of the storm.38

According to Flanders and Brown, who printed the above text, the tragedy described in this ballad occurred at Kelly Stand near the town of Arlington, Vermont. Smith’s original text is given for comparison: Seba Smith: The Snowstorm (1843) The cold wind swept the mountain’s height, And pathless was the dreary wild, And mid the cheerless hours of night A mother wandered with her child. As through the drifted snows she pressed, The babe was sleeping on her breast, The babe was sleeping on her breast. And colder still the winds did blow, And darker hours of night came on, And deeper grew the drifts of snow— Her limbs were chilled, her strength was gone. “O God!” she cried, in accents wild, “If I must perish, save my child, “If I must perish save my child.”

NEW ENGLAND

35

She stript her mantle from her breast, And bared her bosom to the storm; As round the child she wrapped the vest, She smiled to think that it was warm. With one cold kiss, one tear she shed, And sunk upon a snowy bed, And sunk upon a snowy bed. At dawn, a traveller passed by, And saw her ’neath a snowy veil— The frost of death was in her eye, Her cheek was cold, and hard, and pale— He moved the robe from off the child; The babe looked up, and sweetly smiled, The babe looked up, and sweetly smiled.39

Seba Smith was born in Buckfield, Maine, on September 14, 1792, and died in Patchogue, Long Island, on July 29, 1868. He was graduated at Bowdoin in 1818 and subsequently settled in Portland, Maine, as a journalist, where he edited the Eastern Argus, the Family Recorder, and the Portland Daily Courier. During the administration of President Jackson, he wrote a series of humorous and satirical letters under the pen name “Major Jack Downing” that attained wide celebrity and were subsequently collected and published. His other publications include Powhatan, a metrical romance (New York, 1841) and Way Down East, or Portraitures of Yankee Life (1855).40 The Vermont Farmer’s Song Did you ever hear tell of the farmers that live among the hills, Where ev’ry man’s a “Sov’reign” and owns the land he tills; Where all the girls are beautiful and all the boys are strong? ’Tis my delight on a summer’s night to sing the Farmer’s song. ’Tis here the tall and manly “Green Mountain Boys” are seen— So call’d because the Mountains and not the Boys are green, They always fight to win the right or to resist the wrong, ’Tis my delight on a summer’s night to sing the Farmer’s song. ’Tis here the best and fairest of Yankee Girls are caught, With ev’ry grace and form of face that e’er a lover sought, With ev’ry art to win his heart and hold it long and strong. ’Tis my delight on a summer’s night to sing the Farmer’s song. ’Tis here the Morgan horses and Black Hawk steeds abound, For grace and beauty, strength and speed, their equals can’t be found; They will always “go it fleetly” and always “come it strong.” ’Tis my delight on a summer’s night to sing the Farmer’s song. ’Tis here the true “Merinos” of pure imported stock Are often seen to range the green in many a noble flock; Their forms are large and beautiful, their wool is fine and long. ’Tis my delight on a summer’s night to sing the Farmer’s song. And now a health to the shearers, and many joyous years, Who with a will and ready skill propel the busy shears,

36

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

With hearts sincere and conscience clear, and voices loud and strong They take delight, from morn till night, to sing the shearer’s song.41

Vermont was the first state to raise merino sheep, which originated in Spain and were first imported from there in 1809 and 1810. The Morgan horse, first bred in about 1820, was once the most widespread breed in the United States. The American Morgan Horse Register was published in Middlebury, Vermont, starting in 1894. John Godfrey Saxe was born in Highgate, Vermont, on June 2, 1816, and died in Albany, New York, on March 31, 1887. During the four years following his graduation from Middlebury, he studied law in Lockport, New York, and then in St. Albans, Vermont, where, in 1843, he was admitted to the bar. He practiced with success in Franklin County for several years, becoming, in 1850–1851, state’s attorney for Chittenden County, and in 1847– 1848 he was superintendent of common schools. In 1850 he purchased the Burlington Sentinel, which he edited until 1856. Saxe served as attorney-general of Vermont in 1856 and, for a time, was deputy collector of customs. In 1859, and again in 1860, he was the unsuccessful Democratic nominee for governor. Settling in New York, he devoted himself to literature and lectured until 1872, when he moved to Albany and became an editor of the Evening Journal. Saxe achieved his greatest reputation by his poetry. His most widely known piece (though his name isn’t always associated with it) is his versification of the widely known Hindu tale of the six men and the elephant. His “Rhyme of the Rail,” “The Briefless Barrister,” “The Proud Miss McBride,” and similar humorous poems, as well as his more serious “Jerry, the Miller,” “I’m growing Old,” “The Old Church-Bell,” and “Treasures in Heaven,” were very popular.42 Wilkes Lovell ’Twas on the fourteenth day of March, as you will plainly see, We broke the locks of Springfield jail our liberty to get. We broke them, yes, we broke them, swung open wide the door, Resolved to leave old Springfield town and get in jail no more. Wilkes Lovell’s wife she heard the locks as they fell upon the floor; She hastened to the courthouse to let Wilkes Lovell know. She hastened to the courthouse to let the sheriff know, Young Lot and I then hadn’t been gone but an hour and one half ago. Wilkes Lovell mounted his white horse and through the streets did fly, Shouting, “I’ll bring those prisoners back with me or in the chase I’ll die.” He followed us and he captured us, which made our hearts grow cold. He shackled us both together, my boys, and marched us off to jail. Come all of you young greedy lads and take advice from me, But I hope that you will never do the deed young Lot and I have done, For if you do, ’twill ruin you, you’ll be as bad as we, For six long years to serve your time, in a cottage by the sea, And six long months to serve your time in old Rutland on the hill.43

The editors of NGMS record that Lovell was sheriff of Windsor County, Vermont, in the 1890s and that the two miscreants described in the ballad were gypsy horse traders, in jail for the theft of a harness. The irregular rhyme scheme suggests a text that has deteriorated somewhat through imperfect memory. The last couplet is particularly puzzling since the

NEW ENGLAND

37

fifth line in the stanza is unprecedented. Was their sentence for six months or six years? Furthermore, “In a cottage by the sea” makes little sense in the present context, but it is the title of a popular song from the mid-nineteenth century and must have replaced some other phrase in the singer’s mind. Sheriff Lovell’s white horse may be a subconscious recollection from the old British ballad of Lord Lovel, who also rode a milk-white steed as he passed along the highway. Rutland is the county seat of Rutland County, in south central Vermont. From 1784 to 1804, it was the state capital. Margaret Gray—A Legend of Vermont Fair the cabin walls was gleaming On that sunbeam golden glow, On that lovely April morning, It was a hundred years ago, As upon that humble threshold Stood the young wife, Margaret Gray, With her fearless blue eyes glancing Down the lonely forest way. In her arms her laughing baby With its father’s dark hair played, As he lingered there beside them, Leaning on his trusty spade, “I am going to the wheat lot,” With a smile says Robert Gray, “Will you be too lonely Margaret, If I leave you all the day?” Then she smiled a cheerful answer Ere she spoke a single word, And the tones of her replying Were as sweet as songs of birds. “No,” she says, “I’ll take the baby And go stay with Anna Brown, You must meet me there, dear Robert, Ere the sun has quite gone down.” Then they parted, strong and stidy [sic] All the day he labored on, Spading up the fertile acres, From the stubborn forest won. Till when length the shadows warned him That the sun was in the west, Down the woodland aisle he hastened Whispering, “Now for home and rest.” But when he reached the clearing From his friend a mile away, Neither wife nor child was waiting There to welcome Robert Gray. “She is safe at home,” says Anna “For she went an hour ago.”

38

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

“It is strange I did not meet her,” Came his answer quick and low. Back he turned, for night was falling, And the path he scarce could see; Here and there his feet was guided Onward by some deep-gashed tree. Til when length he reached the cabin, Black and desolate it stood, Cold the hearth, the windows raylist [i.e., rayless], In their stillest solitude. With a murmur, prayer, and shudder And a sob of anguish wild, Back he hastened to the forest, Calling on his wife and child. Soon the scattered settlers gathered From their clearing far and near, And their solemn words resounded With their voices ringing clear. Torches blazed, and fires were kindled And the horn, long pealed, rang out, Til the startled echoes answered To the hardy woodmen’s shout. Til in vain their sad endeavors, Night by night and day by day, But no sign or token found they Of the child or Margaret Gray. Woe! ah, woe! to pretty Margaret! With her baby on her arm, On her homeward way she started, Fearing nothing that could harm. With a lip and brow untroubled, And a heart at utter rest, Through the dim woods she went singing To the baby at her breast. But when sudden terror, pausing, Gazed she round in blank dismay. Where was all the white scarred hemlock Pointing out the lonely way? God had mercy! She had wandered From the pathway. Not a tree Giving mute but kindly warning Could her straining vision see. Twilight deepened into darkness, And the stars came out on high. All was silent in the forest Except the owl’s low brooding cry. All about her in the midnight, Steadily the shadows crept And the babe upon her bosom Closed its timid eyes and slept.

NEW ENGLAND

Hark! a shout! and in the distance She could see a torches gleam. But alas! She could not reach them, And they vanished like a dream. With another shout, another, And she screamed and sobbed in vain, Rushing wildly towards the spot She could never, never gain. Morning came and with the sunbeams Hope and courage rose once more, Thinking sure another nightfall Her long wanderings would be o’er, So she soothed her wailing baby Which went faint for want of food. She could gather nuts and acorns That she found within the wood. Ah, the days so long and dreary! And the nights more dreary still! More than once she heard the sounding Of the horns from hill to hill. More than once a smoldering fire In some sheltered nook she found, And she knew her husband’s footprints Close beside it on the ground. Dawned the fourth relentless morning, And the sun’s out-peeping eye Rose upon the haggard mother, Looked to see her baby die. All night long in plaintive mourning Wrang the heart of Margaret Gray. All night long her bosom cradled A pallid thing of clay. Three days more she bore it with her, On her rough and toilsome way, Till acrost its marble beauty Stole the plague spots of decay. Then she knew that she must leave it In the wilderness asleep While the prowling wild beast only Watch above its grave could keep. Down with grief she set beside it Ah, how long she never knew! With the tales her mother taught her, Which her all-dear Father drew; Till the skies were brass above her, And the earth was cold and dim, But with all her prayer and pleading Brought no answer down from Him. But when length turned life the tyrant Bade her take her burden up.

39

40

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

To her lips, so pale and shrunken, Press again the bitter cup. Up she rose, still tramping onward Through the forest large and wild, Till the Mayflowers bloomed and perished, And the sweet June roses died. Till July and August brought her Fruit and berries by the store; Until the goldenrod and aster Said the summer was no more; Til the maples and the birches Donned their robes, from green to gold; And the birds were hastening southward And the days were growing cold. Was she doomed to roam forever O’er this desolated earth? She was the last and only being In the wilds of human birth. Sometimes from her dreary pathway Wolf or black bear turned away, But not once did human faces Bless the sight of Margaret Gray. One chill morning in October When the woods were brown and bare, Through the streets of ancient Charlestown, With a strange bewildered air, Walked a gaunt and pallid woman, Whose disheveled locks of brown O’er her naked breast and shoulders In the wind were streaming down. Wondering glances fell upon her, Women veiled their modest eyes As they slowly ventured near her, Drawn by pitying surprise. “It’s some crazy one,” they whispered. Back her tangled locks she tossed “O kind friends, take pity on me, For I am not mad but lost.” Then she told her piteous story In a strange desponded way, And with cold, white lips she murmurs “Take me home to Robert Gray.” “But the river,” says they, pondering “How crossed you to its eastern side. How crossed you its rapid waters— Deep its channel is, and wide!” But she said she had not crossed it. In a strange erratic course She had wandered so far northward,

Till she reached its fountain source Down the dark Canadian forest, And then blindly roaming on Through the steep New Hampshire valley, Her bewildered feet had gone. Ah, the joy bells, sweet were ringing On that frosty autumn air! How the boats across the waters, How they leaped—the tale to bear. Oh, that wondrous golden sunset Of that blest October day, When the weary wife was folded In the arms of Robert Gray.44

The song originally appeared as a poem by Julia C. R. Dorr titled “Margery Grey— A Legend of Vermont,” based on a true story.45 Although the singer’s text, as given above, has several apparent mistakes, it may seem remarkable to today’s readers that so much could be preserved orally. We should recall that in times long past, oral transmission of poetry was no more surprising than our being able to relate a long joke. The secret of oral tradition is that the essence of the song or story is remembered, not the exact words, just as we would not memorize a joke word for word. In the twentieth century, folklorists collected texts of epic stories from singers of central Europe and the Balkans, who were able to commits thousands of lines of poetry to memory after only one or two hearings. Margaret MacArthur has recorded the song, with some emendations that make sense out of the distorted passages.

MASSACHUSETTS Present-day Massachusetts is the site of two separate seventeenth-century settlements. Pilgrims established Plymouth colony, or the Old Colony, in 1620. The Pilgrims were never granted a royal charter; their government was based on the Mayflower Compact, a document signed by 41 male passengers on the ship Mayflower five weeks before their arrival in the New World. To the north was the much larger Massachusetts Bay Company, settled by English Puritans in the 1630s. By the mid-1640s, the colony numbered more than 20,000 people, and it began absorbing settlements in Maine and New Hampshire. The city of Boston was established in 1630 and was an independent, self-governing entity for half a century. The Puritan government operated as an independent state until King Charles II abrogated the colony’s charter in 1684 for repeatedly overstepping its authority. In 1691 a new charter was granted to the Province of Massachusetts Bay that united Plymouth, Maine, and the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard with Massachusetts. Not until 1820 was Maine established as a separate state. When England began to enact laws and practices to gain revenue from the Boston trade at the expense of the colonies, the aggrieved inhabitants resisted. After passage of the Stamp Act by Parliament in 1765, angry citizens stormed and destroyed the governor’s house. The Boston Massacre of 1770, in which British troops fired on a crowd of civilian hecklers and killed several persons, and the Boston Tea Party of 1773, in which colonists disguised as Indians dumped three shiploads of tea into Boston Harbor, demonstrated that

42

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

the Americans were not about to give in to the British demands. The armed skirmishes at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, were further steps along the irreversible path toward all-out war. When George Washington’s army besieged the British in Boston during the following winter, normal life in the town was suspended. On March 17, 1776, threatened by Washington’s artillery positioned on Dorchester Heights, British troops, officials, and many American loyalists to the crown left the city.46 All told, no colony was more involved in the events leading up to the war than Massachusetts, and many of these actions were memorialized in poems and songs. Since Boston was also one of the printing centers of the colonies, it was natural that it should become the wellspring for many revolutionary pamphlets, broadsides, and other publications. The War of 1812 aroused a great deal of anti-British fervor, and many ballads from the 1770s were reprinted and distributed anew. New England’s Annoyances New England’s annoyances you that would know them, Pray ponder these verses which briefly doth show them; The place where we live is a wilderness wood, Where grass is much wanting that’s fruitful and good: Our mountains and hills and valleys below Being commonly cover’d with ice and with snow, And when the north-wester with violence blows Then every man pulls his cap over his nose; But if any are so hardy and will it withstand, He forfeits a finger, a foot, or a hand. When the spring opens we then take the hoe And make the ground ready to plant and to sow; Our corn being planted and seed being sown, The worms destroy much before it is grown; And when it is growing some spoil there is made, By birds and by squirrels that pluck up the blade; Even when it is grown to full corn in the ear, It is often destroyed by racoons and deer. And now our garments begin to grow thin, And wool is much wanted to card and to spin; If we can get a garment to cover without, Our other in-garments are clout upon clout; Our clothes we brought with us are often much torn, They need to be clouted before they are worn; But clouting our garments they hinder us nothing, Clouts double, are warmer than single whole clothing. If flesh meat be wanting to fill up our dish, We have carrots and pumkins and turnips and fish; And when we have a mind for a delicate dish, We repair to the clam-bank and there we catch fish. Instead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies, Our pumkins and parsnips are common supplies; We have pumkin at morning, and pumkin at noon, If it was not for pumkins we should be undoon.

NEW ENGLAND

43

If barley be wanting to make into malt, We must be contented, and think it no fault, For we can make liquor to sweeten our lips, Of pumkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips. Now while some are going let others be coming, For while liquor is boiling it must have a scumming, But we will not blame them, for birds of a feather, By seeking their fellows are flocking together. But you who the Lord intends hither to bring, Forsake not the honey for fear of the sting, But bring both a quiet and contented mind And all needful blessings you surely will find.47

We have here what is arguably the oldest American folk song—that is to say, the first song written on American soil that survived (for a century or more) by oral tradition. Lemay, who uncovered the above version, argues that the original was probably written in ca. 1643 by Edward Johnson (1598–1672), author of A History of New England and the preeminent town father of Woburn, Massachusetts, serving as legislator, captain of the militia, surveyor, selectman, and magistrate. Though the song belongs to all of New England, it is placed here as a Massachusetts song, inasmuch as its author was a native of Massachusetts and its early publications were all in Massachusetts. In any case, the song is a catalog of the hardships of life in the early New England colonies, but an optimistic one nonetheless. The Boston Burglar I was born in Boston city, a city you all know well, Brought up by honest parents, the truth to you I’ll tell; Brought up by honest parents, and raised most tenderly, Till I became a roving man at the age of twenty-three. My character then was taken, and I was sent to jail, My friends they found it was in vain to get me out on bail; The jury found me guilty, the clerk he wrote it down; The judge then passed me sentence, and I was sent to Charleston town. They put me aboard an east bound train one cold December day, And every station that we passed I’d hear the people say, “There goes the noted burglar, in strong chains he’ll be bound, For doing some crime or other he’s sent to Charleston town.” Now you who have your liberty, pray keep it if you can, And don’t go round the streets at night to break the laws of man, For if you do you’ll surely pay, and find yourself like me, A serving out my twenty one years in the penitentiary.48

“The Boston Burglar” is generally regarded as a fictional American recomposition of a British broadside ballad about a criminal being transported to the Australian penal colony of Botany Bay. An early broadside version of the latter is an imprint by W. Armstrong of Liverpool, dating from 1820–1824. The stanza closest to one of “The Boston Burglar” is And as we rode through London, the Cockneys they did say, It’s a pity that such clever lads should go to Botany Bay;

44

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

But when we do get there some letters we will write, Unto our native land, to our sweethearts and our wives.49

An American broadside, published by Henry J. Wehman in 1881, credits Michael J. Fitzpatrick with the words. Fitzpatrick may have been an Irish immigrant who rewrote a text he knew from tradition. The ballad became immensely popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and was often recorded commercially or collected in the field. It even found its way back to the motherland and has been collected in Ireland and Scotland (as early as 1908).50 Though occasionally, other city names replace Boston (for example, Louisville), it is almost certain that Boston was the original setting. Note also the reference to Charleston town (more correctly, Charlestown), now part of Boston. Battle of Bunker Hill Composed by a British officer after the engagement It was on the seventeenth, by break of day The Yankees did surprise us; With their strong works they had thrown up To burn the town and drive us. But soon we had an order come, An order to defeat them Like rebels stout, they stood it out, And thought we ne’er could beat them. About the hour of twelve that day An order came for marching, With three good flints, and sixty rounds, Each man hop’d to discharge them. We marched down to the Long wharf, Where boats were ready waiting, With expedition we embark’d, Our ships kept cannonading. And when our boats all filled were, With officers and soldiers, With as good troops as England had To oppose, who dare controul us. And when our boats all filled were, We row’d in line of battle, The showers of ball, like hail did fly, Our cannon loud did rattle. There was Copp’s Hill battery near Charlestown, Our twenty-fours they played, And the three frigates in the stream, That very well behaved. The Glasgow frigate clear’d the shore, All at the time of landing, With her grape shot and cannon balls, No yankees e’er could stand them. And when we landed on the shore, We draw’d up all together, The Yankees they’d all man’d their works, And thought we’d ne’er come thither.

Henry Wehman’s 1899 obituary proclaimed him the “original publisher in this country of the penny ballads,” and his publishing house issued nearly 1,500 different titles. This print of “Boston Burglar” was produced in 1881. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

Broadside, “Battle of Bunker Hill.” Even if it was written the day after the battle, this sheet from the shop of the prolific Boston broadside printer, Leonard Deming, was not published until around 1829–1831. Despite the attribution to “a British Officer,” the tone of the text suggests American authorship. From the Library of Congress.

NEW ENGLAND

But soon they did perceive brave Howe, Brave Howe, our bold commander, With grenadiers and infantry We made them to surrender. Brave William Howe on our right wing, Cry’d boys fight on like thunder, You soon will see the rebels flee With great amaze and wonder. Now some lay bleeding on the ground, And some full fast a running. O’er hills and dales and mountains high, Crying, zounds brave Howe’s a coming. They began to play on our left wing, Where Pigot he commanded, But we return’d it back again, With courage most undaunted. To our grape shot and musquet balls, To which they were but strangers, They thought to come with sword in hand, But soon they found their danger. And when the works we got into, And put them to the flight, sirs, Some of them did hide themselves, And others died of fright, sirs, And when their works we got into, Without great fear or danger, The works they’d made was firm and strong, The Yankees are great strangers. But as for our artillery, They all behaved dinty, For while our ammunition held, We gave it to them plenty. But our conductor he got broke, For his misconduct sure, sir, The shot he sent for twelve pound guns Were made for twenty-fours, sir. There’s some in Boston pleas’d to say, As we the field were taking, We went to kill their countrymen, While they their hay were making. But such stout whigs I never saw, To hang them all I’d rather, For making hay with musket balls, And buck-shot mix’t together. Brave Howe is so considerate, As to prevent all danger, He allows us half a pint a day— To rum we are no strangers. Long may he live by land and sea,

47

48

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

For he’s belov’d by many, The name of Howe the Yankees dread, We see it very plainly, And now my song is at an end, And to conclude my ditty, ’Tis the poor and ignorant And only them I pity. As for their king JOHN HANCOCK, And ADAMS, if they’re taken, Their heads for signs shall hang up high, Upon that hill call’d Beacon.51

The Battle of Bunker Hill was the first large-scale engagement of the American Revolution, fought on June 17, 1775, in Charlestown (now part of Boston), Massachusetts. The British goal was the possession of two adjacent peaks, Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill, overlooking Boston Harbor. Some 1,200 American troops, led by Colonel William Prescott, occupied and fortified Breed’s Hill during the night of June 16 as part of a strategic plan to force the British evacuation of Boston. After daybreak on June 17, the British commander in chief Thomas Gage began preparations for an attack. Naval units were brought within shelling range of Breed’s Hill, and about 2,200 troops under the command of General William Howe were dispatched from Boston. Meanwhile, about 300 additional volunteers, including General Joseph Warren, had joined the American force. Supported by naval cannonades, the British troops launched their initial assault on the American earthworks on Breed’s Hill at about 3:00 P.M. Colonel Prescott allegedly issued the now-famous (and oft-misattributed) order, “Don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.” The Americans allowed the British to advance almost to the base of the earthworks and then opened fire. Sustaining severe losses, the British retreated in confusion. A second charge was similarly repulsed. During the third British assault, the Americans, their ammunition exhausted, were forced to withdraw. The British then attacked and captured both hills. American losses in the battle totaled about 400 dead (including Warren), wounded, or taken prisoner. The British suffered about 1,000 killed and wounded, many of them officers. Although victory went to the British, the Americans demonstrated that their militiamen could not be dismissed out of hand, thereby strengthening the spirit of rebellion throughout the colonies. One of the most noteworthy casualties of the encounter was Joseph Warren (1741– 1775). Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and Harvard educated, he became a leader of the anti-British party after passage of the Stamp Act in 1765. He became a major general three days before he was killed in the Battle of Bunker Hill.52 The broadside from which the above text is copied bears no publication data. It probably was printed in the early 1800s—perhaps during the War of 1812—rather than during the Revolutionary period, though it was undoubtedly first written and published at that time. The caption “Composed by a British officer after the engagement” should not necessarily be taken at face value: there is much in the text that betrays a Yankee perspective and sensibility. Leonard Deming of Boston twice printed the ballad, once in 1829–1831 and again in 1832–1837, but the two texts are different from the above version. The most significant difference is in the last six lines, which Deming gives as Tis only Britons ignorant, That I most sincerely pity. As for our King and William Howe,

NEW ENGLAND

49

And General Gage if they’re taken The Yankees will hang their heads up high On that fine hill call’d Beacon.53

If there is any doubt whether an American or Englishman wrote the original text, the nationality of the author of this variant is unmistakable. Several other songs commemorating the battle have circulated.54 Another broadside ballad, more of a paeon to the fallen Joseph Warren, is “General Warren: or the Battle of Bunker Hill,” published by Nathaniel Coverly of Boston.55 Yet another, “Battle of Bunker Hill,” was written a half-century later, according to its first stanza: Come, usher in the early dawn, With the thundering canon’s rattle; ’Tis fifty years this glorious morn, Since our fathers fought the battle.56 A Song on the Nantucket Ladies Young damsels all where ever you may be, I pray attention give to me; Some braken hints I will lay down About the girls in Sherbourn town. When eve comes on they dress up neat, And go a-cruising through the streets; To see if they some beaus can find To suit their fancy and their minds. Skein laces long and frills so neat And bunnets worked so complete; With their painted cheeks and curled hair, They think to make the young men stare. Their long silk gowns and sleeves so big You’d think that they had run the rig; With their white kid shoes and silken hose They look like the devil in their clothes. They get the beaus all for to make A corset board to make them straight; They’ll bind it to their waist so tight And through the streets about from morn till night. Then a few false teeth they’re sure to wear And foretop curls and false hair; And a false heart that’ll ne’er prove true, We find it’s so it’s nothing new. They go to the factory every day And work twelve months without their pay; And then all for to crown the joke Why Daniel Dusten is broke. Then Henry Gardner and Peleg West Then they will do their best, They say that they do what is right And pay the girls every Saturday night.

50

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The girls being few with such ideas, Thinking their master for to please, For six pense [sic] a day to work they go And then they cut a dreadful show. When round Cape Horn their sweethearts go Then they must have another beau; To wait two years they say they can’t, To wait two years they say they shan’t. And when their beaus they do come back, Such lamentations they will make; Saying, “No one has courted me but you dear, So come along and never fear.” “Oh,” says the beaus, “That never do, I’ll never be taken in by you, If you keep on you’ll make me laugh, You can not catch old birds with chaff.” But always give the devil his due, There’s some will wait, ’tis very true; The reason it doth plainly show, They cannot catch another beau. This song was made around Cape Horn, Where most of the young men are gone. Haul down your flag, cut down your staff, It is all true, you need not laugh. Now, to conclude and end my song, There’s women tells me I am rong [sic], But if by chance they find it’s right, They may sing it from morn till night.57

When the Northeast was first settled by Europeans, the first occupations that developed (apart from local farming) were what the geography suggested: fishing (later, whaling) and timbering. Northeast folk song collections abound in maritime songs and sea shanties, especially in the neighborhoods of such seaports as New Bedford, Nantucket, Salem, Plymouth, and Boston. Charles Murphy, a seaman from Nantucket, wrote the following song in his journal while on the ship Diana in 1819. It gives a remarkably detailed view of town life at the time—and in particular, of the young women who cruised the streets of Sherbourn, the old name for Nantucket village. Murphy says his ship went around Cape Horn; that means it was sailed into the Pacific after sperm whales, a voyage that could easily last three years. In that long time, one can well imagine how restless the sweethearts left in Nantucket became. Cape Cod Girls Cape Cod girls they have no combs, Heave away! Heave away! They comb their hair with codfish bones, We’re bound for Californiay!

NEW ENGLAND

51

Heave away, my bully, bully boys, Heave away, and don’t you make a noise. Cape Cod boys they have no sleds, They slide down dunes on codfish heads. Cape Cod doctors they have no pills, They give their patients codfish gills. Cape Cod cats they have no tails, They lost them all in sou’east gales.58

Cape Cod was named by Bartholomew Gosnold, an English explorer who visited its shores in 1602 and took aboard a “great store of codfish.” In 1620 the Pilgrims landed at the site of Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod, before proceeding to Plymouth. Cape Cod has prospered as both a fishing community and vacation destination.59 Frank Shay, who printed the above song, claimed it was well known on Australia-bound whaling ships but unknown among old-time Cape Cod mariners. Massachusetts’s woods and vales still echo with the “shot heard ’round the world” that started the War for Independence, and some wonderful songs were composed between military skirmishes. One of the iconic acts precipitating the war between the colonies and the crown, probably the one most American schoolchildren still remember, is the Boston Tea Party. What they may not remember (or learn) is that the strongest impetus for independence was not a philosophical or political one, but rather economic. As all colonial powers have done for centuries, England used the colonies to its own economic advantage, regardless of the inconvenience to the colonists. In 1767 Parliament passed the Townshend Acts, imposing duties on various products imported into the American colonies. The action raised such a storm of colonial protest that all taxes were repealed in 1770, except that on tea, a duty that Boston merchants circumvented by accepting tea smuggled in by Dutch traders. In 1773 Parliament passed a Tea Act designed to aid the financially troubled (English) East India Company by granting it a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies and other financial favors, which allowed the company to undersell anyone else. The perception of monopoly drove the normally conservative colonial merchants into an alliance with the political firebrand Samuel Adams and his radical Sons of Liberty. On December 16, 1773, a gang of some 60 men, disguised as Mohawk Indians, boarded English ships docked in Boston Harbor and threw overboard 342 chests of tea belonging to the British East India Company. The tea was valued at £18,000. Parliament retaliated by passing a series of punitive measures known in the colonies as the Intolerable Acts, which succeeded only in uniting the colonies and driving them closer to revolt. Many wonderful songs were written about the escapade and enjoyed great popularity for many years. The event was such a defining moment in colonial history that it deserves remembrance in more than one song here, and four follow. In 1812–1815, during the next war with Britain, many of these song hits of the 1770s were dusted off, reprinted, and enjoyed another round of popularity. The first, collected in Martha’s Vineyard, is a version of “Gunpowder Tea,” sung to the tune of the English nursery song “Polly Put the Kettle On.” The reference to Saratoga, where General Burgoyne was humiliatingly defeated by American troops in October 1777, suggests that the song was not written until a few years after the party in Boston Harbor. This song is followed by three other musical commentaries on the Boston Tea Party episode.

52

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Gunpowder Tea Johnny Bull and many more, Soon they say are coming o’er, And as soon as they’re on shore They must have tea. Chorus: So Polly, put the kettle on, Blow the bellows good and strong, Polly put the kettle on, We’ll give them tea. They’ll want it strong, you need not dread, Sweetened well with sugar of lead; Perhaps it will go to their head And spoil their taste for tea. As soon as they put foot on shore, Their cups we’ll fill them o’er and o’er, With such as John Bull drank before, Nice Saratoga Tea. So let them come as soon’s they can, They’ll find us at our post each man, Their hides we will completely tan Before they get their tea.60 [Boston] Tea Tax I snum I am a yankee lad, and I guess I’ll sing a ditty, And if you do not relish it, the more will be the pitty; That is I think, I should have been a plaguy sight more finish’d man, If I’d been born in Boston town, but I warn’t cause I’m a Countryman. Tol lol de ra. Ri tol de rid dle id dle ri tol de da. And t’other day the yankee folks were mad about the taxes And so we went like Indians dress’d, to spilt tea chests with axes; I mean ’twas done in seventy-three, an’ we were real gritty The Mayor he would lead the gang, but Boston warn’t a city. Tol lol de ra, &c. Ye see we yankees didn’t care a pin for wealth or booty, And so in State Street we agreed we’d never pay the duty; That is, in State Street ’twould have been, but ’twas King Street they call’d it then, And the tax on tea, it was so bad, the women would not scal’d it then. Tol lol de ra, &c. To Charlestown Bridge we all went down to see the thing corrected That is, we would have gone there, but the bridge it warn’t erected; The tea perhaps was very good, Bohea, Shouchong or Hyson But drinking tea it warn’t the rage, the duty made it poison Tol lol de ra, &c. And then we went aboard the ships, our vengeance to administer; And didn’t care a tarnal curse, for any King or Minister; We made a plaguy mess o’tea, in one of the biggest dishes,

NEW ENGLAND

53

Mean, we steep’d it in the sea, and treated all the fishes. Tol lol de ra, &c. And then you see we were all found out, a thing we hadn’t dreaded, The leaders were to London sent and instantly beheaded, That is, I mean, they would have been if ever they’d been taken, But the leaders they were never cotch’d, and so they sav’d their bacon. Tol lol de ra, &c. Now heaven bless the President, and all this goodly nation And doubly bless our Boston Mayor, & and all the Corporation; And may all those who are our foes, or at our praise have falter’d, Soon have a change, that is, I mean, may all of them get halter’d. Tol lol de ra, &c.61

Based on his address, the publisher, Leonard Deming, issued this broadside in 1829– 1831. Details in the text indicate that the song was written considerably after the events it describes; probably it was written at the time of the War of 1812 as one more piece of anti-British puffery. Revolutionary Tea There was an old lady lived over the sea, And she was an Island Queen, Her daughter lived off in a new countrie, With an ocean of water between. The old lady’s pockets were full of gold, But never contented was she, So she called on her daughter to pay her a tax Of three pence a pound on her tea, Of three pence a pound on her tea. “Now mother, dear mother,” the daughter replied, “I sha’n’t do the thing you ax, I’m willing to pay a fair price for the tea, But never the three penny tax”; “You shall,” quoth the mother, and redden’d with rage, “For you’re my own daughter, you see, And sure, ’tis quite proper the daughter should pay Her mother a tax on her tea.” (2) And so the old lady her servant called up, And packed off a budget of tea; And eager for three pence a pound, She put in enough for a large familie, She order’d her servants to bring home the tax, Declaring her child should obey, Or old as she was, and almost woman grown, She’d half whip her life away. (2) The tea was conveyed to the daughter’s door, All down by the ocean’s side; And the bouncing girl pour’d out every pound In the dark and boiling tide;

54

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And then she called out to the Island Queen, “O mother, dear mother,” quoth she, “Your tea you may have when ’tis steep’d enough, But never a tax from me.” (2)62

“Revolutionary Tea” is one of the most lighthearted of the Boston Tea Party tributes, affording the colonists a chance to thumb their noses merrily at the motherland. The following song is in quite a different mood. Ballad of the Tea Party As near beauteuous BOSTON lying, On the gently swelling Flood, Without Jack or Pendant flying Three ill fated Tea Ships rode. Just as glorious Sol was setting, On the Wharf a numerous Crew, Sons of Freedom, Fear forgetting, Suddenly appear’d in View. Arm’d with Hammer, Axe, and Chisels, Weapons new for warlike Deed, Toward the Herbage-freighted Vessels They approach’d with dreadful Speed. O’er their Heads, aloft in Midsky, Three bright Angel Forms were seen; This was Hampden, that was Sidney, With fair Liberty between. “Soon, they cry’d, your foes you’ll banish, “Soon the Triumph shall be won, “Scarce shall setting Phebus vanish, “Ere the deathless Deed be done.” Quick as Thought the Ships were boarded, Hatches burst, and Chests display’d; Axes, Hammers, Help afforded; What a glorious Crash they made! Squash into the deep descended Cursed Weed of China’s Coast, Thus at once our Fears were ended; British Rights shall ne’er be lost. Captains! once more hoist your Streamers, Spread your Sails, and plow the Wave! Tell your Masters they were Dreamers When they thought to cheat the BRAVE.63

Reluctantly we leave the frivolous songs of Boston’s memorable tea party to turn to a tragic event following New England’s early industrialization. Mr. Pierce’s Experience On the twenty-fifth of September, I always shall it remember,

NEW ENGLAND

On that bright and sunny morn, The spot I always shall it scorn; In the town of Cambridge I did dwell, With my companion whom I lov’d well; I had not been wedded scarce half a year, When on the railroad I chance chear [sic, meaning unclear]; I was a driving cars as you shall know, Which caused me this fate to undergo; As I was riding and driving as you shall hear, The horse from the path did shear. I was at my work as you have heard When off I jumpt to stear my nag, But by my unfortunate lot It proved to me a bloody spot; It was by the rope that was made fast, That I chanced to get entangled; The cars that run so true and go so fast, That my legs were crushed at last. Soon on a board I was laid, To my house I was conveyed, For doctors in haste they went And for me some pains they spent. The doctors came in haste, To lend their surgical aid, In blood they found me laid, Upon the table I was conveyed. With the saw and lance that cut so slick, And the surgeons that handle them so quick; Whilst on my bed looking aloft, They quickly had my right leg off: Then the other they did it view, The bone it was so badly shattered, To me the surgeon softly said, That off must come my other leg. When both legs were amputated, And softly on the bed was laid; Tho not a bed of down or hay, It was of straw and on it I did lay. I thought my fortune very hard, For off the bed I could not get, And as for a morsel of bread, I could not have a bit. It was with salts and gruel so thin, By chance I did the battle win. While on the bed upon my back, For surgical aid I did not lack.

55

56

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

For two months or more on my bed, And scarce could raise my head; To you my pains I cannot tell, But my maker doth know them well. Fate steals along with silent tread, Found oft’nest in what least we dread; But an earthquake may be bid to spare, That man that is strangled by a hair. But Providence alone secures, In every change both mine and yours; For safety consists not in escape, From dangers of a frightful shape. Remember the universal cause, Act not by partial but by general laws; And make what happiness we justly call, Subsists not in the good of one, but all. On the gay bosom of some fragrant flower, The idle, fluttering live their little hour; Their life all pleasure, and their task all play, All spring their age, sunshine all their day. Not so with the child or sorrow or man, His course with toil concludes with pain begun. That his high destiny he might discern, And in misfortunes school this lesson learn: Pleasure is the portion of the inferior kind, But glory, virtue and heaven for man’s design’d; From this may you a lesson con, And all dangers try and shun.64

This account of Mr. Pierce’s dreadful experience offers more details than most readers will care to know about. Pierce was the son of Nathaniel Pierce (1784 –1840) of Springfield, Vermont, but his birth date or age at the time of the accident were not known by the editors of the NGMS, whence the above text is taken. The first railroad in New England, the Boston and Lowell Railroad, was opened to the public in 1835. In its first few years, both steam and horse power were in use, and this account presumably comes from that period. The 19 stanzas divide into two parts: the first 13 recount the accident itself and Pierce’s surgery. When one recalls that so-called modern anesthetics (nitrous oxide and ether) did not come into use until the 1840s, one concludes that the unfortunate Mr. Pierce must have received nothing more than a few stiff shots of whiskey to dull his pain during his dismemberment. Nevertheless, the operation could be “quick” indeed, as Pierce recounts: according to one nineteenth-century report of a leg amputation from this era, the saw-wielding surgeon removed not only the patient’s leg in less than half a minute, but some of his own fingers as well. The last stanzas are of a more reflective, homiletic nature: the reader is assured that our destinies lie not in our own hands, nor is pleasure itself a goal worth pursuing. Interestingly, there is not a whit of pity for poor Mr. Pierce himself. The penultimate stanza’s final line makes more sense if the word “misfortunes” is a possessive: “misfortune’s.”

A. W. Harmon’s broadside, “The Granite Mill Fire at Fall River, Mass.,” was undated but probably appeared soon after the tragedy of 1874. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

58

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Burning of the Granite Mill In this world with care and trouble, many accidents occur; I am going to sing about one, the saddest you ever heard. ’Twas in Fall River City, where the people were burned up and killed, Imprisoned in a factory known as the Granite Mills. At seven o’clock the fire bell rung; the alarm it was too late. The fire it was a-raging, it was at a fearful rate. Men and women were in it, children I suppose as well. They all might have been saved had the truth been known from the flames of the burning mill. The first scene was a cruel one; a girl so young in years, She was standing at the window, and her eyes were bathed in tears. She was standing at the window, and she called her mother’s name; “O mother, mother, save me,” and she fell back in the flames. The next scene was a horrid one, and as she passed my eyes, She was leaping out of a window, and from the roof so high. There was a poor creature who tried to escape by sliding down a rope, And when she got about halfway down, those burning strands, they broke. Crash, crash, she came upon the ground; she was bruised, burned and killed. Three hundred people lost their lives in the flames of the burning mill; And now I am going to conclude me song, and if you will all agree, I will try and please you one and all and all this company. It was my opinion, it is my opinion still, They all might have been saved had the truth been known from the flames of the burning mill. I hope her soul has gone to rest, in a place that is dearer still, Above, above in heaven above, and away from the burning mill.65

The Granite Mill of Fall River, Massachusetts, was built in 1863 and burned on September 19, 1874. The fire alarm was not sounded for 20 minutes, in which time over 50 persons were trapped in the attic. Twenty were finally reported dead. The ballad was collected also in Maine and Nova Scotia as well as in Vermont. Two other songs were written about the event: “The Burning Granite Mill,” published in songsters of the period, and “The Granite Mill Fire at Fall River, Mass.,” credited to A. W. Harmon and published on a broadside.

RHODE ISLAND The name “Rhode Island” owes its origin to the sixteenth-century Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, who compared the size of Block Island (some 10 miles south of the mainland) to the Mediterranean island of Rhodes. The first settlement was made by the minister Roger Williams and a few followers at Providence, in 1636; they had left the Massachusetts Bay colony because of disagreements with the authorities there. In 1638 a group of Bostonians, in similar difficulties, purchased the island of Aquidneck, now Rhode Island, from Indians and settled Portsmouth. Factional strife split this settlement, and it took more than two decades before a united colony was formed, as implied by the state’s official name, the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.

NEW ENGLAND

59

Though Rhode Islanders supported the revolutionary war with distinction—at the Battle of Rhode Island, a battalion of freed slaves distinguished itself, and a Rhode Islander, General Nathanael Greene, earned praise as Washington’s second in command—after the war, the colony was reluctant to ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was proposed in the form of 10 amendments. Though the largely agricultural population opposed joining the Union, the merchants of Providence and Newport worked hard for ratification and eventually won out. In 1842 a movement for widening the franchise, limited under the 1663 charter to freeholders and their eldest sons, resulted in a conflict known as the Dorr Rebellion (see subsequent discussion). Led by Thomas Wilson Dorr, the son of an aristocratic family, the faction favoring universal suffrage held a convention in 1841 and adopted a constitution embodying this principle. At an election held under this constitution, Dorr was elected governor in 1842, but the election was not accepted as legal by the legislature or the state supreme court. When his forces were repulsed in an attempt to seize the arsenal in Providence, Dorr fled the state. Upon his return, he was tried on a charge of high treason, convicted, and sentenced to life imprisonment; he served only one year, however, and was released in 1845. By that time, the state had adopted a revised constitution considerably broadening the basis of the franchise, but it was not until the mid-twentieth century that full rights to vote in all elections were extended to all citizens at the age of 21 (later, 18).66 A New Song, Called the Gaspée ’Twas in the reign of George the third Our public peace was much disturb’d By ships of war, that came and laid Within our ports, to stop the trade. In seventeen hundred and seventy-two In Newport harbour lay a crew, That play’d the parts of pirates there; The sons of freedom could not bear. Sometimes they’d weigh and give them chace [sic] Such actions sure was very base; No honest coasters cou’d pass by, But what they would let some shot fly; And did provoke to high degree, Those true born sons of liberty; So that they cou’d no longer bear Those sons of Belial staying there. But ’twas not long ’fore it fell out, That William Duddingston, so stout, Commander of the Gaspée tender, Which he has reason to remember; Because as people do insert [sic], He almost had his just desert [sic] Here on the tenth day of last June, Betwixt the hours of twelve and one. Did chance the sloop call’d the Hannah, Of whom one Linsey was commander;

60

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They dog’d her up Providence sound, And there the rascal got a-ground. The news of it flew that very day That they on Nanquit point did lay; That night about half after ten Some Narragansett Indianmen, Being sixty-four if I remember, Which made this stout coxcomb surrender; And what was best of all their tricks They in his britch a ball did fix. Then set the men upon the land And burnt her up we understand; Which thing provokes the King so high He said those men shall surely die. So if he could but find them out, The hangman he’ll employ no doubt; Forhe’s declared in his passion, He’ll have them tri’d, a new fashion. Now for to find these people out, King George has offer’d very stout; One thousand pounds to find out one That wounded William Duddingston. One thousand more he says he’ll spare For those who say they sheriffs were; One thousand more there doth remain, For to find out the leaders name. Likewise five hundred pound per man Of any one of all the clan, But let him try his utmost skill, I’m apt to think he never will Find out any of those hearts of gold, Though he should offer fifty-fold.67

The burning of the vessel Gaspée took place on June 8, 1772, a result of the resentment aroused in Rhode Island over the British attempt to enforce the revenue laws so distasteful to the colonists. The American schooner Hannah, commanded by Captain Lindsey, was proceeding up the river from Newport to Providence, when the Gaspée, commanded by William Duddingston, gave chase. The Hannah crossed the shallow water at Namquit Point, but the Gaspée ran aground trying to follow. That evening, Providence citizens boarded the Gaspée, removed the crew, and torched the vessel. Duddingston fired shots at them and was wounded by return fire—the first shots (some say) fired in the Revolution. The eighth stanza alludes to the fact that the Americans were disguised as Indians.68 The broadside was published in Providence, probably within months of the affair. It is of great historical interest, marking as it does one of the first aggressive encounters between the colonists and their would-be masters, but as a song or a poem, there is little to be said in its praise. There is no authorial attribution: the colophon reads “Providence: Printed for the Purchasers”—that is, the author(s). Evidently neither authors nor printers were eager to

NEW ENGLAND

61

affix their names to the sheet. Was it ever a folk song? Alas, there is no evidence of oral circulation, and we can only conjecture that our revolutionary ancestors would have relished both the outcome of the event and the opportunity to gloat over it. Charles Gibbs Oh, all that now stand round me, Take warning by my fate, Avoid the paths of sin and death Before it is too late. I once had tender parents Who dearly loved their son; But I proved disobedient And in follies [sic] path did run. My father oft recalled me, But I would not refrain, ’Till firmly Satan bound me In his infernal chain. My father thought to change my life By sending me to sea, But that had no effect at all, Though I seen brave Lawrence Die. In Halifax more vice I learnt Than here I can relate; And soon I took a horrid oath Which seal’d my dismal fate. In vain my parents plead with me To quit the paths of sin; Alas, my heart was harden’d And all was black within. A wealthy uncle left me cash, Which I did then abuse, For money I counted but as trash, That I might freely use. At length when all my cash was gone, I resolved to go to sea— And entered myself with Capt. Brown, Which sealed my destiny. I then encountered the Maria, Privateer, Commanded by Capt. Bell, And soon we took her from him, The truth to you I tell. We hoisted up the Black Flag, And a Pirate I became; I then committed cruelties Too dreadful for to name. No sex nor age we spared, But all we took was slain;

62

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

No mercy did we ever show, For dead men tell no tales. My bloody knife was ever ready, For be it understood, No God nor man I ever feared Upon the briny flood. I after visited the land And made a great display, For I had cash at full command, And that I dashed away. Full forty gallant vessels, I robb’d of gold in store, And full four hundred souls Of life, they welter’d in their gore. No pity have I ever shown, Then who can pity me; Though here I die without a sigh, Upon the gallows tree. My tender mother’s heart will ache, My father dear will groan; But none I see recognized me, I die here all alone. May God have mercy on my soul, Is all my wretched prayer; His holy grace can save me yet, Though lost in dark despair. Fur cursed gold my life I sold, And murdered without fear! But at the last I fear I’ve lost, My soul’s in deep despair. Now all who see my shameful end, Take warning here by me, And don’t neglect your souls in life, Lest you die on the gallows tree. My hardened heart it will not bend, It still clings on to life; Ah! must I leave this world behind, For one of endless strife. Will furies drag my spirit home? Will fiends torment my soul? All this, and more I must endure, For love of cursed gold. Farewell, farewell, my only child, May heaven in mercy spare Thee from the shame thy father feels, His crimes and dark despair.

NEW ENGLAND

63

Farewell, my parents ever kind, We ne’er can meet again, For I must suffer for my crimes, Ah! where, I dare not say.69

Charles Gibbs was born in Rhode Island and hanged on Bedloe Island, site of the Statue of Liberty, in 1831 (or 1832?); he was the last pirate hanged in the United States. A 36-page pamphlet published in Providence by Israel Smith in 1831 is titled “Mutiny and murder confession of Charles Gibbs, a native of Rhode Island who, with Thomas J. Wansley, was doomed to be hung in New York on 22d of April last, for the murder of the captain and mate of the brig Vineyard on her passage from New Orleans to Philadelphia, in November 1830 . . . Annexed is a solemn address to youth.” This ballad is a classic example of what is called “the criminal’s last goodnight”— purportedly the words spoken as the doomed villain mounts the steps to the scaffold. It was not uncommon in eighteenth-century England for such hangings (and there were many) to be attended by vast throngs of spectators, among whom strolled vendors with foods and other goods, and probably also pickpockets, who earned their living in the shadow of the gallows pole. In some cases, a hack writer would have penned a fictitious song with the prisoner’s supposed final words; it would have been hastily printed on broadsides and sold for a ha’penny or penny to the “audience.” The ballad is probably from the year of the execution, if not very soon thereafter, but it is not mentioned in contemporary accounts, such as the aforementioned. The ballad has turned up twice in field collections.70 Rhode Islanders may protest the attribution of this ballad of nefarious piracy to their diminutive state, inasmuch as the events described did not take place on Rhode Island soil. In truth, it is only Gibbs’s nativity that justifies the placement of the song in this section. Sarah Maria Cornell Kind Christians all I pray attend, To these few lines that I have penn’d; While I relate the murdered fate, That did awaite poor Cornell’s end. Miss Sarah Cornell was her name, Whose [i.e., whom] base deceit has brought to shame, Your hearts in sympathy must bleed, When shepherds murder lambs indeed. A Rev. Mr. Avery sure, A teacher of the Gospel pure, Stands charged with murder to the test— Seduction too, in part confessed. First inquest he was set at large, From circumstances there’s further charge; Soon after that the deed was done, He ran away the law to shun. But blood for blood aloud doth cry, All murderer’s [sic] too, must surely die; Three hundred dollars of reward, To bring this Avery to the charge.

This broadside from the 1830s includes two different songs commemorating the death of Sarah Mariah Cornell, the second of which is discussed in the text. Misspellings (“Cornel” in the second title) were not uncommon on hastily typeset and printed broadsides of the era; images of coffins were commonly used for songs or poems concerned with death. From the Library of Congress.

NEW ENGLAND

Cover of the booklet, “Life and Trial of the Rev. Ephraim K. Avery, for the Murder of The Young and Beautiful Miss Sarah M. Cornell, a Factory Girl of Fall River, Mass. . . . ,” 1876. Author’s collection.

He soon was taken, and with speed, Must answer for the fatal deed; Now in Rhode Island, bound is he, In May, to wait his destiny. Methought I heard her spirit say, “Remember Cornell’s end, I pray,

65

66

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And let no one reflection make, Upon my friends, for my poor sake. “Let woman’s weakness plead my cause, When cruel men break nature’s laws; Oft man by man is much deceiv’d— What tongue would not my weakness plead “Knew you but half the artful way, My base betrayer led me astray; The best may slip, the cautious fall, He’s more than man ne’er erred at all. “Ye maidens all, both old and young, Trust not to men’s false flatt’ring tongue; To know a man, pray know his life, How few there are deserve a wife. “Tho’ doom’d I am to awful end, I crave the prayers of every friend. That my poor spirit may be blest, And with my God in heaven rest. “Yet, to conclude this mournful song, These lines I pray remember long, Adieu! my friends, pray don’t repine, Example’s yours, experience mine.”71

On the morning of December 21, 1832, farmer John Durfee was startled to discover the lifeless body of a woman hanging from a pole supporting the roof of one of his haystacks on his farm near Fall River—a town of seven textile mills, a steamboat to Providence and Newport, a newspaper, and a population in excess of 4,000. Calling for assistance, Durfee set in motion a chain of events that riveted the attention of much of New England for many months. It was determined that the bruised and abused body belonged to Sarah Maria Cornell, a 31-year-old factory maid, and that she was approximately five months pregnant. A hastily convened coroner’s jury clumsily concluded that she had committed suicide. When her personal belongings were examined, a note was found that she had written the previous evening, when she left her boarding house, telling her landlady that she would return before 9:00 P.M. that evening: “If I should be missing enquire of the Rev. Mr. Avery of Bristol he will know where I am. Dec 20th S M Cornell.” With this and other new information, the body was exhumed and reexamined, and foul play was a decided possibility. Ephraim K. Avery, a 36-year-old ordained minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, was suspected and arraigned. A hearing was convened in Bristol, Rhode Island, on December 25 (then not a holiday in Rhode Island). The prosecution argued that she was a child of an unhappy home who was rejected by her family; that she was a fervent Methodist who had been taken advantage of by Reverend Avery at one of the Methodist camp meetings that she attended regularly; that she approached him to help her out of her difficulty; that he gave her oil of tansy to induce abortion (recommending a dose that would have killed her); and that finally, he saw no way to save his own reputation other than do away with her. The defense brought considerable evidence that Cornell was a shameless hussy of scandalous morals, guilty of theft, perjury, and fornication, and that she seduced Avery and ultimately contrived the circumstances of her suicide vengefully

NEW ENGLAND

67

to implicate him. On January 7, Avery was exonerated. Feelings against him still running high—much of the drama could be seen as an antagonistic relationship between the working-class factory community (who defended one of their own) and the unpopular Methodist Conference (who defended one of their own)—Avery’s lawyers advised him to leave the vicinity. His so doing only further convinced local citizens of his guilt. Additional evidence uncovered as well as irregularities in the coroner’s inquests and the hearing itself resulted in a formal, more protracted trial, held in Newport. Once again, Avery was acquitted (on June 2), but his career as a Methodist minister was effectively terminated. After trying to establish himself at other congregations in New England, he eventually removed to Ohio, where he took up farming and died in 1869. (There is some question whether this ballad should be considered the property of Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Today, Fall River is a Massachusetts city, but in the 1830s, the town was practically on the border between the two states. In fact, one of the broadsides published at the time states that the crime took place in Fall River, Rhode Island. Furthermore, most of the places involved in the events leading up to the murder and subsequently took place in Rhode Island, and since our smallest state has few ballads to which it can wholly lay claim, it is hereby awarded custody over this ballad.) The affair was one of the widely publicized of the early nineteenth century and was arguably the first in the country in which a man of the cloth was tried for murder. Avery’s release was no doubt due to the great expense and trouble to which the Methodist Conference went to obtain his acquittal. Though he continually professed his innocence, an impartial evaluation of the evidence that has survived makes Cornell’s suicide—the formal conclusion of the trial—very unlikely. Her death was most likely the result of a botched attempt at abortion, but no one other than Avery was ever suggested as a likely suspect. The Forget Me Not Songster text, though published in the 1840s, must have been written (and doubtless first published) between May and June 1833—after the first, but before the final trial’s outcome was known. It is a charming mixture of traditional commonplaces (“Kind Christians all, I pray, attend”), clumsy rhyme schemes (“Now in Rhode Island, bound is he”), grammatical errors (“murderer’s” for “murderers”), and occasional flashes of poetic skill (“Example’s yours, experience mine”). A pair of stanzas (1 and 5) in the text violate the otherwise consistent AABB rhyme scheme, suggesting perhaps a text remembered (or copied) imperfectly from an earlier original. Many gallows ballads from this era are called last goodnight ballads—written as if they were the final words of the criminal about to be executed. Invariably, they end with the criminal exhorting the audience not to tread his or her own wicked path of sin (see notes to “Charles Gibbs” above for more details). In this case, the author has used the device of imagining he heard poor Sarah’s departed spirit in order to conjure up her own conjectured last words; though Sarah is the victim, her words lead us to believe she was not entirely blameless. Two other broadside ballads commemorating the Cornell murder have been preserved on a single sheet: one, titled “Factory Maid,” beginning, “Oh, list the sad tale of the poor factory maid,” is paired with “The Clove-Hitch Knot—composed on the death of Sarah M. Cornell, who was murdered near Fall River, R.I.”; the first is to the tune of “The StarSpangled Banner” and the second to “Auld Lang Syne.” The clove hitch refers to the type of knot used in the rope around Sarah’s neck—an important feature that prompted considerable argument at the trials over whether a factory maid would know about such a mariner’s knot and would be able to hang herself with it. All three ballads, all of unknown authorship, take Reverend Avery’s guilt for granted; the one quoted here certainly does so, while still allowing for Sarah’s own moral failings.

68

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

In this wise, they reflect the attitudes of the textile factory communities of which Sarah was a member. Other songs, likewise disposed against Avery, were printed in the months during and after the trial.72 One commentator, a journalist who went by the pen name of Aristides, gathered his newspaper reports into a single volume after the conclusion of the trial. Aristides was hard-pressed to accept Avery’s innocence. His preface reluctantly professes his satisfaction with the trial—but not with the consequences—and also exhibits some of the public acrimony toward the Methodist Conference: Avery, it is true, has been tried and acquitted by a jury of his country. With this, I am satisfied. But no jury shall ever force on me an opinion contrary to my conviction, nor compel me to hold my peace when I see even common decency set at naught. Had the [Methodist] Conference, at Boston, conducted as men in their stations ought to have conducted, and, with all humility, kept Ephraim K. Avery from the pulpit, till his innocence were made to appear, all would have been well. But, when, after using every possible means, fair and foul, to rescue him from the grasp of justice, he was borne in triumph to the metropolis of New-England, and, while the verdict of not guilty had scarcely ceased to vibrate on the ear, was raised in proud exultation to the consecrated desk—when, in the very face of truth, he was declared free, even of the suspicion of crime, and all those denounced as infidels, sceptics [sic], and bloody minded wretches, who presumed to doubt his innocence, the community that could have looked quietly on—that would not have broken out in a burst of honest indignation at such abuse, would scarcely deserve the name of civilized. The public demanded the simple facts, many of which were kept back by plotting and corruption. They now have them; and such as been their force, that the recreant has cowered before them—has abandoned the pulpit he so long disgraced, and winged his flight to some distant region. For one, I am satisfied with the result; and believe the public are likewise. Let him remain silent till his innocence can be made to appear, and if ever that event should take place, all will rejoice with him. Till then, though ten thousand juries and conferences acquit him, he can never be thought of, or spoken of, without having associated with his name the title of murderer. And every attempt to make the people think or speak otherwise, will inevitably recoil, like that which has past, on those who make them.73

That the Cornell-Avery saga generated considerable literature in the 1830s is not surprising; perhaps not expected is that a century and a half later, it still drew interest. Kasserman’s Fall River Outrage is a detailed account of the historical events as best as they could be reconstructed from the documents.74 Paul’s The Tragedy at Tiverton and Cable’s Avery’s Knot, both from the 1980s, are historical novels—a literary form that allows its creator(s) to rewrite history as they prefer it to have happened.75 Cable’s reconstruction of events is that Cornell and Avery were secret lovers, and her pregnancy forced Avery, for whom marriage or even just public disclosure were unthinkable, to try to effect an abortion. That attempt failed, Sarah died, and Avery strung her up to give the appearance of suicide. Paul’s story is much more imaginative: he acknowledges some intimacy between Cornell and Avery but finds another culprit (actually two) to blame for her death. Shall Dorr Be Freed (Tune: “The Star-Spangled Banner”) O say shall the victim remain in his thrall, For maintaining the post which a People had given; For accepting their loud and unanimous call— For whose good he so long, and so firmly has striven.

This broadside, “Shall Dorr Be Freed,” was one of many songs and poems written and distributed in Rhode Island during the Dorr rebellion around 1845. Courtesy of the Rhode Island Historical Society (RHi X3 6741).

70

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

O say shall not he from base thrall be set free, And receive all his Rights with his dear Liberty? Will our Rulers have Justice and Mercy to save, And the victim be freed e’er he drops in the grave? And now the Election’s brief struggle is o’er, And Charles Jackson’s appointed to lead them to action; O may our Legislature in Justice restore, To the captive his freedom, and Rights to a fraction. If he had been wrong, he has suffered full long, And the voices that chose him were many and strong. O then may our Rulers use Mercy to save, And the victim be freed e’er he drops in the grave. Let such vain objections be heard of no more, And now Jackson is raised to the Governor’s station, May his councils direct, and guide you to restore Sweet Peace to Rhode Island through Dorr’s liberation. O then will not you, to the People be true, And forgive, like your God, who is merciful too. Then may you be just, and use Mercy to save, And the captive be freed e’er he drops in the grave. Then when he again breathes the pure balmy air, And is freed from the toil of the prison that bound him, And thousands to greet him, will hither repair, And fond parents and friends will gather around him. Then we shall have peace, and fierce discord will cease, And the name of our State, will in glory increase. Then may harmony guide you, and mercy to save, And the captive be freed e’er he drops in the grave. Put away Party hate, and let enmity cease From your bosoms revenge and hostility banish— Let harmony rule, and the bright Sun of Peace The land will illumine, and discord will vanish. Though some should deride, let their sneers not divide, And may God, with his Wisdom direct you and guide. May the banner of mercy and justice still wave, And Rhode Island be ranked with the free and the brave. —E.H.H.76

In the 1840s many Rhode Island citizens felt that the state’s political system was in the thrall of the antiquated royal colonial charter of 1663, and peaceful attempts at reform had been unsuccessful. Consequently, in 1842, under the leadership of Thomas Wilson Dorr (1805–1854), they resorted to an armed rebellion. Their goals included extension of suffrage by eliminating the ancient $134 freehold qualification for voting and office holding; reapportionment of the state House of Representatives, which was under the control of rural towns; removal of the judiciary from the control of the Assembly; modification of a harsh penal code; inauguration of secret ballot; and abolition of the requirement that nonvoters serve in the state militia. Growing reformist agitation had prompted the General Assembly several times to convene a constitutional convention that (perhaps by design) succeeded in effecting minimal

NEW ENGLAND

71

changes or none at all. Finally, in 1841, convinced that legal procedures would not accomplish anything, reformers, led by Thomas Dorr, recently elected member to the House of Representatives, opted for extralegal means. Under Dorr’s leadership, they appealed to all adult male citizens to disregard landholding qualifications and elect delegates to a People’s Convention, to meet in October. A liberalized proposed constitution was drafted and submitted to popular referendum in December. Though it received a majority of favorable votes, the new constitution was not to go into effect until May 1842, which gave the old guard charter adherents time to launch a counterattack in the form of various laws (“Algerine laws”) to protect their own positions. In the turbulent months following, an election was held on April 18, and Dorr was elected governor, though the process was in violation of some of the recently passed Algerine laws and in effect made Dorr guilty of treason against the state. Dorr traveled to Washington to seek support from President John Tyler but was told that the president would back the conservative government in the event that the conflict escalated to armed confrontation. On May 17 Dorr’s followers seized two ancient Revolutionary War cannons from the mall in Providence’s town center and determined to attack the state arsenal. Confronted by the conservative militia, Dorr gave the order to fire the weapons, which failed to work properly, and Dorr’s forces fled or retreated. This fiasco doomed Dorr’s cause, and the following morning, he fled the state. In the following months, the conservative Law and Order Party convened another constitutional convention and enacted a new document meeting at least some of the reformers’ demands. After the new constitution was ratified, Dorr returned to Providence in October 1843 to surrender; he was arrested, tried for treason, and found guilty by a jury consisting of his political opponents. He was sentenced to solitary confinement for life but was pardoned by the new governor, Charles Jackson, after serving one year. A liberalized General Assembly restored his civil rights in 1851, but his spirit and health were crushed, and he died in 1854.77 “Shall Dorr Be Freed” must date from 1845, between Governor Jackson’s election and Dorr’s release from prison in June. Other broadside ballads on the Dorr episode include the following (title, first line, and credits, if any): 1. An Address to the Freemen of Rhode-Island (“Freemen of Rhode-Island, rise!”) 2. The Fearless Spirit of Thomas W. Dorr, As He Stood in the Legislative Hall, at Newport, R.I. (“He stood before the assembled crowd”) 3. Flight of Dorr’s Army (“The sun was low on Federal Hill”) 4. Gov. Thomas Wilson Dorr (“Next to the peerless Washington”) 5. Landholders’ Victory (“Brave suffrage men, assist while I sing”) 6. A Parody. Sung at the Young Women’s Suffrage Fair (“Shall Suffrage prisoners be forgot”) 7. Rhody’s Prodigy, or, the First and Only Veritable History of the Rhode Island War (“Ye patriots bold and sages old”) 8. The Suffrage Boys (“The Suffrage boys are wise awake”) 9. Suffrage Pledge (“Here on this sacred spot”) 10. Thomas W. Dorr in Prison. Written for the 4th of September (“While we assemble here this day”) 11. The Triumphs of Gov. Dorr: Or, His Victory Over His Enemies (“Triumphant spread your wings on high”); composed by John Costin James, a Friend of Freedom 12. Woonsocket Suffrage Song (“Come, list awhile, ye suffrage men”); by a Suffrage Lady; air: “American Boy.” 13. Untitled (“Come whiggies, come, Old Durham’s in trouble”); anti-Dorr ballad

72

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

(Bright-Eyed) Little Nell of Narragansett Bay Full well do I remember my boyhood’s happy hours, The cottage and the garden where bloomed the fairest flowers, The bright and sparkling water, o’er which we used to sail With hearts so gay, for miles away, before the gentle gale. I had a dear companion, but she’s not with me now, The lily of the valley is waving o’er her brow, And I am sad and lonely, and mourning all the day For bright-eyed laughing little Nell of Narragansett Bay. Chorus: Toll, toll the bell at early dawn of day, For lovely Nell so quickly passed away, Toll, toll the bell a soft and mournful lay, For bright-eyed laughing little Nell of Narragansett Bay. I loved the little beauty, my boat it was my pride, And with her close beside me, what joy the foam to ride, She’d laugh with tone so merry to see the waves go by, As wildly blew the stormy wind, and murky was the sky, Though lightnings flashed around us and all was dark and drear, We loved to brave old ocean, and never dreamed of fear, The arrow bounded onward and darted through the spray, With bright-eyed laughing little Nell of Narragansett Bay. Chorus. One day from us she wandered, and soon within the boat, The cord was quickly loosened and with the tide afloat, The treacherous bark flew lightly and swift before the wind, While home and friends, and all so dear were many miles behind, Next day her form all lifeless, was washed upon the beach, I stood and gazed upon it, bereft of sense and speech; ’Tis years since thus we parted, but here I weep to day, For bright-eyed laughing little Nell of Narragansett Bay. Chorus.78

George Frederick Root (1820–1895) was one of the great American composers of the mid-nineteenth century, producing such enduring favorites as “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” and “Just Before the Battle, Mother.” Root grew up in Boston, where he was classically trained on piano. After moving to New York City in 1845, he played the organ at the Church of the Strangers and taught music at the Abbott Institute for Young Ladies. After some education in Europe, he was offered an opportunity to assist Lowell Mason, one of America’s most distinguished musicians and music educators, at Boston’s Academy of Music. For many years, Root was disconcerted by the conflict between the prestige of a career as a classical composer and the appeal of a writer of popular songs. In 1851 he began writing minstrel songs, concealing his identity for a while by using the pseudonym G. Friedrich Wurzel (“root” in German) because he was still troubled by the dilemma. His first success came in 1853 with “The Hazel Dell,” followed in 1855 with another hit, “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower.” In 1959 he moved the family to Chicago to join his older brother’s publishing company, Root & Cady. When the Civil War commenced, impelled by the desire to write songs that would win a wide audience and influence as many people as possible, Root began to write songs in support of the Union side. In 1863 he composed “The First Gun is Fired” and then, in 1864, the composition that became the best-known song of the war era,

NEW ENGLAND

73

“The Battle Cry of Freedom.” Other songs composed during this time include “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” “Just After the Battle,” “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp,” “On, On, On the Boys Came Marching,” and “The Vacant Chair.” Root continued working for Root & Cady after the war, and in 1872 the University of Chicago awarded him the honorary degree of doctor of music. In his later life, he was instrumental in founding the New York Normal Institute, dedicated to the training of music instructors. Narragansett Bay is an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean that nearly divides the state of Rhode Island in half. Since colonial times, it has been an important shipping center as well as a prosperous fishing and recreational area. Whether Root chose it as the site for this tragic story of love and death because of fond memories there or simply because it made the title phrase such a perfect line of iambic heptameter, I cannot say. There certainly is no historical basis for its story. Root’s song is a typical sentimental ballad of the Victorian era—meaning that, unlike the traditional ballads of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which tell tales of violence and/or passion, this one’s central figure dies pathetically and undeservedly from circumstances beyond her control. Root’s song endured in oral tradition long after its reign as a commercial hit. In the early twentieth century, it was collected from folksingers in the Northeast (Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania), the Midwest (Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota), the Southeast (Florida, Missouri, North Carolina), and the West (Utah, California) as well as in Canada. Alas, the same cannot be said for the four nineteenth-century ballads resulting from historical Rhode Island events; there is no indication that any of them was remembered into the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. Nevertheless, in their day they must have been widely sung. They provide a reminder that folk songs, no more than other kinds of lore, do not last forever, but have their finite lifetimes. It is not so remarkable that they fade from public memory after a century as that certain other songs and ballads last for three or four centuries. The Railroad Accident at Richmond Switch On April nineteenth, seventy-three, Of this affair we heard— The worst disaster, said to be, That ever here occurred. From Stonington, the Steamboat Train, To Boston being bound, With passengers who that night came From New York by the Sound. At Richmond Switch a bridge was gone; Not being warned of this, With lightning speed the train came on, And plunged in the abyss. Rush of water that night, they say, It through a mill dam came, Entirely took the bridge away, Just ere the coming train. The cars and engine, in the trench, Suddenly taking fire,

74

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Water failing the flames to quench, They were consumed entire. The engineer and fireman brave Ne’er from their duty turned; Passengers’ lives they’d wish to save, Themselves were killed and burned. The danger being by them seen, Firm at their posts did stand; At the throttle Guile’s killed by steam, Shovel in Eldred’s hand. Seven bodies to a crisp were burned, And taken from the wreck; With horror from the sight all turned, But none will it forget. Some twenty others, wounded sore, Were a pitiful sight; Some likely will be crippled for The balance of their life. But the number of lost, alas! A secret must remain; Passengers many, of second class, That night were on the train. The conductor, from rear platform, By fortune did escape; With signal he the Mail Train warned, Which saved it from that fate. The Boat Train’s Engineer, they say, Over the other claimed, By ten minutes, the right of way, And thus the road he gained. If the Mail Train had gone before, The right they did demand, Of the killed and wounded many more Would on the record stand. The bridge rebuilt over the brook, A train that soon passed by, The victims to Providence took, Whom friends identify. Guile it’s known, in Providence lived; Each time his train passed through, A whistle for his wife he’d give; The greeting she well knew. His place in Elmwood, plainly shown, The railroad passed his door; His widow, in her lonely home, His signal greets no more.

NEW ENGLAND

75

Eldred, the fireman, Wickford claims; A noble son she bred; In grief, they say, there one remains, Whom he was soon to wed. Though railroad accidents severe Are often taking place, This road’s record of such is clear, It’s said, except this case.79

Just east of the village of Richmond Switch, Rhode Island (now called Wood River Junction), the tracks of the Stonington Line crossed Meadow Brook, on a bridge with a span of less than 20 feet. At about 2:45 on the morning of April 19, 1873, the Steam Boat Train pulled away from the Stonington steamboat landing, having made a delayed connection with the overnight steamboat from New York City. The Boat Train was bound for Providence with three flatcars piled high with freight and baggage and over 100 passengers packed into its five coaches. A great many of the 100 were packed in the first passenger car, a secondclass coach commonly called an emigrant car, carrying mostly emigrants freshly arrived in the United States. At Stonington Junction, the Boat Train met the northbound Shore Line Express, with the Boston mail. Conductor Orrin Gardner of the Boat Train was annoyed because the boat from New York had been a half hour late and he had not cleared the junction with the allotted time interval before the scheduled arrival of the Shore Line Express, and so he had to wait on a siding until it arrived. When the express finally arrived at 3:05, the two conductors argued over which train should proceed first over the bridge. After heated debate, it was decided that the boat train would cross first and the Shore Line would follow it at the prescribed interval of 10 minutes. In a few minutes, the Boat Train crossed the Pawcatuck River and entered Rhode Island at Westerly. After a brief station stop there, engineer Guile opened up the throttle and began to make up a little time racing through the dark and misty morning at about 40 miles an hour. Just about nine miles north of Westerly, the Boat Train thundered downgrade into Richmond Switch. At Richmond Switch, just west of the railroad track, Meadow Brook was dammed to provide water power for G. N. Ennis’s gristmill. The dam was made of dry-laid stone slabs backed by an earthen fill over 20 feet thick, with the Alton Road running on top of the fill. This dam held back about 40 acres of water. It had rained hard on Thursday and Friday, and the water level in the millpond rose quickly, in spite of the miller’s opening the mill gates to vent excess buildup. Suddenly, the dam gave way, sending a wall of water 10 feet high racing down the normally shallow channel and obliterating the railroad bridge—just in time for the arriving Boat Train. The locomotive leapt the chasm, now 40 feet wide, and crashed into the bank on the other side. The coal tender jackknifed, coming to rest upside down on top of the cab. The three flat cars piled into the stream, and then the first three coaches slammed together, each telescoping halfway through the one ahead of it. The first coach, the one packed with emigrants, was driven out atop the sunken flatcars by the force of the telescoping coaches behind it, spilling passengers into the frigid, swirling, dark water.

76

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Inside the splintering coaches, the glowing coal stoves and oil lamps overturned, showering the occupants and wreckage with glowing coals and flammable liquid. Fires broke out simultaneously in several places, fanned by a brisk northeast breeze. Brakeman Monroe raced along the tracks to warn the fast-approaching Express, and as soon as the engineer sighted him, he threw the engine in reverse. Conductor Sprague ordered the Express’s cars decoupled and had the engine pull up to the wreck, where he coupled onto the rear cars and pulled them out of the fire, which was already blistering their varnish. There was no escape for those trapped in the wreckage; the cars burned until there was nothing left but ashes and glowing metal parts. Other passengers, weighed down by their heavy clothing, foundered in the raging stream, some unable to reach firm ground. Engineer Guile’s body was found jammed between a driving wheel and the boiler, his lifeless hand still outstretched toward the throttle. The charred body of fireman George Eldred was found the next morning, still clutching the tender’s brake wheel in his fire-blackened hands. The train had 91 ticketed passengers, a nine-man crew, and six deadheading railroaders aboard on that fatal morning. The engineer, fireman, and nine passengers were killed in the wreck. Some passengers were never accounted for, and the death toll may have been higher. For weeks afterward, pieces of clothing, debris from the wreck, and occasionally, a gruesome part of a body were picked out of mill wheels as far downstream as Westerly. Engineer Guile had lived with his new wife in a house within walking distance of the railroad tracks in Providence. Like many engineers of the day, Guile had his own distinctive whistle, with which he would signal his wife as his train flew by.80 The ballad given here was published in Rhode Island without attribution or date; in view of its accuracy, it presumably was produced soon after the wreck. Like several others in this collection, there is no assurance that it was actually sung. There is a further literary interest in this tragic tale: Bret Harte, then a journalist working for the New York Tribune, read the story (but evidently misread the engineer’s name) and wrote a poem about it, “Guild’s Signal.” Its final stanza follows: And then, one night, it was heard no more From Stonington over Rhode Island shore, And the folk in Providence smiled and said As they turned in their beds, “The engineer Has once forgotten his midnight cheer.” One only knew, To his trust true, Guild lay under his engine, dead.

CONNECTICUT Although Dutch New Amsterdam and English Plymouth colony established trading posts along the Connecticut River in the early seventeenth century, the first permanent European settlers in the state came from the Massachusetts Bay colony to the middle Connecticut Valley during 1633–1635 and to the Saybrook–New Haven coastal strip during 1635–1638. (By the time of the first national census of 1790, there was little evidence of the Dutch presence in the state.) In 1665 the Connecticut River settlements and the New Haven colony were united. The New Haven colony was unsuccessful in an attempt to settle Delaware Bay, and the united Connecticut colony, despite its charter provisions, lost its claim to a strip of land extending to the Pacific. Following the American Revolution,

NEW ENGLAND

77

settlers from Connecticut, with claims in the Midwest, were among the first to move into an area that became known as the Western Reserve, now northeastern Ohio. A royal charter from the British crown in 1662 provided for virtual self-government by suitably qualified (based on property and religion) colonists. This document remained in force until it was replaced by the state constitution adopted in 1818.81 The Yankees Return from Camp Father and I went down to camp Along with captain Gooding, Here we see the men and boys, As thick as hasty pudding. Chorus: Yankey doodle, keep it up, Yankee doodle, dandy; Mind the music and the step, And with the girls be handy. And there we see a thousand men, As rich as ’Squire David; And what they wasted every day, I wish it could be saved. Yankey doodle, &c. The ’lasses they eat every day, Would keep an house a winter; They have as much that I’ll be bound They eat it when they’re amind to. And there we see a swamping gun, Large as a log of maple, Upon a deuced little cart, A load for father’s cattle. And every time they shoot it off, It takes a horn of powder; It makes a noise like father’s gun, Only a nation louder. I went as nigh to one myself As ’Siah’s underpining; And father went as nigh again, I thought the deuce was in him. Cousin Simon grew so bold, I thought he would have cock’d it; It scar’d me so, I shrink’d it off, And hung by father’s pocket. And Captain Davis had a gun, He kind of clap’d his hand on’t, And struck a crooked stabbing iron Upon the little end on’t. And there I see a pumpkin shell As big as mother’s bason,

78

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Broadside, “The Yankees Return from Camp,” ca. 1810–1814, one of the earliest printed versions known of the perennial favorite, “Yankee Doodle.” This text was attributed to popular author Edward Bangs. The two woodcuts depict what appear to be sheep or lions, one as a musketeer guard and the other playing the violin. From Brown University Library.

And every time they touch’d it off, They scamper’d like the nation. I see a little barrel too, The heads were made of leather,

NEW ENGLAND

79

They knock’d upon’t with little clubs, And call’d the folks together. And there was Captain Washington, And gentlefolks about him, They say he’s grown so tarnal proud, He will not ride without ’em. He got him on his meeting clothes, Upon a slapping stallion, He set the world along in rows, In hundred and in millions. The flaming ribbons in their hats, They look’d so taring fine, ah, I wanted pockily to get, To give to my Jemimah. I see another snarl of men A digging graves, they told me, So tarnal long, so tarnal deep, They ’tended they should hold me. It scar’d me so, I hook’d it off, Nor stopt, as I remember, Nor turn’d about till I got home, Lock’d up in mother’s chamber.82

Although the song “Yankee Doodle” belongs now to the entire nation, it is placed here because it is the official state song of Connecticut. Admittedly, these are not the words that are familiar to most readers; there were numerous versions published in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but this one has been preserved on an early song sheet by one of Boston’s most prolific printers of broadsides in the early 1800s. The origins and authorship of the song “Yankee Doodle”—as well as the origin of the expression yankee itself—have inspired a profusion of scholarship, anecdote, speculation, hearsay, and nonsense. It is well to remember that there were numerous versions, and different groups of stanzas must have had separate origins and at different times. The conclusion seems to be that, in spite of claims for foreign origin, the song was born on American soil—even though the music may have been printed in England earlier than in the New World. The earliest reference to the song is in the libretto of a comic opera published in 1767, where the phrase appears: “Exit, singing the chorus, yankee doodle, etc.” Thus one assumes that the song was already well known by then, even if printings have not yet surfaced.83 A compelling argument has been made that parts of the song originated during a battle at Cape Breton, Canada, during the French and Indian War in 1745. There are so many Americanisms that the author and early singers must have been American. The common verse (pony/macaroni, etc.) did not appear in print until the 1840s— though here again, the implication is that it had circulated orally well before—possibly as early as the 1760s, when the London Macaroni Club flourished. This was an entourage of young dandies who affected continental tastes and fashions and often sported elaborate hairstyles.84 As for the origin of the epithet “yankee” and the phrase yankee doodle—many ingenious explanations have been served up, including derivations from various Native American

80

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

tongues as well as from Dutch, French, and even Persian. There is less argument that the term usually means (or did, in the eighteenth century) a New Englander, and was often use derogatorily. The Connecticut Pedlar I’m a Pedlar, I’m a Pedlar, I’m a Pedlar from Connecticut, I’m a Pedlar, I’m a Pedlar, pray don’t you want to buy; Many goods have I in store, sir, Listen while I name them o’er sir; Finer goods than e’er you saw before, sir, Very splendid goods have I to sell in store, sir, Listen while I name them o’er. Wooden wares, carpets for parlors and stairs, Maches and Spanish cigars, articles splendid I tell you. Here are tins, papers of needles and pins, Tracts upon popular sins, any of which I would sell. And here is Thomsonian medicine, Richest beyond all comparison, Killing the seeds of diseases, Appetite while it increases, Hot drops and strong compositions Will keep you in healthy conditions, So you will ne’er need a physician again. Here are combs, elegant brushes and brooms, Made for the sweeping of rooms, Finish’d both smoothly and neatly. Here are knives, ribbons and silks for your wives, Whistles and jews harps and fifes, On which your sons will play sweetly. And here’s the seed of asparagus, Lettuce, beet, onions and pepper grass, From the United Societies, Seeds of all kinds and varieties, Shaving soap, excellent razor strops, Razors that smoothly will shave your chops, Swain’s panacea and Jones’s drops too. Have you any seed of turnip?. . . . Do you sell the seed of coriander? Tell me pedlar, can you furnish me with any wire sieves or dinner horns?85

In an era when many of us can do most of our shopping without exiting our houses, it may tax credulity to accept that there was a time when many Americans had to depend on traveling salespersons, or peddlers (formerly, pedlars), to provide them with their needs, from books and magazines to manufactured goods and materials to be used in sewing, cooking, and other domestic occupations. This was particularly true away from the major metropolitan areas, where there were no markets or shops, and the nearest country store was a day’s travel by horse and wagon. Peddlers took on a particularly important role in the early 1800s: when foreign trade was curtailed because of British embargos prior to and during the War of 1812, many New England shippers and traders invested their idle

NEW ENGLAND

81

capital in manufacturing. Yankee peddlers developed a market for Connecticut products, traveling as far as the South and Midwest selling buttons, pins, needles, hats, combs, tinware, brassware, clocks, rifles, tableware, and other items.86 Connecticut’s strong peddler tradition is reflected in the state motto, “The Nutmeg State,” which lingers from the days when unscrupulous peddlers tried to palm off wooden nutmegs to gullible colonists as the genuine article. (This will make no sense to a housewife whose only experience with nutmeg is in the powdered form.) It is delightful, therefore, to find this musical documentation of the role of these once vital elements in colonial life. The song reminds us of the needs that the peddler satisfied; it also pokes fun at (or at least, draws attention to) some of the long since discarded medicinal and hygienic practices of eighteenth-century America. For example, the reference to “Thomsonian medicine” recalls the once influential Samuel Thomson (1769–1843), who, in the early 1800s, putting little stock in the conventional practices of bleeding, cupping, and purging, began instead to develop his own theory of herbal medicine. Gradually, he established a reputation as a healer in his native New England and was soon marketing his system to others. By 1813 he had patented his system and began to sell “family rights certificates,” which gave the buyer a 16-page instructional booklet and allowed them to buy unadulterated domestic drugs. Did the remedies actually work? A host of medical treatments, whether by establishment practitioners or quack doctors, work because of (1) a placebo effect and (2) the body’s own natural ability to heal itself, regardless what treatment is used. Regular doctors disparaged the Thomsonians as “puke doctors and steamers.” However, Americans flocked to Thomsonian medical practitioners in the early decades of the nineteenth century. In the 1830s, when Thomsonianism reached its peak, the movement had its own lecture circuit, infirmaries, health practitioners, a network of Friendly Botanic Societies, and publications. Thomsonianism began to decline in the late 1830s even before the death of Samuel Thomson, plagued both by criticism from without and schisms from within— former associates who tried to step out on their own.87 Another favorite treatment of the day was Swain’s panacea—a patent medicine of William Swain of 1820, a cure-all that probably consisted mainly of rum and brandy. The “United Societies” mentioned in the fifth stanza was a Wesleyan religious organization. Though Massachusetts passed a law against hawkers in 1713, it carefully excluded book peddlers, who provided a valuable service in rural areas. The first bookseller seems to have been Hezekiah Usher of Boston, who added books to his general merchandise in about 1647.88 Springfield Mountain On Springfield mountains there did dwell A likely youth who was knowne full well; Lieutenant Mirick onley sone, A likely youth, nigh twenty one. One Friday morning he did go in to the medow and did moe. A round or two then he did feal, A pisin sarpent at his heal. When he received his dedly wond he dropt his sithe a pon the ground.

82

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And strate for home wase his intent, Caling aloude stil as he went. tho all around his voys wase hered but none of his friends to him apiere. they thot it wase some workman calld; and there poor Timothy alone must fall. So soon his Carful father went to seak his son with discontent and there hes fond onley son he found ded as a stone a pon the ground. And there he lay down sopose to rest with both his hands Acrost his brst his mouth and eyes Closed fast And there poor man he slept his last. his father vieude his track with great consarn Where he had run across the corn uneven tracks where he did go did appear to stagger to and frow The seventh of August sixty one this fatal axsident was done Let this a warning be to all, to be Prepared when God does call.89

The most frequently reported ballad of the Northeast (though comparatively uncommon in the Southeast) arose from a simple—probably common—domestic tragedy. This is “Springfield Mountain,” a tale that recounts the death of Timothy Myrick in Farmington, Connecticut, on August 7, 1761—believed to be the oldest indigenous ballad to survive in oral tradition into the twentieth century. The long and persistent popularity of this ballad must reflect in part the great concern over snakes in rural areas; tales such as this could have served as warnings to young children not to run off alone into the woods. The version printed here is as it was reconstructed by historian Rufus Stebbins, who is vague on his sources and may be responsible for the deliberately archaic spellings. Wrote Stebbins, “This poem had a wide circulation in both manuscript and print, and is the great Elegy of the ‘Mountains.’ Like the author of another immortal poem, the Iliad, its author and his residence are alike mythical; but his work and his fame have endured.”90 Myrick, 22 years old and soon to have been married, was born in Springfield Outer Commons, or Springfield Mountains, later renamed Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He was buried in the latter town’s cemetery, and because of his being both born and buried in that community, the song about him is often considered a Massachusetts ballad. Out of respect for the snake, which was a Connecticut native, the song has been categorized here as a Connecticut song. New England folk music scholar Phillips Barry researched the history of this ballad intensively and concluded that once, there were four distinct text types of the song: two, including the one given here, were of folk origin. Probably the first was written in or near the Springfield community and circulated in a (now lost) broadside; there was a tradition that it was composed by Nathan(iel) Terry, a cousin of Sarah (née Lamb) Dwight, Myrick’s fiancée. The second was a recomposition, perhaps made in Vermont, to where some of the

NEW ENGLAND

83

Myrick family’s relatives had moved. Neither of these can be traced to earlier than 1849, and Barry speculated that Terry wrote the ballad 70 years afterward on the occasion of the centennial celebration of Springfield’s founding—an event at which one of the Myrick family was a guest speaker.91 On the other hand, it would not be unreasonable to conjecture that one ballad version was written soon after the accident but left no traces in the written record for seven decades. The other two versions were comic stage recompositions, the earlier copyrighted in 1836 and the later in 1840. These soon entered oral tradition alongside the older serious ones—especially in the Southeast.92 It may puzzle listeners of a later era how the story of a tragic death could have been made into a very popular comic song. The language of the latter appears to satirize the speech of the rural Yankee, and by trivializing the death, the song was probably intended to make fun of the rustic folk and their agrarian lifestyle in a way no longer considered acceptable. Snakes, after all, tend not to be city dwellers. Connecticut What land is that so nicely bound By Massachusetts and the Sound, Rhode Island and New York around; Where Yankees thick as hops are found, And hasty puddings do abound? Connecticut. What land is that, when George the king Did o’er the sea his fetters fling, And think to link us in their ring, Which gave the cry, “there’s no such thing,” Whose sons did Yankee Doodle sing? Connecticut. What land is that where folks are said To be scrupulously bred, To be so steady habited; Where hearty boys and girls are fed With pumpkin pies and gingerbread? Connecticut. What land is that, where old time walks In steady pace o’er maple blocks; Forsakes his brass for wooden clocks; Where heads too high will meet with knocks; And land were more if fewer rocks? Connecticut. What land is that where onions grow; Where maidens’ necks are white as snow, And cheeks like roses red, you know; Where jonnycakes are baked from dough That land where milk and honey flow? Connecticut. What land is that whence pedlars come A thousand miles or more from home, With tin, with basswood trenchers; some

84

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

With patent nutmegs and new rum; To gather up the coppers?—hum! Connecticut. What land is that where parsons live, Where men hear gospel and believe; Where humble sinners seek reprieve; Where women stay at home and weave, Nor gad without their husbands’ leave? Connecticut. What land is that where I can trace My nineteenth cousin by his face; Where once I fished for little dace, And never learned the deuce from ace; Where gran[d]mother this night says grace; Connecticut. What land is that, when we behold, And all its history unfold, And all about the land is told, We like most things, but some we scold? Ah! gentle reader, that is old Connecticut.93

Every state’s citizens are entitled to brag about their home state, and this is one Connecticut writer’s paean of praise. The Connecticut of this text is old-fashioned, virtuous, simple, honest, and religious. Only the state’s pedlars are dealt a tiny crumb of criticism for their overzealous commercial dealings. The songster in which this text appeared was published soon after the Mexican War, or about 1848–1850, but the origin of the song itself—if indeed it was ever sung—is not known. In fact, the admonition to the “gentle reader” suggests perhaps it was only a poem, declaimed to a jovial pub audience who raised their tankards unsteadily and bellowed out “Connecticut” at each stanza’s conclusions. Perhaps some reader can put a new tune to it yet. Battle of Stonington A gallant ship from England came, Freighted deep with fire and flame, And other things we need not name, To have a dash at Stonington; Now safe arriv’d they work begun, They tho’t to make the Yankees run, And have a mighty deal of fun, In stealing sheep at Stonington. A Yankee then popped up his head, Parson Jones a sermon read, To which our Rev’rend Doctor said, That they must fight for Stonington; Their ships advancing sev’ral ways, The Britons soon began to blaze, Which put old Williams in amaze, Who fear’d the boys of Stonington.

Broadside printers would include more than one song if necessary to fill the sheet. This Leonard Deming print, ca. 1829–1831, pairs a commemoration of the Battle of Stonington of 1814 with a booster song for the fertile Ohio territory widely distributed in the 1830s and 1840s. From the Library of Congress.

86

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Ramilies first began th’ attack, Nimrod made a mighty crack, And none can tell what kept them back From setting fire to Stonington; Their bombs were thrown, and rockets flew, And not a man of all their crew, Tho’ ev’ry man stood full in view, Could kill a man of Stonington. Their old razee, with red-hot ball, Made a farmer’s barrack fall, And did a cowhouse sadly maul; That stood a mile from Stonington; We Yankees to our fort repair’d, And made as how we little cared About their shot, tho’ very hard They blazed away at Stonington. To have a turn we tho’t but fair, So we brought two guns to bear, And, sir, it would have made you stare, To see the smoke at Stonington; We bored the Nimrod thro’ and thro’, And killed and mangled half her crew, When riddled, crippled, she withdrew, And cuss’d the boys of Stonington. The Ramilies gave up the affray, With her comrades sneaked away, Such was the valor on that day, Of British tars at Stonington; Now some assert on sartain grounds, Beside their damage and their wounds, It cost the king ten thousand pounds, To have a dash at Stonington.94

The town of Stonington in southeast Connecticut early developed prosperous shipbuilding and whaling industries. Perhaps on this account, it endured naval attacks by the British in 1775 during the American Revolution and again during the War of 1812. The Battle of Stonington commemorated in this ballad is from the later war: Early on August 9, 1814, four British vessels under the command of Sir Thomas Hardy, protégé of Lord Nelson, appeared offshore. They sent a delegation into the town, which was suspected of harboring torpedoes, to demand immediate surrender and evacuation within an hour. Two of Stonington’s leading citizens spoke for all with a note that stated, “We shall defend the place to the last extremity; should it be destroyed, we shall perish in its ruins.” Their entire arsenal consisted of two 18-pound cannons and one 6-pounder, set up on a hastily dug earthwork not far from the Point. For three days 158 Royal Navy guns pounded the town, destroying as many as forty buildings, but causing few casualties. The only death was that of an elderly woman who was being tended in her last illness by her daughter and who refused to move inland with the other noncombatants. The British, by contrast, suffered many dead and wounded, although the exact total is still undetermined, and on the afternoon of August 14, the battered fleet sailed off.95

NEW ENGLAND

87

The ballad was written in 1815 by Philip Morin Freneau (1752–1832), an American poet of prodigious popularity and influence in the early 1800s, who penned numerous popular historical and patriotic songs and poems. He was alternately called the “poet of American independence” and the “father of American poetry.” After graduating from Princeton and a brief and desultory experience as an educator, he spent more than a half dozen years at sea, including some voyages to the West Indies, during one of which he was captured by the British after a bloody fight between the American ship Aurora and the British Iris. In the 1790s he married, settled in New York, and enjoyed a succession of journalistic positions and political appointments.96 After its initial publication, Freneau’s poem appeared on several broadsides.97 Freneau’s original text is three quatrains longer than the version given above and has several small textual differences. His opening line is “Four gallant ships from England came.” Broadside texts have it as three ships.98 Farmington Canal Song Oh! Captain Dick’s a gay old bird, Yes he is, upon my word! But that ain’t no excuse For his whiskers to be filled with terbacker juice! Click Webster never went to skule, But, he can drive any orn’ry mule, He chaws terbacker, he drinks rum, He can make a canal boat hum! The boat ties up at Whitin’s dock Two, three times a week, ’bout four o’clock, Out comes Adney and old Eb too, Gub Homer, Bela, and the rest of the crew. They pull and haul and cuss and swear, Unload the cargo and then repair To the store to licker up and smoke, Tell tall stories, swap lies, and joke!99

The durability of oral tradition is sometimes remarkable. “Matty Groves,” a graphic ballad of love, adultery, betrayal, and revenge, has been current in England and/or America since the early 1500s. “Froggy Went a-Courtin,’ ” a children’s song (now) about the improbable nuptials of a frog and a mouse, not only has been sung for just as long, but has also enjoyed numerous commercial recordings and picture book presentations. On the other hand, some songs are so specific to a certain time and place that they are doomed to evanescence. A group of New Haven businessmen met in 1821 to plan a Connecticut canal to facilitate trade. Ground was broken in 1825, and the canal was completed in 1835. The Farmington Canal was in use between New Haven, Connecticut, and Northampton, Massachusetts, until about 1848. Captain Dick Norton piloted a boat from New Haven to Plainville in that period, and the song must have originated then. There is no trace of the song other than in Plainville, and since it is so specific to that area, it seems unlikely that anyone anywhere else would have been interested in learning and remembering it. Henry A. Castle, who sent the text to folk song collector Eloise Hubbard Linscott, said that there was no set tune, but everyone used to sing it differently. In nineteenth-century Plainville, the characters were well known, the boat was a regular visitor, and therefore the song was a one-time favorite.

88

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

As such, it is a good example of one of those folk songs that had a brief life in a very circumscribed geographic region but has now fallen completely out of use. The canal itself, however, has not fallen completely out of use—at least, in a sense. After 12 years of use, a railroad was built along the route of the canal, and the canal fell out of use. The Canal Railroad was used until the early 1980s, when flooding damaged the rail to the extent that it could not operate. During the 1990s, construction began on a trail following the original rail line route. At present, the Farmington Canal Heritage Greenway covers about 84 miles from New Haven to Northampton, Massachusetts.100 The Story of Gerald Chapman O, come all you young people and listen while I tell, The fate of Gerald Chapman who was hung in a prison cell; Just shortly after midnight he was called to meet his God, And shortly after sunrise was laid beneath the sod. He was a desperate criminal from the cradle to the grave, He murdered a policeman—for it his life he gave; He spent long years in prison, in Auburn and Sing Sing, He robbed the mail of over a million, got back in jail again. He was sent to Atlanta prison and tunneled out of that pen, Was shot three times and captured, escaped from the hospital again; He went up in Connecticut and in New Britain town, While attempting to rob a store there he shot James Skelley down. He was captured in Indiana was brought back to Connecticut state The jury found him guilty and hanging was his fate; He died with his secret in his heart and never told his name, Or where his money was hid til his last breath he was [dead?] Before the pardon board in his own behalf he pled, He did not ask for mercy only justice, he said; When told of the board’s decision he did not mourn or cry, But he only uttered “I’m not afraid to die.” He entered the death cell and not a word he said, And then two minutes later he was pronounced dead; Young people all take warning from Gerald Chapman’s fate, And lead an honest life before it is too late.101

Gerald Chapman led a life of crime for 19 years. In 1922 he was convicted in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York of mail robbery and placing the life of a mail carrier in jeopardy and was sentenced, on August 23, 1922, to 25 years’ imprisonment in the penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia. But not long after, his sentence was commuted by President Calvin College for good behavior. Chapman’s good behavior evidently terminated with his liberation: on April 4, 1925, he was tried for, and convicted of, the murder of police officer James Skelly of New Britain on October 12, 1924. Though he was sentenced to be hanged on June 25, 1925, he received three reprieves and was not executed until midnight, April 5–6, 1926, at Connecticut State prison. Within a month of his execution, two ballads were recorded about his career: “Story of Gerald Chapman,” recorded by Carl Conner and transcribed here; and “Gerald Chapman, What a Pity,” recorded by Arthur Fields.

NEW ENGLAND

89

NOTES 1. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), in particular “Conclusion,” pp. 783ff. Population figures are from “Percent Distribution of the White Population, by Nationality: 1790,” in Historical Abstract of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1961), Series Z 20; values have been recomputed excluding the “unassigned” population. 2. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Maine.” 3. Abridged slightly from one of the texts given in the Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1932), 4:6–8, which gives considerable background information about this and another ballad about the skirmish. A shorter version is sung by Sandy Ives, Folksongs of Maine, Smithsonian Institution Folkways Cassette Series 05323. A longer text was published by Rufus W. Griswold, Curiosities of American Literature (1841), 27–28. 4. From Roland Palmer Gray, Songs and Ballads of the Main Lumberjacks with Other Songs from Maine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 156–57. A recording of the song can be heard on Sandy Ives, Folksongs of Maine. 5. Gray, Songs and Ballads. 6. From Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth, Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-Songs and Ballads of the Woods and the Coast (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), 22–23, reprinted in Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1933), 6:11, and in Phillips Barry, ed., The Maine Woods Songster (Cambridge: Powell, 1939), 76–77. The text and tune are from the singing of Mrs. Annie V. Marston of West Gouldsboro, Maine. For references to other collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), 155 [C 17]. 7. From Helen Hartness Flanders, Elizabeth F. Ballard, G. Brown, and Phillips Barry, The New Green Mountain Songster (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966), 58–60. Collected from Mr. Orlon Merrill, who learned it as a boy in Maine from his grandfather. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 214 [G 5]. 8. From Phillips Barry, Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1935), 9:17–19. 9. From Asa Burnham Hutchinson, The Granite Songster: Comprising the Songs of the Hutchinson Family, without the Music (Boston: A. B. Hutchinson, 1847), 51–52. For a version from oral tradition as sung by Mrs. Jennie Hardy Linscott, in whose family it was sung for generations, see Eloise Hubbard Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England (Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1962), 158–60. 10. From Gray, Songs and Ballads, 18–21, taken from John S. Springer, Forest Life and Forest Trees (New York, 1851), where it was stated, “Loggers, unlike most classes of men, are under the necessity of manufacturing their own songs. . . . The following is inserted as a specimen of log-swamp literature, composed by one of the loggers.” The ballad was also reprinted by Eckstorm and Smyth, Minstrelsy of Maine, 41–43. 11. From Harvard Advocate, November 10, 1871, p. 40; reprinted in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, January 27, 1951, p. 331; and in Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 52. A recording by Doney Hammontree can be heard on Ozark Folksongs, Rounder 1108. 12. From Eckstorm and Smyth, Minstrelsy of Maine, 48–51; received in 1921 from Leonard Patterson of Berlin, New Hampshire, with the note, “But about the song. This is the way I have heard my father tell it many, many times. The boys were all out in the woods one afternoon and the cook thought that he would like some deer steak for supper. So he took his rifle and started out. When he returned the camp was burned flat. They all turned to and built the camp up again, and about two weeks after they had got moved into their new home, one evening they asked Mr. [Henry K.] Thompson to sing a song, and he sung this that he had made up about the camp burning down.” Another, slightly different text was sung by Mr. Patterson in 1936 for Phillips Barry and published, with tune, in Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1937), 12:20–21.

90

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

13. Taken mostly from Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “New Hampshire.” 14. From Flanders et al., New Green Mountain Songster, 46–48, where it was copied literatim et punctatim from The Green Mountain Songster (Sandgate, VT: 1823), an anonymous manuscript by a veteran soldier. 15. From The American Vocalist, A Choice Collection of the Most Popular and Admired Sentimental, Patriotic, Comic, Irish, Negro, and Other Songs (New York: C. P. Huestis, 1847), 7–9. 16. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “The Hutchinson Family.” 17. Broadside from the Kenneth S. Goldstein Collection of American Song Broadsides, catalog 002501-BROAD, in the Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University. 18. Figures for earnings of mill operatives in the nineteenth century differ greatly according to source; often it is not clear whether the reported earnings are in actual dollars or have been converted to dollars for some reference year. According to Robert G. Layer, Earnings of Cotton Mill Operatives, 1825–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, n.d.), actual average daily earnings for all workers of the Boston Company were 50–60 cents in the 1830s and 1840s. 19. From Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England, 175–77, as sung by Mrs. Winifred Allard Piper of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, which adjoins Brookfield. The third verse was contributed by Dana Cate of Sanbornville, New Hampshire. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 195 [F 8]. 20. From Helen Hartness Flanders and George Brown, Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1968), 72–73, recorded in 1930 in Springfield, Vermont, from the singing of Mrs. George Tatro, whose relatives knew some of the principals of the story. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 202 [F 21]. 21. http://www.pembroke-nh.com/history.asp; http://www.oldnh.com/PembrokeSun html. 22. Barry, Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society, 4:20. 23. The first was Reverend S. C. Keeler, The Murdered Maiden Student: A Tribute to the Memory of Miss Josie A. Langmaid (Pembroke, NH: Suncook, 1878). Also of interest is The Trial of Joseph Lapage, the French Monster, for the Murder of the Beautiful School Girl, Miss Josie Langmaid. Also, the Account of the Murder of Miss Marietta Ball, the School Teacher, in the Woods, in Vermont . . . Copyrighted in 1876, this must have preceded Lapage’s conviction. For more details, see Thomas M. McDade, The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961), 173–74. 24. From Edward D. Ives, “ ‘Ben Deane’ and Joe Scott: A Ballad and Its Probable Author,” Journal of American Folklore 73 (January–March 1959): 53–66, as sung by William Bell of Brewer, Maine. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 207 [F 32], and Edward D. Ives, Joe Scott: The Woodsman-Songmaker (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979). 25. From Ives, Joe Scott. 26. For more details, see Ives, Joe Scott. 27. Taken mostly from Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Vermont.” 28. From John and Lucy Allison, Ballads of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, Victor Album P-11, record 26460-B2. The Allisons’ source is not indicated. 29. Seven other songs and poems about the Bennington battle were gathered and reprinted by William L. Stone, Ballads and Poems Relating to the Burgoyne Campaign (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970). 30. From Vermont Sings (Delaware, OH: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1959), 10–11, in turn taken from Perrin Batchelder Fisk, A Yeoman of the Lord: Poems (North Montpelier, Vt.: The Driftwind Press, 1933). Other versions have been reported from oral tradition: one, contributed by Mrs. Anna H. Dole of Danville, Vermont, is given in Flanders and Brown, Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads, 33–34, and is reprinted in Norm Cohen, Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005); another is given in Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England, 238–40, from Mrs. Addie Jackson Morse of Underhill, Vermont.

NEW ENGLAND

91

31. The text given here is as John G. Whittier wrote it; see Whittier, The Complete Poetical Works of Whittier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1894), 509, wherein the editors note that this is the first edition of Whittier’s collected works that contains this poem, first published anonymously in 1833. The text is reprinted in Helen Hartness Flanders, ed., A Garland of Green Mountain Song (Northfield: Vermont Commission on Country Life, 1934), 7–8. Flanders collected one stanza from the singing of George Edwards of Burlington. The song was recorded by Margaret MacArthur on Vermont Ballads and Broadsides, Whetstone Records CD 01. 32. From Flanders and Brown, Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads, 43–45. From the singing of Mr. Paul Lorette of Manchester Center, Vermont. It has also been collected in North Dakota, New York, Michigan, and Kentucky. The composition “Green Mountain Boys” by William Cullen Bryant is completely different. 33. From Wehman’s Song Book, no. 15 (July 1887?), 24. To the tune of “Milwaukee Fire.” For a collected text, see Helen Hartness Flanders et al., The New Green Mountain Songster: Traditional Folksongs of Vermont (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966; reprint 1939), 156. Margaret MacArthur has recorded the ballad under the title “Central Vermont” on On the Mountains High, Living Folk Records LP F-LFR-100. 34. From Flanders et al., New Green Mountain Songster, 157–58; taken from the Boston Traveller, Boston Transcript, February 5–8, 1887. New Green Mountain Songster also gives a collected text, titled “The Hartford Wreck.” The bridge in the sixth line of the song is given as the Hartford Bridge. 35. From Flanders et al., New Green Mountain Songster, 257–58, contributed by Mrs. Grace Bartlett Fisk, in whose Springfield (Vermont) family the ballad had been sung for three generations. 36. From Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1934), 8:19–24. 37. From Flanders and Brown, Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads, 27–28, as sung by Mr. E. C. Beers. Margaret MacArthur has recorded the ballad on On the Mountains High, Living Folk Records LP F-LFR-100. 38. From the sheet music cover, “The Snow Storm, a Balad” (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1843). 39. Ibid. 40. From Edited Appletons Encyclopedia, Copyright © 2001 Virtualology. 41. From Vermont Sings, 7–8. The text is also given in Flanders et al., New Green Mountain Songster, 102–5, but some of the stanzas are different. The text is by John G. Saxe and is set to the English traditional tune “The Lincolnshire Poacher.” A note states that the song was composed in 1850 to be used at a public sheep shearing at Hyde’s Hotel, Sudbury. Margaret MacArthur has recorded the song on An Almanac of New England Farm Songs, Green Linnet LP SIF 1039. 42. From www famousamericans net. 43. From Flanders et al., New Green Mountain Songster, 217–18, as sung by Mrs. Fred Blodgett of Springfield, Vermont, recorded by Helen Hartness Flanders. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 180 [E 9]. 44. From Flanders and Brown, Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads, 19–26, taken from the singing of Mr. Orlon Merrill of Charlestown, New Hampshire. Merrill had learned it from the singing of a blind singer, George Abbott. The song was recorded by Margaret MacArthur on Vermont Ballads and Broadsides, Whetstone Records CD 01. 45. Julia C. R. Dorr, Poems (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1872), 56–62. 46. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Massachusetts.” Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM edition, “Massachusetts.” 47. From the “Poets Corner” of Isaiah Thomas’s (Boston) Massachusetts Spy, February 3, 1774, as reprinted in J. A. Leo Lemay, “New England’s Annoyances”: America’s First Folk Song (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985), 91–92. Clouts are patches. 48. As recorded by Carl T. Sprague, June 24, 1926 for Victor, released on Victor 78 rpm 20534; reissued on Cowtrails, Longhorns and Tight Saddles, Bear Family CD BCD 15979 AH. 49. From “Botany Bay,” a broadside printed by W. Armstrong of Liverpool, 1820–1824. A copy can be seen on the Bodleian Library Web site, http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/.

92

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

50. For references to other collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., American Balladry from British Broadsides: A Guide for Students and Collectors of Traditional Song (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1957), 175[L16b]. 51. From a broadside owned by Brown University’s Hay Library, catalog no. HB 10577. The original text has been divided into stanzas of eight lines. 52. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM edition, s.v. “Joseph Warren.” 53. From a broadside, printed by Leonard Deming of Boston, at Brown University’s Hay Library, catalog no. HB 20513. 54. A recording of one, by Sam Hinton, can be heard on Library of Congress Session, Bear Family 16383. 55. A copy is in the Brown University’s Hay Library, catalog no. HB 14470. 56. From a broadside held by Brown University’s Hay Library, catalog no. HB 20517. 57. Transcribed and published by Gale Huntington, Songs the Whalemen Sang (Barre, MA: Barre, 1964), 165–67. Punctuation has been added, but original spelling is retained. Braken is an old-fashioned New England term for “torn, flawed”; a bunnet is a bonnet. 58. From Frank Shay, An American Sailor’s Treasury: Sea Songs, Chanteys, Legends and Lore (New York: Southmark, 1991), 90. Stan Ransom, the “Connecticut Peddler,” recorded a version on his CD, I Love Long Island: Traditional Music of Long Island, Plattsburgh. 59. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Cape Cod.” 60. As sung by E. G. Huntington, learned from the singing of the Tilton brothers of Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, on Folksongs from Martha’s Vineyard, Folkways LP/Cass FA 2032. Sugar of lead is lead acetate, a sweet but poisonous salt; alternatively, the phrase may simply mean “flavor it with gunshot.” 61. From a broadside, “Tea Tax,” sold by Leonard Deming of Boston, “Sung with unbounded applause at the Boston Theatre, by Mr. Andrews.” The sheet also contains a second song, “The Cottage on the Moor.” It can be viewed on the Library of Congress Web site, memory.loc.gov, “America Singing: Nineteenth Century Song Sheets.” I snum was a colloquial expression the equivalent of “I swear.” 62. From Robert H. Kemp, Father Kemp’s Old Folks Concert Tunes (Boston: Olive Ditson, 1889), p. 71. A recorded version can be heard on 200 Years of American Heritage in Song, CMH CD box set 1776. 63. Reprinted, literatim et punctatim, from Arthur M. Schlesinger, “A Note on Songs as Patriot Propaganda, 1765–1776,” William and Mary Quarterly, Series 3 11 (January 1954): 79–80; taken in turn from Virginia Gazette (Pudie and Dixon), January 20, 1774. Another version is given in Griswold, Curiosities, 30, where the tune is specified as “The Hosier’s Ghost.” The ballad was recorded by John and Lucy Allison, Early American Ballads, Keynote Records album K 102, 78 rpm. The angel “Hampden” may be John Hampden (1594–1643), English parliamentary leader who opposed King Charles I and for whom Hampden County, Massachusetts, was named in 1812. “Sidney” may be Algernon Sidney (1622–1683), English politician executed for allegedly plotting to overthrow King Charles II’s government. He was regarded as a great republican martyr. 64. From Flanders et al., New Green Mountain Songster, 161–63, where the text is reprinted verbatim et literatim from the original broadside. In the last stanza, con means “learn.” 65. Ibid., 229–31. Recorded from Mr. A. A. Mills of Florence, Vermont. 66. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Rhode Island.” 67. From a broadside in possession of the Rhode Island Historical Society, reproduced in Ola Elizabeth Winslow, American Broadside Verse from Imprints of the 17th and 18th Centuries (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930), 137 [No. 65]. The last word of the first line of the sixth quatrain is “insert,” but “assert” was meant. 68. Details from ibid. 69. Text from The Forget Me Not Songster (New York: Nafis and Cornish, n.d.), 72–74, with instructions to be sung to the tune of “The Rocks of Scilla.” A broadside, published by J. M’Cleland, 248 Water Street [Boston?], is available online through the New York Public Library.

NEW ENGLAND

93

70. See Bruce Rosenberg, The Folksongs of Virginia, a Checklist of the WPA Holdings of Alderman Library, University of Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969), no. 177, 23 stanzas, collected in 1941 in Virginia; and Louis W. Chappell, Folk-Songs of Roanoke and the Albemarle (Morgantown, WV: Ballad Press, 1939), 54, a fragment of two incomplete stanzas, collected in 1933 in North Carolina. 71. Text from Forget Me Not Songster, 195–96; the punctuation has been modernized. 72. See David Richard Kasserman, Fall River Outrage: Life, Murder, and Justice in Early Industrial New England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), 220–21, for excerpts. 73. Aristides [William Simons Jr.?], Strictures on the Case of Ephraim K. Avery, Originally Published in the Republican Herald, Providence, R. I. (Providence, RI: William Simons Jr. Herald Office, 1833), 5–6. 74. Kasserman, Fall River Outrage. 75. Raymond Paul, The Tragedy at Tiverton: An Historical Novel of Murder (New York: Ballantine Books, 1984); Mary Cable, Avery’s Knot (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981). 76. Text from a broadside reproduced in Russell J. DeSimone and Daniel C. Schofield, The Broadsides of the Dorr Rebellion (Providence: Rhode Island Supreme Court Historical Society, 1992). 77. Summarized from Patrick T. Conley, introduction to DeSimone and Schofield, Broadsides of the Dorr Rebellion, 1–13. 78. Sheet music written by G.C.W. Arranged by Wurzel. New York: Wm. A. Pond, 1860. 79. From a broadside in the collection of the Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfeesboro. Imprint: Niantio, Rhode Island, undated. 80. This account is taken from the Web site http://danger-ahead.railfan net/ accidents/richmond_ switch/home html. 81. Taken mainly from Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Connecticut.” 82. From a broadside printed by N[athaniel] Coverly Jr., Milk Street, Boston, [1810–1814]. Copies held by the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, and the John Hay Library, Brown University. 83. The most recent summary is given by James J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk, 5th ed. (New York: Dover, 2000), 659–60, 697. Oscar Sonneck, prominent musicologist and chief of the Library of Congress Music Division in the early 1900s, produced the most thorough study, republished in Oscar Sonneck, Report on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia,” “America,” and “Yankee Doodle” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909). A more readable, and very convincing, study is J. A. Leo Lemay, “The American Origins of ‘Yankee Doodle,’ ” William and Mary Quarterly, Series 3 33 (July 1976): 435–64. Lemay is the only scholar to apply criteria of folk song and history to the problem—as opposed to just musical or publication criteria. 84. Sonneck, Report, 127–28. 85. Taken from Jim Douglas, Contentment, or, the Compleat Nutmeg-State Songster (Sturbridge, MA: Pedlar Press, 1987), 74 –80. According to Douglas, the song was first published in 1851 by Oliver Ditson of Boston, with words and music credited to H. W. Dunbar. The text is written here as straight verse; musically, it consists of several parts in a fuguing arrangement, so the words alone do not give an accurate impression of the song as sung. 86. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition, s.v. “Connecticut.” 87. See David Armstrong and Elizabeth Metzger Armstrong, “The Thomsonians: Every Man His Own Doctor,” in The Great American Medicine Show: Being an Illustrated History of Hucksters, Healers, Health Evangelists, and Heroes from Plymouth Rock to the Present (New York: Prentice Hall, 1991), chap. 3. 88. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “History of Publishing.” 89. Copied exactly as given in Rufus P. Stebbins, An Historical Address, Delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Wilbraham, June 15, 1863 (Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1864), 206. See Norm Cohen, Folk Music, 94, for a traditional version sung by

94

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Mr. Josiah S. Kennison in Townshend, Vermont, as printed in Flanders and Brown, Vermont FolkSongs and Ballads, 15–16. 90. Stebbins, An Historical Address, 66–67. 91. Phillips Barry, Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA: 1931– 36), 2:10; 3:30; 7:4 –5; 8:3–6; 9:8–10, 6–8; 10:13–15; 11:6–8. 92. Two surviving sheet music prints are “The Pesky Sarpent: A Pathetic Ballad” (Boston: Oakes and Swan, n.d.), no author given; and “On Springfield Mountains, or, the Pesky Sarpent. A Pathetic Ballad” (Boston: Oliver Diston, 1878). Both can be seen at http://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu. edu, the Web site for the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music at Johns Hopkins’s Milton S. Eisenhower library. 93. From The National Songster: Embellished with Twenty-five Splendid Engravings, Illustrative of the American Victories in Mexico. By an American Officer (New York: Richard Marsh, [before 1848]), 239–40. 94. From Father Kemp’s Old Folks’ Concert Tunes (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1889), 70. A razee is a wooden ship with the deck cut away. A recording by Wallace House can be heard on Ballads of the War of 1812, 1791–1836, Smithsonian Folkways FW 05002. 95. From the Web site http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1993/6/1993_6_ 22.shtml. 96. For more biographical information, see Harry Hayden Clark, ed., Poems of Freneau (New York: Hafner, 1929). 97. One broadside was published by Leonard Deming of Boston between 1829 and 1931, containing “Battle of Stonington” together with “Banks of Ohio.” The first line of the former is “Three gallant ships from England came.” Copies are held at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, and at the John Hay Library at Brown University. 98. See, e.g., “Battle of Stonington” and “Banks of Ohio” (Boston, Massachusetts), published by L. Deming between 1832 and 1837 (New York Historical Society Broadsides SY1832 no. 108). 99. From Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England, 195–96. Words received from Henry A. Castle of Plainville, Connecticut. For a recorded version, see Wallace House, Ballads of the War of 1812, 1791–1836, Smithsonian Folkways FW 05002. 100. For more information, see http://www farmingtoncanal.org. 101. As recorded by Carl Conner on April 23, 1926, in Atlanta, Georgia, and issued on Columbia 15076-D, 78 rpm, in August 1926.

2 Midland (North Atlantic)

Early immigration to the midland states differed in character from that of New England to the North. Most of the British arrivals came later—mainly in the 40-year interval from 1675 to 1715—and came heavily from England’s north midlands country. Unlike New England’s settlers, 90 percent of whom came in families, only half of the midland colonists did so. Their occupations were divided between artisans and farmers. More significant, though, a substantial contribution to the population’s makeup came from European countries, in particular, Holland and Germany. Swedish immigrants constituted a sizeable fraction of New Jersey and, even more so, of Delaware (over 9%). Starting in 1717, the Scots Irish began arriving from northern Ireland. These were Protestants who had been driven out of Scotland, settling mainly in the Ulster region of northern Ireland before crossing the ocean. They settled in Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna River and in northern New York. From Pennsylvania, they moved south into the less populated highlands, where they were joined by more immigrants—perhaps a quarter of a million—in the next half century. This migration left an enormous Scots imprint on American culture, particularly in the folk tunes, songs, and ballads that became a part of the new American musical tradition.1

NEW YORK What is now New York was originally settled as a colony of the Netherlands following Henry Hudson’s exploration in 1609 of the river later named for him. In 1624 the Dutch established Fort Orange at modern Albany as the first permanent European settlement in what is now New York, and one year later, he established New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. To formalize the settlement, Peter Minuit, the Dutch governor, tendered the natives’

96

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

merchandise worth about 60 Dutch guilders—the celebrated $24 sale price for Manhattan. (Some historians have argued that the Indians understood the transaction to be for hunting rights, rather than actual property ownership—a concept that may have been foreign to them.) Lacking the motivations of political or religious freedoms that drove the English emigrants, the Dutch were apparently not interested in long-term agricultural development. Thus, when an English fleet sailed into New York harbor in 1664, Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered without a fight. By 1669 the colony was firmly in the hands of the English, who renamed it New York.2 The Dutch Lullaby Slaap, Kindje, slaap, Daar buiten loopt een Schaap, Eeen Schaap met witte Voetjes, Dat drunkt zijn melk zoo zoetjes, Slaap, Kindje, Slaap.

Sleep, little one, sleep, Out of doors there runs a sheep, A sheep with four white feet, That drinks its milk so sweet, Sleep, little one, sleep.3

Collector Frank Warner heard this song “in an old Dutch settlement up the Hudson River in New York.” Whether it actually survived from the Dutch colonists of the seventeenth century is not known, but it is not unreasonable to expect lullabies such as this, sung by parents to their children for generations, to endure for many centuries of Dutch Americans. The Battle of Schenectady A Ballad In which is set forth the horrid cruellties practised by the French and Indians on the Night of the 8th of Last February. The which I did compose Last Night in the space of one Hour, and am now writing, the Morning of Fryday, June 12, 1690. W. W. God Prosper long our King and Queen Our lives & Safeties all A sad misfortune once there did Schenectady befall. From forth the woods of Canada The Frenchmen tooke their Way The People of Schenectady To captivate and slay. They march’d for two & twenty dais, All thro’ the deepest snow; And on a dismal Winter Night They strucke the Cruel Blow. The lightsome sun that rules the Day, Had gone down in the West; And eke the drowsy Villagers [eke = “also”] Had sought and found their reste. They thought They were in Safetie all, And dreampt not of the Foe; But att Midnight They all awoke, In Wonderment & Woe.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

For They were in their pleasant Beddies, And soundelie sleeping, when Each Door was sudden open broke By six or seven Men. The Men and Women Younge & Olde, And eke the Girls & Boys, All started up in great Affright, Att the alarming Noise. They then were murther’d in their Beddes Without shame or remorse; And soon the Floores and Streets were stew’d [stenched] With many a bleeding corse [corpse]. The Village soon began to Blaze Which shew’d the horrid sight— But, O, I scarce can Beare to Tell The Mis’ries of that Night. They threw the Infants in the Fire, The Men they did not spare; But killed All which they could find Tho’ Aged or tho’ Fair. O Christe! In the still Midnight air, It sounded dismally, The Women’s Prayers, and the loud screams, Of their great Agony. Methinks as if I hear them now All ringing in my ear; The Shrieks & Groanes & Woefull Sighs, They utter’d in their Fear. But some ran off to Albany, And told the dolefull Tale Yett tho’ We gave our cheerful Aid, It did not much avail. And We were horribly afraid, And shook with Terror, when They told us that the Frenchmen were More than a Thousand Men. The News came on the Sabbath morn, Just att the Break of Day. And with a companie of Horse I galloped away. But soone We found the French were gone With all their great Bootye; And then their Trail We did pursue, As was our true Dutye. The Mohaques joynd our brave Partye, And followed in the chase

97

98

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Till we came upp with the Frenchmen, Att a most likelye Place. Our soldiers fell upon their Reare, And killed twenty-five, Our Young Men were so much enrag’d They took scarce One alive. D’Aillebout Them did commande, Which were but Theevish Rogues, Else why did they consent and Goe With Bloodye Indian Dogges? And Here I End the long Ballad, The Which you just have redde; I wish that it may stay on earth Long after I am Dead. —Walter Wilie Albany, June 12, 16904

This fascinating historical ballad must be one of the earliest preserved to be written on (colonial) American soil. The story concerns an event during King William’s War (1689– 1697; in Europe, called the War of the League of Augsburg), the first of the four wars fought between England and France in the New World, the last of which is known as the French and Indian War. The British, led by Sir William Phips, captured Port Royal, Acadia (later Nova Scotia), but failed to take Quebec. Then, on the night of February 8, 1690, Count Frontenac led a party consisting of 200 French troops and friendly Indians and retaliated with attacks on Schenectady, Salmon Falls (in present New Hampshire), and Casco Bay (in present Maine). In the attack on the village of Schenectady, all but 30 of the inhabitants were killed; those 30 were taken captive to Montreal. The New England colonies responded with unsuccessful attacks on Canada. “D’Aillebout” in the penultimate stanza was Lieutenant D’Aillebout de Mantet, assistant to the French commander, Lemoine de Sainte Helene. The ballad is given as reprinted in an 1883 history and appears to preserve the archaic spelling of the late seventeenth century, except, possibly, the name “Schenectady” was modernized since in documents of the 1690s, it was variously spelled Schoonechtede, Schinectedy, Skinnechtady, or Schanechtede—all attempts to anglicize a Mohawk place name. The Mohawks were friendly to the colonists at that time. The Fate of John Burgoyne When Jack the king’s commander Was going to his duty, Through all the crown he smiled and bow’d To every blooming beauty. The city rung with feats he’d done In Portugal and Flanders, And all the town thought he’d be crown’d The first of Alexanders. To Hampton Court he first repairs To kiss great George’s hand, sirs; Then to harangue on state affairs

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

99

Before he left the land, sirs; The “Lower House” sat mute as mouse To hear his grand oration; And all the peers, with loudest cheers, Proclaimed him to the nation. Then off he went to Canada, Next to Ticonderoga, And quitting those away he goes Straightway to Saratoga. With great parade his march he made To gain his wished-for station, While far and wide his minions hied To spread his “Proclamation.” To such as staid he offers made Of pardon on submission; But savage bands should waste the lands Of all in opposition. But ah, the cruel fates of war! This boasted son of Britain, When mounting his triumphal car With sudden fear was smitten. The sons of Freedom gathered round, His hostile bands confounded, And when they’d fain have turn’d their back They found themselves surrounded! In vain they fought, in vain they fled, Their chief, humane and tender, To save the rest soon thought it best His forces to surrender. Brave St. Clair when he first retired Knew what the fates portended; And Arnold and heroic Gates His conduct have defended. Thus may America’s brave songs With honor be rewarded, And be the fate of all her foes The same as here recorded.5

“The Fate of John Burgoyne,” written probably in 1777 to the dance tune “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” paints an accurate, if sketchy, picture of one of the northern campaigns of the Revolutionary War. Major General John (“Gentleman Johnny”) Burgoyne (1722–1792) had served with distinction in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and had been elected to the House of Commons in 1761 and again in 1768. Assigned to Canada in 1776, he entered into an offensive in which British armies from the North (Burgoyne’s troops), South (General Sir William Howe’s), and West (Colonel Barry St. Leger’s) would unite at Albany, New York, isolating New England from the other rebellious colonies. On July 6, 1777, Burgoyne’s force captured Fort Ticonderoga, New York, which was held by only a small garrison, and then Fort Edwards on July 31. However, the short journey between the forts was a nightmare for Burgoyne’s army, who had to slash their way through virgin forests and lay down roads wide enough for the hundreds of wagons carrying not only military provisions, but

100

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

officers’ wives and children and Burgoyne’s fine linens and chests of dishes, silverware, and expensive wines—all the while fending off guerrilla attacks and disease-bearing insects. His army consisted of some 8,000 soldiers, among them a number of Native Americans. On the way south, Burgoyne would make inspiring speeches to his Indian warriors (probably not even intelligible to them), then send copies of them to the London newspapers. His ebullient optimism notwithstanding, he suffered a succession of disasters. One unit of his forces was completely routed by the Green Mountain Boys at the battle of Bennington (August 16, 1777). A month later (September 19), Brigadier General Benedict Arnold defeated his troops badly at the First Battle of Saratoga (also called the First Battle of Freeman’s Farm), some 20 miles north of Albany, along the Hudson. Meanwhile, General Benjamin Lincoln and a New England militia cut his communication to the North, preventing any retreat. In desperation, Burgoyne engaged the Americans again at the Second Battle of Saratoga, where his forces, now reduced to 6,000 men, were outnumbered by General Gates, and on October 17, he surrendered. His men were allowed to return to England on the promise that they not serve in the war again—a common practice at the time. The surrender at Saratoga proved one of the turning points in the war. Noble Lads of Canada Come all ye British heroes, I pray you lend your ears, Draw up your British forces, and then your volunteers; We’re going to fight the Yankee boys, by water and by land, And we never will return, till we conquer sword in hand. Refrain: We’re the noble lads of Canada, come to arms boys come. O now the time has come, my boys, to cross the Yankee’s line, We remember they were rebels once, and conquer’d John Burgoyne. We’ll subdue those mighty Democrats, and pull their dwellings down, And we’ll have the states inhabited with subjects to the crown. Refrain. We’ve as choice a British army as ever crossed the seas, We’ll burn both town and city, and with smoke becloud the skies. We’ll subdue the old Green Mountain boy, their Washington is gone, And we’ll play them Yankee Doodle, as the Yankees did Burgoyne. Refrain. Now we’ve reached the Platsburgh banks, my boys, and here we’ll make a stand, Until we take the Yankee fleet, McDonough doth command; We’ve the Growler and the Eagle, that from Smith we took away, And we’ll have their noble fleet that lies anchored in the bay. Refrain. O, our fleet is hove in view my boys, the cannon loudly roar, With death upon our cannon balls, we’ll drench their docks with gore; We’ve water craft sufficient to sink them in an hour, But our orders is to board and the Yankee’s flag destroy. Refrain. Now the battle’s growing hot, my boys, I don’t know how ’twill turn, While McDonough’s boats on swivels hung continually do burn, We see such constant flashing that the smoke beclouds the day, And our larger boats they’ve struck and our smaller run away. Refrain: O we’ve got too far from Canada, run for life boys, run. O Provost he sigh’d aloud and to his officers he said, I wish the devil and those Yankees could but said alongside. For the tars of France and England can’t stand before them well, For I think they’d flog the devil and drive him back to hell. Refrain.

The “Noble Lads of Canada” were the British forces engaged in the battle on Lake Champlain in 1814. Leonard Deming published this broadside in the 1830s.

102

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now prepare for your retreat, my boys, make all the haste you can, The Yankees are surrounding us, we’ll surely be Burgoyn’d, Behind the hedges, and the ditches, and the trees, and every stump, You can see the sons of b——s, and the cursed Yankees jump. Refrain. Now we’ve reached the Chazy Heights my boys, we’ll make short delay, For the rest our weary limbs and to feed our beasts on hay; Soon McDonough’s cocks began to crow, was heard at Stark’s barn, And a report throughout the camp was the general alarm. Refrain. O Provost sighed aloud and to his officers did say, “The Yankee troops are hove in sight and hell will be to pay. Shall we fight like men of courage, and do the best we can?— When we know they will flog us two to one—I think we’d better run.” Refrain. Now if ever I reach Quebec alive I’ll surely stay at home, For McDonough’s gained a victory, the devil fight Macombe; I had rather fight a thousand troops as good as ever crossed the seas, Than fifty of those Yankees behind the stumps and trees. Refrain. They told us that the Fed’ralists were friendly to the crown, They’d join our army and the Democrats pull down; But they all unite together as a band of brothers joined, They will fight for independence till they die upon the ground. Refrain. The old ’76’s have sallied forth, upon their crutches they do lean. With their rifles leveled on us, with their specks they take good aim; For there’s no retreat in those my boys who’d rather die than run, And we make no doubt that these are those that conquered John Burgoyne. Refrain: When he got too far from Canada, run for life boys, run. Now we’ve reached the British ground, my boys, we’ll have a day of rest, And I wish my soul that I could say ’twould be a day of mirth; But I’ve left so many troops behind, it causes me to mourn, And if ever I fight the Yankees more, I’ll surely stay at home. Refrain: Now we’ve got back to Canada, stay at home, boys, stay, Here’s a health to all the British troops, likewise to general Provost, And to our respective families, and the girls we love most; To McDonough and Macombe, and to every Yankee boy, Now fill up your tumblers for I never was so dry. Refrain.6

The battle memorialized in the above ballad occurred during the War of 1812 on Lake Champlain. A British army of some 14,000 troops under Sir George Prevost reached Plattsburg in a joint land and sea operation. U.S. defenders included 1,500 regulars and about 2,500 militia commanded by General Alexander Macomb (1782–1841), supported by a 14-ship U.S. naval squadron under Commodore Thomas Macdonough (1783–1825). The outcome of the battle was determined on water when the British fleet was decisively defeated on September 11, 1814. Deprived of naval support, the invading army was forced to retreat. The victory at Plattsburg influenced the terms of peace drawn at the Treaty of Ghent the following December. General Burgoyne, the British military commander during the Revolutionary War, played no part in this battle, but his resounding defeat (after his steady display of excessive

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

103

arrogance) at Saratoga in 1777 at the hands of General Horatio Gates gave a new verb to the American language (“to burgoyne” meant, for half a century, “to capture or take prisoner”). The ballad is written as if from the British point of view, but the admiration shown for the Yankee soldiers suggests the author was in reality an American. It has been credited to Miner Lewis of Mooers.7 The ballad was issued on several broadsides after the war, sometimes titled “The Bold Lads of Canada.” Several other ballads about the battle were written and disseminated in cheap print. Boston printer Nathaniel Coverly issued a single broadside that held two ballads on the same event.8 Another, completely different, ballad, “Battle of Plattsburgh,” was issued, but with no identifying markings.9 Early in the period of westward movement, the rivers offered promise as a principal means of transporting goods and people. Farsighted individuals envisioned canals as manmade extensions of the natural rivers that could greatly facilitate transportation. Today, we recall principally the Erie Canal, which ran west from Albany to Buffalo, but this was just the first of many. Construction on the Erie Canal began in 1817 and was completed in 1825. The opening of the Canal confirmed New York’s position as the gateway to what was then called “the West” from the Atlantic Coast. It was followed by others: the Ohio & Erie Canal, from Cleveland south to Portsmouth, Ohio (completed 1833); the Pennsylvania Canal, from Philadelphia west to Pittsburgh (1834); the Wabash & Erie Canal, from Toledo on Lake Erie southwest to Terre Haute, Indiana (1843); the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, from Washington, D.C., west to Cumberland (1866). Altogether, some 3,000 miles of inland waterways had been constructed by the 1840s. Their heyday was cut short in the 1850s with the rapid growth of the railroads, which soon made the canals obsolete. Early opponents to the railroads, who objected to them on various grounds of safety, noise, pollution, and undependability, found natural allies in the canal interests, who saw their own financial investments seriously threatened. The canals bred a host of songs and ballads, most of which died out in the nineteenth century as the canals themselves became obsolete, but a few, in particular, about the Erie, were still well remembered into the twentieth century. The E-ri-e We were forty miles from Albany, Forget it, I never shall; What a terrible storm we had one night, On the E-ri-e canal. Chorus: Oh, the E-ri-e was a-risin’, and the gin was a-gettin’ low; And I scarcely think we’ll get a drink till we get to Buffalo, Till we get to Buffalo. We were loaded down with barley, We were chock up full of rye; The Captain he looked down on me, With his gol-durn wicked eye. Chorus. Two days out from Syracuse, The vessel struck a shoal; And we like to all been foundered, On a chunk of Lackawanna coal. We hollered to the captain On the towpath, treadin’ dirt;

104

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

He jumped on board and stopped the leak With his old red flannel shirt. The cook she was a grand old gal, She wore a ragged dress; We heisted her upon the pole, As a signal of distress. The wind begin to whistle The waves begin to roll, We had to reef our royals On that raging Canal. When we got to Syracuse, Off-mule he was dead, The nigh mule got blind staggers We cracked him on the head. The captain, he got married, The cook, she went to jail; And I’m the only sea-cook son, That’s left to tell the tale.10

Though immensely popular throughout the twentieth century, the details of the song’s early dissemination—apart from its presumed time and place of origin—are unknown. It appears to be a redaction of a much longer song from the 1840s called “The Raging Canawl (or Kanawl),” in which the towing team and driver actually fall in the canal in the stormy night.11 It did not appear in print in its present form until Carl Sandburg included it in his famous American Songbag, one of the first folk song collections intended for a general audience.12 Young Carlotta Young Carlotta lived on a mountain side, A wild and a lonely spot, There were no dwellings for many miles around Except her father’s cot. And yet on many a winter night, Young swains would gather there; Her father kept a social board, And she was very fair. One New Years’ Eve as the sun went down, Far looked her wishful eye; Out from the frosty windowpanes, As merry sleighs dashed by. At the village fifteen miles away, Was to be a ball that night; And though the air was freezing cold, Her heart was warm and bright. How brightly beamed her laughing eye, As a well-known voice she heard; And as she looked to the cottage door, Her lover’s sleigh appeared.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

“Oh daughter dear, O daughter dear, This blanket around you fold; For it’s an awful night outside, You’ll catch your death of cold.” “Oh nay, nay, nay,” Young Carlotta cried, And she laughed like a gypsy queen; To ride in blankets muffled up, I never will be seen. “My silken coat is quite enough, You know it’s lined throughout; And there’s my silken scarf To twine my head and neck about.” Her bonnet and her gloves are on, She jumped into the sleigh; And swiftly sped down the mountainside And over the hills away. With muffled beats so silently Five miles at length were passed; When Charles with a few and shivering words The silence broke at last. “Such a dreadful night I’ve never seen, My reins I scarce can hold”; Young Carlotta faintly then replied, “Oh I am very cold.” He cracked his whip, he urged his steed, Much faster than before; And thus five other weary miles, In silence they passed o’er. Spoke Charles then, “How fast the ice Is freezing on my brow”; Carlotta still more faintly said, “I’m getting warmer now.” Thus on they rode through the frosty air, And the blustering cold afright; Until at last the village lamps And the ballroom came in sight. They reached the door, young Charles sprang out, He held his hand to her, “Why sit you like a monument That hath no power to stir?” He called her once, he called her twice, She answered not a word; He asked her for her hand again, But still she never stirred. He took her hand in his—’twas cold, ’Twas hard as any stone; He tore the mantle from her face, The cold stars on it shown.

105

106

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Then quickly to the lighted hall Her lifeless form he bore; Young Carlotta’s eyes had closed in death, Her voice was heard no more. And there he set down by her side, His bitter tears did flow; He cried, “My own, my charming bride, You never more will know.” He twined his arms about her form, And kissed her marble brow; His thoughts went back to when she said, “I’m getting warmer now.”13

Under the title “A Corpse Going to a Ball,” this ballad was first published in 1843 by Seba Smith (1792–1868) in a journal he edited, the Rover.14 Smith was born in Portland, Maine, and wrote many pieces that enjoyed popularity in their day. Smith’s simple, direct language and suspenseful telling, together with the innately (possibly morbidly) interesting plot made many listeners want to add it to their repertoires; it would have been a superb piece for declaiming at a public gathering—a popular pastime in the nineteenth century. In spite of the remarkably well preserved state of the ballad as it was performed by Almeda Riddle, the hand of at least one folk recomposer is evident in her two final stanzas, which were not in Smith’s original. Whoever wrote them was skillful in matching Smith’s style, and also adding an element of narrative irony that was lacking from the original. Other recorded versions append yet two more stanzas that were not in the original: They bore her out into the sleigh, And Charles with her rode home. And when they reached her cottage door, Oh, how her parents mourned! They mourned for the loss of their daughter dear, And Charles mourned o’er his bride, Until at length his heart did break And they slumber side by side.15 Henry Green of Troy Good people, come, both old and young, and hear a story told, Concerning a young damsel, ’twill make your blood run cold; A young and beautiful woman, Miss White, it was her name, Who was murdered by her husband, and he hanged for the same. Miss White, I’m told was handsome unto a high degree, Young Henry was wealthy, as you shall plainly see; He went unto her dwelling and this to her did say; “Dear Mary, will you be my wife? oh, pray, do name the day!” “Oh, Henry dear Henry, I fear this ne’er will do, For you have proud relations and I’m not as rich as you; And when your parents come to know they’ll spurn us from the door! They’d rather you’d marry some other girl with wealth laid up in store.”

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

107

No information regarding the author, publisher, date, or place was given on this broadside, “The Murdered Wife: or the Case of Henry G. Green . . . ,” but it probably was issued soon after the murderer’s execution in September 1845. Brown University Library. “Oh, Mary, dearest Mary, pray, why torment me so? I swear by all that’s sacred I ever will prove true, And if you do not give consent, I’ll surely take my life, For I no longer wish to live unless you are my wife.” She, hearing all that he had said, believing it was true, Soon gave consent to be his wife, but little did she know;

108

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Oh, little did she dream, indeed, how could she e’er suspect, That he would shortly take the life he had sworn to protect? They had been married scarce a week when she was taken ill Great doctors quick were summoned, who tried their utmost skill; They tried their best in every way, but none her life could save, And soon it was proclaimed that she might go down to the grave. Her brother, hearing of the same, straightway to her did go, Saying, “Sister, you are dying. Dear, tell me is it so? Have you not been murdered by the one you thought your friend? Oh, tell the truth before you die, do not the guilty ‘fend!” “As I am on the bed of death, and know that I must die, And that I’m going to meet my God, I’ll not the truth deny; Young Henry Green has poisoned me—oh, quickly for him send. For still I love him, just as well as when he was my friend.” Young Henry Green was summoned his dying wife to see, ’Twas there she said, “Oh, Henry, were you e’er deceived by me?” She cast on him one loving look, then dropped into death’s swoon, While he gazed on her with a tearful eye, then in silence left the room. At an inquest on the body, according to the law, ’Twas ascertained by doctors that arsenic was the cause; Young Henry was arrested and cast into Troy jail. There to await his trial, as the court would take no bail. When his trial day arrived, he was brought upon the stand, To answer for the blackest crime committed in our land; He said he was innocent, and did her friends defy, But Judge Parker passed his sentence, and he was condemned to die.16

This ballad relates a true crime that was committed over 150 years ago. Green married Mary Ann Wyatt on February 10, 1845, in Berlin, New York, about five weeks after he first met her while she was performing with a company of itinerant temperance players. Both were 22 years old at the time. Five days later, apparently regretting his marriage, Green tried to poison his bride, first with doses of opium in her food, and, when she vomited that up, by lacing her meals with arsenic for the next two days. She died eight days after their marriage. At the coroner’s inquest, several witnesses reported having seen Henry administering some white powder in liquids and foods to Mary, and abundant traces of arsenic were found. Henry was tried on July 7, found guilty, and hanged on September 10, 1845, in Troy, New York. The traditional ballad, probably written soon afterward, was found most often in Vermont but has been collected as far away as Virginia, Florida, Michigan, and Missouri. A comic parody, in which the protagonists are William Henry White and Polly Green, was written in the 1880s by William B. Brown and published in his songster, Comical Brown’s Songster.17 The Lamentation of James Rodgers Come all you tender Christians, I hope you will draw near, And likewise pay attention to those few lines I have here: For the murder of Mr. Swanton I am condemned to die, On the twelfth day of November upon the gallows high.

This is the better-known of two ballads published in 1858 soon after the execution of James Rodgers, this one by Andrews, one of the most prolific of New York’s broadside publishers of the midnineteenth century. From the Library of Congress.

110

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

My name is James Rodgers—the same I ne’er denied, Which leaves my aged parents in sorrow for to cry; It’s little ever they thought, all in my youth and bloom I came into New York for to meet my fatal doom. My parents raised me tenderly, as you may plainly see, And constantly good advice they used to give to me; They told me to shun night walking and all bad company, Or states prison or the scaffold would be the doom for me. In bad houses and liquor I used to take delight, And constantly my companions they used me there invite; They all persuaded me the use of knives were free, I migh[t] commit a murder, and hanged I would not be. Upon the fatal night, as you may plainly see, My companions advised me to go and have a spree; My passion got the best of me, as you may plainly know, I drew the fatal knife, and it proved my overthrow. Mr. Swanton and his wife were passing through the street, And in my drunken passion I chanced them for to meet; They surely did not injure me—the same I’ll ne’er deny, But Satan being so near me, I could not pass them by. I staggered up against them, and then he turned around, And demanded if the sidewalk had not enough of ground; It’s then I drew the fatal knife, and stabbed him to the heart, Which leaves the loving wife from her husband for to part. To Woodbridge then I quickly fled, thinking to escape, But the hand of Providence was before me—indeed I was too late; There I was taken prisoner, and fetched unto my doom, To die upon the gallows, all in my youthful bloom. My trial came on quickly, and condemned I was to die, My companions and associates, they were standing by; I told them to take warning by that my humble fate, To shun night walking and bad company ere it be too late. Farewell, my aged father, I ne’er will see you more, And my broken-hearted mother, my loss you do deplore; My sisters and brothers, to you I bid adieu, Upon this fatal forenoon I have to part with you. The morning of my execution most heartrending for to see, My sister came from Jersey to take the last farewell of me; She flew into my arms, and bitterly did cry, Saying, my dear and loving brother, this day you are to die. Thanks to the sheriff for his kindness to me, Also my noble counsellor, who thought to get me free; And likewise my faithful clergy who brought my mind to bear, For now I die a true penitent I solemnly declare. My life is now ended—from this world I must part, For the murder of Mr. Swanton I am sorry to the heart;

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

111

Let each wild and vicious youth a warning take by me, To be ruled by their parents, and shun bad company.18

On the night of October 17, 1857, at the corner of 10th Avenue and 21st Street in New York, a very drunken James Rodgers and two rowdy companions were engaged in an altercation when they encountered Mr. and Mrs. John Swanston (“Swanton” in the song). Rodgers accidentally staggered into Mrs. Swanston, upon which her husband, a wellreputed engineer, spoke harshly to him. Rodgers drew a knife and stabbed Swanston, causing almost instant death. The youths fled; a terrified Mrs. Swanston shrieked for help and her husband’s body was borne to their home. The police were notified and soon found two of the youths; the third, Rodgers, had fled to Woodbridge, where he sought refuge at the home of his sister. He soon left the home and attempted to hide out in the woods, but he was apprehended, taken to prison, and soon tried and found guilty to be hanged. His comportment in the courtroom astonished spectators, who had expected a surly and unkempt prisoner, but found him gentle, meek, almost girlish, and apologetic: he had no recollection of the killing, but he acknowledged that he was drunk and in the company of bad companions, and accepted that the accusation must be true. He was held in jail for over a year before the day of his execution. On the preceding night, he bade farewell to his aged mother and spent his final hours in prayer in the company of Father Duranke of the 16th Street Church. His father, two sisters, two brothers, and a brother-in-law joined him in a final Mass in the prison chapel. That evening, two gentlemen holding prominent political positions visited the governor to appeal for a commutation of his sentence, but to no avail.19 Rodgers’s execution on November 12, 1858, was followed by at least two broadside songs, one of which served as the model for several later ballads (see the discussion in chapter 5 concerning the songs of Ohio).20 The ballad preserves many specifics of this particular event, though it is closely based on numerous other Irish and Irish American street ballads of the nineteenth century.21 Though there may not be any traces of this particular ballad story in oral tradition, the piece is justifiably labeled a folk song by virtue of its undeniable position in a long tradition of folk verse. Jim Fisk Song If you’ll listen a while, I’ll sing you a song About this glorious land of the free; And the difference I’ll show ‘twixt the rich and the poor In a trial by jury, you see— If you’ve plenty of stamps, you can hold up your head, And walk out from your own prison door; But they’ll hang you up high if you’ve no friends or gold— Let the rich go, but hang up the poor! Chorus: In the trials for murder we’ve had now-a-days The rich ones get off swift and sure; While they’ve thousands to pay to the jury and Judge, You can bet they’ll go back on the poor. Let me speak of a man who’s now dead in his grave— A good man as ever was born— Jim Fisk he was called, and his money he gave To the outcast, the poor and forlorn;

The elaborately lithographed sheet music cover to “Jim Fisk, or He Never Went Back on the Poor,” (1874) remembers robber baron Fisk’s most charitable act: sending a trainload of supplies for victims of the Chicago fire of 1871. From the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music, Special Collections, Sheridan Libraries, The Johns Hopkins University.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

113

We all know he loved both women and wine, But his heart it was right I am sure; Though he lived like a prince in a palace so fine, Yet he never went back on the poor! Chorus: If a man was in trouble, Fisk helped him along To drive the grim wolf from the door; He strove to do right, though he may have done wrong, But he never went back on the poor! Jim Fisk was a man who wore his heart on his sleeve, No matter what people would say; And he did all his deeds (both the good and the bad) In the broad open light of the day. With his grand six-in-hand on the beach at Long Branch, He cut a big dash, to be sure; But Chicago’s great fire showed the world that Jim Fisk With his wealth, still remembered the poor! Chorus: When the telegram came that the homeless, that night, Were starving to death, slow but sure, His lightning express, manned by noble Jim Fisk, Flew to feed all her hungry and poor! Now, what do you think of this trial of Stokes, Who murdered this friend of the poor? When such men get free, is there any one safe If they step from outside their own door? Is there one law for the poor, and one for the rich? It seems so—at least so I say— If they hang up the poor, why—damn it—the rich Ought to swing up the very same way! Chorus: Don’t show any favor to friend or to foe, The beggar or prince at his door; The big millionaire you must hang up also, But never go back on the poor! Oh! shame on this land of the free and brave, When such sights as this meet our eye! The poor in their prisons are treated like slaves While the rich in their cells they live high. A poor devil, crazy with drink, they will hang For a murder he didn’t intend; But a wealthy assassin, with political friends, Gets off, for he’s money to spend! Chorus: But if things go on this way, we’ll stand it no more, The people will rise up in bands; A Vigilance Committee we’ll raise on our shore, And take the law in our own hands!22

Even in death, Jim Fisk was larger than life. If ever a man could be characterized as a Robin Hood—robbing the rich and aiding the poor—Fisk was such an individual. With his partner in chicanery, Jay Gould, Fisk engaged in a succession of financial malfeasances

114

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

that brought financial ruin to untold numbers of speculators and financiers. In 1868 they acquired control of the Erie Railroad, which they used to further their shady operations on the stock market. Their most brazen operation resulted from Gould’s dream to corner the entire U.S. gold supply, and it ended in the panic of Black Friday, September 24, 1869. But Jubilee Jim, the “Prince of the Erie,” as he was dubbed, could indeed be a generous man. When the Chicago fire of October 8, 1871, left thousands destitute and homeless, he sent a trainload of supplies to the stricken city, one of many acts of kindness that induced the common folk to forgive him for all the speculators he had driven to ruin. Separated from his wife, Fisk lived a life of opulence and had a weakness for women. One favorite was Helen Josephine Mansfield, whom he set up in a four-story residence not far from the Grand Opera House, which he owned. In about 1870, Fisk introduced Mansfield to Edward S. Stokes, an oil refinery owner whom Fisk had helped financially. Soon, Mansfield announced she had fallen in love with Stokes and demanded a substantial cash settlement from Fisk. Jubilee Jim took some revenge on Stokes by cutting off all deals between the Erie Railroad and Stokes’s refinery, thus ruining the latter’s business. Stokes and Mansfield tried to blackmail Fisk by threatening to publish his love letters to Mansfield; Fisk sued, and they countersued. Though the case was dismissed, the report of another lawsuit so enraged Stokes that he accosted Fisk at the Grand Central Hotel and, on January 6, 1872, shot him fatally. Stokes was arrested and tried; after three trials, he was finally found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to six years in Sing Sing, of which he served four. He died in 1901. The ballad “Jim Fisk, or He Never Went Back on the Poor” was published by W. F. Helmick of Cincinnati in 1874, with “J. S.” (generally believed to be songwriter William J. Scanlon) credited as author. The song is built on an older song, “Never Go Back on the Poor,” and uses its tune. The song’s author is outraged that Stokes, one of the undeserving rich in his opinion, gets off with only minor punishment, whereas had he been poor, he would have been treated much more harshly. Fisk’s crimes and wealth are politely excused—more than compensated for by his memorable acts of generosity.23 The Two Orphans, or, the Brooklyn Theatre Fire The evening’s bright stars they were shining, The moonbeams shone clear on our [land]; Our city was in peace and quietness, The hour of midnight near at hand. But, hark! Do you hear that cry? Fire! How dismal those bells they do sound— Our Brooklyn Theatre is burning! Alas! burning fast to the ground. Chorus: We ne’er can forget the “Two Orphans,” Bad luck seems to be in its wake: It seems it were brought to our city, The lives of our dear friends to take. The doors they were open at seven, The curtain was rolled up at eight: Them that had got seats they were happy, Outside they were mad that were late. The play it went on very smoothly, ’Till sparks from the scenes they did fly;

An early broadside published by Henry J. Wehman. DeKalb Avenue was his home address in 1880 –1881 during his first years in business. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

116

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

It’s then that men, women and children, “O God! save our lives!” they did cry. Chorus. Next morn, in amongst those black rains, O God! what a sight met our eyes! The dead they were lying in all shapes, Some there that none could recognize! Poor mothers there weeping and crying, For sons that were out all that night; O God! let their souls rest in heaven, Amongst the innocent and bright. Chorus. What means this large gathering of people, Upon such a cold dreary day? Or what means this long line of hearses, With tops plumed in feathery array? Far out to the cemetery of Greenwood, Where the wind makes the lone willow sigh, ’Tis there where the funeral is going, The poor unknown dead there to lie. Chorus.24

On the night of December 5, 1876, a calamitous fire destroyed the Brooklyn Theater on Johnson Street. The conflagration was started by a kerosene lamp, which swiftly bathed the ceiling in flames and turned the auditorium into an inferno. The theater had no fire escapes and only five narrow exits. In one of the worst fires in modern history, over 300 people (including some of the actors) who had come to see the popular actress Kate Claxton in “The Two Orphans” died. Unidentified bodies were buried in a common grave in GreenWood Cemetery. Sing Ha-Ha, Come from China My name Sing-Ha-Ha, come from China, Keep a little wash shop way down street. No like-a ’Melican man, too much chin-chin, No pay wash bill, him a dead beat. Me got an Irish girl, she well nice-ee Me make her some day my wife. We have a nice time, go back China, Eat plenty much good rats and mice. My name Sing-Ha-Ha, come from China, Run away soon, no come back. Me catch-a Irish girl on-a ’Melican man’s lap Kissee her—smack, smack, smack. Got a little house in Bottle Alley, Two little rooms top side high; We get married, drink much gin-gin, She get tight and hit my eye. P’liceman come along—take me up—lock me up a shop, Put me in a room and make me stay; Judge send me up for a very long time-ee, My pretty Irish girl she run away.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

117

Oh! My name Sing-Ha-Ha, come from China, Me like-a Irish girl, she like-a me. Me from-a Hong Kong, ’Melican man come along, Steal an Irish girl from a poor Chinee.25

So long as they kept their mouths shut, immigrants from Western Europe could blend in among the masses of Americans with relative ease. Children, generally quicker at learning the language of their surroundings, could assimilate even faster. Asian immigrants were doomed to endure discrimination for generations after coming to the New World. The preceding text, from the 1880s, displays an unusual mixture of dislike and sympathy for the foreigners. The place name reference “Bottle Alley” is ambiguous. In fact, there are many bottle alleys in America, as well as elsewhere. The chapter on South Carolina songs includes a “Bottle Alley Song” that refers to a Charleston locale. Other bottle alleys are known in Baltimore and Colorado Springs, not to mention London and Hastings, England, and the city of Colon in Panama. The Bottle Alley of the preceding song is most likely the one in New York City’s Chinatown, amid a neighborhood heavily overlaid with diverse immigrant communities. The above text is from oral tradition, but a very different text, probably the original, was published in the 1880s under the title “Hong Kong.” The first stanza and chorus went as follows: My name is Sin-Sin, come from China, In a bigee large ship, commee long here; Wind blow welly muchee, kick upee blubelly, Ship makee Chinaman feelee wellee queer. Me fetchee longee a lillee gal nicee, She come longee to be my wife, She say she lovee me once or twicee, Makee bigee swear to it all her life. Chorus: Me likee bow wow, wellee goodee chow-chow, Me likee lillee gal, she likee me, Me fetchee Hong-Kong, white man comee long, Takee lillee gal from a poor Chinee.26

This text is so different (among other differences, there is no reference to Bottle Alley) that it is safe to assume that the song was current in oral tradition for some time.27 The Smugglers of Buffalo It was on the sixth of April as I lay on my bed, A-thinking of the sorrows that crowned my aching head; And surrounded I was by officers, and with them I was forced to go, To serve a long a dreary trick in the jails of Buffalo. When I’ve done my trick and am pardoned, and once more I am free, I’ll go down to Sandusky, my true love for to see; But, perhaps, my boys, she will give me the bounce when she does come to know That I led a gang of smugglers to the jails of Buffalo. Oh, the girl she came from Peterson, and the truth to you I’ll tell, She was an only daughter, and her parents loved her well;

118

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They brought her up in fear of the Lord, but little did she know That she was married to a smuggler that served time in Buffalo.28

Shipping ports—whether on ocean, lake, sea, or river—were often wild and lawless places, where sailors, whalers, and boatmen touched land after tediously long periods on the water, and were eager for opportunities to spend their earnings on women, whiskey, and other entertainments. Buffalo ranked along with the worst of them, as this song attests. It’s very possible that the song’s author had in mind “Buffalo Skinners,” a southwestern ballad of the 1870s with the repeating phrase “on the range of the buffalo.” McKinley Say, Mr. McKinley, why didn’t you run, Seen a man comin’ with a smoking forty-one, In Buffalo, in Buffalo. Send for the doctor, doctor he come, Come in a walking, comin’ a runnin’ In Buffalo, in Buffalo. Doctor, doctor, do all you can, Man shot my husband with handkerchief over his hand, In Buffalo, in Buffalo. He looked at McKinley, looked through his specs, Told Mr. McKinley that he done cashed his checks, In Buffalo, in Buffalo. Rubber-tired buggy, double-seated hack, Carried him to graveyard but won’t carry him back, In Buffalo, in Buffalo. Mrs. McKinley in Brooklyn all dressed in red, Weepin’ and a-moanin’ for her husband was dead, In Buffalo, in Buffalo. Jailer told Czolgosz, “What you doin’ here?” “Took and shot McKinley, gonna take electric chair,” In Buffalo, in Buffalo. Czolgosz told jailer, “Treat me like a man, I got to die and go to Dixie Land,” In Buffalo, in Buffalo.29

William McKinley was the third of our presidents to be assassinated. He had been attending the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, where, on September 5, 1901, designated President’s Day, he had given a major speech that contributed to the breaking of all previous attendance records at the fair. On September 6 was to be a public reception, at which the president would shake hands with a long queue of admirers. Though there were some 50 guards, Secret Service agents, and detectives, no one took note of a young man standing in line with his hand bound up in a handkerchief. As the man, Leon Czolgosz, stepped up to the president, he fired two shots from his .32 caliber Iver Johnson pistol. He was immediately seized, pummeled, handcuffed, and hastily spirited away, lest he be lynched by the angry mob. Czolgosz was later examined and declared mentally sane;

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

119

his crime was said to result from his anarchist persuasion, and he was electrocuted seven weeks later at Auburn, New York. With the memory of President Garfield’s assassination of two decades earlier—when Garfield died of gunshot wounds because his doctors failed to opt promptly for surgery— still on their minds, McKinley’s doctors decided to operate immediately under circumstances (in a makeshift fairgrounds emergency hospital) that were far from ideal. Without proper instruments and working under inadequate lighting, surgeons did the best they could, but it was not enough. For a few days it looked as if the president would recover, but a week after the shooting, McKinley took a turn for the worse and his condition steadily worsened. He died during predawn hours of September 14. Riley Puckett’s rendition is in the style of African American ballads (note, in particular, the three-line stanza, AAB—characteristic of blues—rather than the quatrain of Anglo American ballads) and uses many African American commonplaces. For example, the formulaic .41 caliber gun replaces the actual .32 caliber one. Stanzas such as the third and fourth are also formulaic verses in African American folk ballads and blues and have little factual basis in this story.30 The Ballad of Grace Brown and Chester Gillette The dreams of the happy is finished, The scores are brought in at last; A jury has brought in its verdict, The sentence on Gillette is passed. Two mothers are weeping and praying; One praying that justice be done, The other one asking for mercy, Asking God to save her dear son. All eyes are turned on the drama, A-watching the press night and day, A-reading those sweet pleading letters, Wondering what Gillette would say. He is now in State’s Auburn dark prison Where he soon will give up his young life, Which might have been filled with sweet sunshine Had he taken Grace Brown for his wife. But Cupid was too strong for Gillette, It was playing too strong with his heart, For the one that had loved him so dearly, Yet from her he wanted to part. ’Twas on a hot, sultry day in the summer When the flowers were all aglow, They started out on their vacation For the lakes and the mountains to roam. Did she think when he gathered those flowers, That grew on the shores of the lake, That the hand that plucked those sweet lilies, Her own sweet life they would take?

Photographs of Grace Brown and her lover/murderer, Chester Gillette, from the book, Grace Brown’s Love Letters (1906). Author’s collection.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

121

They were seen on the clear, crystal waters Of the beautiful Big Moose Lake, And nobody thought he’d be guilty Of the life of that poor girl to take. It happened along in the evening, Just at the close of the day, With the one that had loved him so dearly They drifted along on South Bay. They were out of the view of the people Where no one could hear her last call, And nobody knows how it happened, But Gillette and God knows it all.31

Most people who grew up in the middle half of the twentieth century know the story of Grace Brown and Chester Gillette, but they may not know the characters by name. In 1925 Theodore Dreiser published a novel based on their story, An American Tragedy, and in 1951 the story was brought to the cinema as A Place in the Sun. (An early filmed version, in 1931, enjoyed very limited success and resulted in acrimonious accusations and libel suits.) The factual vacation escapade took place at Big Moose Lake in Adirondack Park in upstate New York; the accident/murder took place on July 11, 1906. Many of the overt aspects of Dreiser’s account mirrored the historical event; when Gillette was arrested, he acknowledged the boat outing, but insisted the drowning was an accident. However, there was little, if any, basis for Dreiser’s “other woman” character. At his trial, Gillette asserted that he told Brown he would reveal his identity to her family, upon which she panicked and committed suicide by jumping into the water. After six hours’ deliberation on December 4, the incredulous jury found Gillette guilty. Whether or not he really was—as the anonymous balladist says—only Gillette and God know.32 In Dreiser’s fictionalized account, Clyde Griffiths (based on Chester Gillette) is attracted to Roberta Alden (based on the real Grace Brown), and she becomes pregnant, but almost at the same time, he falls for the dazzling Sondra. Roberta demands he provide for (or marry) her, but Clyde is increasingly bewitched by Sondra and finally conceives a plan whereby he and Roberta will take a vacation trip and go on a picnic on the lake, where he will push her overboard, knowing that she can’t swim. But out on the boat, Clyde seems to have a change of heart (or loses his nerve) and abandons his plan. However, a sudden movement by Roberta startles him, and he accidentally hits her with his camera tripod, knocking her overboard. He decides not to try to rescue her. Clyde is arrested and brought to trial. He tells his lawyer all; his lawyer assures him that a jury would never believe that he planned murder but the actual death was an accident; he has to concoct a fabricated story that makes more sense. In the end, Clyde is found guilty anyway. Dreiser’s story was a tragedy in several ways, but his title suggests his awareness of the widespread nature of the story—in real life as well as in balladry: man murders pregnant sweetheart rather than be burdened with a family. Governor Al Smith Cal in the White House preparing for his rest, Al and his buddies are doing their best He’ll win, Al will win.

122

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Hoover in the northland he’s firing his gun Smith admits it [?], he’s winning everyone Hard to beat, hard to beat. Well, hear the people shouting, “no booze they say,” Its ruining . . . you can get it any day Bootleg juries [?] and killers too. The sugar that they make now will make you bounce around The brandy that you will put you flat on the ground Bad stuff, hard to drink. It won’t be long now till she will be free, Then we’ll make corn licker as pure as can be, Free from lye and sugar too. When Hoover went out we didn’t think then That we would have a chance together back again He’s coming back, back again. Well, let’s nominate Al Smith, nominate him, I say, And we’ll find true law on election day, Yes true, all the way. He made a good governor, you all will agree He’ll make a good president as good as can be, Yes he will, yes he will. Let’s nominate Al Smith, nominate I say, Then he’ll find true law on election day, Yes true all the way.33

Official political campaign songs tend to portray their candidates in the most general favorable language. The smaller handful of folk songs relating to political contests have a decidedly different flavor. Candidates are endorsed on what seem to be the most whimsical grounds. This song by a North Carolina string band seems more concerned with the quality of alcoholic beverage than with any more substantive issues. Smith’s opposition to Prohibition is a major reason for the singers’ endorsement. It is interesting, though, that their opposition to Prohibition seems to be largely because of the adverse health consequences of illegally produced alcoholic beverages. The tune the Night Hawks use is, coincidentally, the same as the tune of the “McKinley” ballad quoted previously. As the very popular four-time Democratic governor of New York, Alfred E. Smith (1873–1944) worked for many social causes, including adequate housing, improved factory laws, proper care of the mentally ill, child welfare, and state parks. In 1924 Smith became the first Roman Catholic to receive serious consideration as a candidate for the presidency of the United States. The major factors working against him were his religion and his opposition to Prohibition. Four years later, he won the chance to represent the Democratic Party in the 1928 elections, but was resoundingly defeated, carrying only 87 electoral votes to Republican Herbert Hoover’s 444.

NEW JERSEY Although the first European to visit what became New Jersey was the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in 1524, colonization did not begin until the arrival in 1609 of the

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

123

English navigator Henry Hudson, who sent a party to explore Sandy Hook Bay. The first permanent European settlement was at Bergen (now Jersey City) in 1660. The colony was brought under English rule in 1664, although for the next five years, the Dutch disputed that claim. In 1676 the province was divided into East and West Jersey, the former going to Sir George Carteret and the latter to a group of Quakers. The division continued until 1702, when all of the province reverted to the Crown, and until 1738 New Jersey and New York were ruled by a single governor.34 The Dutch presence was still felt after the Revolution: in the 1790 census, 20 percent of New Jersey’s population was of Dutch origin—the largest percentage of any of the states. Battle of Trenton On Christmas day in seventy-six, Our ragged troops with bayonets fix’d, For Trenton marched away. The Delaware see! the boats below! The light obscured by hail and snow! But no signs of dismay. Our object was the Hessian band, That dared invade fair freedom’s land, And quarter in that place. Great Washington he led us on, Whose streaming flag, in storm or sun, Had never known disgrace. In silent march we pass’d the night, Each soldier panting for the fight, Though quite benumb’d with frost. Greene, on the left, at six began, The right was led by Sullivan, Who ne’er a moment lost. Their pickets storm’d, the alarm was spread, That rebels risen from the dead Were marching into town. Some scamper’d here, some scamper’d there, And some for action did prepare; But soon their arms laid down. Twelve hundred servile miscreants, With all their colors, guns, and tents, Were trophies of the day. The frolic o’er, the bright canteen, In centre, front, and rear was seen Driving fatigue away. Now, brothers of the patriot bands, Let’s sing deliverance from the hands Of arbitrary sway. And as our life is but a span, Let’s touch the tankard while we can, In memory of that day.35

124

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Revolutionary War battles of Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey, are considered Washington’s first successes in the open field. After a series of unsuccessful campaigns in New York, December 1776 found the enfeebled American army under General Washington’s command in tatters and miserably discouraged. Washington had led his 5,000 men into New Jersey ahead of General Lord Cornwallis’s army, hoping to preserve the Continental Army intact and defend Philadelphia. Many of his troops’ terms of enlistment expired at the end of December, and few replacements were signing up. To Washington’s dismay, the men of New Jersey were fence-sitters; they wanted to wait out the coming campaigns before deciding to which side they would commit themselves. General Sir William Howe (Cornwallis’s superior), in a comfortable military position, facing a bitterly cold winter with the lure of a charming mistress awaiting him in New York, called off any immediate military engagements, assuming that Washington’s army would only melt away during the bitter cold. Instead, Washington decided that his only option was to seize the initiative. A Hessian brigade was settled in at Trenton. Washington resolved to capture the Hessians since they were unsupported by other troops. He planned to cross the Delaware with three columns, but only one got across. The passage was made with 2,500 men on Christmas eve, across floating ice, to a point nine miles north of the Hessians. Dividing his force into two divisions, he approached the town by two different routes and took the Hessian outposts by surprise. They continued to the town, where the Hessians were sleeping off Christmas dinner, and attacked on the afternoon of December 26. All avenues of retreat being closed, and being fired upon by American artillery and musketry, 950 Hessians surrendered themselves, 1,200 small arms, six brass cannon, and the colors of the Hessian brigade. Encouraged by this victory, Washington recrossed the Delaware on December 30 and occupied Trenton. From there, encouraged and strengthened, Washington led his army north to Princeton, where Lord Cornwallis had a strong rear guard. On the night of January 2–3, Washington advanced on Princeton and routed the British contingent. They retreated to the college, where one of the regiments barricaded itself in Nassau Hall, but they surrendered after Washington’s artillery fired a few cannonballs into the building. The two campaigns, at Trenton and Princeton, reinvigorated the American cause and won Washington the confidence of his troops and the country. Historian Samuel Eliot Morison summarized the events: “In a campaign lasting only three weeks, at a time of year when gentlemen were not supposed to fight, the military genius of America’s greatest gentleman, and the fortitude of some five thousand of his men, had undone everything Howe accomplished, recovered the Jersies, and saved the American cause.”36 The Sons of New Jersey There was a call for Volunteers sometime in last year, And there the Sons of New Jersey did quickly volunteer, They volunteered in Company K, to give the South a slamb, And each and all did volunteer to fight for Uncle Sam. Chorus: They are the sons of Liberty, They are the sons of Liberty, They are the sons of Liberty, And they’ll fight for Uncle Sam. There is our noble three year boys, we know will cut a swell, Way down south in Dixie’s land where Traitor Jackson dwells; They will not let the rebels cross Columbia’s happy land. For they all did volunteer to fight for Uncle Sam. Chorus.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

125

Burnside is now in command, and we think all things are right, He’s on his way to Richmond, now to have another fight, He is a man, a soldier bold, and will give the Rebels a flamb, He volunteered his services to fight for Uncle Sam. Chorus. There is our noble and gallant flag, that waves so bold and free. All over the sweet northern lands, and on the raging sea; The rebels thought they would take down, and give the north a jamb, And then we all did volunteer to fight for Uncle Sam. Chorus. There is our gallant 24th we know won’t leave the ranks, For there they have a young Burnside that went from Turkey Point, They volunteered for this call—this noble gallant band, They are known in Washington, and will fight for Uncle Sam. Chorus.37

The background of this Civil War song is obscure. In September 1862, Major General Burnside fought in the Battle of Antietam under General George B. McClellan, whom he succeeded in November as a commander of the Army of the Potomac; it would seem that this song dates from shortly after that event. The reference to “Turkey Point,” a lighthouse on the Elk River in Maryland, is also puzzling. (Possibly it is a later addition, inasmuch as it breaks the regular rhyme scheme.) At any rate, the enthusiasm for young Burnside may have been misplaced: a month later, his forces were decisively defeated by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Today, Burnside is mainly remembered (if at all) for his prolific facial whiskers, nicknamed, in his honor, “burnsides,” and then later “sideburns.” The song also sports some long-forgotten slang terms: “jam(b),” “slam(b),” and “flam(b).” New Jers-A Come, kind friends, all draw near, The song that I’m about to sing, you every one should hear, So give me your attention to what I’m going to say; I’ll sing you a new song about New Jers-A. The things that I’m about to mention in my rhyme, I’ll prove to you quite plainly, if you will give me time; So for all convicted prisoners, I beg you all to pray, For they ne’er will get pardoned if in New Jers-A. If you go to Jersey and ask them for their fruit, The stingy old Spaniards will at you shoot, And if you find an apple, you’ll have to run away, For they’ll choke you for a cherry, up in New Jers-A. The first thing I will mention, happened on the Delaware. A steamboat was burnt and many drowned there; The guilty were arrested and allowed to walk away; That’s the way they do things up in New Jers-A. Another time at Burlington, you surely don’t forget, The cars were running backwards, and by accident upset; Old and young were killed there, but no one had to pay; For they never hurts a Jerseyman in New Jers-A. Over here in Camden, not many months ago, A German went a gunning all through the ice and snow, He accidently shot one, (Hatch); they marched straight away, Twenty years to prison up in New Jers-A.

126

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The latest thing that has occurred, caused many a tear, I think that it happened some time last year. A man was murdered, so we heard say, Way down at Freehold in New Jers-A. A man was arrested at once for the deed, And to a court of Justice they straight did him lead. He was tried and convicted: on the scaffold he had to pay; Yes, they strung up poor Donnelly in New Jers-A. After hanging thirty minutes, he was cut down; The sheriff on his body cast many a frown, And he wanted to exhibit the corpse that day On the Court House steps at Freehold in New Jers-A. Here I would have you know, to my country I am true, But give to me the power, I’ll tell you what I’d do: Over to New Jersey I would go straight way, And hang up all the Jerseymen in New Jers-A. Now for a time my song is done; I hope in this rhyme I’ve not offended any one; If I have, forgive me, all, I pray, And I will say no more about New Jers-A.38

The broadside from which this text is taken is undated, but, based on the publisher’s address, it is probably from 1859–1860. Considering that it was sung by a New York man in a New York theater, it suggests that the New York–New Jersey rivalry predates the Civil War. Perhaps neighbors across the Hudson had a small uncivil war of their own going on. The Laws of Jersey State The laws of Jersey state are such You dare not kill a snail; To Camden jail they’ll send you off Without a cent of bail. They’ll seize upon your gun For climbing on a fence And give you twenty years to boot If you practice self defence. There’s nothing like it, boys, you know, There’s nothing, now I say, There is nothing like it, boys, you know, So let them blaze away.39

While we’re bad-mouthing New Jersey, let’s not overlook this little gem, recalled by an attorney of Butler, Pennsylvania, in 1926, from his youth: “When I was a boy of 8 or 10 (I am chasing fourscore now) going to a country school in west Pennsylvania, our teacher taught us a number of songs.” Since we can’t question the good lawyer under oath, let’s take his word for it and date this ditty to ca. 1855. The sentiments are much the same as the preceding song, though the style is very different.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

127

Moore and Jacoby While I relate my story you oystermen give ear, Jacoby’s fading glory you presently shall hear; Give me your attention and you will plainly see That the Eloisa Moore can beat the Samuel Jacoby. Chorus: Ring, ring your bells at dawning of the day, The Moore’s the fastest boat around to sail the Delaware Bay; Oystermen ring your fog bells to let the people see, That the Eloisa Moore can beat the Samuel Jacoby. Here comes old Sam Spencer, he’s always hanging ’round, It’s nothing but the Jacoby whenever he’s in town; He goes into the chandlery and sets upon a stool, It’s enough to make the people think that he’s a perfect fool. Chorus. We were sailing up the Delaware as though we had no wind, When the Eloise Moore had to take her topsail in; We arrived at Philadelphia, we harbored there all night, But the Samuel Jacoby arrived at first daylight. William Peterson was our captain, Willie Newcomb was the mate, Will Ladlow was our pot wrestler, he cooked us what we ate; Dave Robbins and Harry Gates were the men before the mast, The whole crews’ heart just swelled with pride as we went sailing past. Chorus. Here comes Seth and Billy, they jam in but a word, I think it would be better now if they were seen not heard; With this I’ll end me song and I hope it wasn’t long, But we can beat the Samuel Jacoby each time she comes along.40

Jim Albertson, who recorded the preceding song, offered some background information: An envelope arrived one day from Nick Anastor, president of the Vineland Historical Society. He thought I might be interested in the enclosed newspaper clipping from around the turn of the century that told about a song concerning a racing rivalry between two South Jersey oyster boats that once sailed the Delaware Bay. Since the tune was not included, I found the words suggested a tune from “Strike the Bell, Second Mate.” This is how I have sung the song ever since. Clyde Phillips and Walt Hinson of Maricetown put me in touch with Seth Henderson of Newport, NJ, who knew the original and remembered the song being sung in his family (his grandfather is one of the little boys mentioned in the song) and Captain Cornelius Campbell, also of Newport who knew the history of the boats (his uncle was the cook), and took me to Money Island to see the last remains and final resting place of the Samuel Jacoby. I was pleased to record the song for the New Jersey Public Television documentary film, “Schooners on the Bay.”41 Mount Holly Jail When you go to Mount Holly, it’s there where you’re set, It’s whiskey and tobacco you get damned a bit. Chorus: And it’s hard times in Mount Holly Jail. (2) Your hands and your feet chained down to the floor, God damn their old souls why can’t they do more.

128

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Soup that you get is not very neat, It’s full some scraps and some damned dirty meat. Fetched from the kitchen in an old slop pail, And that’s the way they serve you Mount Holly Jail. Oh lice! Oh lice! as big as young quails, You can’t help get lousy in Mount Holly Jail. There is High Sheriff Townsell, I almost forget, He’s the greatest old loafer was in the whole lot. If he was tried and had his just due, He’s been sent to state’s prison ’count burglaries too. There’s Billy Reeves I almost forgot, He’s the damndest old loafer was in the whole lot. Your pockets he’ll pick and your clothes he will sell, Get drunk on your money at Townsell’s hotel. There is Mr. Pitcher, he’s a very nice man, If you ask him for a favor, he’ll do it if he can. That ain’t all I’d have you to know, Every Sunday morning we have Holy Joe. There he will stand and the truth he will tell, To save the poor prisoners from going to hell.42

Every region of the country has its own cell full of jail songs. Either they catalog the incivilities and abuses of the local sheriff, or they rail against the bug infestations and inedible food of the jail facilities. The characters in these songs and ballads are usually not hardened criminals, but merely those unfortunates who were caught for some lesser offense—drunkenness, disturbing the peace, wife beating, library fines. That way, listeners could sympathize with the complaints in good conscience, knowing they weren’t abetting any serious crimes. Other regions have produced songs very similar to this one from New Jersey’s Mount Holly jail.43 Jim Albertson offered some additional verses, including the following: When you go to Mount Holly, it’s there you will find, An old stone jail house, leave all joy behind.

His last verse ends, To save all the prisoners from going to . . . Atlantic City. (spoken): Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.44 The Hoboken Fire ’Twas on a Saturday evening that the fire bells rang out, The North German docks are burning! most every one did shout; And the quiet folks of Hoboken did rush in deep despair, When that awful cry of fire was carried through the air. The Saale, the Maine and Bremen, three noble German ships,

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

129

Were blazing just like furnaces as they lay in their slips; And hundreds of good people gazed at the calamity so dire. Helpless to give any aid to the victims of the fire. Chorus: Picture the ships from stem to stern, picture the victims doomed to burn. Picture their friends upon the shore, whom they would never see no more; Picture the flames mounting high, looking as if they touched the sky, A terrible sight it was to see, a picture no artist could paint. The firemen they worked nobly and did rescue some poor souls, Who rushed to gain a shelter down in the steamships’ holds; While others from the water they did their best to save, And snatched about a score or two from an untimely grave. The police they did their duty, and promptly gave a hand To help the injured people as they came to the land; And the people of Hoboken gave every want and desire To help the needy sufferers of that awful terrible fire.45

At 4:00 P.M. on June 30, 1900, a fire broke out amid the cotton stored on Pier 3 of the North German Lloyd Steamship Company on the Hoboken, New Jersey, waterfront. Within half an hour, the piers, four large oceangoing steamers, and numerous small boats were on fire. Over 200 souls perished as passengers and crew could not escape from the burning vessels in time. The estimated loss of property was put in excess of $6 million. As the New York Times reported the following day, Pier 3, the southernmost of the Bremen piers, was filled with cotton, the bales piled high, and with barrels of turpentine and oil. Without a warning a fire started in the middle of the cotton, about one-third way out on the pier, and the strong wind instantly fanned the little sheet of flame into a roaring devouring blaze, and almost before any one could make a move the flames reached the barrels of oil and turpentine, which exploded in such rapid succession that the sound was like that of a rapid-fire gun. So quickly had the flames taken hold of the cotton and oil that these reports were the first warning of the fire received at the company’s offices on Water Street. An alarm was turned in promptly by the policeman on the pier, and the Hoboken firemen were on the ground within three minutes after the discovery of the fire, but it had gained headway with such incredible rapidity that the three piers of the North German Lloyd Line were already beyond saving.46

A ballad was written soon after by one Larry Lavake, who used the tune and format of the pop hit of the preceding year, “A Picture No Artist Can Paint” (he retained the title phrase in the last line of the chorus). While Lavake’s composition offers little to merit immortality (nor do the other songs of his that Delaney published), it is a characteristic example of a typical folk poet at work, writing in the style of traditional disaster ballads of the nineteenth century, and borrowing a tune that his readers would recognize. Folk musicians and poets are much more adept at producing original lyrics than at composing a new melody; hence the use of an older, familiar tune is a common procedure. Not only are writers such as Lavake probably ill prepared to compose their own tunes, but the cheap print publishers, such as William Delaney, would have found it much easier (and less expensive) to be spared the requirement of printing music. Delaney’s series of songbooks, which were published between 1893 and 1922, typically included words to some 160–180 songs in each issue. These included new popular songs, with proper copyright credits and information on how the sheet music could be purchased, and older traditional songs, which

130

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

required no such details. Usually, the contemporary popular songs were at the front of the publication and the public domain titles toward the back. Lavake’s song was on page 4, suggesting that it was a new song that Lavake had submitted to Delaney for publication; probably he sold publication rights outright, since no copyright notice was printed. Since the tune was widely known at the time, one can reasonably assume that some readers, particularly in the New Jersey area, may have taken the trouble to learn the song and perform it—at least, for a few years, while the memory of the terrible disaster was still fresh in their minds. The Paterson Fire The fatal cry of fire it was carried though the air, And crowds of people they came rushing round. All Paterson is burning, it was passed from lip to lip, Where a knot of silent people could be found. And the noise of rushing engines, falling walls and stifled groans Told of the awful suff’ring that was there; And the people rushing hither for some place they could escape, Filled their honest hearts with horror and despair. Chorus: Oh, that awful cry of fire it was sick’ning, And the people from their beds they had to fly; Paterson is burning down! was the cry that passed around, When to save themselves they did madly try. How the flames did roar around them as they fled from danger near, Soaring to a height that seemed like mountain high; And how many loving children who had wakened from their sleep, Will nevermore fond parent forms decry. For the cruel hand of fate has parted them forevermore, And their souls from earth have sadly passed away; Drop a tear in their remembrance as you read the awful tale Of those victims of that fatal Sabath [sic] day.47

The Great Paterson Fire occurred on Sunday, February 9, 1902, shortly after midnight. It consumed nearly 500 buildings, devastating the downtown and Sandy Hill areas of Silk City. Two lives were lost, and several people were injured. It is estimated that the monetary loss of the Great Fire was nearly $6 million (in today’s dollars, that would be equivalent to more than $120 million). It stands today as New Jersey’s largest fire. Approximately 250 families lost their homes in the conflagration. While only a few silkmanufacturing establishments were affected by the fire, numerous banks, retail stores, and other commercial enterprises were consumed by the blaze. Larry Lavake contributed this item as well as the preceding one to publisher William W. Delaney, and it shows no improvement in his talents (see, in particular, the very clumsy second stanza). Evidently not a musician, he again borrowed a popular song for his tune, this time using the 1901 hit “I’ll Be with You When the Roses Bloom Again,” by Cobb and Edwards. The Trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann Here’s a story that’s worth repeating, It’s a story that ends the same,

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

Of a man gone astray and the price he must pay He’s the only one who’s to blame. In the quaint little town of Flemington On the second of January Bruno sat in the room and the State asked his doom While the world listened to that story. On the jury sat four good women On the jury sat eight good men; And the judge said “proceed,” and the state said “indeed”; While Defense said “go prove it then.” And his wife the State’s first witness, January third was the day; And she held in her hand as she sat on the stand The suit her dear child wore away. Col. Lindy was the State’s next witness That he paid though his child was dead; Under oath there he swore that he heard a Doctor, Just same that as Poffince [?] had said. ’Twas the night when he called Doc Condon And he said with a voice that rang true, That the kidnapper John was Bruno Hauptmann Bruno turned pale when “Jafsie” got through. Then they called a handwriting expert, Mr. Osborn was that man’s name; And he swore Hauptman wrote each ransom note; Bruno snarled for he knew no shame. “You’re a liar” yelled Bruno Hauptmann To the agent Tom Sisk on the stand And the jury he told they found notes of gold That were given the kidnapper’s hand. Ellen Achenbach, Bruno’s neighbor, Told how Bruno had limped one day When a voice with a ring, hollered, “your lying,” Mrs. Hoffman was heard to say. Then the state to Attorney Wilentz To the kind hearted judge Trechard said The state rests its case, and he said in their place You must see Anna and Bruno dead. The Defense called their first witness January the 24th day; Bruno then took the stand, on the bible his hand, And he swore that the truth he would say. On the 28th he admitted That he lied to the New York police; In a voice hoarse and bold then his story he told Told the jury he was with his niece.

131

132

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Bruno Hauptmann was cross examined And this was what he told; That it was the wish of Isadore Fisch That he kept a shoe box of gold. But he wouldn’t explain the address That was found in his small closet wall, First he answered with “Yes,” then he said “No I guess,” And the jury listened to it all. When they asked why he hid that money In the wall with the auger hole Well he mumbled a sigh, trying hard to reply Just how to explain his bank roll. He denied that piece of pinewood, He denied about the ladder too; He denied every word the jury had heard And he said that each word was untrue. On the 13th day of February The judge charged the jury And he said, “Judge him fair when you all get in there And deliberate honestly.” On the jury sat four good women, On the jury sat eight good men; When the jury came out not a face had a doubt They had dealt with justice then. O the story is worth repeating It’s a story that ends the same; When a man goes astray there’s a price he must pay He’s the only one who’s to blame. On the last great day in heaven When the master calls out each name Will you stand with the blessed and eternal rest Or will you have to answer some shame?48

In 1932, Colonel Charles Lindbergh was one of America’s most celebrated heroes. His solo transatlantic flight a few years earlier itself prompted a flock of popular and hillbilly songs. Then, suddenly, tragedy struck the Lindbergh household. It was called the “crime of the century”—but then, what celebrated crime hasn’t? Seven different hillbilly songs about this nationally prominent crime were written and /or recorded between 1932 and 1935, three of which—including this one—by the prolific New York songwriter, publisher, and singer, Bob Miller. On the night of March 1, 1932, someone entered the second-storey nursery of the Lindbergh home in Hopewell, New Jersey, by a ladder and abducted the sleeping Charles Lindbergh Jr., leaving a ransom note demanding $50,000. After various efforts at communication through newspaper advertisements, a go-between—a retired New York teacher named John F. Condon—delivered the ransom on the night of April 8 at the Woodland Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City, following the promise of the return of the baby. The baby, however, had been killed shortly after the abduction, and its body was found on May 12 near the Lindbergh home.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

133

A manhunt was launched and the serial numbers of the ransom bills (many in uncommon gold certificates) were publicized. More than two years later, on September 15, 1934, Bruno Richard Hauptmann passed one of the notes at a Bronx filling station. He was arrested, and a large stash of the ransom money was found in a shoe box when his house was searched. At his trial at Flemington, New Jersey, from January 2 through February 13, 1935, the chief evidence against Hauptmann was (1) the recovered money (the “notes of gold” in the song), (2) the discovery of go-between Condon’s telephone number on a closet wall in Hauptmann’s home (the ballad refers to it as an address), (3) the identification of Hauptmann by witnesses, who professed seeing him near the Lindbergh home or in the cemetery, and (4) the discovery that the ladder used in the kidnapping had been mended with a missing plank from Hauptmann’s attic (referred to in the 16th stanza). Hauptmann countered that he had merely held the money for a friend, one Isidore Fisch, who had returned to Germany in 1933 and died there; that he was a carpenter and furthermore wouldn’t have made or used such a shoddy ladder. Hauptmann was convicted and electrocuted on April 3, 1936, in the New Jersey State Prison—to the end claiming his innocence. An article he wrote, “Why Did You Kill Me?,” appeared posthumously in Liberty magazine on May 2. The song transcribed previously—and the several others mentioned—were all written before Hauptmann’s execution (some even before his conviction), yet his guilt was always presumed. As in many celebrated criminal trials, arguments surfaced interminably, claiming that the German immigrant Hauptmann had been set up and was innocent. In 1948 a wooden table turned up in Plainfield, New Jersey, with a message, penciled in German, that the writer—and not Hauptmann—was part of a gang that had executed the kidnapping. It was signed NSDAP—the initials of the Nazi Party. The matter has still not been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and probably never will be.49 Morro Castle Disaster As the fire filled the air maddening scenes were everywhere The flame-swept decks were far beyond control In his cabin overhead lay the captain, who was dead While death took charge, demanding its great toll. Chorus: And all around ocean waves, Carried poor humans to their graves; Surely angels way up there Wept for loved ones way down here, Beseeching God for mercy to each soul. Many hundreds made the trip on the Morro Castle ship, Bidding goodby to loved ones that were dear; And that proud ship sailed along with its happy merry throng, No one dreaming that death was hovering near. Chorus: And all around ocean waves, Waited to carry souls to graves; Surely God in heaven above, In his mercy filled with love Made angels guard the lost souls way down here. There’s no doubt that something failed when the Morro Castle sailed Perhaps ’twas carelessness on that deep sea;

134

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They’ll investigate the set [?]; still that won’t restore the death The innocent ones of that tragedy. Chorus: And all around ocean waves, Carried poor humans to their graves; Oh, the guilty ones shall pay, On that last great judgment day, When God shall judge each one in His glory.50

The Morro Castle and Oriente were the largest and most luxurious Ward Liners ever built, measuring 11,520 tons gross and providing 437 first-class passengers and 95 touristclass passengers with an array of lavishly decorated public rooms, staterooms, and suites. Ironically, it was those elaborate interiors that added to the Morro Castle’s destruction. Early in the morning of September 8, 1934, a mysterious fire was detected in her first-class writing room as the Morro Castle steamed off the New Jersey coast. Fanned by a gale, the fire quickly raced across the varnish, veneer, and draperies of the first-class cabins. Toxic smoke cut off most passengers from the lifeboats, while confusion among the crew added to the disaster. By the time the smoldering wreck washed ashore at Asbury Park, 134 people had lost their lives. What actually started the fire has never been determined, but arson was thought likely. Why someone on board the ship would have risked his or her own life in such an act is not clear. Whatever the cause, the Ward Line never recovered from the negative publicity caused by the tragedy. In 1935 the Ward name was dropped for good, and the line thereafter became known as the Cuba Mail Line. Ships of the fleet were painted in new color schemes in an effort to erase the memory of the Morro Castle’s famous profile. The Morro Castle disaster remains one of the deadliest shipwrecks in American history.51 Bob Miller’s ballad was recorded by Ray Whitley only nine days after the disaster, and the records were released within two months. Knowing his audience’s religious convictions, he ended the ballad with the characteristic moral promising that the guilty parties would not escape God’s judgment.

PENNSYLVANIA Although the Swedes and the Dutch were the region’s earliest European settlers, English Quakers soon overtook them in numbers and importance, and quickly turned William Penn’s three original counties of Philadelphia, Chester, and Bucks into a thriving commercial center. Penn’s policies of religious toleration encouraged other groups to settle in Pennsylvania; among them were German immigrants from the Rhineland (long since erroneously called Pennsylvania Dutch, by a misunderstanding of the German’s own word for themselves, Deutsch), who grew rapidly in numbers.52 By the time of the first national census in 1790, the Pennsylvania Germans constituted 38 percent of the of the state’s population, while the earlier Dutch and Swedes combined now accounted for less than 2 percent of the total. Scots and Scots Irish (Ulster Irish)—Scots who had earlier been driven out of the highlands and herded into parts of Ireland—composed another major ethnic group. These two groups consituted almost 23 percent of the 1790 population. Other British groups, such as the Welsh and Cornish, established a presence that grew in importance through the nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, the major influxes of immigrants came from Italy and Eastern Europe. All of these groups made a major contribution to the culture of the mining communities, in particular, to their music.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

One of several broadside prints of “Battle of the Kegs,” this one published ca. 1810– 1814 in Boston. From the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass. The Battle of the Kegs Gallants attend, and hear a friend, Trill forth harmonious ditty, Strange things I’ll tell, which late befell, In Philadelphia city.

135

136

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

’Twas early day, as poets say, Just when the sun was rising, A soldier stood, on a log of wood, And saw a thing surprising. As in amaze he stood to gaze, The truth can’t be denied, sir, He spied a score of kegs or more, Come floating down the tide, sir. A sailor, too, in jerkin blue, This strange appearance viewing, First damn’d his eyes, in great surprise Then said, “some mischief’s brewing. These kegs, I’m told, the rebels hold, Packed up like pickled herring, And they’re coming down, t’ attack the town, In this new way of ferrying.” The soldier flew, the sailor too, And scared almost to death, sir, Wore out their shoes to spread the news, And ran till out of breath, sir. Now up and down, throughout the town; Most frantic scenes were acted; And some ran here, and others there, Like men almost distracted. Sore fire cried, which some denied, But said the earth had quakéd; And girls and boys, with hideous noise, Ran through the streets half naked. Sir William, he, snug as a flea,53 Lay all this time a snoring; Nor dreamed of harm, as he lay warm, In bed with Mrs. L —g.54 Now, in a fright, he starts upright, Awaked by such a clatter; He rubs both eyes, and boldly cries, “For God’s sake, what’s the matter?” At his bedside, he then espied, Sir Erskine at command, sir,55 Upon one foot he had one boot, And th’other in his hand, sir. “Arise! arise,” Sir Erskine cries, The rebels—more’s the pity— Without a boat, are all afloat, And rang’d before the city. “The motley crew, in vessels new, With Satan for their guide, sir,

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

137

Pack’d up in bags, or wooden kegs, Come driving down the tide, sir. “Therefore prepare for bloody war; These kegs must all be routed; Or surely we despised shall be, And British courage doubted.” The royal band, now ready stand, All ranged in dread array, sir; With stomachs stout, to see it out, And make a bloody day, sir. The cannons roar from shore to shore, The small arms make a rattle; Since wars began, I’m sure no man E’er saw so strange a battle. The rebel dales, the rebel vales, With rebel trees surrounded, The distant wood, the hills and floods, With rebel echoes sounded. The fish below swam to and fro, Attack’d from every quarter; Why sure thought they, the devil’s to pay, ’Mongst folks above the water. The kegs, ’tis said, though strongly made, Of rebel staves and hoops, sir, Could not oppose their powerful foes, The conquering British troops, sir. From morn till night, these men of might Display’d amazing courage; And when the sun was fairly down, Retired to sup their porridge. An hundred men, with each a pen, Or more, upon my word, sir, It is most true would be too few, Their valor to record, sir. Such feats did they perform that day, Against those wicked kegs, sir, That years to come, if they get home, They’ll make their boasts and brags, sir.56 Early in January, 1778, David Bushnell, the inventor of the American Torpedo, and other submarine machinery, prepared a number of “infernals,” as the British termed them, and set the afloat in the Delaware River a few miles above Philadelphia, in order to annoy the royal shipping, which at that time lay off that place. These machines were constructed of kegs, charged with powder, and so arranged as to explode on coming in contact with any thing while floating along with the tide. On their appearance, the British seamen and troops became alarmed, and, manning the shipping and wharves, discharged their small arms and cannon at every thing they could see floating in the river during the ebb tide. Upon this incident the [preceding] song was composed by Francis Hopkinson, one of the happiest writers of his time. It soon became popular with Washington’s army.57

138

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Hopkinson, a resident of Philadelphia at the time, was a graduate of Princeton, member of Congress, judge, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and patron of the arts. Though he composed tunes for some of his own songs, “Battle of the Kegs” was meant to be sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.”58 Polly Williams Come all ye good people, wherever you be; Come listen a while to my sad tragedy, It is of a young lady that was worthy of praise— At the age of eighteen she ended her days. Long time she’d been courted, as I have heard say, And her lover to delude her took many a way; For soon as he found that her love he had gained, Her company he slighted; her love he disdained. And then to destroy her he contrived a plan, To this mountain conveyed her, as I understand, Oh, this innocent creature his mind did not know And in hopes to be married, with the traitor did go. And when to this mountain he did her convey, Oh, he left her fair body for the varmints a prey. She was cruelly treated and shamefully used, By this cruel tyrant; who could him excuse? Which caused old and young to weep and to cry, And to find out this traitor they each one did try; He was apprehended, his cause to bewail, Straightway he was conducted to Uniontown jail. There by judge and jury he was proven out clear, And now he takes Polly Clayton and calls her his dear; But like a deceiver, he’ll live in despair Till the day of strict judgment, when all must appear. Oh, the judge and the jury, they all will be there, And with one accord, the truth will declare; Oh, the impartial judge, he will pass the decree, And the cruel tyrant condem-ned will be. Come all ye good people who saw this object, Don’t add or diminish, deceive or correct; This honored young lady was found in her gore, And her flesh by the traitor all mangled and tore. Oh, it’s every temptation is the future of some more, And of all such false lovers, I would have you beware. Oh, beware of false lovers, who court in deceit, Lest, like Polly Williams, it will prove your sad fate— To be brought by a lover to shame and disgrace, And to lose your sweet life in some wilderness place; They will hug you and kiss you and call you their own, And when your back is turned, they will leave you to mourn.59

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

139

The above text was collected by Pennsylvania folklorist Samuel Bayard and published by George Swetnam in his breezy history of western Pennsylvania. Swetnam recounted in detail the history of this tragedy of nearly two centuries ago thus. Mary Williams, called Polly, was born in about 1792 at New Salem, Pennsylvania, not far from Uniontown. In about 1808 she met Philip Rogers, the handsome and smoothtalking son of a neighbor, and it became understood in those parts that a wedding was not far off. But Philip delayed and doubted, and Polly’s trust, once firmly anchored on a foundation of love, began to lose its moorings, and her spirits slowly turned moody and melancholy. In August 1810 Philip proposed that they run away to be married by a squire who lived some 14 miles thence. Polly dressed her best and set off with Philip, never to be seen alive again. Her body was discovered by a horrified party of berry-picking youngsters the next day at the foot of White Rocks, showing signs of a desperate struggle and severe head wounds. A coroner concluded that she had been pushed over the cliff and then bashed with a rock for good measure. Rogers was arrested and tried in Uniontown in November. He protested that he and Polly had quarreled and they had separated, implying that she had fallen or jumped. The judge’s instructions to the jury included the assertion that the evidence against him was “very strong,” but the jury found him innocent. Polly’s body was reburied in another grave, later marked with a headstone that bore the inscription Behold with pity, you that pass by; Here doth the bones of Polly Williams lie; Who was cut off in her youthful bloom, By a vile wretch, her intended groom.

Rogers left the neighborhood a few years later, married, and raised a family. He died during the Civil War at the age of 74. Wrote Bayard, The Murder caused a tremendous sensation in the southwestern counties of Pennsylvania, and everyone can still tell the story, though few remember the song. Several songs were composed—both of the folk type and of the literary type. I have another folk ballad about this tragedy, which is longer and more detailed, but not complete. In the course of years, many legends—some of them being of a decidedly superstitious turn—have grown up about the career of the murderer after his acquittal and marriage.60

In this early example of trial by ballad, as in the case, for example, of Sarah Maria Cornell discussed in chapter 1, we find that the judgment of the community—especially as given expression by the ballad writer—is perpendicular to that of the legal system. Before sharing in the public outrage at counterfeit coins in the scales of Justice, it is wise to consider some similar scandalous murders of our own time—the John F. Kennedy assassination, or the O. J. Simpson trial—and the public dissatisfaction with the outcome of the investigations. Every murder story since that of Abel by Cain is complicated, and seldom does the legal system dispose of them tidily and without embarrassing loose ends. As for the ballad text itself—we should note that it is in typical broadside or “comeall-ye” style, full of editorial abuse heaped on the accused, and concluding with abundant moralizing directed toward the wide-eyed public. The language is awkward and rhymes are forced. Bayard’s concluding stanza is similar to lines in other ballads and songs; compare the widely known “False Hearted Lover” (or “On Top of Old Smoky”), which concludes,

140

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They’ll hug you and kiss you and tell you more lies Than cross ties on a railroad or stars in the skies.61

But not necessarily murder you. James Bird You sons of freedom listen to me, and you daughters too, give ear, You a sad a mournful story as we ever told shall hear; Hull, you know, his troops surrendered, and defenseless left the West, Our forces quick assembled, the invaders to resist. There was one amongst the number, tall, graceful and serene, Firm his step, his look undaunted, ne’er a nobler youth was seen. One fond kiss he snatched from Mary, craved his mother’s prayer once more, Pressed his father’s hand and left them for Lake Erie’s distant shore. Soon he came where noble Perry had assembled all his fleet. Here this noble Bird enlisted, expecting soon the foe to meet. Where is Bird when battle rages? Is he in the strife or no? Hark, the cannon’s roar tremendous, here we meet our furious foe. But behold! a ball has struck him, see the crimson current flow. “Leave the deck!” exclaimed brave Perry. “No,” cried Bird, “I will not go. Here on deck I took my station, Bird will ne’er his colors fly; I will stand by you, brave Perry, till we conquer or we die.” And did Bird receive a pension, or was he to his friends restored? No, nor ever to his bosom clasped the maid his heart adored. But there came most dismal tidings from Lake Erie’s distant shore; Better there that brave Bird had perished after the battle’s awful roar. “Dearest father, tell my mother when this letter reaches you, Not to mourn, her first beloved oh dearly bids his last adieu. I’m a sufferer for deserting from the brig Niagary, Dearest mother, read this letter, ’tis the last you’ll hear from me.” Dark and dismal was the morning Bird was ordered out to die. Where’s the heart that would not pity or for him would heave a sigh? See him kneel upon his coffin, sure his death can do no good. Spare him! Hark! O God, they’ve shot him, see his bosom stream with blood! Farewell, Bird, farewell forever! Home nor friends you’ll see no more, Now his mangled corpse lies buried on Lake Erie’s distant shore. Bird will ever be remembered, aye unto this present day. Oh, what can beset wrong them who engage in war or fray?62

“James Bird” was written by a journalist, Charles Miner (1780–1865), who printed it in a newspaper he edited, the Wilkes-Barre (Pennsylvania) Gleaner in 1814. Bird enlisted and fought bravely with Commodore Perry on the Lawrence and was wounded. After he recovered, he deserted from guard duty watching over government stores. He was captured, court-martialed, and convicted, and in October 1814, he was executed on board the Niagara. Miner, a strong Bird partisan, was accurate in his depiction of the events, but he clearly felt that Bird’s heroism should have exonerated his petty infraction. For decades, feelings about Bird continued to run strong, with much local opinion

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

141

in his favor. In about 1885 one correspondent of the Williamsport Breakfast Table (Pennsylvania) wrote, I was familiar in my boyhood with Bird’s story, as the man who betrayed him lived only 12 miles from where I was born. After Perry’s victory on Lake Erie, Bird was idle a long time, and seeing no further need of his service in the fleet, he deserted and finally went to work for a man named Waterman, near Gowanda, N.Y. I have seen Waterman many times and often passed the land cleared by Bird for him. When Waterman was owing Bird quite a sum for work, he told him, if he would go with him to Buffalo he could get the money there to pay him. Arriving there, and finding no United States troops, Mr. Waterman induced him to go with him to Erie, saying he would pay his fare, and that the man who was to let him have the money had gone to Erie. Bird not suspecting his design went with him. Once there, Bird was surrendered to the troops, and Waterman, pocketing the reward for returning deserters, left him to be shot, balancing his own account at the same time and never paying Bird a cent for his labor.” The words “Spare him! Hark! Oh, God, they’ve shot him” were said to have been exclaimed by Commadore Perry, who had ridden on horseback from Buffalo to Erie to save Bird’s life.63

The version printed here, collected in the 1960s, is remarkably close to Miner’s original text of 150 years earlier, except for the final couplet, which was added by someone else in the intervening years—probably a considerable number of years later, considering the phrase, “aye, unto this present day.” Only around the Great Lakes and New England area did the ballad remain a favorite, but there it could still being heard long after the echoes from gunfire had faded away and all the participants in the war had departed. The Banks of the Schuylkill On the banks of the Schuylkill so pleasant and gay, There, bless’d with my true love, I spend the short day, Where the sun shed his rays thro’ the mulberry tree, And the streams form’d a mirror for my true love and me. On the spot of clover we sat ourselves down, Not envying the greatest of monarchs that’s crowned. My name in the sand with his finger he drew, And he swore by the stream he would ever prove true. To which I beheld the gay pride of my fair, I gazed on his face while he play’d with my hair, He need not have told me his love with a sigh, For the Schuylkill secures my dear fellow to me. Of times he told me the stories of love, He would sing me a song my affections to move, My lips were solicited, my hand gently press’d On the banks of the Schuylkill, where Jesse was bless’d. Whenever we leave this enchanting retreat, With blushes, she says, when next shall we meet? Next Sunday, he says, if the weather proves clear, On the banks of the Schuylkill, I’ll meet you my dear. Now all these innocent pleasure’s [sic] are o’er, The murmuring river can please me no more, Since the banks of the Schuylkill have lost all their charms, And the soldiers have torn my dear boy from my arms.

The text to the ballad “Banks of the Schuylkill” provides filler to the page devoted primarily to another ballad, one from the War of 1812, to which the fine woodcut illustration refers. It was published by Leonard Deming in Boston in 1832–1837. From the Library of Congress.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

143

But should ever I clasp him again to my heart, No more shall my true love and I ever part, No more shall the wars take my true love away, And the banks of the Schuylkill shall ever be gay.64

This is one of the minority of songs in this collection that does not deal with war, disaster, death, betrayal, or murder. The preoccupation of the ballad muse with such grim subjects is neither remarkable nor peculiar to the times; a census of today’s newspapers would reveal a similar apportionment between topics of alarm and those of happy times. This song appeared in broadsides and songsters of the 1840s and possibly earlier.65 The theme of a young maid whose true love has been whisked off to the army suggests a period of wartime, but there was none in the country before the 1840s since the War of 1812. The omission of any details regarding a specific conflict suggests further that the song was not written during a war, nor with any one war in mind. The song’s author could be confident that the day would come when the song would again resonate with personal meaning to many singers and listeners. There is a tiny enigma in the text: who is Jesse? If this is some literary reference it is indeed obscure; if, rather, it refers to some local person (baptized in the river?), he has long since been forgotten. The Schuylkill River is in southeastern Pennsylvania. It rises in eastern Schuylkill County in an anthracite-coal region and flows southeastward for 130 miles to the Delaware River at Philadelphia. Canals were built in the 1820s, enhancing navigation opportunities and spurring early industrial growth of the cities in the Schuylkill valley. By the 1840s rail transport had largely rendered the canal obsolete. The song mentions none of this, suggesting an earlier, bucolic preindustrial stage in the region’s development. The song was collected from oral tradition in Maine and in Missouri in the 1940s.66 De Philadelphia Riots, or, I Guess It Wan’t De Niggas Dis Time Oh in Philadelphia folks say how Dat Darkies kick up all de rows, But de riot up in Skensin’ton, Beats all de darkies twelve to one. Chorus: An’ I guess it wasn’t de niggas dis time, I guess it wasn’t de niggas dis time, I guess it wasn’t de niggas dis time, Mr. Mayor, I guess it wasn’t de niggas dis time. Oh, de “Natives” de went up to meet, At de corner ob Second an’ Massa street, De Irish cotch dar Starry Flag, An’ tare him clean up to a rag. Chorus. Oh, de peaceful Natives go away, An’ meet up dar an odder day, Den de Irish get half shot all round, An’ den dey shoot de Natives down. De Natives couldn’t stand dat quite, For freemen will defend dar right, An’ when dar blood begin to spill, Dey thought ob glorious Bunker Hill.

This undated Philadelphia broadside probably was published soon after 1844 when the events it describes occurred. Courtesy of Lewis Becker.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

Day dart like lions on dese Pats, An’ stoned ’em back wid whole brickbats, Day fought wid hands ’gin loaded guns, Lord, how American blood did run. Chorus: But whar was de sheriff dis time? But whar was de sheriff dis time? But whar was de sheriff dis time, Mr. Mayor? Oh, whar was de sheriff dis time? Oh, de Irish in dar houses say, Like ’possums in a holler tree, Day poke dar guns out through de wall, Lord, how day make poor Natives fall. Dey kotch one shooter by de hip, Dey drag him on his jaw bone lip, Dey thought him dead and leff him be, But he cum de possum, an’ got free. De Natives got some shooting sticks, An’ fired at dar frames an’ bricks, De Pats shot back an’ de hot lead flew, Lord! what’s creation comin’ to? De Natives couldn’t fire much ball, An so dey fire dar houses all, Den de sheriff fotch his troops about, I ’spose to shoot de fire out. Chorus: But dey cum rather late dat time, But dey cum rather late dat time, But dey cum rather late dat time, Mr. Mayor, But dey cum rather late dat time. De Michael leff ’em in a lurch, An’ so dey burn de Michael’s church. Oh, dat dar was a burnin’ shame, But I wonder who was mos’ to blame. Cat-wallader he walk in now, An’ wid his brave men stop de row, Den wicked rowdies went in town, An’ burn de St. Augustine’s down. Chorus: Oh, whar was de police dat time? Oh, whar was de police dat time? Oh, whar was de police dat time, Mr. Mayor? Oh, whar was de police dat time? Oh, den de big fish ’gin to fear, Dey thought the burnin’ was too near, Dey call’d a meetin’ to make peace, An’ made all white folks turn police.

145

146

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Chorus: If dey’d been a little sooner dat time, If dey’d been a little sooner dat time, If dey’d been a little sooner dat time, Mr. Mayor, Dey might a stopt all dis crime. An’ next de gub’ner cum to town, Arter fifty Natives war shot down, To save de spilt milk all endeavor, But dey say “it’s better late dan neber.” Den de sheriff ax de States’ ’Torney, To know what a sheriff’s duty be, De ’Torney answer like a man, It am to do de best you can. Chorus: But dar’s nothin’ like doin’ it in time, But dar’s nothin’ like doin’ it in time, But dar’s nothin’ like doin’ it in time, Mr. Mayor, But dar’s nothin’ like doin’ it in time. Den Massa sheriff to get free Make Patterson his deputy, De general gallowson’s de town, To shoot de used up riot down. His barracks am Girard’s ole bank, De ghost ob Stephy’s dollars clank, If he’s been dar to saw de scene, He’s day, “by dam vat all dis mean” Dey make a stable ob de yard, An’ de vault a sleepin’ place for guard, An’ dar was one deposit queer, De Princeton’s tars wid sharp-toed spears Den for church burners soon de mayor, Offered a reward quite rare, But to cotch dem dat killed freedom’s sons De state couldn’t find no law nor funds. Chorus: Oh, I guess it wan’t so in old times, Oh, I guess it wan’t so in old times, Oh, I guess it wan’t so in old times, Mr. Mayor, Oh, I guess it wan’t so in old times. But decent folks am quiet now, Still newspapers keep up a row, Dey spin long lies about de riot, Because they’re makin’ money by it. Chorus: Howebber ’taint de niggas dis time, Howebber ’taint de niggas dis time, Howebber ’taint de niggas dis time, Mr. Mayor, Howebber ’taint de niggas dis time.67

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

147

The Greek word for “foreigners” is barbaroi, which English borrowed, but changed its meaning into the much more pejorative term barbarian. For hundreds of years, Anglo American society has reacted uneasily to the prospect of foreign immigrants; all that has changed over the years since colonial days has been the nationality of the recipients of native hostility. In the early years of the twenty-first century, the animosity has focused on Hispanic immigrants; in the twentieth century, Asians were a principal target, and in the nineteenth century before them, the Irish, the Germans, the Dutch, the Jews, the Italians, and the Scandinavians were in turn vilified, scorned, cursed, and attacked. Irish immigration to America experienced a great surge in the 1840s as a result mainly of the failure of the potato crop. Unlike earlier Irish immigrants, who settled in rural areas, the famine refugees headed for cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco. Here they settled in clusters that became targets for discrimination and attacks. A commonly seen placard in store windows in New York City and elsewhere was “Help Wanted—No Irish Need Apply.” In Philadelphia, in May 1844, tensions reached such a degree that riots broke out. Called variously the Philadelphia nativist riots, the Philadelphia prayer riots, the Bible riots, and the Native American riots, the riots involved conflicts between nativists (i.e., antiforeigners) and recent Irish Catholic immigrants. They began in the largely Irish suburb of Kensington because of a controversy concerning Bible reading in the public schools. The challenge concerned not the practice itself, but rather the fact that it was a Protestant version that was used. In November 1842 Philadelphia’s Roman Catholic bishop, Francis Kenrick, wrote a letter to the board of controllers of public schools, asking that Catholic children be allowed to use the Catholic (Douay) version of the Bible and be excused from other religious teaching while at school. The school board was ready to accommodate this reasonable request, but outraged anti-Catholics turned the petition into an attack on the Bible itself. The American Nativist Party, a virulently antiforeigner, anti-immigration organization, together with the American Protestant Association, put forth the theory that the Pope was planning to take over America, and the Irish, because of their loyalty to the Pope, would be his steadfast soldiers in this action. On May 3 the short-lived nativist group, the American Republican Party, was founded and pledged to work for a new naturalization law that required a residence of 21 years before citizenship could be granted. The party provocatively held a meeting in a heavily Irish part of the Philadelphia suburb of Kensington. The Irish responded with clubs, stones, and shots, killing one Protestant youth. The nativists retreated, to return on May 6 in greater numbers. This meeting began with inflammatory remarks and ended in more fisticuffs that resulted in several deaths. Conflicts resumed on the following day. Bishop Kenrick requested the Catholics not to resort to violence, but this did not deter the Protestants and nativists. Rioters burned down St. Michael’s Catholic Church and rectory, at 2nd and Jefferson Streets, the Seminary of the Sisters of Charity, and several homes before soldiers arrived and the fire was contained. In Philadelphia itself, another riot erupted that resulted in the burning of St. Augustine’s Church, located on 4th Street between Vine and New Streets. A nearby school with a collection of rare books was burned as well. Order was finally restored, but not before some 30 deaths and 150 wounded. In addition, 200 fled their homes, and damage totaled $150,000.68 Several ballads were published about the riots. This one is particularly interesting in that it represents neither of the combatants’ points of view, but rather the perspective of the downtrodden African American populace. Thank goodness “it wasn’t de niggas dis time,

148

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Mr. Mayor”! This was a reference to earlier antislavery riots in the city in 1830, when “negroes were pelted in the streets, white men, who pleaded their cause, were pelted on the platform.”69 That the text was actually written by an African American seems improbable; more likely it was written by blackface minstrel entertainers, who often commented on political events of the day and were occasionally sympathetic toward African Americans. The wealth of details, mostly factual, suggest composition very soon after the riots. In this case, the objects of criticism include not only the nativist rioters, but also the agencies of the government who responded too slowly to prevent deaths and destruction. The picture painted is not an unfamiliar one to our own times. “Catwallader” refers to Philadelphia native George Cadwalader (1806–1879), who studied law and was admitted to the bar. He served in the Pennsylvania state militia and led the city’s first brigade against the rioters. He became a general in the U.S. Army during the Mexican American War and also served in the Civil War. “Massa” street in the second stanza refers to Jefferson Street, an interesting way of referring to the former president. “Natives” and “Pats” are, respectively, the anti-Catholic “nativists” and the Irish. “Girard’s bank” in the fourth stanza from the end had been appropriated for the military headquarters. The officers and crew of the U.S. steamship Princeton, mentioned in the next stanza, arrived, ready to join the fray if they were needed. They took up their quarters in the Girard Bank. “Patterson” was Major Patterson, who lead the cavalry troops. Down in the Lehigh Valley Just let me sit down here and rest, I’m only a tramp poor and . . . But once I had home pure and blest, the best that the world could . . . My wife and my fair daughter Nellie together were happy each day Until came a city stranger who stole our sweet Nellie away. Chorus: ’Twas down in the Lehigh Valley I dwelt in a happy nest My wife and my daughter Nellie made ev’ry moment blest; But into our peaceful cottage that viper foul did come Down in the Lehigh Valley he broke up our happy home. I know I am ragged and mean, and roaming the cold world alone; My wife died of grief in that scene where Nell’s blighted was our own; And since thro’ the world I’ve been drifting, I know ’tis my fortune and fate, Yes, drifting, with vengeance still drifting, to meet once that fiend whom I hate. So just let sit down and rest, and don’t ev’ry one on me frown, I know you are all of the best, and so was I till I was down; The future for me is all shadow, the world to my heart dark and dreer, But I’ll die with a smile for all mankind, if only that scoundrel were here!70

The Lehigh Valley and the Lehigh county name are derived from Lechauwekink (later shortened to Lecha), the Delaware Indian name for the Lehigh River, meaning “where there are forks.” With the advent of the Lehigh Canal in 1829, the region became an important industrial center, with anthracite coal, iron, cement, and silk as featured products.71 Though this song has been collected with other titles, it is most often associated with the Lehigh Valley, but the reasons for this are not apparent.72 In some versions, the narrator tramp gives his former occupation as village blacksmith—and one recording even used “The Village Blacksmith” as its title. George Milburn, who collected a boxcar full of hobo

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

149

songs and poems, includes a sequence of half a dozen songs all derived from this one.73 In the 1870s and 1880s the region figured prominently as a music place name, with “Lehigh Polka” (1875), “The Lehigh Valley Route” (1887), and “Lehigh Valley Waltz” (1887). In these cases, the Lehigh is meant to conjure up images of a happy and romantic sort—quite different from the fate of our poor betrayed blacksmith. Possibly the name was associated with an impersonal industrialized setting, where jobs came and went and life had become unstable because of creeping industrialization, and life itself had acquired the sooty grime of ubiquitous coal dust. Another song from the same period, “The Pennsylvania Tramp,” paints an image of an unaccountably different sort: Here I am, a lonely stranger all the way from Pennsylvania, When I work my life’s in danger, ladies, come and pity me—hi yah! I have traveled this world over, in my pockets not a stamp, My name’s a terror to this nation, I’m the Pennsylvania tramp—hi yah! etc.74 The Avondale Mine Disaster Good Christians all, both great and small, I pray ye lend an ear, And listen with attention while The truth I will declare; When you hear this lamentation, It will cause ye to weep and wail, About the suffocation In the mines of Avondale. On the sixth day of September, Eighteen hundred and sixty-nine, Those miners all then got a call To go work in the mine; But little did they think that day That death would gloom the vale Before they would return again From the mines of Avondale. The women and the children, Their hearts were filled with joy, To see the men go work again, And likewise every boy; But a dismal sight in broad daylight Soon made them all turn pale, When they saw the breaker burning O’er the mines of Avondale. From here and there, and everywhere, They gathered in a crowd, Some tearing off their clothes and hair, And crying out aloud: “Get out our husbands and our sons! Death he’s going to steal Their lives away without delay In the mines of Avondale.”

This broadside ballad was published in Scranton, Pennsylvania, not far from the site of the 1869 mine accident, and may have been the original text of one of the traditional ballads about the event. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

But all in vain, there was no hope, One single soul to save, For there is not second outlet From the subterranean cave. No pen can write the awful fright And horror that did prevail, Among the dying victims, In the mines of Avondale. A consultation then was held, ’Twas asked who’d volunteer For to go down this dismal shaft, To seek their comrades dear; Two Welshmen brave, without dismay,75 And courage without fail, Went down the shaft, without delay, In the mines of Avondale. When at the bottom they arrived, And thought to make their way, One of them died for want of air, While the other, in great dismay, He gave a sign to hoist him up, To tell the dreadful tale, That all were lost forever In the mines of Avondale. Every effort then took place To send down some fresh air; The men that next went down again They took of them good care; They traversed through the chambers, And this time did not fail In finding those dead bodies In the mines of Avondale. Sixty-seven was the number That in a heap were found, It seemed they were bewailing Their fate in underground; They found a father with his son Clasped in his arms so pale, It was a heart-rending scene In the mines of Avondale. Now to conclude, and make an end, Their number I’ll pen down— One hundred and ten of brave stout men Were smothered underground; They’re in their graves till the lat day, Their widows may bewail, And the orphans’ cries they rend the skies All round through Avondale!76

151

152

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Two ballads were written and preserved in oral tradition after the dreadful disaster in the Avondale mines near Plymouth, Pennsylvania, in 1869. The Avondale mine, as was common, was ventilated by means of a furnace on the bottom level, which had a flue running up the mine shaft. On the morning of September 6, the flue caught fire, and soon the coal breaker (a machine for crushing the anthracite rock) was aflame. The shaft was the only outlet from the mine, and since it was now filled with smoke and flame, there was no source for fresh air to the mine; consequently the trapped miners suffocated from want of oxygen. Altogether, 110 men died—including two members of the rescue party overcome by black damp (carbon dioxide). George Korson found a printed broadside version of this ballad bearing the name of James Fox of Scranton as the author. Besides the version reprinted here, the ballad was collected by Korson, Mellinger E. Henry, and Henry W. Shoemaker.77 Another broadside with the imprint “Published and for sale at Mac’s Book Store, Wyoming Ave., Scranton, Pa.” has also been preserved.78 In this latter text, the number cited in the penultimate stanza is 97, rather than 67. Korson, who gave an extensive account of the disaster and the ballad, was told by one former Avondale miner that for many years after the explosion, the mine and the village were said to be haunted by the spirits of the dead miners, who had often been seen slipping through the gloom or the mine or in the village, and that the ballad was composed by a Jewish peddler from Scranton, who had sold his wares to miners in Avondale. Thomas Duffy Come all ye true-born Irishmen, wherever you may be, I hope you will pay attention and listen unto me, Concerning ten brave Irishmen all in their youthful bloom, Who died in Pennsylvania on the twenty-first of June. Thomas Duffy and James Carroll as you can plainly see, They were murdered by false perjurers all on the gallows tree. Thomas Duffy on the brink of death did neither shake nor fear, But he smiled upon his murderers although his end was near. He took his brother by the hand and kissed him o’er and o’er Saying, “Farewell, my faithful brother, I shall never see you more, Till your spirit from this world has fled to that celestial shore Where perjurers can’t enter to shake loving hearts any more. “Take my advice, dear Patrick, and follow in my wake. Let perjurers do all they can, my heart they will never shake.” He scorned his prosecutors although he stood alone, As did many a gallant Irishman before England’s king and throne. He said, “We are not defeated; up or with our banner high, Although our parents were treated we will show them how to die.” He mounted on the scaffold with a firm and steady tread, Resembling a young nobleman a-going up to bed. He looked up the circle that stood around him there, And smiled upon his brother whose heart was in despair. “Give me your hand, dear Patrick, fret not for my sad fate, But before I will bid this world adieu, the truth to you I’ll state. I never saw James Kerrigan, the truth to you I’ll tell, Save once at Carroll residence where I treated him right well.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

153

I never asked James Carroll to shoot a man for me, Nor offered him ten dollars, as my God I hope to see. “I bear no living creature the slightest hate or spite, But as I am going to face my God my conscience it is light. But why should I tarry longer in this dark world of woe? My faith was never stronger and I am longing for to go.” The rope was dropped around his neck and the warrant to him read, And in twenty minutes after, brave Duffy he was dead. God rest his soul; he perished there to friends and country true, And he kept his secrets to the last as Irishmen should do. Bright angels thronged the jail yard until they saw him dead, And taking a last look at him his spirit with them fled. Tom Duffy was as true a man as ever blessed our sod, And now we hope his soul’s at rest with Mary and with God.79

The Molly Maguires were Irish Catholic miners who “had gained control of the anthracite divisions of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and used them as a cloak for criminal activities” in the anthracite coal region prior to the Civil War.80 They took their name from a band of young Irish peasants who terrorized landlords’ agents in the 1840s. Prosecuting the Mollies proved challenging for many years because their organization was so secretive and because most of the Irish American collier communities supported them, either willingly or otherwise. Active in their prosecution was the Pinkerton Agency—in fact, this was one of the salient cases that established the reputation of Alan Pinkerton and his detectives, perhaps the first truly modern detective agency in history. In 1871 Pinkerton hired a detective, James McParlan(d), whose assignment was to infiltrate the organization. It took McParlan, who assumed the alias of James McKenna, five years to gain the Mollies’ confidence and gather the evidence needed to expose and break them. Ten Molly Maguires were hanged on June 21, 1877, in Mauch Chunk or Pottsville, Pennsylvania—a coordinated mass hanging intended by authorities to serve as an unforgettable warning that the organization was doomed.81 Folklorist and journalist George Korson, who recovered the above ballad, collected and published eight songs about the Maguires in the course of his researches in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania’s Carbon and Schuylkill counties.82 The ballad is modeled after the Anglo Irish criminal’s last goodnight pattern, but without the usual penitential farewells and moralizing. The executee is not regarded at all as a criminal, but a martyred hero. Similar ballads abounded in Ireland in various conflicts with the British throughout the nineteenth century. The Johnstown Flood On a balmy day in May, when nature held full sway, And the birds sang sweetly in the sky above; A lovely city lay serene in a valley deep in green, Where thousands well in happiness and love. But soon the scene was changed, for just like a thing deranged, A storm came crashing through the quiet town; The wind rave and shrieked, thunder rolled, lightning streaked, And the rain it poured in awful torrents down.

Henry Wehman’s broadside, “The Johnstown Flood,” followed the sheet music publication of the same song. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

155

Chorus: Then the cry of distress rings from East to West, And our whole dear country now is plunged in woe; For the thousands burned and drowned in the city of Johnstown, All were lost in that great overflow. Like Paul Revere of old, comes a rider, brave and bold, On a big bay horse he’s flying like a deer; And he is shouting warnings shrill: Quickly fly off to the hills! But the people smile and show no signs of fear. Ah, but ere they turned away, the brave rider and his bay And the many thousand souls he tried to save; For they had no time to spare or to offer up a prayer, They were hurled at once into a watery grave. ’Twas a scene no tongue can tell, homes strewn about pell-mell, Infants torn away from loving mothers’ arms; Strong men battling for their lives, husbands for their wives, And no one left protecting them from harm. Fathers, mothers, children, all, both young, old great, and small, Were thrown about like chaff before the wind; When the fearful raging flood, rushing where the city stood, Leaving thousands dead and dying there behind. Soon the houses piled on high, reaching far up to the sky, And containing dead and living human freight; Loud shrieks soon rent the air from the wounded lying there. With no chance to help avert their dreadful fate. But a fearful cry arose, like the screams of battling foes, For that dreadful sick’ning pile was now on fire; While pouring prayers to heaven, they were burned as in an oven. And that burning heap had formed their funeral pyre.83

Johnstown, in southwestern Pennsylvania, lies at the confluence of the Conemaugh River and Stony Creek, 76 miles east of Pittsburgh. At 3:10 P.M. on May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam, a poorly maintained earth fill structure holding a major upstream reservoir, collapsed after heavy rains, sending a terrifying wall of water careening down the Conemaugh River valley at speeds of 20–40 miles per hour. At 4:07 P.M., a 30-foot-high wall of water smashed into Johnstown, which lay on the floodplain of the Conemaugh. The flood swept away most of the northern half of the city, killing 2,209 people and destroying 1,600 homes.84 I Lie in the American Land Ej, Božemoj, cotej Ameriki, Idze doňej narod preveliki, Ija pojdzem, šak som mladi ešče, Dami Panboh tam dajake sčesce.

Ah, my God, what’s in America? Very many people are going over there, I will also go, for I am still young, God the Lord grant me good luck there.

Jaše vracim kecme nezabije, Lem ti čekaj ot domňe novinu, Jak ot domne novinu dostaneš, Šicko sebe doporjatku prines, Sama šedneš navraneho koňa, Atak prijdzeš draha duso moja.

I’ll return if I don’t get killed, But you wait for news from me, When you hear from me, Put everything in order, Mount a raven-black horse, And come to me, dear soul of mine.

156

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Ajak vona do McKeesport prišla, Ta uš muža živoho nenašla, Len totu krev co znoho kapkala Atak nadnu prehorko plakala.

But when she came to McKeesport, She did not find her husband alive; Only his blood did she find And over it bitterly she cried.

“Ej, mužumoj co žeši učinil, Žesi tote dzeci osirocil.” “Povic ženo tej mojej siroce, Žeja ležim utej Americe, Povic ženo najme nečekaju, Boja ležim v Americkim kraju.”

“Ah, my husband, what did you do, Orphaned, these children of ours?” “To these orphans of mine, my wife, say, That I lie here in America. Tell them, wife of mine, not to wait for me, For I lie in the American land.”85

Jacob Evanson collected this tragic ballad from its author, Andrew Kovaly, who emigrated to the United States from Slovakia in 1899. Describing how he wrote it in the early 1900s, Kovaly said, I was a young foreman in a Bessemer mill here in McKeesport. A very good friend of mine, a member of my crew, had saved enough money to send to Slovakia for his family. While they were on the way to America, he was killed before my eyes under an ingot buggy. I tried to grab him but it was too late. It was terrible. I felt so bad that when I met his wife and little children at the railroad station I hardly know how to break the sad news to them. Then I made this song. My friend was very proud of America and it was with pride and happiness that he had looked forward to raising his children as Americans. The song made me feel better and also my friend’s wife. But she cried very hard. I have never forgotten it.86 The Homestead Strike We are asking one another as we pass the time of day, Why working men resort to arms to get their proper pay. And why our labor unions they must not be recognized Whilst the actions of a syndicate must not be criticized. Now the troubles down at Homestead were brought about this way, When a grasping corporation had the audacity to say: “You must all renounce your union and forswear your liberty And we will give you a chance to live and die in slavery.” Chorus: Now the man that fights for honor, none came blame him, May luck attend wherever he may roam; And no son of his will ever live to shame him, Whilst liberty and honor rule our home. Now this sturdy band of workingmen started out at the break of day, Determination in their faces which plainly meant to say: “No one can come and take our homes for which we have toiled so long. No one can come and take our places—no, here’s where we belong!” A woman with a rifle saw her husband in the crowd, She handed him the weapon and they cheered her long and loud. He kissed her and said, “Mary, you go home till we’re through.” She answered, “No, if you must fight, my place is here with you.” When a lot of bum detectives came without authority, Like thieves at night when decent men were sleeping peacefully— Can you wonder why all honest hearts with indignation burn, And why the slimy worm that treads the earth when trod upon will turn?

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

157

When they locked out men at Homestead so they were face to face With a lot of bum detectives and they knew it was their place To protect their homes and families, and this was neatly done, And the public will reward them for the victories they won.87

This song and the one following commemorate a major conflict in the struggle to unionize the Pittsburg iron and steel workers in the late nineteenth century. As Evanson tells it, Before dawn on the foggy morning of July 6, 1892, the whistle of the Homestead steel mills started to blow. This was a pre-arranged signal to warn the workers of trouble, and was reinforced by a horseman who galloped through the streets to call them out. Hugh O’Donnell, the steelworkers’ leader, had received a telegram from the lookout on the Smithfield Street bridge in Pittsburgh, seven miles down the Monongahela River; it read: “Watch river. Steamer with barges left here.” Before long, O’Donnell and most of the 3,800 workers, armed with rifles, shotguns, pistols, and clubs, reached the mill in time to see the tugboat Little Bill emerged from the fog with two barges in tow. Their worst fears were realized when armed men in the uniform of the hated Pinkertons prepared to embark. These uniformed strikebreakers had been hired by the Carnegie Steel Company, which on June 20 had locked out the workers as the result of a wage dispute. Then the employees, backed by the Amalgamated Association, had retaliated by organizing on a military basis, and for five days had succeeded in preventing anyone from entering the plant. The stage was set for an epic battle. The company and the union were both powerful. Each had taken the law into its own hands. “This was no ordinary lockout, It was revolution, sheer, stark, elemental.” The Little Bill steamed away, leaving three hundred Pinkertons in the two barges, but opposed to them were thousands who now swarmed over the mill property to points of vantage. An all-day battle was on, mainly with small arms, but also with dynamite, burning oil and gas, and even obsolete cannon. When the Pinkertons finally surrendered, the toll on both sides was ten men dead and over sixty wounded.88

Father Was Killed by the Pinkerton Men ’Twas in a Pennsylvania town, not very long ago, Men struck against reduction of their pay; Their millionaire employer, with philanthropic show, Had closed the works till starved they would obey. They fought for home and right to live where they had toiled so long, But ere the sun had set some were laid low; There’re hearts now sadly grieving by that sad and bitter wrong. Got help them! for it was a cruel blow. Chorus: God help them tonight in their hour of affliction, Praying for him whom they’ll ne’er see again; Hear the poor orphans tell their sad story: “Father was killed by the Pinkerton men!” Ye prating politicians who boast protection creed, Go to Homestead and stop the orphans’ cry; Protection for the rich man—ye pander to his greed. His workmen they are cattle and may die. The freedom of the city, in Scotland far away, ’Tis presented to the millionaire suave; But here in free America, with protection in full sway, His workmen get the freedom of the grave.89

158

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The small town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, nine miles upstream from Pittsburgh on the Monongahela, was the site of the Homestead Steel Works, one small ingot in Andrew Carnegie’s vast industrial fortress. The factory had been unionized by the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin Workers (AA), but management saw the AA as a deterrent to improved technology, efficient production, and, perhaps most important, increased profits. In March 1892 Carnegie decided to let his contract with the AA locals expire, warning employees that the firm could not be only partly unionized; it must be wholly Union shop or not at all. Anticipating resistance, he ordered his managers to stock up on essential fabricated parts so they could withstand a strike. The plant manager, Henry Clay Frick, ordered his carpenters to build a sturdy wooden fence around the mill and secretly hired 300 armed Pinkerton guards to protect the property. Wage negotiations continued but seemed doomed to fail, and on June 29 Frick ordered the mill shut down and demanded the union’s capitulation. Although the AA claimed only 800 members, Frick’s action goaded nearly 3,000 other workers to take sides with the union, and the lockout was turned into a strike. Early in the morning of July 6, two barges laden with Pinkerton gunmen and their associated strike breakers were tugged up river to the plant site, and a battle began. At least 10 men were killed, and many more were wounded. A few days later, with the standoff unresolved, the governor sent in the state militia, and the strikers, who had taken control of the town, were ordered dispersed. Nonunion labor was brought in under protection of the militia. The union was crushed, and the steel industry was able to resist successful unionization until the late 1930s.90 Today, the terrible battles between unionists and capitalists are largely forgotten, and the names of Carnegie and Frick are associated with magnificent libraries and art galleries. Songsters and broadsides of the late nineteenth century were frequent venues for songs and ballads of a decidedly different tenor from the more widely disseminated sheet music products of the principal pop music establishment called “Tin Pan Alley” and centered in New York’s Union Square district. In addition to the reprinting of genuinely old traditional ballads, some centuries old, these media often offered contemporary topical songs that would have been of interest primarily to the working classes. “Willie Wildwave,” credited with the preceding piece, wrote numerous topical screeds. This colorful pseudonym was for decades the alter ego of New York–born William W. Delaney, for 34 years one of the few preeminent publishers of cheap print collections of popular songs. Born in the 1860s, he became a “printer’s devil” ( print shop apprentice) at age 15. Later, as Willie Wildwave, he wrote puzzles for Frank Leslie’s Boys’ and Girls’ Weekly and for Harrigan and Hart’s New York Boys. Later he became a reporter for the New York News Agency and, in 1877, became a compositor for the New York Sun. In 1890 he opened his own print shop on Park Row. When he quit the business in 1924, it was because of competition from the phonograph, the piano player, and the radio.91 Altoona Freight Wreck They had just left the point at Kittanning, Freight Number Twelve Sixty-two, She traveled right on down the mountain, And brave were the men in her crew. The engineer pulled at the whistle, For the brakes wouldn’t work when applied; The brakeman climbed out on the car top, For he knew what that whistle had cried.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

159

With all of the strength that God gave him, He tightened the brakes with a prayer; But she kept right on down the mountain, Her whistle was piercing the air. She traveled at sixty an hour, Gaining speed every foot of the way; And then in a crash it was over, And there on the track the freight lay. They were found at their post in the wreckage, Both had done their duty so well; The engineer still held the whistle, And the fireman still hung to the bell.92

On the morning of November 29, 1925, the Pennsylvania Railroad’s eastbound freight train VL-4, hauled by engine 1282, had just reached a block station 3.3 miles from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and started down the grade, when it was stalled by an application of the brakes for a reason that was never ascertained. The engineer started the train up again without ensuring that the air brake system was working properly and never regained control of the engine. The train was derailed after reaching a speed of approximately 60 miles an hour on a downhill grade. Both the engineer and fireman were killed, and most of the cars were demolished.93 The ballad was written within two months of the accident and was credited to one Fred Tait-Douglas, who probably sent his poem to Carson J. Robison for publication. This was common procedure at the time; Robison was a very prolific and well-known writer of hillbilly event ballads, and many writers mailed him their compositions in the hope that he would set them to music and publish them. Robison’s published text had nine stanzas, but the singer, limited by the approximately three minutes’ duration of a10-inch 78 rpm record, had to shorten the song to five stanzas. One of the omitted stanzas was Robison’s conclusion—the ubiquitous moral to a tragic tale such as this one: This story is told of a freight train, And it should be a warning to all; You should be prepared every minute, For you cannot tell when He’ll call.94 My Old Pennsylvania Home Die suun schiendt hell in em alt Pennsylfawnisch heim, Sis suummer die schwartze sin fro; Es welschkarn is tzeidich uun die wiss iss im blieh, Die feggel singe da gons dawg doh. Die kinner rulle uf em floor in die hitt, Oll luschdich, oll fraylich uun schmart; Eb lang, ‘hardie tzeita’ gluppa uf da dier, Noe mei alt Pennsylfawnisch heim guut nacht. Chorus: Wein nich mehr du hulde, O, wein nich mehr; Weir singen en sang fa die alt Pennsylfawnisch heim, Fa die alt Pennsylfawnisch heim das so farn.95

160

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

German immigration to the New World began in earnest in 1683 following William Penn’s establishment of a new colony in 1681. As part of his aggressive promotion of the new colony, in 1682 he published Some Account of the Province of Pennsylvania. Translated into German, Dutch, and French, and circulated in Europe, it aided in the active recruitment of Europeans—Germans, in particular—to Pennsylvania. From provinces along the lower Rhine, Saxony, Bavaria, Alsace, and Switzerland, altogether, some 109,000 Germanspeaking peoples came in the 1700s, perhaps encouraged by the Germanic heritage of both English kings, George I (ruled 1714 –1727) and George II (1727–1760). (George I of Hannover—now part of Germany—became heir to the English throne because he was the great grandson of King James I of England. Simultaneously a prince of Hannover, George always was more interested in his German realm than in his new English one, and his son, George II, had similar preferences.) The first all-German settlement in America was at Germantown, Pennsylvania, and successive immigrants heavily settled the valleys of southeastern Pennsylvania. There they learned to tolerate being called “Dutch” because the English settlers misinterpreted the German word Deutsch (Deitsch in their dialect), which meant “German.” Well into the twentieth century, the Pennsylvania Dutch of the Mahantongo Valley preserved the folklore of their eighteenth-century German-speaking immigrant ancestors. Their folk songs include lullabies and songs of childhood, courting songs, songs about farm life, drinking songs, and of course, religious songs. Other songs originated in the New World, some as translations or parodies of the American songs they heard their neighbors singing.96 The above song is the Pennsylvania Dutch rendition of Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home,” published in 1853. It follows Foster’s text fairly closely, except for the change of “Kentucky” to “Pennsylvania” (for the original text, see the discussion of Kentucky songs in chapter 3). Foster’s songs found fans everywhere, and those who did not speak English fluently had them translated into their own languages.

DELAWARE The Dutch who established the first European settlement in what is now Delaware in 1631 were soon eradicated by natives, and it was not until 1638 that a permanent settlement—New Sweden—was established at Fort Christina, now Wilmington. The Dutch from New Amsterdam (later, New York) conquered the Swedes in 1655, and the English seized the colony from the Dutch in 1664. Thereafter, except for a brief Dutch reconquest in 1673, Delaware was administered as part of New York until 1682, when the Duke of York ceded it to William Penn, who wanted it so that his colony of Pennsylvania could have ocean access. Though Penn tried to unite the Delaware counties with Pennsylvania, both sides resented union. In 1704 he allowed Delaware an assembly of its own. Pennsylvania and Delaware shared an appointed governor until the Revolution. On December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the new Constitution.97 In spite of diminutive Delaware’s primacy in ratification of the new American Constitution, one is hard-pressed to find traditional songs and ballads that reflect specifically Delawarean history and society. The Battle of the Wilderness Now boys just listen while I sing to you a song sirs, About our glorious Veteran troops and how they move along sirs,

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

161

Of our Keystone Boys and how they fought and how the rebels run sirs And left their sick and wounded back and stores for Uncle Sam sirs. Chorus: And that’s just so—Ri, fal, de ral de laddy and that’s just so. When the battle first commenced, they stood up to a man sirs; But when they saw the Yankees come led on by General Grant sirs, They thought it time to make a dash and come up in a mass, sirs: But the Yankees sent them howling back, they fell like withered grass sirs. Chorus. Oh there’s General Beauregard, Jeff. Davis, Bragg and Lee sirs, They thought to bag our Union Boys and trap brave General Meade sirs; But Uncle Abe he had a man, he brought from Tennessee sirs, That whipped them several times before and set their darkies free sirs. Chorus. Old New York and Jersey too is moving in the train sirs, Likewise the boys from old Vermont and noble state of Maine sirs; They will meet them in their Capital and free our sick and lame sirs And then return to their homes and peace they will proclaim sirs. Chorus. Ohio boys and Hoosiers too have many pressing claimes [sic] sirs, And Massachusetts too can boast of men both true and brave sirs, There’s Michigan and Illinois who sent us Honest Abe sirs And lots of men to back him up and help our Union save sirs. Chorus. They met them in the Wilderness, just at the break of day sirs, And fought them on the right and left, till Lee he ran away sirs, And left some thousands on the field, he could not get away sirs; But our Union boys they dressed their wounds, their dead they put away sirs. Chorus. In Spottsylvania Court House the Rebels they marched away sirs, But Hancock with his second corps just happened around that way sirs; His boys they were still full of fight and thought they’d make a day sirs, They thrashed the Reb’s and captured lots and brought off forty guns sirs. Chorus. We mourn the loss of [Sedgwick], commander of the corps sirs, The gallant Sixth, who fought so well, through all this bloody war sirs, He fell while nobly cheering on the boys of his command sirs, And his name will be remembered long by every loyal man sirs. Chorus. They captured Stuart on that day and brought him in to Grant sirs, He would not take our Yankee grub and could not stand our Meade sirs; They shipped him to Fort Delaware, where he must long remain sirs, Until the stars and stripes shall float from Florida to Maine sirs. Chorus. Now here success to our Volunteers, to Gen. Grant and Meade sirs, To Hancock, Warren and Burnside we give three hearty cheers sirs, With fighting Butler in the rear and Gun Boats on the James sirs, We’ll thrash the southern traitors before we close the year sirs. Chorus.98

The Battle of the Wilderness was fought in Virginia on May 5–6, 1864. Following its indecisive conclusion, Union General Ulysses S. Grant moved his left flank forward, engaging the Confederate forces of General Robert E. Lee at Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia. The battle raged for about a week and a half, and on May 20, Grant continued his march southeastward in a flanking movement toward the Confederate capital. The Union army suffered some 18,000 casualties compared to the Confederates’ 11,000 or fewer.

162

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The song is placed in this section because of its mention of Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island, an important prison for captured Confederate soldiers starting in July 1861. The year 1862 brought the first political prisoners to Fort Delaware. The state’s tenuous position as a border state and the army’s crackdown on civilians who expressed secessionist sentiments contributed to arrests of dissidents. By the fall, 129 political prisoners were being held at the fort. As the battles of the Civil War became bloodier and more frequent, more facilities were required to house surrendered or captured Confederate troops. Fort Delaware was an attractive choice because of its sturdy fortifications and proximity to many Southern states. Following the battles of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in the summer of 1863, the prison population swelled by more than 12,500 new arrivals. In three and a half years, more than 30,000 prisoners passed through the gates of the island fortress. More than 2,400 died on the island, the vast majority of whom were buried at Finn’s Point, New Jersey, just across the river from the fort.99 The poem employs a type of feminine rhyme scheme common in the nineteenth century and earlier but seldom encountered anymore; yet several of the ballads and songs in this collection make use of it. Feminine rhyme in general involves the last two syllables of the rhyming lines; but in this usage, the last syllable is a repeating “sirs” falling on an unaccented beat. Without it, the meter would be the familiar iambic (short-long)—heptameter in this case. Many songs and poems of the period used exactly this device—a repeating “sirs” or “boys” or “oh” at the end of every line. What Did Delaware? What did Delaware, boys, what did Delaware? I ask you again as a personal friend, what did Delaware?” “She wore a New Jersey, boys, she wore a New Jersey. I tell you again as a personal friend, She wore a New Jersey.” What did Tennessee, boys? . . .

She saw what Arkansas . . .

Where did Idaho, boys? . . .

She hoed in Maryland . . .

What did Iowa, boys? . . .

She weighed a Washington . . .

What made Chicago ill, boys? . . .

Too much Illinois . . .

What did Mississip, boys? . . .

She sipped a Minnesota . . .100

The essence of a folk song is that it belongs to everyone: in the collective social consciousness, it has no writer, no author, no composer, no publisher; it’s yours and mine to sing or to change as we see fit. In practice it is not always easy to determine the truth of these attributes, so, as discussed in the introduction, we are forced to look to other, more verifiable criteria, such as the existence of variation, which is a strong suggestion that singers do not feel the imposition of a so-called correct version. By almost any criterion, “What Did Delaware?” is a folk song, in spite of its having been copyrighted, published, and recorded in 1960.101 Examination of the several versions of the song currently available on our most recent mass medium—the Internet—offers proof that the song is still being sung and recomposed.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

163

Apart from Mr. Irving, however, no one seems to have cared to take credit for the composition of the song. Which is to say, until it was recorded by the very popular Perry Como in 1960, there was little money to be gained from acknowledging paternity—and certainly no glory or fame. The above is the oldest printed version found. Other verses include the following: Oh, where has Oregon? . . .

She’s gone to Oklahoma . . .

Oh, what did Massa-chew? . . .

She chewed her Connecti-cud . . .

Oh, how did Connecti-cut? . . .

She cut with her Arkansas . . .

Oh, how did Flori-die? . . .

She died in Missouri . . .

Oh, why did Cali-phone ya? . . .

She phoned to say “Hawaii.” . . .

Oh, where has Oregon? . . .

She went to pay her Texas . . .

Oh, how did Wisconsin? . . .

She stole a New-brass-key . . .

Swimming in the Delaware The Old Gray Mare went swimming in the Delaware, In her yellow underwear— Said she didn’t give a care! The Old Gray Mare went swimming in the Delaware, Many long years ago.102 Floatin’ Down the Delaware There goes [person’s name] Floatin’ down the Delaware, Holes in his underwear, Couldn’t afford another pair Three weeks later Bitten by a polar bear Poor old polar bear died.103

No disrespect is intended in immortalizing Delaware’s contribution to American folk song with two children’s ditties about shabbily attired swimmers in the local river. The immediate ancestor of these bits of children’s lore is a 1915 pop song published by Frank Panella, “The Old Gray Mare” (“The old gray mare came tearin’ out of the wilderness . . . many long years ago”). Panella had borrowed from an 1858 song of J. Warner titled “Down in Alabam,” later known as “Down in the Wilderness.” Earlier still, all these songs were based on the religious spiritual “I Wait upon the Lord”: If you want to get to Heaven, Got to go in the wilderness, Go in the wilderness, (2) Mornin,’ brother, go in the wilderness, Got to go in the wilderness, And wait upon the Lord.104

What does it all have to do with Delaware? Frankly, very little. In fact, the song earns a place in this section merely on account of the Delaware River, only a few of whose

164

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

405 miles touch Delaware soil, forming the border with New Jersey before emptying into the Delaware Bay. It is tempting to try to relate the wilderness that the old gray mare came tearing out of with the wilderness of the Civil War battle mentioned previously, but there is absolutely no justification for such sleight of hand. My Delaware How beautiful along thy shore, Delaware, my Delaware, Shall Freedom’s word ring out once more, Delaware, my Delaware. We want the earth, we want the earth; Our warrant is our manhood’s worth. Our title is our human birth. Delaware, my Delaware. Chorus: We want the earth, we want it all; We want the whole terrestrial ball. Awake! Awake! ’Tis Freedom’s call. Delaware, my Delaware. How beautiful for thy release, Delaware, my Delaware. The feet of them that bring thee peace. Delaware, my Delaware. Who bring the good that is to be, Who make the way for Liberty, Who bring the truth that makes thee free. Delaware, my Delaware. Chorus.105

In the 1890s, many Americans were swayed by economist Henry George’s theory of the single tax: an argument that (1) there should be but a single tax, and that on land only; (2) furthermore, land was not to be owned but only leased; those who leased the land were free to improve it as they wished, and would pay a single tax on the land only, not the improvements. In June 1895 a single-tax campaign was begun in Delaware; its leaders included Jackson H. Ralston, Arthur H. Stevenson, Frank Stephens, and Harold Studell. In 1900 sculptor Stephens and architect Will Price, putting the ideas of single-tax philosophy into practice, founded the community of Arden: the land was (and still is) owned in common; residents pay taxes on the land they rent. The experiment proved so successful that in 1922 Ardentown was founded along similar principles, and then Ardencroft in 1950.106 Though Stephens was primarily a sculptor, he was also a poet of some talent, and he put those talents to work writing songs in support of the Delaware single-tax movement: These songs were written in the beginning of the campaign, and were sung at meetings which were held all over the sate, and at club assemblages. They did much to stimulate the spirit which sent our speakers, in the face of arrests and threats of assassination, into every town and village of the “Blue Hen State” to preach the Single Tax Gospel.107

“My Delaware” was one of the songs Frank Stephens (1859–1935) wrote for the campaign. It was marked to be sung to the tune of “Maryland, My Maryland.” How much it

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

165

was sung during those years we have no evidence, but we have Studell’s attestation that the several songs Stephens wrote for the campaign were sung widely and with enthusiasm during those end-of-the-century years.

MARYLAND The land that became Maryland was granted by royal charter to Cecil Calvert, Lord Baltimore, in 1632, as a haven in which his fellow Roman Catholics might escape the restrictions placed on them in England. Leonard Calvert, Lord Baltimore’s younger brother, led the founding expedition on St. Clement’s (now Blakistone) Island in the lower Potomac in March 1634. As the population center shifted to the north and west, the capital was moved to Annapolis, and in 1729 the eponymous city of Baltimore was founded. Marylanders early resisted British efforts to make the colonies bear more of the costs of government: in 1774, the year following the infamous Boston Tea Party, a ship laden with tea was burned at an Annapolis dock. In April 1788 Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the new federal Constitution. Three years later, it ceded territory and advanced money for public buildings to help form the District of Columbia. The Civil War found Maryland riven by opposing factions. Landed gentry and residents of the Eastern Shore supported the secessionists, while workingmen and western Marylanders stood up for the Union; a third faction favored neutrality. In the end, Maryland did not join the 11 states of the Confederacy and remained formally within the Union, in spite of some strong Confederate sentiments. Federal troops occupied Baltimore and Annapolis, and martial law was imposed in this border state. The constitution of 1864 abolished slavery and removed power from the rural aristocracy.108 The Battle of Baltimore Old Ross, Cockburn, and Cochran, too, And many a bloody villain more, Swore with their bloody savage crew, That they would plunder Baltimore. But General Winder being afraid That his militia would not stand, He sent away to crave the air Of a few true Virginians. Then up we rose with hearts elate, To help our suffering sister state, &c. When first our orders we received, For to prepare without delay, Our wives and sweethearts for to leave, And to the army march away. Although it griev’d our hearts full sore, To leave our sweet Virginia shore, We kiss’d our sweethearts o’er and o’er, And march’d like true Virginians. Adieu awhile, sweet girls adieu, With honor we’ll return to you. With rapid marches on we went, To leave our sweet Virginia shore,

In addition to the ballad discussed in the text, the battle of Baltimore inpired this much more enduring song, later known as “The Star Spangled Banner.” This broadside print, “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” may be its first publication. Collection of The New-York Historical Society.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

No halt was made, no time was spend, Till we arrived at Baltimore. The Baltimoreans did us greet, The ladies clapt their lilly white hands, Exclaiming as we passed the street, “Welcome ye brave Virginians! May heaven all your foes confound, And send you home with laurels crown’d.” We had not been in quarters long, Before we heard the dread alarms, The cannon roared, the bells did ring, The drum did beat, “to arms, to arms!” Then up we rose to face our foes, Determined to meet them on the strand, And drive them back from fair freedom’s shore, Or die like brave Virginians, In heaven above we placed our trust, Well knowing that our cause is just, &c. Then Ross he landed at North Point, With seven thousand men or more; And swore by that time next night, That he would be in Baltimore. But Striker met him on the strand, Attended by a chosen band, Where he received a fatal shot, From a brave Pennsylvanian— Whom heaven directed to the field, To make this haughty Briton yield, &c. Then Cockburn he drew up his fleet, To bombard Fort McHenry, A-thinking that our men, of course, Would take affright and run away. The fort was commanded by a patriotic band, As ever grac’d fair freedom’s land, And he who did the fort command, Was a true blue Virginian. Long may we have Brave Armstead’s name Recorded on the book of fame, &c. A day and a night they tried their might, But found their bombs did not prevail, And seeing their army put to flight, They weighed their anchor and made sail, Resolving to return again, To execute their former plan; But if they do they’ll find us still, That we are brave Virginians. And they shall know before they’ve done, That they are not in Washington. But now their shipping’s out of sight, And each man take a parting glass;

167

168

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Drink to his true love and heart’s delight, His only joy and bosom friend; For I might as well drink a health, For I hate to see good liquor stand, That America may always boast, That we are brave Virginians.109

This song from the War of 1812 reflects that early phase of U.S. history when its citizens still identified themselves as Virginians, Marylanders (Baltimoreans), or Pennsylvanians first, and Americans second. The events described in the song immediately precede and lead into a much better remembered phase of the conflict—the bombing of Fort McHenry on the night of September 13–14, 1814, by the British fleet commanded by Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane (note correct spelling), the inspiration for Francis Scott Key’s immortal poem “The Star-Spangled Banner.” While the setting is in and near Baltimore, the focus is on the brave men of Virginia who came to the aid of their hapless Maryland neighbors (and earn the admiration of the ever-so-fair Baltimore ladies); the song’s author is not known, but it would not be unreasonable to presume he was a Virginian.110 Maryland, My Maryland The Rebel horde is on thy shore, Maryland, my Maryland! Arise! and drive him from thy door, Maryland, my Maryland! Avenge the foe thou must abhor, Who seeks thy fall, oh, Baltimore! Drive back the tyrant, peace restore, Maryland, my Maryland! Hark to a nation’s warm appeal, Maryland, my Maryland! And sister states that for thee feel, Maryland, my Maryland! Gird now thy sons with arms of steel, And heavy be the blows they deal, For traitors shall thy vengeance feel, Maryland, my Maryland! Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland, my Maryland! Thy gleaming sword shall never rust, Maryland, my Maryland! Thy sons shall battle with the just, And soon repel the traitor’s thrust; For in their strength our state shall trust, Maryland, my Maryland! Come, for thy men are bold and strong, Maryland, my Maryland! Drive back the foe that would thee wrong, Maryland, my Maryland! Come with thine own heroic throng, And, as they army moves along,

M. Septimus Winner’s song, “Maryland, My Maryland,” was a pro-Union parody of the original proConfederate text. From the Library of Congress.

170

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Let UNION be their constant song, Maryland, my Maryland! Virginia feels the tyrant’s chain, Maryland, my Maryland! Her children lie around her slain, Maryland, my Maryland! Let Carolina call in vain, Our rights we know and will maintain, Our rise shall be her fall again, Maryland, my Maryland! I hear the distant battle’s hum, Maryland, my Maryland! I hear the bugle, fife and drum, Maryland, my Maryland! Thou art not deaf, thou art not dumb, Thou wilt not falter nor succumb, I hear thee cry, “We come! we come! Maryland, my Maryland!” Ten hundred thousand brave and free, Maryland, my Maryland! Are ready now to strike with thee, Maryland, my Maryland! A million more still yet agree, To help thee hold thy liberty, For thou shalt ever, ever be, Maryland, my Maryland!111

The words to “Maryland, My Maryland” were written in the night of April 23–24, 1861, by James Ryder Randall, a Baltimore native and professor of English literature at Poydras College, Pointe-Coupée, Louisiana. It was published in the New Orleans Sunday Delta on May 5 and garnered immense popularity, being frequently reprinted by other Southern newspapers. On May 31, it was reprinted in the South, a pro-Confederacy journal from Baltimore. A few days later, a group of music lovers who constituted the Baltimore Glee Club met at the home of two of their members and ardent Confederate supporters, the Cary sisters, Hetty and Jennie. Jennie was in charge of the musical program that night and, wanting to include some pro-Southern expressions of sentiment, thought of the recently published poem, “My Maryland.” But it lacked a tune; she recalled the college song her cousin, who attended Yale, had been singing: it was set to the Teutonic tune “Lauriger Horatius,” also the tune for the German Christmas carol “Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,” published in 1799. The song was copyrighted October 11, 1861, by Miller and Beacham of Baltimore, with the credit “written by a Baltimorean in Louisianna [sic]. Music Adapted & Arranged by C. E.” Beneath this was a shield proclaiming “Crescite et Multiplicamini” (the Latin translation of the Biblical “be fruitful and multiply”). On the first Confederate printing, January 22, 1862, words were credited to Randall and the music to “a Lady of Baltimore.” Somehow, the German connection was forgotten.112 Some early printings instructed the words be sung not to that familiar carol’s tune, but to “My Normandy.”113

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

171

However, there’s another twist to this story: the previous text, published on many broadsides in the 1860s, is not Randall’s. The original text is very different: The despot’s heel is on thy shore, Maryland! His torch is at thy temple door, Maryland! Avenge the patriotic gore That flecked the streets of Baltimore, And be the battle queen of yore, Maryland! My Maryland! Hark to an exiled son’s appeal, Maryland! My Mother State! to thee I kneel, Maryland! For life or death, for woe or weal, Thy peerless chivalry reveal, And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel, Maryland! My Maryland! Thou wilt not cower in the dust, Maryland! Thy beaming sword shall never rust, Maryland! Remember Carroll’s sacred trust, Remember Howard’s warlike thrust, And all thy slumberers with the just, Maryland! My Maryland! Come! ’tis the red dawn of the day, Maryland! Come with thy panoplied array, Maryland! With Ringgold’s spirit for the fray, With Watson’s blood at Monterey, With fearless Lowe and dashing May, Maryland! My Maryland! Come! for thy shield is bright and strong, Maryland! Come! for thy dalliance does thee wrong, Maryland! Come to thine own heroic throng, That stalks with Liberty along, And gives a new key to thy song, Maryland! My Maryland! Dear Mother! burst the tyrant’s chain, Maryland! Virginia should not call in vain, Maryland! She meets her sisters on the plain— Sic semper! ’tis the proud refrain

172

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

That baffles minions back again, Maryland! Arise in majesty again, Maryland! My Maryland! I see the blush upon thy cheek, Maryland! For thou wast ever bravely meek, Maryland! But lo! there surges forth a shriek, From hill to hill, from creek to creek, Potomac calls to Chesapeake, Maryland! My Maryland! Thou wilt not yield the Vandal toll, Maryland! Thou wilt not crook to his control, Maryland! Better the fire upon thee roll, Better the shot, the blade, the bowl, Than crucifixion of the Soul, Maryland! My Maryland! I hear the distant thunder hum, Maryland! The Old Line bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb— Huzza! She spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She’ll come! She’ll come! Maryland! My Maryland!114

Most decidedly a very different set of lyrics and sentiments. The story behind these, Randall’s own words, started when President Lincoln ordered federal troops to Washington, D.C., to protect the capital. On April 19, the Union’s Sixth Massachusetts Regiment arrived in Baltimore. Since there was no rail line passing directly through the city, troops had to detrain at the train station at one end of the city and march across town to board a train to the capital. Confederate sympathizers in the city gathered in the streets to protest and try to block the troops. Rioters attacked the soldiers with bricks and stones and also pistols. Endangered soldiers fired back and riots followed, resulting in a dozen civilian deaths, including a friend of Randall’s.115 As Randall later wrote, In April, 1861, I read in the New Orleans Delta news of the attack on the Massachusetts troops as they passed through Baltimore. This account greatly excited me. I had long been absent from my native city, and the startling event there influenced my mind. That night I could not dismiss from my mind what I had read in the paper. About midnight I arose, lit a candle and went to my desk. Some powerful influence seemed to possess me, and almost involuntarily I proceeded to write the song of ‘My Maryland.’ I remember that this idea seemed to take shape as music in my brain—some wild air that I can not now recall. The whole poem was dashed off rapidly when once begun. It was not composed in cold blood, but under what may be called a conflagration of the senses, if not an inspiration of the intellect. No one was more surprised than I was at the widespread and instantaneous popularity I had been so strangely stimulated to write.116

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

173

Very few of Randall’s original words clearly betray his identification with the Confederate cause. The reference to “despot” in the first line has been taken to mean Lincoln— but it is not ineluctable. Several other noted Marylanders are mentioned in the text: Samuel Ringgold (1796–1846) was the first casualty in the Mexican-American War; his father (same name) had been a U.S. Congressman. Lieutenant Colonel William H. Watson (d. 1846) commanded the Battalion of Baltimore and District of Columbia Volunteers in the Mexican-American War. He was killed in the Battle of Monterrey in September 1846. Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737–1832) was a lawyer and politician who represented Maryland as a delegate to the Continental Congress and later was a U.S. Senator. John Eager Howard (1752–1827) was a soldier and politician; Howard County, Maryland, is named for him.117 The later broadside text is more forthrightly supportive of the Union cause. It is puzzling, perhaps, that the broadsides still credit Randall with authoring the words that must have been contrary to his own sentiments. Who wrote the second set of words? Most likely the popular song writer and publisher Septimus Winner (author of “Listen to the Mockingbird”), who was credited on the broadside text given previously and also on sheet music published by him in 1862. In 1863 another set of words was published; the first lines were “Should traitor bands invade thy shore, Maryland! my Maryland / Thy sons will rally as of yore, Maryland! my Maryland.”118 In later years, the songs “Florida, My Florida” and “Michigan, My Michigan” were both modeled after the Maryland hit. The Maryland Martyrs They bore them to a gloomy cell, And barred them from the light, Because they boldly dared to tell The people what was right. They dared their feeble voice to raise, Against oppression’s power, To show, by truth’s unerring rays, The dangers of the hour. They called them by a traitorous name, And with a fiendish hate Heaped on their heads a load of shame, Such as on felon’s wait. They dragged them from their peaceful hearths Upon a despot’s word, Although the vilest man on earth Should by the law be heard. Thus they the men of lofty soul, Wielding a magic pen, Whose word the people would control, And sway the minds of men, Is by the tyrant Lincoln’s nod, Of liberty bereft, Struck by a base usurper’s rod— In dark confinement left. They shut them up, but could not chain Their free and fearless soul;

174

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The sacred chamber of their brain Was free from their control. They could not bind the eagle thought That from their mind took flight, Efface the lessons they had taught, Nor bar the truth from light. For tho’ within a dungeon damp, They shut them from the day, They could not quench truth’s airy lamp That burns with fadeless ray. But hark! upon the sea of life, What sound comes from afar? It is the harbinger of strife, Of red ensanguined war. It is the People’s voice that breaks Like wild waves on the ear; It is the People’s tramp that shakes The earth both far and near. Lift up thy head, O martyrs brave, Thy chains will broken be; The People come their friends to save— Look up, thou wilt be free!119

During the Civil War, Fort McHenry served as a detention camp for Confederate prisoners. As noted, there was considerable pro-Confederate sentiment among Marylanders. This song was probably meant to give moral support to the imprisoned Confederate troops and also to those Southerners who felt betrayed by Maryland’s Unionist stance. Wars often produce some immortal song lyrics, but the pompous tenor of these lines doomed them to evanescence: there is no evidence that the song was sung after the war’s conclusion. Down-Trodden Maryland Air—“Tom Bowling” Down-trodden, despised see brave Maryland lie, The noblest of all States; Up and to ransom her let each one try, To hasten the plans of the Fates. Her land is of the greatest beauty, That e’er the eye gazed on; Fearless she roused her to her duty, Nor paused she till ’twas done. From her, her Old Line has departed, With leaders true and brave; She’s been of all the truest hearted, Why suffer her to be a slave; She’s waited long with murmurs deep, Aye calling on ye oft; Still traitors on her insults heap. Still lies her hope aloft.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

175

But yet she hopes for better things, When Jeff who all commands, This wanton war to an end quick brings, With peace to our southeren lands. And when the South is free once more, Twill be her proudest boast, That forth the first her men did pour, To curb the invading host.120

A border state, Maryland remained in the Union but was home to many Confederate sympathizers. This song views the Northerners as invaders and traitors—a strange interpretation of the actual sequence of events. In November 1861, when it was written, the Confederate forces were holding their own against the Northern troops, and Southerners could still expect victory under their president, Jefferson Davis. The Maryland Battle Cry Hark! the trumpet calls to duty, See, our glorious Flag unfurl’d, The Stars and Stripes unite in beauty, The pride and envy of the world. Chorus: So let the Southerns do as they will, We are for the Union still; For the Union, for the Union, We are for the Union still. If we wish that Flag respected, We must answer honor’s call; Duty must not be neglected, Tho’ our dearest friends should fall. Chorus. Traitors have betrayed the nation, But we will by the Union stand; Let every patriot seek his station, With the gallant warlike band. Chorus. Tho’ the Rebels have exulted, In their treason and their shame; Yet the Flag they have insulted, Still retains its honor’d name. Chorus. Long its folds shall float above us, While we shout our battle cry; “We will fight for those who love us, But let every traitor die.” Marylanders to your station, Boldly meet the traitor foe; Fight as bravely for the nation, As you did in Mexico. Chorus. Then your names shall live in story, And echo’d be from strand to strand, Then fight for Liberty and Glory, The Union and your Native land. Chorus.121

176

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

This example is offered to counterbalance the preceding song. Its sentiments are decidedly pro-Union. The broadside bears a woodcut between the first and second lines of the title. Though it is difficult to make out all the details, it depicts a female figure robed in classic garb, standing with a balance scale in one hand and a sword sprouting an olive branch in the other; at her feet seems to be a quiver of arrows; behind her are two barrels, and behind them, the mast of a ship. The nuances of this array of iconic images are difficult to parse. Maryland, My Home Sweet Maryland, thy groves are green, And sparkling are thy rills, And lovely are thy vales between, Thy fair and verdant hills. Though far away I plow the sea, Or in far countries roam, My heart with fondness clings to thee, Sweet Maryland, my home! Long years, have passed, since when a boy, I roamed thy fields with glee, Or on thy waters, bright with joy, Dashed outward to the sea. How fair, how bright those scenes to me, Thy skies, how bright above; At night’s pale hour I dream of thee, Sweet Maryland, my love! What joy to see thee yet once more, To hail thy favored land! How gladly would I leap on shore, To tread thy silver strand! And I will cross Atlantic’s main, When summer days shall come, To roam the woods and hills again, Of Maryland, my home!122

This love letter, treating Maryland with the passion of a long-absent lover, contrasts starkly to the militant songs that kept printing presses running overtime during the Civil War, of which several examples are gathered previously. None of the three broadside prints seen gives a clue to an author (save for his gender), which suggests the songs had already circulated for some while at the (unspecified) time of their publication. That there is no hint of conflict suggests an antebellum date, but that is only conjectural. It could also have been written in the 1870s as an attempt to bury the lingering bitter memories of the war. Baltimore Fire It was only though a fault by an error That I heard a cry I ever will remember The fire sent and cast its burning embries On another fated city of our land. Chorus: Fire, fire, I heard the cry, From every breeze that passes by,

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

177

All the world was one sad cry of pity, Strong men in angry praise [anguish prayed?] Calling loud to heaven for aid While the fire in ruins was laying Fair Baltimore, the beautiful city. Amid an awful struggle of commotion The wind blew a gale from the ocean, Brave fireman struggled with devotion But the efforts all proved in vain.123

The Great Baltimore Fire of 1904 raged from 10:48 A.M. Sunday, February 7, to 5:00 P.M. the following Monday. More than 1,200 firefighters were required to bring the blaze under control. The fire was reported first at the John Hurst and Company building at 10:48 A.M. and quickly spread. By 1:30 P.M., units from Washington, D.C., were arriving. Efforts to halt the fire’s spread by dynamiting buildings around the existing fire proved unsuccessful. Contributing to the duration of the fire was the lack of national standards in firefighting equipment. Although fire engines from nearby cities (such as Philadelphia and Washington, as well as units from New York City, Wilmington, and Atlantic City) responded, many were useless because their hose couplings failed to fit Baltimore hydrants. As a result, the fire burned over 30 hours, destroying 1,526 buildings spanning 70 city blocks.124 The song transcribed previously was modified slightly from a song of 1872, written by Joe A. Gulick, about the great Boston fire of that year. The sections borrowed and modified for the later Baltimore disaster follow: Boston Fire It was only on the Tenth of last November That we heard the news we ever shall remember, That the fire-king had cast its burning embers O’er another fated city in our land. As the woeful tidings flashed along the wire, Of this other sad catastrophe so dire, That Boston, beauteous city was on fire, And sinking ’neath the fiend’s relentless hand. Chorus: Fire! fire! was heard the cry, In every breeze that passed us by, All the world did heave a sigh of pity; Strong men in anguish pray’d. Fervent prayers to Heaven to aid, Before the fire in ruins laid, Fair Boston, beauteous city. And all through the terrible commotion, The wind blew a gale from off the ocean, The brave firemen worked with all devotion, To laugh at their efforts yet it seem’d; And soared with fiery prayer still higher O’er chimney top, steeple and church spire, Till all was one vast flame of fire, And the light around the horizon gleamed. Chorus.125

178

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Charlie Poole (1892–1931), the North Carolina hillbilly musician who sang the text of “Baltimore Fire” for the Columbia Phonograph Corporation in 1930, was a hard-drinking rambling musician who traveled throughout North Carolina and adjacent states, making a living by his music. When he started making phonograph recordings in 1925, he and his band proved to be one of the most popular groups in the Appalachian region, and he enjoyed a successful musical career until his excessive drinking led to an early heart attack at age 39. Poole’s recording is the only one of “Baltimore Fire” until the 1950s. Then, other folk revival groups, entranced with the style of the North Carolina Ramblers, recorded many of their best hits, and “Baltimore Fire” gained a new career on recordings and in concerts. Unfortunately, Poole had a tendency to garble his words (alcohol is an effective solvent for syllables), and most transcriptions of his text give the first line as “It was by a silver falls by a narrow,” but with the written text as a guideline, his words can be deciphered.

NOTES 1. David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), in particular “Conclusion,” pp. 783ff. Population figures are from “Percent Distribution of the White Population, by Nationality: 1790,” in Historical Abstract of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1961), Series Z 20; values have been recomputed excluding the “unassigned” population. See also Stephen A. Flanders, Atlas of American Migration (New York: Facts on File, 1998). 2. Taken primarily from Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-R edition. 3. Frank M. Warner, Folk Songs and Ballads of the Eastern Seaboard—from a Collector’s Notebook (Macon, GA: Southern Press, 1963), 40. 4. From Jonathan Pearson et al., A History of the Schenectady Patent in the Dutch and English Times; Being Contributions toward a History of the Lower Mohawk Valley, ed. J. W. MacMurray (Albany, NY: Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1883), 269–70. Patent in this context means a land grant. 5. From Rufus Griswold, Curiosities of American Literature (1841); published with I. C. D’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature (New York: World Publishing House, 1876), 32. 6. From The Forget Me Not Songster (New York: Nafis and Cornish, n.d.), 213–17, punctuation modernized. A recording by Stan Ransom is available on his CD, The Battle of Plattsburgh: Music from the War of 1812 (Plattsburgh, NY, 2001). 7. Edith E. Cutting, Lore of an Adirondack County (Elizabethtown, NY: Denton, 1944), 44. 8. The sheet was captioned “The Battle of Plattsburg: Tune . . .‘Banks of the Dee’: Together with the Siege of Plattsburg, sung in the character of a Black sailor—tune—‘Boyn-water.’ ” Printed and sold by Nathaniel Coverly, no. 16, Milk Street, Boston, [1814?]. The first line of “Battle of Plattsburg” is “Twas autumn, around me the leaves were descending.” Of greater historical interest is the second ballad, written in imitation of African American speech; the first line is “Back side Albany stan’ Lake Champlain.” Variously titled “The Battle of Plattsburgh” and “Backside Albany,” it was written by Micah Hawkins (1777–1825). A copy is owned by the American Antiquarian Society at Worcester, Massachusetts. Recordings of “Noble Lads of Canada” and “Backside Albany” as well as other ballads about the battle were made by Stan Ransom, the “Connecticut Peddler,” and can be heard on his CD, The Battle of Plattsburg: Music from the War of 1812 (Plattsburgh, NY, 2001). 9. “Battle of Plattsburgh” (n.p., ca. 1814), first line: “My countrymen what thanks we owe.” A copy is at Brown University’s Hay Library, catalog 1-SIZE HB23247. 10. From Pete Seeger, Frontier Ballads, Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2175. Towpath is the ground path paralleling the canal along which mules, pulling the barge by ropes, were driven; nigh mule and off mule are the mules nearer to, and further from, respectively, the windy side; blind staggers are a disease of the brain and spinal cord affecting horses, mules, etc.; reef means “roll up”; royals are small, square, usually topmost sails; son of a gun was originally a child born at sea on

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

179

a voyage long enough that wives were permitted on board. For another New York canal song, see Norm Cohen, Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 93. 11. For example, compare the following stanza: The cook, she being kind-hearted, she loaned us an old dress, Which we raised upon a setting-pole as a signal of distress” From The Forecastle Songster (New York: Cornish, Lamport, 1851), 271–75. 12. Carl Sandburg, The American Songbag (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927), 180. 13. Called “Young Carlotta” by the singer of this text, Almeda Riddle, of Arkansas. Recorded in 1964 (Vanguard LP VRS 9158). Standard title is “Young Charlotte”; see Laws, Native American Balladry, 221 [G 17]. 14. Smith’s poem appeared in The Rover 2 (December 28, 1843): 225. Smith prefaced his text with the headnote, “The incident, from which the following ballad is woven, was given in the paper three or four years ago as a fact. It was stated, that a young lady in the country, while riding some distance to a ball on New Year’s evening, actually froze to death.” The ballad was the subject of investigation by Phillips Barry (1880–1937); see Helen Hartness Flanders, Elizabeth F. Ballard, George Brown, and Phillips Barry, The New Green Mountain Songster (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966), 111–15. 15. Phillips Barry, in Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1934), 8:17–19; text received from Mr. F. L. Tracy of Brewer, Maine, in 1934. Barry suggested it was folk poet, Alonzo Carter, who wrote the additional stanzas and first sang the ballad widely, setting it to an older, familiar tune. 16. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 30 (New York: Delaney, n.d. [ca September 1902]), 24. No credits given; punctuation modified. A substantially different text was published on a broadside, “The Murdered Wife: or, the Case of Henry G. Green, of Berlin, Rensselaer County, N.Y.” A copy is held by Brown University’s John Hay Library, catalog no. HB 16182. A traditional version, recorded in the Ozarks from Charley Short on August 22, 1941, in Galena, Missouri, can be heard on Folksongs of the Ozarks, Rounder CD 1108. 17. For historical details, see Louis C. Jones, “The Berlin Murder Case in Folklore and Ballad,” Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association 34, New York History 17 (1936): 192–205. This article includes a reproduction of the broadside “The Murdered Wife . . .” 18. From a broadside published by Henry De Marsan, New York, n.d., ca. 1858. 19. New York Times, November 13, 1858, p. 4. 20. Another ballad, “Lament of James Rodgers . . .” (New York: Andrews, [1858]), can be seen on the Web site “America Singing: Nineteenth-century Song Sheets,” at http://memory.loc.gov. 21. For several examples, see James N. Healy, ed., “Execution Ballads,” in The Mercier Book of Old Irish Street Ballads, vol. 1 (Cork: Mercier Press, 1967), sect. 2. 22. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 16 (n.d. [ca January 1898]), 25. The song was more usually called “Stokes’ Verdict” and was published as such on a broadside by H. J. Wehman. Another broadside, published by W. J. Schmidt of Baltimore, was titled “Jim Fisk Never Went Back on the Poor”—written and sung by W. S. Salmon, the rising young comic and “motto” vocalist. Brown University’s John Hay Library owns a broadside version titled “Stokes’ Verdict: A New and Original ‘Song of the Times,’ as Now Sung in the Principal Theatres,” catalog no. HB 22372. 23. Extracted from Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 91–92, which see for more details and references. 24. From a broadside published by E. Nason and Company, New York [1880–1889]; copy in the collection of the Center for Popular Music, catalog no. 002153-BROAD. 25. Reported by J. W. Green, whose mother used to sing the song in the 1880s, in Western Folklore 6 (July 1947): 278. 26. From Harper Brothers, Merry Folks Songster (Lockport, NY: Merchant’s Gargling Oil, n.d., ca. 1883), 23.

180

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

27. Another traditional version (untitled) was sent to Robert W. Gordon by Malcolm Kingsberg in ca. 1927. It doesn’t mention Bottle Alley either, but places the Chinese laundryman’s shop at the corner of New York’s Mott and Pell streets (Gordon letter no. 3806). 28. From Ivan H. Walton and Joe Grimm, Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), 117. As sung by John W. Green of Beaver Island. 29. As sung by Riley Puckett, recorded April 11, 1929, in Atlanta, Georgia; issued on Columbia 15448-D, 78 rpm, in November 1929. Repeated stanzas have been omitted. 30. For more details, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 415–22. 31. As sung at Gloversville, New York, by a former woodsman, and published in Harold W. Thompson, Body, Boots and Britches: Folktales, Ballads and Speech from Country New York (New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1939), 444 – 45. 32. The story has also been told in Charles Samuels, Death Was the Bridegroom (New York: Fawcett, 1955); in Craig Brandon, Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited (Utica, NY: North Country Books, 1966); and in Joseph W. Brownell and Patricia Wawrzaszek Enos, Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906 (Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes, 1986). See also the recently republished [Grace Brown], Grace Brown’s Love Letters (Surry, NH: Surry Cottage Books, 2006). 33. As recorded by the Carolina Night Hawks in Atlanta, Georgia, on April 17, 1928. Issued on Columbia 15256-D, 78 rpm, in July 1928. Reissued on Music from the Lost Provinces, Old Hat 1001. Sugar probably means “sugar-head”—a slang term for moonshine whiskey. 34. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “New Jersey.” 35. Reprinted from Rufus W. Griswold, Curiosities of American Literature, where it was introduced with this note: “Numerous songs, odes, epigrams and pasquinades, commemorating this battle, appeared during the war. We have several loyal productions upon this subject; but they are too profane and corrupt for publication at the present time. The author of the one subjoined is unknown. The Earl Dorset’s lyric ‘Fire of Love,’ which was very popular at the period of the Revolution, is, probably, the song upon which this was modelled.” The text also appears in the Rough and Ready Songster, also titled The National Songster (New York: Richard Marsh, n.d., ca. 1846), 240–42, and in Frank Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania in Song and Story. With Notes and Illustrations. With an Appendix: The Battle Ballads and Other Poems of Southwestern Pennsylvania (Greensburg, PA: printed by the author, 1878), 342. 36. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 244. 37. Words by F. B. Johnson, to the tune of “Wait for the Wagon.” Text from a broadside published by Johnson, Printer, 7 North Tenth Street, Philadelphia, which bears the note, “Composed at Dividing Creek.” A copy is held at the Library of Congress in the Civil War Song Sheets collection and can be seen at http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/. 38. Sung by Harry Ball, the “Yankee Vocalist,” at Hitchcock’s National Concert Saloon, 172 New Canal Street, New York. Air: K.Y.K. Text from a broadside published by H. De Marsan, 38 Chatham Street, New York. A copy is in the Library of Congress collection American Songs and Ballads and can be viewed at http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/. 39. Sent to Robert W. Gordon by William D. Brandon, Attorney, Butler, Pennsylvania, ca. May 1926 (Gordon letter no. 1673). 40. From Jim Albertson, Down Jersey: Songs and Stories of Southern New Jersey, Smithsonian Folkways LP FS 5203/Cass 05203. 41. From Jim Albertson’s brochure notes to his LP/cassette album, Down Jersey. 42. From Herbert Halpert, “Ballads and Folk Songs from New Jersey,” Journal of American Folk-Lore 52 (1938): 67–68. Sung by Oliver Minney near Cookstown, New Jersey, October 11, 1936, and several times thereafter. He did not sing the verses in the same order on different occasions. 43. Cf. “It’s Hard Times in Lancaster Jail,” a New Hampshire song; also John A. Lomax and Alex Lomax, American Ballads and Folk Songs (New York: Macmillan, 1934), 138; John Harrington Cox, Folk-Songs of the South Collected under the Auspices of the West Virginia Folk-Lore Society

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

181

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 511; and W. R. Mackenzie, Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia (1928), 148. 44. Jim Alberton, Down Jersey: Songs and Stories of Southern New Jersey, Smithsonian Folkways LP FS 5203/Cass 05203. 45. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 25 (1900?), 4. Written by Larry Lavake. 46. From “Over 200 Perish In Burning Liners,” New York Times, July 1, 1900, p. 1. 47. From ibid., no. 30 (n.d. [ca September 1902]), 8. Written by Larry Lavake; air: “I’ll Be With You When the Roses Bloom Again.” 48. From a recording by Bill Cox, made February 26, 1935, and issued in May 1935 on Perfect 13123 and other labels; words credited to Bob Miller. Cox’s text is difficult to transcribe; some of the names he mentions do not correspond to anyone discussed in historical accounts of the trial. 49. For more information, see Lloyd C. Gardner, The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004); Jim Fisher, The Ghosts of Hopewell: Setting the Record Straight in the Lindbergh Case (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999); and Noel Behn, Lindbergh: The Crime (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994). 50. From a recording by Ray Whitley made ca. September 17, 1934, in New York City but remade a week later and released on Conqueror 8383, 78 rpm, in November 1934; words credited to Bob Miller. 51. From http://www.wardline.com/morrocastle html. 52. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Pennsylvania German.” 53. Sir William Howe commanded the British army, which entered Philadelphia on September 27, 1777. 54. The ellipsis conceals the name of the wife of Joshua Loring, a refugee from Boston, made commissary of prisoners by General Howe. 55. Sir William Erskine was a general in the British army. 56. From Griswold, Curiosities of American Literature, 38. 57. Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1964), 209–10. 58. For more details, see Harold Krelove, “The Battle of the Kegs,” in Two Penny Ballads and Four Dollar Whiskey, ed. Kenneth S. Goldstein and Robert H. Byington (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966), 61–70. 59. Collected by Samuel Bayard and printed in George Swetnam, “Tragedy of the White Rocks,” in Pittsylvania Country (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1951), 59–68. The text was also printed in Lomax and Lomax, American Ballads, 159–60, but with several textual differences, the only significant ones being (1) that her age is given as 19 and (2) the first line of the penultimate stanza ends, “is the future of some snare,” which preserves a proper rhyme scheme. 60. Quoted in Lomax and Lomax, American Ballads, 159–60. 61. Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania, 403–10, prints two other contemporary ballads about the murder. 62. As sung by O. J. Abbott of Hull, Quebec, for Edith Fowke, and issued on Songs of the Great Lakes, Smithsonian Folkways FM 4018. For references to other collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), [A 5]. 63. From an unidentified issue of the Williamsport Breakfast Table as reprinted in Wehman’s Song Book, no. 9 (1885?), 13. 64. From Forget Me Not Songster, 164–65. 65. A broadside was published by Leonard Deming of Boston between 1832 and 1837. 66. See Ozark Folksongs, Rounder CD 1108, for a version recorded in the 1940s, and the Helen Hartness Flanders Collection at Middlebury College, Vermont, for other collected renditions. 67. Published by J. Torr, 29 South Third Street, Philadelphia. 68. For more information, see Morison, Oxford History, 481–82; Agnes Repplier, “Riots,” in Philadelphia: The Place and the People (New York: Macmillan, 1898), 342–55; and John B. Perry and Henry Jordan, A Full and Complete Account of the Late Awful Riots in Philadelphia (New York: Nafis

182

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

and Cornish, 1844), and the Web site http://www.irish-society.org/Hedgemaster%20Archives/phila delphia.htm. I am grateful to Lew Becker for bringing these ballads to my attention and making copies available to me. 69. Repplier, “Riots,” 343. 70. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 8 (n.d. [ca September 1895]), 5. Words and music by Ned Yale, 1894. There were three closely related 78-rpm hillbilly recordings: “Down in the Tennessee Valley” by Emry Arthur (Vocalion 5208, 1928); “The Village Blacksmith” by Cecil Vaughn (Columbia 15465-D, 1929); and “The Tramp Song” by the Blue Ridge Entertainers (Columbia 15647-D, 1931). 71. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Lehigh.” 72. For example, see George Milburn, Hobo’s Hornbook: A Repertory for a Gutter Jongleur (New York: Ives Washburn, 1930), 41–43. 73. Ibid., 41–58. 74. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 7 (January 1895), 21, without attribution. 75. According to Korson, these were Thomas Williams of Plymouth and David Jones of Grand Tunnel, George Korson, Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miner (New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1927), 131–39. 76. From James Taylor Adams, Death in the Dark: A Collection of Factual Ballads of American Mine Disasters (Big Laurel, VA: Adams-Mullins Press, 1941), 33–36. A similar text was published by Henry J. Wehman, Collection of Songs, no. 10 (April 1886?)—except that the number found dead in the penultimate stanza is 97. A recording by John J. Quinn can be heard on A Treasury of Library of Congress Recordings, Rounder CD 1500. 77. Korson, Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miner, 131–39; M. E. Henry, “More Songs from the Southern Highlands,” Journal of American Folklore 44 (1931): 113; Henry W. Shoemaker, Mountain Minstrelsy of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Newman F. McGirr, 1931). 78. A copy is held in the Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Popular Music’s Goldstein collection, catalog no. 002539-BROAD. 79. From George Korson, Minstrels of the Mine Patch: Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1964), 265–67. Korson received a written copy of the text in 1836 from Barney Kelly, an Ashland minstrel. 80. Korson, Songs and Ballads, 187. 81. For more information on the Molly Maguires, see Wayne G. Broehl Jr., The Molly Maguires (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965). 82. Korson, Minstrels of the Mine Patch, 240–68. 83. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 5 (May 1894), 19. Words and music by Joe Flynn, copyright 1889 by Chas. D. Blake and Co. For references to collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 219 [G 14]. A recording by Mark Moody can be heard on Brave Boys: New England Traditions in Folk Music, New World Records CD 80239. 84. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Johnstown.” 85. From Jacob A. Evanson, “Folk Songs of an Industrial City,” in George Korson, ed., Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1949), 437–38. Collected from Andrew Kovaly at McKeesport in 1947. The song was recorded by Vivien Richman on Folk Songs of West Pennsylvania, Folkways LP FG 3568. 86. Evanson, “Folk Songs.” 87. Collected from Peter Haser at New Kensington, Pennsylvania, in 1940, by George Korson, and printed in Korson, Coal Dust on the Fiddle: Songs and Stories of the Bituminous Industry (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1965), 405–6. 88. From Evanson, “Folk Songs.” 89. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 2 (May 1893), 2. Words and music by Willie Wildwave; copyright by William W. Delaney on December 15, 1892. Olive Woolley Burt published a version (lacking the second stanza) she collected in 1922 in Embreevilla, Pennsylvania, in American Murder Ballads and Their Stories (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 185.

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC)

183

90. For a lengthy exposition of the events at Homestead and the songs they inspired, see Archie Green, “Homestead’s Strike Songs,” in Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes: Laborlore Explorations (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), chap. 7. 91. See Walter B. Hayward, “I Cannot Sing the Old Songs,” New York Times, June 8, 1924; reprinted as “Songs of Their Day,” in the Grosvenor Library Bulletin 6 (June 1924): 1–5. 92. As recorded by Riley Puckett on September 29, 1937, for Decca records in New York City; released on Decca 5455, 78 rpm. Words by Fred tait-Douglas, music by Carson J. Robison, copyright 1926. 93. From Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 244. 94. Ibid. 95. From Phares H. Hertzog, The Favorite Songs, Sayings and Stories of a Pennsylvania Dutchman (Witmer, PA: Applied Arts, 1966), 14. 96. For other examples, see Cohen, Folk Music, 104–6. 97. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Delaware.” 98. From a broadside in the collection of the Center for Popular Music, MTSU, catalog no. 001486-BROAD; “published and sung by James D. Gay of Philadelphia” in 1862–1866. 99. From the Web site for Fort Delaware State Park, http://www.visitthefort.com/historyx html. 100. “State Song” from E. O. Harbin, Phunology: A Collection of Tried and Proved Plans for Play, Fellowship, and Profit, rev. ed. (Nashville, TN: Cokesbury Press, 1923), 408–9. 101. Credited to writer Gordon Irving and recorded by Perry Como as “Delaware,” RCA Victor ep 47–7670, 45 rpm. 102. From Sam Hinton, brochure notes, p. 5, to his LP The Wandering Folksong, Smithsonian Folkways FA 2401. 103. From Marcia and Jon Pankake, Joe’s Got a Head Like a Ping-Pong Ball: A Prairie Home Companion Folk Song Book (New York: Penguin, 1990), 157. 104. From William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, eds., Slave Songs of the United States (New York: Oak, 1965), quoted by Hinton, Wandering Folksong. 105. From Frank Stephens, Some Songs (Arden, DE: Arden Press, 1935), 36. 106. See http://www.theardens.com for more information. 107. Harold Studell, in Stephens, Some Songs, 31. 108. Taken mostly from Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Maryland.” 109. From Forget Me Not Songster, 17–19; punctuation modernized. 110. Another song commemorating the same event (though considerably more verbosely) was “The Battle of North Point,” in The American Songster (New York: John Kenedy, 1838), 223–30. 111. From a broadside published by A. W. Auner of Philadelphia, where it is credited to Sep. Winner, 1862. A copy is in the Brown University Hay Library, catalog no. HB 6281. 112. James J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk, 5th ed. (New York: Dover, 2000), 355–56; E. Lawrence Abel, Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861–1865 (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000), 70–71. 113. Originally titled “Ma Normandie” by French poet and songwriter Frédéric Berat (1801– 1855). 114. This text is taken from James Ryder Randall, Maryland, My Maryland and Other Poems by James Ryder Randall (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1909). The text given in the Web site for the Maryland State Archive (http://www mdarchives.state md.us/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/lyrics. html) is different in several lines. 115. For more historical details, see James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 284ff. 116. From the introduction to Randall, Maryland, My Maryland. 117. For biographical information on Ringgold, Watson, Carroll, and Howard, see the Web sites, http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/brush/ring htm; http://www.dmwv.org/honoring/baltimore htm; http:// www.ushistory.org/declaration/signers/carroll htm; and http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodis play.pl?index=H000841, respectively.

184

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

118. “Maryland! my Maryland!,” adapted by George Barker (A. C. Peters and Brother, 1863). A copy is held by the Center for Popular Music at MTSU, catalog no. 1741-SMVOL. 119. From Library of Congress American Song Sheets collection. It can be viewed online at http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/. 120. This broadside, datelined Baltimore, November 18, 1861, is from the Library of Congress Collection of Civil War Song Sheets. It can be viewed online at http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/. 121. From an undated, unattributed broadside in the Library of Congress. It bears the instruction, “Tune—‘Gay and Happy.’ ” It can be viewed online at http://www.loc.gov/rbc/amss/cw1/cw103540/ 001q.gif. 122. From a broadside held by the Library of Congress, published by McCoull and Slater of Baltimore (n.d.); it can be viewed online at http://memory.loc.gov/amss/as1/as108560/00q.gif. Another broadside of the same text, published in Philadelphia by A. W. Auner, is held by Brown University’s Hay Library, catalog no. HB 4936. 123. From a recording by Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Rambers, 1929, issued on Columbia 15509-D, 78 rpm. Reissued on Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers: Vol. 2—Old Time Songs Recorded from 1926 to 1930, County CD 3508. 124. For more information on the fire, see the Web site for the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage, http://www.mdch.org/fire/. 125. From Cradle’s Empty, Baby’s Gone Songster (New York: A. J. Dick, 18—), 16–17. The identical text also appears in Wehman’s Universal Songster, no. 2 (1884?), 51, “as sung by William Scanlan.”

3 Upper South

Although Virginia’s Jamestown was initially settled by a private group, the London Company, the company failed in 1624, and Virginia became Britain’s first royal colony. Immigration was slow until the 1640s; then, in the next three decades, some 45,000 settlers (80% of whom were male, most of them aged 15–24) arrived, mostly from well-established families in England’s south and west. In 1653 former indentured servants and poor farmers from Virginia, unable to compete for land with the wealthy plantation owners, migrated south into present-day northeastern North Carolina. By 1700 the coastal tidewater areas were largely settled, and those seeking more land began to push west, first into the Piedmont (foothills) region and then, in the 1700s, through passages across the Appalachian Mountains. Four major natural passages were found: one, in the north along the Mohawk River; two across Pennsylvania; and the fourth, relevant here, through the Cumberland Gap. Kentucky and Tennessee were settled in this manner, but also by immigrations from the Mississippi River to the west. Through the Cumberland Gap went the Wilderness Road, continuing on to Harrodsburg and Louisville. A branch called the Tennessee Path was extended to the south, headed for Knoxville and Nashville; eventually it was extended (the Natchez Trace) all the way to Natchez, Mississippi.

VIRGINIA It was on Virginia soil that the first permanent British colony was established in North America—at Jamestown, in 1607. A dozen years later, the settlement earned the dubious distinction of being the first to bring African slaves to the colonies. Jamestown’s early inhabitants faced continued hardships—hunger, poor shelter, Indian hostility, and disease— and more than once, the colony was nearly abandoned.

186

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The governorship of Sir William Berkeley—begun in 1642, interrupted by Puritan rule from 1652 to 1660, and ended in 1677—witnessed the solidification of the colony. The many anti-Puritan cavaliers who fled to Virginia after 1649 added an important element to the population, much of which consisted of indentured white and black servants.1 Virginians played a preeminent role in the events leading up to the American Revolution and the convening of the first Continental Congress in 1774. Virginians Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were, respectively, primary author of the Declaration of Independence and commander in chief of the continental armies. In 1788 Virginia became the 10th state to ratify the Constitution. Just as it played a leading role in the American Revolution, Virginia led the way down the path leading to secession in 1861. Richmond, Virginia, became the capital of the new Confederacy, and Virginia soil became the major battleground throughout the war. In 1863 the state lost one-third of its territory when pro-Union mountaineers seceded to form West Virginia. In 1867 Congress placed the vanquished South under military rule, and Virginia was not readmitted as a state of the Union until 1870.2 The Virginian Maid’s Lament Hearken, and I’ll tell You a story that befell, In the lands of Virginia, O; How that a pretty maid For a slave she was betray’d And O but I’m weary, weary, O. Seven long years I serv’d To Captain Welsh, a laird, In the lands of Virginia, O; And he so cruelly Sold me to Madam Guy, And O but I’m weary, weary, O. We are yoked in a plough, And wearied sair enough, In the lands of Virginia, O; With the yoke upon our neck, Till our hearts are like to break, And O but I’m weary, weary, O. When we’re called home to meat, There’s little there to eat; In the lands of Virginia, O; We’re whipt at every meal, And our backs are never heal, And O but I’m weary, weary, O. When our madam she does walk, We must all be at her back, In the lands of Virginia, O; When our baby it does weep, We must lull it o’er asleep, And O but I’m weary, weary, O.

UPPER SOUTH

187

At mid time of the day When our master goes to play, In the lands of Virginia, O; Our factor stands near by, With his rod below his thigh, And O but I’m weary, weary, O. But if I had the chance, Fair Scotland to advance, In the lands of Virginia, O; Never more should I Be a slave to Madam Guy, And O but I’m weary, weary, O.3

In 1828 Peter Buchan published one of the earliest collections of songs and ballads collected directly from the lips of the peasant folk of northern Scotland. For a while, some scholars questioned how faithfully he reported what he heard; there were suspicions that he might have edited some of his ballad texts silently. This simple song does not sound like it has been tampered with, so we are safe to accept it as a reliable reflection of a bitter period in English-Scottish history when, between the years of 1735 and 1753, children from northern Scotland were kidnapped from their parents and sold into slavery to the plantation owners of the colonies of Maryland and Virginia. A number of merchants of the city of Aberdeen were involved in this practice of hiring press-gangs to round up any unsuspecting children for deportation. When one returned slave, Peter Williamson, tried to publish his story so the good citizens of Scotland could learn what was happening under their eyes, he was punished, jailed, and threatened. One does not have to read much in today’s newspapers to find accounts of similar barbarisms taking place. How the author of this song made it back to Scotland Buchan does not tell us. The Vance Song Green grows the woods where Sandy flows. And peace dwells in that land. The bears there in the laurel lie, And red bucks rove the hills. But Vance no more shall Big Sandy behold, Nor drink of its crystal waves, The partial judge has pronounced his doom, The hunter has found his grave. The judge he said he was my friend, Though Elliott’s life he had saved. A juryman I did become That Elliott he might live. But the friendship I have shown to others Has never been shown to me; That humanity that belongs to the brave Does yet belong to me. It was by the help of James McFarlane Judge Johnston did me call; They took me from my native home— Confined me in a stone wall.

188

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

My persecutors have gained their request, Their promise they have made good; They often swore they never would rest Till they got my heart’s blood. There’s Daniel Horton, Bob and Bill, A lie against me swore, In order to take my life away That I might be no more. But I and they shall meet again When the last trump shall blow; Perhaps I will be in Abraham’s arms While they roll in the gulf below. I killed a man, I don’t deny— He threatened to kill me; For this I am condemned to die, The jury all agree. But they and I together must meet Where all things are well known; If I have shed innocent blood, I hope there is mercy shown. Bright shines the sun on Clinch’s Hills, So soft the west winds blow; The woods are covered with blossoms gay, Perfumed with the wild rose. But Vance no more shall Big Sandy behold, Or breathe its delightful pefume; This day in death his eyes shall close, His body consigned to a tomb. Farewell, my friends and children dear, To you I bid farewell; The love I have for your precious souls No mortal tongue can tell. Farewell, my true and loving wife, To you I bid adieu; And if I reach fair Canaan’s Land, I hope to meet with you. I come, I come, you angels of light! To the worlds of joy I come; Celestial Dove, convey me Home, To the New Jerusalem.4

Several details concerning “The Vance Song” are sketchy, but the story centers around the murder of Lewis Horton in September 1817. According to oral history, Abner Vance was a hunter and Baptist preacher who lived on Clinch River in Russell County, Virginia. His daughter had had a sexual encounter with either Vance’s wealthy neighbor, Lewis Horton, or Lewis’s brother, Daniel. As a result, when they next met, Vance quarreled with the Hortons and ended up shooting Lewis off his horse at the Clinch River. Both Vance and his wife were tried in Russell County for the murder, but only Abner was convicted. After a series of appeals, the original conviction was upheld, and Vance was again sentenced, in May 1819, to be hanged in Abingdon, Washington County, in 1819.

UPPER SOUTH

189

According to Vance’s great grandson, D. K. Vance, “The Vance Song” was composed by Abner Vance himself and sung while he awaited his execution; furthermore, a reprieve had been granted but the execution was carried out minutes before the message arrived. D. K. Vance had in his possession in 1925 a copy of the broadside printing of the song.5 The song was still known in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky more than a century after Vance’s death. It has also been collected under the titles “Vance’s Song,” and “Vance’s Farewell.”6 There is an elegance in this farewell not often seen in southern American folk poetry, but then most of our familiar examples are from much later in the century. Vance, if honest, clearly believed himself innocent of the crime, and went to his death comforted by his religion. De Free Nigger Come all you Virginia gals and listen to my noise, Neber do you wed wid de Carolina boys; For if dat you do your portion it will be, Corn cake and harmony and Jango lango tea. Chorus: O mamsele Maria che bone cum saw, Mamselle Maria che bone cum saw. They will take you and place you on Jango lango hill, Dar de ill make you work and tary to your will; You work all day, your fingers to be quick, Den you trample over de ground like a crooked maple stick. We had a little cow and wee milk her in de gord, I put it in de corner and kivered it wid a bord; Dat am de way da used for to do, When I libed along wid de carlina crew. Buckskins and mockazins to a high degree, Den whe go a courting de prity gals to see; De first word da sez to us when whe do sit down, Why its hayse around de Joney its bake nice and brown. Some have mockazins and some haves none But he dat habs a pair of boots he tinks himself a man; Wid his big Brass butons and his long tail Blu Dem what we call de dandies of de carolina crew. When I was a slave some elebin years ago My master gib me spade shubil and a hoe; But I tell him rite smack it neber would do, For I was bound to shine among de carolina [crew?]. Now the carolina crew da are a bery large croud, They walks in de hubaras and dresses up so loud; And when da are on a spree mind I tell you, You had better meet de debil dan dat carolina crew.7

Apologies are necessary for printing a song whose title contains an epithet that many Americans find exceedingly offensive. Two remarks should be made: first, the song is presented for the historical record, with no intent to use it as a racial slur today. It would be

190

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

dishonest to bowdlerize the text by contriving a socially acceptable euphemism. Second, it is fair to argue that the term was not always as negatively laden with contempt as it has been in the last several decades.8 In the mid-eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, in parts of the country, the term was used neutrally. Whether it was understood that way by African American hearers is, of course, another matter. This song is an early piece from the blackface minstrel stage. The adjective blackface refers to the fact that the actors applied burnt cork to their faces to imitate the complexions of the African Americans. The makeup was so much a part of the minstrels’ outfit that when, during Reconstruction years, genuinely black actors began to participate in minstrelsy, they too felt obliged to use burnt cork makeup. White minstrel-stage entertainers continued to blacken their faces well into the 1930s. Early minstrel songs of this period (1841) were believed by its audiences (and probably its presenters) to be imitations of black slave music; whether the imitation was a form of flattery or of mockery continues to be argued vehemently by various writers. The text does not sound to modern ears like flattery was intended, yet it lacks the feeling of depicting the former slave as an object of derision or contempt. Rather than focusing on the ex-slave per se, the song poses a lighthearted rivalry between Virginians and Carolinians which, for the most part, could be nonracial. (It is remarkable that—in the lyrics—the slave under discussion was emancipated in the 1830s, long before the Civil War.) To a modern audience, that it was published without author credit would suggest either that its performer, R. W. Pelham, was borrowing from older traditional songs or that he was not proud of his creation. However, at the time, the practice was not that unusual. Pelham performed the song frequently and probably was so associated with it that other performers would have been reluctant to borrow it.9 Dick Pelham, by the way, was one of the four entertainers who, in 1843, founded the Virginia Minstrels, the first group to present a full minstrel show and thereby firmly establish blackface minstrelsy as a major American art form. Portions of the text are unintelligible to today’s readers—even with standardized spelling inserted. One wonders if it made more sense 16 decades ago. Is the chorus some nonsense refrain, or is it something meaningful that was badly jumbled? We can decipher “harmony” to be “hominy,” but what of “jango lango,” and “hubaras”? Some of the idiosyncratic spelling is challenging. Antebellum minstrel songs usually attempted to portray black dialect accurately, except in those instances where the theme of the song was the presumed intellectual pretentiousness of the African American dandy, and the text deliberately misused many polysyllabic words. This song falls into neither category neatly. The song serves us another purpose: when compared with some of its descendants, it illustrates the manner in which some folk songs are readily adapted by singers as they move from state to state. Among the traditional songs that can claim “De Free Nigger” as ancestor are the following: Title

First Line

West Virginia Gals Alsea Girls [Oregon] Arkansas Boys Arkansas Boys Arkansas Sheik

“Come all you West Virginia gals and listen to my noise” “Come, you Alsea girls, and listen to my noise” “Come all you pretty gals an’ listen to my voice” “Come all you Tennessee girls and listen to my noise” “Come all you Missouri girls and listen to my noise, Don’t you marry those” “Come all you Missouri girls and listen to my noise” “Come, all young girls, pay attention to my noise” “Come all you Mississippi girls and listen to my noise”

Texan Boys Kansas Boys Mississippi Girls

UPPER SOUTH

The Carolina Crew Don’t marry the Mormon Boys Texian Boys Cheyenne Boys On the Road to California Illinois Gals

191

“I had a little cow and I milked her in a gourd” “Come girls come and listen to my noise” “Lou’siana gals, come and listen to my noise” “Come all you pretty girls and listen to my noise” “Come all girls, pay attention to my voice” “Come on Illinois gals and listen to my noise”

Several of these variant texts are included elsewhere in this collection: all of them— whether taken from hillbilly recordings of the 1920s or field recordings—are (thankfully) completely devoid of any references to anything African American. Poor Goins Come all you young people, That live far and near, I’ll tell of a murder That was done on the Nine Mile Spur. They surrounded Poor Goins, But Goins got away. He went to Ely Boggs. He went there to stay. Ely Boggs, he foreknew him. His life he did betray, Saying, “Come and go with me, And I’ll show you a nigh way.” They started up Nine Mile Spur, boys. They made no delay, ’Till they came across the crossroads, Where Goins they did slay. When they got in hearing, They were lying mighty still. “Your money’s what we’re after, And Goins we will kill.” When they got in gunshot They did bid him for to stand. “Your money’s what we’re after. Your life is in our hands.” Sweet heaven, Sweet heaven, How loud he did cry, “To think of my companion, And now I have to die.” When the gun did fire, It caused his horse to run. The bullet failed to kill him. George struck him with his gun. After they had killed him, With him they would not stay.

192

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They drank up all his whiskey, And then they rode away. His wife, she was sent for. She made no delay. She found his grave dug Along by the way. “Go kill a man for riches Or any such thing. I pray the Lord have mercy Till judgement kills the stings.” Sweet heaven, sweet heaven, We heard her poor mourns. “Here lies his poor body. Where is his poor soul?”10

Alexander Goins was a horse trader who was killed in October 1844 by thieves in Wise County (at the time, Lee County). According to one account, Goins was ambushed by robber George Hall and others hiding along the trail, but he escaped to the house of Ely Boggs. Unfortunately for Goins, Boggs was in league with the highwaymen. Saying that he could show Goins another route out of the area, Boggs led Goins to where Hall’s men were hiding, and Goins was shot and killed. Another version of the tale has it that Goins himself was a horse thief and he was shot by outraged settlers. The song is attributed to Gabriel Church of Wise County. Born in 1825, Church reportedly wrote hundreds of songs, many of them religious, but this is the only one known to have survived.11 As a consequence of where the population was centered and where most of the battles were fought, the ballads from the Revolutionary War and War of 1812 were mainly confined to the northeastern corner of the country. In contrast, Civil War battles took place over a wider geographic region, and so the great abundance of Civil War music has left echoes in many parts of the country. Criminals are often found returning to the scene of their crime. Whether the same can be said of armies, the fact is that two Civil War battles were fought at Bull Run, near Manassas. The earlier battle, on July 21, 1861, was the first important encounter in the war and inspired many songs and poems, of which the following made the most lasting impression on the public memory. Manassa Junction (The Battle of Bull Run) In eighteen hundred an’ sixty one Way down in old Virginia; MacDowell marched with old an’ young, Horse-thieves and other villains. There was Tories there an’ dirty Dutch, An’ Hessians an’ Yankees bloody; With the regular troops from Tennessee United in one body. To crush the traitor was their plan, An’ then march on to Richmond;

UPPER SOUTH

193

An’ handcuff every Rebel man As fast as they could catch ’em. But never was a ditch they dug More ready for the diggers; Nor did they by their false humbug Succeed in stealin’ niggers. Then General Scott from Chesterville Delivered his dispatches; While Beauregard on the battle field Cried, “Boys, pull down your hatches.” Then down they went on German Gulf, An’ stopped their blood and thunder; While Kirby with the Southern boys Put all their men asunder. An’ then the race for life begun, The Yankees seen us comin’; An’ every individual man Displayed his skill a-runnin’. The ladies who came out to see The rebel host defeated; They was themselves compelled to flee When all their men retreated. They lost, poor souls, their crimson fine, An’ all their ball equipage Was scattered o’er the battle line Like common soldiers’ baggage. They left upon the battle ground Their wounded, sick an’ dyin’; They never turned their faces round, So swiftly was they flyin’. Their ammunition, stores an’ guns, Provisions, mess an’ horses, The cowards left behind an’ run Before our Southern forces. No men on earth did fight more brave Than did our Southern soldiers; But many found a soldier’s grave, An’ there his body moulders. But still they will on memory’s page Live on in song an’ story; An’ honored both by youth an’ age, They fill their graves with glory.12

General Irvin McDowell of the North and General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard of the South led their respective ill-prepared armies to an encounter near Bull Run, a small stream about 30 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., and about 3 miles north of the

194

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Confederate camp at Manassas. Though the Union armies (some 39,000 after reinforcements arrived) outnumbered the Southerners (22,000), after five hours they were handily routed, suffering some 2,900 casualties to the rebels’ 2,000. One of the shining lights of the Confederate forces was General Thomas Jonathan Jackson, whose steadfast resistance of Union charges earned him the nickname of “Stonewall.”13 The battle occasioned many broadside poems and songs, but the one given here, though recovered several times in the Ozarks, seems not to have made it into wider circulation. Obviously written by a Confederate sympathizer (if not participant), the song is openly contemptuous of the Yankees. The references to Dutch, Tory, and Hessian troops harkens back to the adversaries in the Revolutionary War, though it was true that many Union soldiers in the west were of German ancestry. The poet was a person of some skill, alternating between deliberate homespun and genuine quality (as, for example, in the last quatrain). The Cumberland ’s Crew Now then shipmates, come gather and join in my ditty, Of a terrible battle that happened of late; When each Union tar shed a tear of sad pity, When he heard of the once gallant Cumberland ’s fate. On the eighth day of March told a terrible story, And many brave tars to this world bid adieu; Our flag it was wrapped in a mantle of glory By the heroic deeds of the Cumberland ’s crew. On the ill-fated day about ten in the morning, The sky it was clear and bright shone the sun; The drums of the Cumberland sounded a warning That told every seaman to stand by his gun. Then an ironclad frigate down on us came bearing, And high in the air the Rebel flag flew; The pennant of treason she proudly was wearing, Determined to conquer the Cumberland ’s crew. Then up spoke our captain with stern resolution, Saying, “Boys, of this monster now don’t be dismayed; We’ve sworn to maintain our beloved Constitution, And to die for our country we are not afraid.” Our noble ship fired, our guns dreadfully thundered, Our shot on the Rebel like hail did we pour; The people on shore gazed with terror and wonder, As the shots struck her sides and glanced harmlessly o’er. Now the pride of our Navy can never be daunted, Though the dead and the wounded our decks they did strew; “We’ll die at our quarters or conquer victorious,” Was answered in cheers by the Cumberland ’s crew. We’ve fought for the Union, our cause it is glorious, To the Star-Spangled Banner we’ll ever be true; Wherever we are we’ll make tyranny tremble, Or we’ll die by our guns like the Cumberland ’s crew.14

This ballad chronicles one of the great naval battles of the Civil War and a prologue to a sea change in maritime warfare. On March 8, 1862, off the coast of Newport News,

UPPER SOUTH

195

Virginia, the Northern frigate Cumberland was engaged by the Confederate Merrimack, the first ironclad fighting ship and the secret weapon of the Confederacy. The Union men in the square rigger watched helplessly as their cannon fire bounced harmlessly off the iron sides of the strange-looking armor-plated vessel. The Merrimack closed in and rammed the Cumberland amidship, and the stricken vessel quickly sank. Over 100 sick and wounded, who could not be removed from the ship, perished. The following day, the Merrimack was in turn defeated by the Yankee ironclad Monitor. The ballad text is written in stanzas of eight lines, which corresponds to the doublelength melody. In what used to be a characteristic singing device in the northern states and Canada, the singer renders the last four words of the song declamando—that is, spoken rather than sung. “The Cumberland ’s Crew” concerns a battle in the Chesapeake Bay; nevertheless, the ballad is remembered primarily in the Northeast and around the Great Lakes, where maritime songs in general thrived best. The ballad became a widely known favorite; in particular, its melody was coopted for many later topical ballads. Monitor and Merrimac (Air—Yankee Doodle Dandy) I’m going to sing a song, I won’t detain you long, If you listen I will tell you how, so handy, O; The Monitor went smack up to the Merrimac, And upon her sides played Yankee Doodle Dandy, O. Chorus: Hip a dooden do, Jeff Davis, how are you? Our Monitor beat your Merrimac quite handy, O, Ericson he’s around, in the world there can’t be found A people like the Yankee Doodle Dandy, O. ’Twas on the Eighth of March the Merrimac slipped out From Norfolk, for to take a cruise so handy, O; She did not think she’d meet any thing in our fleet, Able to give her Yankee Doodle Dandy, O. She went rushing round, smashing every thing she found, Till the Monitor came sailing in so handy, O; And Worden stopped her fun, soon made her cut and run, While the shells they whistled Yankee Doodle Dandy, O. For the Yorktown and the other they’d be a little bother To smash and break them both up, so handy, O; For our gunboats they would do to rip them through and through, While the sailors they’d sing Yankee Doodle Dandy, O. The Merrimac was some, till the Monitor she come, And opened up her little ports so handy, O; Then the shot did fly till the Merrimac’s men did cry, Here’s the Devil, sure, or Yankee Doodle Dandy, O. To Jeff this ought to show that this monster is no go, And that Mechanics in the North are very handy, O; That he must surrender soon, or we’ll blow him to the moon, With inventions of our Yankee Doodle Dandy, O.

196

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now, boys, let us cheer the men that don’t know fear, That worked that little battery so handy, O; They deserve well of us all, let us pray that none may fall, May they live long to sing Yankee Doodle Dandy, O.15

The Civil War naval battle between the Union’s Monitor and the Confederate Merrimack (renamed the Virginia after the Confederates rebuilt it) made naval history as the first between two ironclad warships. The Virginia, originally a wooden steam frigate called the Merrimack, had been sunk and abandoned by Union forces in the Elizabeth River off Norfolk, Virginia, in the spring of 1861. It was raised by Confederate forces a few months later and rebuilt as an ironclad vessel. Nevertheless, it was still sometimes called the Merrimack and the battle is usually referred to that of the Monitor and Merrimack. On March 9, 1862, the Monitor engaged the Virginia/Merrimack at Hampton Roads, off the Virginia coast, where on the previous day the Virginia had destroyed two Union ships (see the preceding song). Exchanges of fire produced insubstantial damage, but after a few hours of battle, the Virginia was forced to withdraw to Norfolk because of receding tides. The Battle at Hampton Roads (as it is often known) is thus generally considered a draw. The encounter, however, proved the effectiveness of the new ironclad ships, and it marked the beginning of modern naval engineering. Two months after the inconclusive battle with the Monitor, the Virginia was destroyed by Confederate forces when they evacuated the Norfolk Navy Yard.16 The Last Fierce Charge ’Twas just before the last fierce charge, Two soldiers drew their reins; With a parting word and a touch of the hand— For they never might meet again. One had blue eyes and curly hair, Nineteen but a month ago; He had rosy red cheeks and a downy chin For he was only a boy, you know. The other was tall, dark, daring and proud, His faith in this world was dim; He had only trusted in those whom he loved— They were all this world to him. They had ridden together in many a raid, They had marched for many a mile; But never before had they met their foe With a calm and peaceful smile. They gazed each other into the face With an awful and ghostly gloom; The tall dark man was the first to speak, Saying, “Charlie, my time has come. “We’ll ride together into the fight, But you’ll ride out alone; Oh, promise me a little more trouble to take, When I am dead and gone.

UPPER SOUTH

“I have a picture upon my heart, I’ll wear it into the fight; Its mild blue eyes and curly hair— It’s like the morning light. “It’s like the morning light to me, It gladdens my lonely life; But little did I care for the frown on her face When she promised to be my wife. “Oh, write to her, Charlie, and tell her I am gone, Send back her fair, fond face; Oh, write and tell her how I died, And where is my resting place. “Oh, tell her I’ll meet her over the boundary line, With heaven and earth between; Oh, tell her I’ll meet her over there, It won’t be long, I mean.” There were tears in the blue eyes of the boy, His voice was low with pain; “I’ll do, my comrade, what you ask, If I ride out again. “But if you ride out and I am left, Will you do as much for me? For I have a mother to hear the news— Write to her tenderly. “One after another she has lost, She has buried a husband and two sons; And I was the last one of her boys, She cheered me and sent me on. “She is praying at home like a mortal saint, Her heart is worn with woe; Oh, tell her I’ll meet her over there, It won’t be long, I know.” Just then the order came to charge— In an instant hand touched hand; And into the thickest of the fight Rode that devoted band. They rode together to the crest of the hill, Where enemy poured shot and shell; Poured clouds of dust on the falling men, And cheered as they fell. Among the dead and dying lay The boy with the curly hair; And the tall dark man who rode by his side Lay dying by him there. There was no one left to write to the girl, The words her lover had said;

197

198

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Nor the mother who waits at home for her boy Will ever know that he is dead. She will never know his last fond thoughts To soothe her in her pain Till she crosses over the river of death And stands by his side again.17

Though there is nothing in the text that identifies the battle scene, in the Ozarks the song is usually called “The Battle of Fredericksburg,” so at least some of its singers identified it with that encounter. In fairness to other states, however, it has also been collected under the titles “Fight at Bunker Hill,” “The Battle of Gettysburg,” and “Custer’s Last Fight,” which would justify claims by Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Montana, respectively. It is a nonpartisan song, about neither manly warfare nor partisan politics nor abolition. It is about soldiers anywhere and everywhere and the domestic tragedy that lingers long after the dust on the battle ground has settled. Fredericksburg, Virginia, was, in mid-December of 1862, the site of one of the Confederacy’s early victories over the North. The contending armies were massive: the Union Army of the Potomac with 122,000 troops and 312 guns, under Ambrose Everett Burnside, and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia with 78,500 men and 270 guns, under Robert E. Lee. The Union army crossed the Rappahannock directly opposite Fredericksburg and launched frontal assaults against the Confederate troops encamped at heights overlooking the river. The attacks were repulsed by the Confederates, and the defeated Union army was compelled to retreat. Union losses—1,284 killed and 9,600 wounded—were more than double those suffered by the Confederates.18 Talt Hall Come all you fathers and mothers, Brothers and sister all. I’ll relate to you a story, The story of old Talt Hall. He’s breaking up our country And trying to kill us all. He shot and killed Frank Slayers, Was the commencement of it all. He left his ol’ Kentucky Virginia for to roam, Leaving his friends and loved ones Back in his Beaver Creek home. He roamed the streets of Wise and Norton Through the summer and the fall. He met with Enos Hylton, And poor Enos had to fall. The posse hunted for him Through valley, hill, and dale. They found him down in Memphis, And he had to go to jail.

UPPER SOUTH

199

They arrested him in Tennessee. They brought him to Gladeville jail, Without any friends or relations, No one to go his bail. They built the platform, boys, Nearby the jailhouse side. He walked out on it and wrung his hands and cried, “If I hadn’t killed Enos Hylton, I wouldn’t have to die.”19

Desperado Talton Hall was born in Kentucky in about 1846, but much of his life of crime—and certainly its termination by his hanging in 1892—was effected in Virginia. Like many outlaws of his day, Hall had a career that was greatly exaggerated, and, like Jesse James, he was credited with many more crimes than he committed. During the Civil War, Talt Hall rode for the Confederacy with General Morgan. He was tried for murder in 1866, 1875, and again in 1883—each time eluding conviction by jurors too terrified to find him guilty. Finally, in July 1891, Hall killed Police Chief Hylton of Norton, Virginia. He fled to Memphis, Tennessee, and though there was a considerable reward on his capture, no one had the nerve to try. He was finally brought back to trial by “Doc” Taylor, his rival in crime. Upon conviction, he was hanged inside a specially built, covered gallows in Big Stone Gap. According to folklorist James Taylor Adams, “Old Talt Hall” was composed by Uriah N. Webb, a 10-year-old boy. The ballad has been reported in Kentucky and southwest Virginia.20 Carry Me Back to Old Virginny Carry me back to old Virginny, There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow, There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime There’s where the old darkey’s heart am long’d to go, There’s where I labored so hard for old massa, Day after day in the field of yellow corn, No place on earth do I love more sincerely Than old Virginny, the state where I was born. Chorus: Carry me back to old Virginny, There’s where the cotton and the corn and tatoes grow, There’s where the birds warble sweet in the springtime There’s where this old darkey’s heart am long’d to go. Carry me back to old Virginny, There let me live ’till I wither and decay, Long by the old Dismal Swamp have I wandered, There’s where this old darkey’s life will pass away. Massa and missis have long gone before me, Soon we will meet on that bright and golden shore, There we’ll be happy and free from all sorrow, There’s where we’ll meet and we’ll never part no more.21

“Carry Me Back to Old Virginny” was written in 1878 by James Allen Bland (1854– 1911), a New York–born entertainer and composer. A graduate of Howard University

200

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

in Washington, D.C., in 1873, he turned to a career on the minstrel stage, achieving his greatest success in Britain between 1882 and 1901. He wrote more than 700 songs, mostly for minstrel shows, among them “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny,” “In the Evening by the Moonlight,” and “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers.” His latter years were spent in poverty and obscurity, and he died in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He wrote “Carry Me Back” while visiting a friend in Tidewater, Virginia. Some of Bland’s songs—though all of considerable charm—share a mood that seems more attuned to the 1840s than the 1870s. In 1940 the song was adopted as the official state song, a distinction which it retained until 1977, when it was retired from service and declared the “emeritus” state song—whatever that means. With its rosily sentimental depiction of antebellum plantation life, Virginians decided that the lyrics were no longer appropriate for an official state song. ( The song is not to be confused with an 1847 work of the same title by Charles T. White.) The Wreck on the C & O Along came the F.F.V., the fastest on the line, A running on the C. and O. road, thirty minutes behind time. As she passed the Sewalls it was quarters on the line; And they received new orders to make up some lost time. Chorus: Many man’s been murdered by the railroad, railroad, Many man’s been murdered by the railroad And lain in his lonesome grave. When she arrived at Hinton the engineer was there, His name was Georgie Alley, with bright and golden hair. His fireman, Jackie Dickerson, was standing by his side, Waiting to get orders, both in the cab to ride. Georgie’s mother came to him with a basket on her arm, Saying, “Georgie dear, my darling son, be careful how you run; Many a poor man’s lost his life trying to make up all lost time, But if you hold your engine right, you’ll get there just on time.” “Oh, mother, I know your advice is good, to the letter I’ll take heed, I know my engine is all right, I know that she will speed; It’s over this road I mean to fly with speed unknown to all, And when I blow for the stock-yard gates they’ll surely hear my call.” Georgie stepped into his cab, the throttle he did pull, Off the engine darted like a fire in angry wool. “It’s o’er this road I mean to fly with speed unknown to all, And when I blow for Big Bend tunnel they’ll surely hear my call.” Georgie said to his fireman, “Jack, a little more extra steam, I mean to pull old No. 4 the fastest you ever seen. I mean to pull her through, my boy, with speed unknown to all, And when I blow for Clifton Forge they’ll surely hear my call.” Georgie said to his fireman, “Jack, a rock ahead I see! I know that death is waiting there to grab both you and me. From this cab now you must leap, your darling life to save; I want you to be an engineer when I’m sleeping in my grave.”

UPPER SOUTH

201

“Oh, no, George, I will not go, I want to die with you.” “Oh, no, Jack, I’ll die for both me and you.” From the cab poor Jack did fly, New River it was high, And as he kissed his hand to George old No. 4 flew by. On the engine darted and against the rock she crashed, Upside down the engine turned, her tender body mashed, His head against the fire-box, the burning flames rolled o’er, “I am glad I was born an engineer to die on 44.” Georgie’s mother came to him, saying, “Son, what have you done?” “Too late, too late, mother dear, my race is almost run. But if I had a local train, the truth to you I’ll tell, I would run her into Clifton Forge, or drop her into hell.” The doctor said to Georgie, “My darling son be still, Your precious life may yet be saved if it be God’s blessed will.” “Oh, no,” said Georgie, “I want to die, I am ready now to go; I want to die with the engine I love, and that’s old 44.”22

This widely known and oft-recorded ballad from an accident near Clifton Forge, Virginia, in 1890, has all the attributes of popular drama: an heroic engineer, challenged to make up lost time, is cautioned by his dear mother to run his engine with care. The engineer promises her he will do so, but the reader knows that, just as in the fairy tales when the protagonist is warned not to do such and such, it will somehow be done. Sure enough, a rock on the tracks suddenly looms in his view and he knows he can’t stop in time; he tells his loyal fireman to jump while he remains at his post, and he dies in the performance of his appointed duty. Like most of the better-known railroad accident ballads, it focuses on the railroaders involved and not the passengers. This in part reflects the fact that most of these ballads were originally written by railroaders and published in railroad men’s journals to commemorate the tragic deaths of beloved comrades. The facts behind the story are well known, and the ballad writer has gotten most of them wrong. George Alley, born in Richmond, Virginia, in 1860, was killed on eastbound Number Four, the FFV (officially, Fast Flying Virginian) five hours after his engine struck a rock on the road on October 23, 1890. It was the fourth serious accident on the FFV since the C & O inaugurated its first luxury “name” train on May 11, 1889. To correct some of the text’s inaccuracies: Alley had straight black hair, not bright and golden; Jack Dickenson was not on the engine at the time; the fireman did not have time to wave good-bye to him, nor did he jump into the New River, which was on the other side of the cab; Alley’s mother did not appear at the side of the dying engineer; the engine was not Number 44, but 134 (the train was Number 4). The text is the earliest that can be dated with certainty; all other early printed texts are probably from the first decade of the twentieth century. There is thus no evidence to bring the song closer than a decade or more to the events it describes. If it is that much more recent than the accident, we might be able to account for so many factual errors.23 The Wreck of the Old 97 Steve Brady kissed his loving wife, By the rising of the sun; And he said to his children, “May God bless you, For your dad must now go on his run.”

Cover to the sheet music for “The Wreck of the Old 97.” Although the accident occurred in 1903, the sheet music was not published until 21 years later, after the appearance of phonograph recordings of the song. From the Library of Congress.

UPPER SOUTH

203

’Twas the twenty-second day of that November, And the clouds were hanging low, He took Old Ninety-seven out of Washington Station Like an arrow shot from a bow. I was standing on the mountain that cold and frosty morning, And I watched curling smoke below; It was streaming from Old Ninety-seven’s smokestack Way down on that Southern road. Ninety-seven was the fasted mail train Ever run the Southern line; But when she reached into Richmond, Virginia, She was twenty-seven minutes behind. He received his orders at the Richmond station, Saying, “Steve you’re far behind; Now this isn’t Thirty-eight but it’s Old Ninety-seven, You must put her into Spencer on time.” When he read his orders he said to his fireman, “Do not obey the whistle or the bell; And we’ll put Old Ninety-seven into Spencer on time, Or we’ll sink her in the bottom pits of hell.” He saw the brakeman signal and threw back his throttle, Although his air was bad; And the signalman said when he passed Franklin Junction You could not see the man in the cab. Steve looked at his watch and said to his fireman, “Just throw in a little more coal, And when we reach those Cumberland Mountains, You can watch Old Ninety-seven roll.” He went over the grade making ninety miles an hour, And his whistle broke into a scream; He was found when dead with his hand on the throttle, And was scalded to death by steam. When the news went in o’er the telegraph wires, This is what the Western said: That brave, brave man that was driving Ninety-seven Is now laying in North Danville, dead. The people waited at the depot, Till the setting of the sun; It was hours and hours the dispatch was waiting For the fastest train ever run.24

The railroader’s biggest fear was of a train wreck, and over the years about 10 times as many railroad men died in train wrecks as did passengers. As noted, most of the songs and poems written about wrecks were from the railroaders’ perspective; it was never the number of people killed in a wreck that determined whether a song was written about it, or whether that song survived. The most popular wreck ballad was about an accident with only nine fatalities: “The Wreck of the Old 97.”

204

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Number 97 was a fast mail train on the Southern Railway that ran from Washington, D.C., to Atlanta, Georgia, between December 1902 and January 1907. On September 27, 1903, because of various delays, 97 reached Monroe, Virginia, 165 miles south of Washington, about an hour late. At that station the crew was changed; the fresh engineer was Joseph A. Broady, who had been with the Southern for only a month and was unfamiliar with Old 97’s route. Outside of Danville, Virginia, the tracks crossed Stillhouse Trestle, a wooden bridge spanning Stillhouse Creek. The trestle is preceded by a dangerous combination of curve and descending grade. Broady, trying to make up lost time, approached the trestle too fast and lost control of the train; the locomotive and the five wooden cars behind it flew off the rails and hurtled into the ravine below. Nine persons were killed and seven others injured. Seventeen-year-old Fred Jackson Lewey, who lived in Danville, was one of the first on the scene of the accident. A week or so later, he began writing a song about it. Other locals added verses to it, and the song gained some local currency. Several commercial hillbilly recordings after 1923 served to spread the ballad around the country, making it one of the best-known traditional train wreck ballads of all time. Lewey (and others who contributed other verses) used a melody that was already well worn by 1903: Henry Clay Work’s tune for his hit of 1865, “The Ship That Never Return’d.” But between Work’s composition and Lewey’s borrowing were several other songs about trains or individuals who set off on some mission never to be seen again. So much so that by 1903 it was an obvious choice for the foundation about a train wreck ballad. This ballad, popular for years after the wreck in Virginia and North Carolina, might have quietly died away had it not been for the advent of the phonograph record and a string of quirky events. Several hillbilly musicians recorded the song between 1924 and 1925, and one of those recordings captured the attention of popular singer Vernon Dalhart, who was looking for a new gimmick to jump-start his stalled recording career. Dalhart’s record producers were willing to try “Old 97” but told Dal that he needed another song for the reverse side of the record. He pulled together a song about a lovelorn prisoner (which he said he and his cousin had written—but that’s another story), called it “The Prisoner’s Song,” and recorded the pair of selections. As fate would have it, the latter piece became an enormous hit, selling close to a million records in a few years’ time (a remarkable achievement for the mid1920s). Naturally, the reverse side of the record saw the same distribution, and as a result, “Wreck of Old 97” became the best-known train wreck ballad since “Casey Jones.” Since the 1920s, the song has been recorded by folk, pop, jazz, blues, western, country, and bluegrass musicians.25 Henry Clay Beattie “Come on honey, let’s go for a spin, You won’t need a wrap, just jump right in; No, don’t take the baby, we won’t go far.” With these last words, he started the car. On a lonely road just out of town, He stopped the car and jumped to the ground; Then he placed a gun to his young wife’s head, And, pulling the trigger, he shot her dead. Here comes Henry Beattie in his automobile, He is coming so fast you can’t see his wheels;

UPPER SOUTH

205

With rings on his fingers and a gun in his hand, He’s going to blame the murder on an innocent man. He placed her body at his side, And sat upon it during his ride; Back to his home he cried in fear, “A robber has shot my wifie dear!” Oh, Henry Beattie, it is a shame! Why did you blacken your honorable name? Bowed your parents’ heads in sorrow and care, For your lies and murder took you to the chair.26

The book published after the event proclaimed it the “most highly sensational tragedy of the century.” More temperate judges might think that 1911 was too early to propound such a sweeping assessment. On July 19 of that year, Henry Clay Beattie reported the murder of his wife while the two of them were out riding on the Midlothian turnpike the previous night. Beattie claimed that they had been driving along happily when, at about 10:45 P.M., a tall, bearded man appeared in the road in front of the car. Beattie brought the car to a halt

Two portraits, murderer Henry Clay Beattie and his secret paramour, Beulah Binford, from the book Full and Complete History of the Great Beattie Case (1911). Author’s collection.

206

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

and exchanged some angry words with the pedestrian. The man, carrying a rifle, raised it to his shoulder and fired a shot, hitting Mrs. Beattie in the face. Beattie leapt out of the car and struggled with the assailant, wresting the gun from his grip. The attacker ran off into the woods. Beattie threw the gun into the backseat of the car and drove to his in-laws’ home, where his mother-in-law was tending the five-week-old Henry Clay Beattie III. Henry Clay Beattie Jr. was the son of a well-to-do and respected businessman. The younger Beattie began at an early age to lead a dissolute life, supported financially by his well-meaning father. Among his various affairs was one with Beulah Binford, not quite 14 when they began dating in about 1907. A child was born to Binford, of which Beattie was said to be the father, but proved sickly and died in 1910 when only a year old. In August of that year, Beattie married Louise Owen, a childhood friend, and a son was born to them nine months and a week after their wedding day. Beattie continued his contact with Binford, and although at the trial he denied that he ever loved her, he did admit to having been with her three or four nights a week for the two weeks preceding the murder. Her diary, disclosed after the trial, revealed that in spite of her unsavory reputation, her attachment to Beattie was genuine and deeply felt. Whether or not Beattie reciprocated her feelings—in court he claimed it was only because of generosity that he paid for her schooling, for the baby’s funeral, and for her to rent and furnish an apartment in Norfolk—could not be determined from the public record. He spent much of the evening preceding the murder with her. Almost immediately after the murder, suspicions grew that Beattie’s story was not truthful. Among the evidence was his cousin Paul Beattie’s confession to having purchased a shotgun on June 24 at Henry’s request and delivering it to him the following day. On September 8, after a trial of 16 days, the jury pronounced Beattie guilty of murder. On the day of his execution, November 24, Beattie confessed fully to his crime. The ballad quoted previously was widely sung in Virginia in years after the crime; in the 1960s and 1970s Virginians could still be found who could recall parts of the song. According to one of them, it was sung to the tune of “Casey Jones,” a pop hit of two years earlier. A completely distinct ballad about the murder was also circulated and recorded in 1927 by Virginia hillbilly singer Kelly Harrell.27 Claude Allen Claude Allen and his dear old father Have met their fatal doom at last; Their friends are glad their troubles are over, And hope their souls are now at rest. Claude’s mother’s tears will gently flow But the loss of the ones she loves so dear; It seems that none can tell her troubles, It seems no one can tell but her. Claude Allen had a pretty sweetheart, To mourn the loss of the one she loved; She hopes to meet beyond the river, A fair you face in heaven above. Claude was young and very handsome, And still had hopes until the last, That he might in some way or other Escape his death at the Richmond Pen.

UPPER SOUTH

207

The governor being so hard-hearted, And not caring what his friends might say; That he finally took his sweet life from him, And they laid his body in the clay. High up on yonders lonely mountain, Claude Allen sleeps beneath the clay; No more we’ll hear his words for mercy, Nor see his face till Judgment Day. Come, all young men, you may take warning, Be careful how you go astray; Or you might be like poor Claude Allen, And have that awful debt to pay.28

The book cover to The Mountain Massacre (1930), a cheap publication telling the history of the escapades of the Allen clan. Author’s collection.

208

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Sidney Allen Come all you people, if you want to hear The story of a cruel mountaineer; Sidney Allen was a rounder, At Hatfield Court House he won his fame. Court called the jury at half past nine, Sidney Allen was a prisoner and he was on time; He mounted to the bar with his pistol in his hand, And he sent Judge Massie to the promised land. Just a moment later, and the place was in a roar— The dead and the dying, they were lying on the floor; With a thirty-eight special and thirty-eight ball Sidney backed the sheriff up against the wall. The sheriff saw that he was in a mighty bad place— The mountaineer was staring him right in the face; He turned to the window and then he said: “Just a moment later and we’ll all be dead.” He mounted to his pony and away he did ride, His friends and his neighbors—they were riding at his side— They all shook hands and swore they would hang Before they would give up to the Bolton gang. Sidney Allen wandered and he traveled all around, Until he was captured in that western town; He was taken to the station with a ball and chain, And they put poor Sidney on that east-bound train. They arrived at Sidney’s home about eleven forty-one, There he met his wife and daughters and two little sons; They all shook hands and began to pray, And they said, “O Lord, don’t take our papa away.” The people they all gathered from far and near, Just to see poor Sidney sentenced to the electric chair; But to their great surprise the judge, he said, “He’s going to the penitentiary instead.”29

The morning of March 14, 1912, was not a good time to be sightseeing at the Carroll County Courthouse in Hillsville, Virginia. Two days earlier, Floyd Allen had been arrested for interfering with police officers who were bringing his nephews back from North Carolina for some minor incidents of disturbing the peace. The original disturbance had taken place late in the summer of 1911. The Allens claimed only threats had been thrown up; officers asserted the Allens had used force. Floyd was tried and convicted in the courthouse and sentenced by Judge Thornton L. Massie to a year in the penitentiary. Floyd, having previously sworn he would rather die than go to prison, leapt up, drew a revolver from his pocket, and shot the judge dead. Almost immediately, other members of the Allen clan drew revolvers and fell to shooting law officers, jury members, and spectators. Sheriff Webb drew his own gun and shot Floyd, but an instant later he and also Attorney William Foster were both fatally shot. Floyd’s brother

UPPER SOUTH

209

Sidna was also wounded. Pandemonium ensued, and people dashed madly for the doors and windows. The Allens fled town, leaving five dead and many others (including three jurors and three spectators) wounded. Eventually, all the Allens were rounded up and brought in for trial. Sidna Allen barricaded himself in his house with a copious supply of rifles and ammunition. On March 15, after a lively exchange of gunfire, the posse rushed his house and found his wife dead from gunshots, and Sidna himself seriously injured. Floyd was captured and locked up; he immediately whipped a pocket knife out of his pocket and slashed his own throat, from which injury he recovered. Some of the fugitive Allens were captured as far away as Iowa. Floyd Allen and his son, Claude, were tried separately, the former on May 18 and the latter on July 17, and both received the death penalty and were electrocuted on March 28, 1913. Friel Allen was given a prison sentence of 18 years. Sidna Allen was sentenced to 35 years but was pardoned in 1926. The “Claude Allen” song was circulating by 1914, and perhaps even earlier. It is fairly factual but overwhelmingly sympathetic toward the Allens, making no mention of any criminal activities except in the very generic moralizing last stanza. ( Note that neither of the ballads refers to the center of controversy, Floyd Allen). “Sidney Allen” (his name is invariably misspelled) was set to the tune of “Casey Jones,” which it parodies rather closely in some lines. “Casey Jones” was a major pop hit of 1911, and its tune became a workhorse for many subsequent songs. “Sidney Allen” has many inaccuracies; possibly it was penned very soon after the fracas, when there were still many conflicting (but plausible) accounts of what actually happened. Its tone is rather neutral toward the actions of the Allens, except that the final stanza implies a general expectation that “Sidney” would justly receive the death penalty. Peter Aceves published a study of the incident and the songs and, observing that no singer has recorded both songs, concluded that they represent two irreconcilable viewpoints of the community.30 Freeda Bolt Amid the Blue Ridge Mountains, There lived a maiden fair; Her life was pure as heaven, Her heart was free from care; She dreamed of love and romance, With heart so glad and free; No gloom within the future, Young Freeda Bolt could see. Nearby lived Buren Harmon, A boy she loved so well; And of these two young lovers, A story I will tell; Was late one Thursday evening, The stars were shining dim; When Buren called his sweetheart To come and go with him. He told her on the morrow, That they would surely wed; But little was she thinking, He’d take her life instead;

210

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They motored to Bent Mountain, A place so dark and lone; And there her form so helpless, He placed beneath a stone. Away from home and mother, And all she loved so well; The bitter pain and anguish, No mortal tongue can tell; Through tears she plead for mercy, But heeding not her cry; Young Harmon left his sweetheart In agony to die. Me thinks the God in heaven, In mercy heard her cry; And sent a band of Angels, To linger very nigh, And bear her spirit over To yonder happy shore, Where dying comes no never, And parting is no more.31

Pregnant Freeda Bolt left the Floyd County community of Willis with her sweetheart, Buren Harmon, on December 12, 1929, on what she happily thought was her elopement. Harmon had other plans. He bound and strangled the woman and hid her body under brush and rocks near the road. Harmon reportedly returned to the crime scene a day or so later, found Bolt still alive, and strangled her again. When Bolt was reported missing, Harmon was naturally the prime suspect. He was taken into custody but did not confess to the crime until after the body was found several days later. Floyd County officials feared that Harmon would be lynched, and the prisoner was removed to Roanoke County for trial. The trial, in which Harmon was portrayed by the defense as dimwitted and insane, held the attention of the public across the state. Even the New York Times mentioned the case. Harmon was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. He was pardoned after serving 18 years. “The Story of Freeda Bolt” was written by D. M. Shank, a local hymn writer, at the request of the Floyd County Ramblers, and the group recorded it for the RCA Victor Record Company in 1930. The Carter Family recorded it for Decca in 1938, and versions of the song were still being sung in the region in the 1970s. Gruver Meadows My name is Gruver Meadows, my name I’ll never deny, I’ve done a cruel murder and in prison I must die; Now listen my good people just listen to what I say, I killed my wife and Standon Dean on the eleventh day of May. ’Twas in the Blue Ridge mountains upon one fatal night, Around my little farmhouse the moon was shining bright; I crept right down that stairway with a thirty-eight pocket gun, And in that fatal moment the awful deed was done.

UPPER SOUTH

211

I crept right up the stairway with the gun still in my hand, My wife was there to meet me and a trembling she did stand; “Oh, Gruver, dear, I love you,” she cried on bended knees, “I love you true my darling, don’t shoot me, Gruver, please.” My anger still a-raging, I caught her by the hair, I beat her and I bruised her—I did no longer care; To her I would not listen, she pleaded in despair, And then with that smoking pistol I shot and killed her there. I went to town next morning and I told what I had done, I surrendered to the sheriff and I then laid down my gun; They put me in the jailhouse, I tried to play insane, But the people were against me, alas, it was in vain. Oh, children, little children, come kiss your papa goodbye, I killed you mother and Stanton Dean and that I’ll never deny; It was my angry nature a sweet revenge did crave, And now your mother and Stanton Dean lie silent in the grave.32

Gruver Meadows and his wife of 13 years, Serena Meadows (she was also his second cousin), owned a farm and mill on Dean Mountain in Rockingham County, Virginia, when the events related in the ballad occurred. On May 11, 1925, they had been working in the woods and had some arguments, which flared up again in the evening after dinner. They lived with their six children and a hired hand, Staunton Dean, who was also distantly related to the Meadows. Gruver jumped out of bed in a rage, grabbed his .38 pistol, and ran downstairs to where Dean was sleeping and put two bullets through his head. He then returned upstairs and shot his wife several times. He then locked five of the children in a back room and, taking his oldest son, walked to Harrisonburg and surrendered to the sheriff. He was tried in June and found guilty and eventually sentenced to life imprisonment in the State Penitentiary. In January 1927, while attending a dance for prison inmates, Meadows escaped and fled to his mother’s house. Borrowing $250 from her and recovering $1,000 that he had hidden in the woods, he caught a train to Detroit. In May of that year, while returning to Virginia, he was seen and arrested. He was returned to Southwestern State Hospital, where he spent the remainder of his life. Friends and relatives told folklorist Charles F. Perdue Jr. that Meadows had been somewhat mentally unbalanced, stating on occasion that he was plagued by witches. Although the ballad about the murders was copyrighted and recorded by Andrew Jenkins, evidence that Perdue gathered indicates that the song was written by two young women, Nina Monger and Mildred Blose, at the local Blue Bell overalls plant on their lunch breaks. They showed their text (they had no tune for it) to the proprietor of the local record store, who said he would send it to New York; before long, their song turned up on a 78 rpm recording by “Gooby” Jenkins. Though Mildred (née Blose) Williams did not believe she was familiar with the ballad “Charles Guiteau,” their ballad follows the pattern of that earlier song closely, and Jenkins used that tune when he made his recording.33 The Cyclone of Rye Cove Oh, listen today in the story I tell, In sadness and tear-dimmed eyes;

212

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Of a dreadful cyclone that came this way, And blew our schoolhouse away. Chorus: Rye Cove (Rye Cove), Rye Cove (Rye Cove), The place of my childhood and home; Where in life’s early morn I once loved to roam, But now it’s so silent and lone. When the cyclone appeared, it darkened the air, Yet the lightning flashed over the sky; And the children all cried, “Don’t take us away, And spare us to go back home!” There were mothers so dear and fathers the same, That came to this horrible scene; Searching and crying, each found their own child, Dying on a pillow of stone. Oh, give us a home far beyond the blue sky, Where storms and cyclones are unknown; And there by life’s friends we’ll plant this glad hand, Our children in a heavenly home.34

On May 2, 1929, a violent storm in Scott County generated a devastating tornado through the Rye Cove Valley. The twister’s path crossed a two-storey, wooden schoolhouse, then occupied by 155 children and eight teachers. The tornado struck the school, shearing off its roof and reducing the rest to a pile of rubble. Almost immediately after, an overturned stove started a fire that torched the debris. Survivors and neighbors rushed to the scene and formed a bucket brigade to extinguish the blaze so that those trapped in the wreckage could be assisted. A special train was called out to Clinchport, six miles from Rye Cove, in order to bear the injured children to the nearest hospital in Bristol, Tennessee. Altogether, 13 children were dead and 54 others were treated for serious injuries. One of the witnesses to the event was Alvin Pleasant Carter, of the Carter Family. He had been arranging a concert booking in an adjacent valley when the tornado struck. As soon as news of the children’s plight reached him, he rushed to the scene to assist the rescue operation. With vivid memories fresh in his mind, he returned home to Mace Springs and composed “The Cyclone of Rye Cove.”35

WEST VIRGINIA The mountainous northwestern part of Virginia was settled by people of very different socioeconomic backgrounds from the more aristocratic settlers of the eastern seaboard (particularly after the influx of great numbers of Irish fleeing the potato famine of the 1840s), and as early as the 1820s, there were proposals to form a separate political entity. That urge did not reach fruition until the formation of the southern Confederacy: in 1861, after Virginia held a convention to decide secession, the denizens of northwestern Virginia refused to accept the action and chose instead to secede from Virginia so they could remain in the Union. In 1863 West Virginia became the Union’s 35th state. Nevertheless, Confederate sympathies remained strong in the southern and eastern counties, which endured pillaging guerrilla bands and families and friendships riven by conflicting loyalties. The late nineteenth century saw the rapid industrialization of the region, and West Virginia soon became one of the nation’s chief producers of coal, oil, natural gas, and lumber.

UPPER SOUTH

213

To provide labor for these burgeoning industries, large numbers of immigrants arrived from Southern and Eastern Europe, especially Italy, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Russia, and African American workers moved in from the southern states. The Battle of Point Pleasant Let us mind the tenth day of October, Seventy-four, which caused woe; The Indian savages they did cover The pleasant banks of the Ohio. The battle beginning in the morning— Throughout the day it lasted sore, Till the evening shades were returning down Upon the banks of the Ohio. Judgment proceedes [sic] to execution— Let fame throughout all dangers go; Our heroes fought with resolution, Upon the banks of the Ohio. Seven score lay dead and wounded, Of champions that did face their foes; By which the heathen were confounded Upon the banks of the Ohio. Colonel Lewis and some noble captains, Did down to death like Uriah go; Alas! their heads wound up in napkins Upon the banks of the Ohio. Kings lamented their mighty fallen Upon the mountains of Gilboa; And now we mourn for brave Hugh Allen Far from the banks of the Ohio. Oh! bless the mighty King of Heaven, For all his wondrous works below, Who hath to us the victory given Upon the banks of the Ohio.36

After the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1763, ending French influence in the area, Britain hoped to avoid difficulties with the Native Americans by barring colonial settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains—an edict that was widely ignored. Virginia’s governor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, undertook a retaliatory action against Native Americans, who were raiding settlers in the prohibited area. The conflict, called Lord Dunmore’s War, ended on October 10, 1774, with a victory over the Shawnee people at Point Pleasant, now in part of West Virginia. Historian Henry Howe recounted how, “in the fall of 1844, while traveling over Western Virginia collecting historical materials, I stayed over night in the cabin of a mountaineer, named Jess Van Bibber, then an old man. I had sought him for information, because his family had been engaged in the border wars. This old man sung to me, in pathetic tones, the song of that battle, sometimes called by them ‘The Shawanese Battle.’ I wrote it down from his lips, and published it in my works on Virginia, and now reproduce it here.”37

214

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

West Virginia Gals Come all you West Virginia gals and listen to my noise, Don’t you court the West Virginia boys, If you do, your portion will be. Corn bread and bacon you will see. (2) When you go a courtin’ they will set you a chair, The first thing they’ll say is “My daddy killed a deer”; Next thing they’ll say when you step down, “Mammy ain’t you bakin’ your johnny cakes brown?” (2) When they go to meetin’ I’ll tell you what they’ll wear, Scissor tail coat, all ready to tear; Old leather boots with the tops turned down, Pair o’ cotton socks that they wear year ’round. (2) When they go to store they take a turn of corn, Pat of salty butter right fresh from the churn; Storekeeper says, “You haven’t got enough For a plug of tobaccer and a bale of snuff.” (2) When they b’il molasses I’ll tell you what they do— Build a rotten furnace without any flue; Grind their cane around and around, (Will) stop molasses biler and they set it on the ground. (2) They build their houses with log poles, Don’t have windows, none that’s all; Clap board roof, an old slat door, Sandstone chimney and a puncheon floor. (2) Take you away to the Blackjack hills, There to live and make your will; There you’ll stay and carve and spade, That is the way of the West Virginia race. (2)38

“West Virginia Gals” is an offshoot of the 1841 song “De Free Nigger,” discussed among the songs of Virginia. The song has been modified remarkably in the intervening decades. Most notably, it is no longer a song about emancipated slaves, but now seems to be about mountain whites, and the age-old theme is the rivalry between the sexes. Many of the lines have been preserved from the 1841 song, but some of the obscure localisms have been pared away and a good deal more has been added. All in all, the text paints an image of an ignorant and socially graceless mountaineer. The group that recorded this song, Al Hopkins and his Bucklebusters, was also called “The Hillbillies,” and was the first group on records to use that soubriquet—possibly it was their band that gave the name to an entire musical genre in the 1920s. Though Hopkins and his colleagues used the term humorously, it has been regarded as pejorative by many southern mountain people, which was one reason why “hillbilly music” was renamed “country music.” The word meant an uncouth and ignorant southern mountaineer—much the sort of person described in the lyrics of this song. John Brown’s Body John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,

UPPER SOUTH

215

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul’s marching on! Chorus: Glory, Hally, Hallelujah! Glory, Hally, Hallelujah! Glory, Hally, Hallelujah! His soul’s marching on. He’s gone to be a soldier in the army of our Lord. (3) His soul is marching on! John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back. (3) His soul is marching on! His pet lambs will meet him on the way. (3) They go marching on! They will hang Jeff Davis to a tree! (3) As they march along! Now, three rousing cheers for the Union! (3) As we are marching on!39 Alternate verses: John Brown died on a scaffold for the slave, Dark was the hour when we dug his hallowed grave; Now God avenges the life he gladly gave, Freedom reigns today. Chorus: John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave; John Brown lives in the triumphs of the brave; John Brown’s soul not a higher joy can crave— Freedom reigns today!40

Connecticut-born John Brown (1800–1859) devoted much of his adult life to the education and freeing of American slaves. In 1855 he moved to the Kansas Territory, where a struggle raged between pro-slavery and antislavery factions. Brown was not above resorting to violence in the pursuit of his abolitionist goals, and in 1857 he determined to take action to free the slaves by armed force. He gathered a small band of supporters, and on October 16, 1859, they seized the U.S. arsenal and armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), and took control of the town. Within hours his force was surrounded by the local militia, reinforced on the following day by a company of U.S. Marines under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee. Ten of Brown’s men, including two of his sons, were killed in the ensuing battle, and Brown was forced to surrender. He was arrested, charged, and convicted of treason and murder, and was hanged in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), in December 1859. The details of the composition of the song about the late John Brown are obscure, but it was based, in tune and structure, on a Methodist hymn, originally copyrighted in 1858 by G. S. Scofield 41: Say, brothers, will you meet us? (3) On Canaan’s happy shore.

One broadside version of ca. 1861 specifies the tune as “Brothers, Will You Meet Me.”42 Several individuals had a hand in disseminating the tune, principally Patrick Gilmore,

Broadside, “John Brown” (1861). The unusual notation at the top, “Origin, Fort Warren,” suggests that this song about a soldier at that fort was already being associated with Brown, the martyred abolitionist. From the Library of Congress.

UPPER SOUTH

217

bandmaster for the Union Army, who played it regularly at Fort Warren at Saturday night concerts. It spread widely from there and was an obvious vehicle a few years later for a simple, spiritual-like lyric about the hanging of the honored, though eccentric, abolitionist.43 However, perhaps the story is not so simple. The song “John Brown” quoted previously was copyrighted in 1861, words and music by C. S. Hall; note that the lyrics make no direct reference to John Brown’s raid, arrest, or hanging, nor to abolition. According to one authority, “It should be mentioned that the John Brown in the song was a Sergeant at Fort Warren, not the antislavery crusader famous for his raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859; however, the latter’s celebrity led to the parody.”44 The broadside published by C. S. Hall, unusual in that it contains music as well as text, bears the somewhat uncustomary notation “Origin, Fort Warren.” Both sheet music and broadsides appeared that year with various titles: “John Brown,” “The Popular John Brown Song,” and “John Brown’s Song.” Other songs commented more specifically on the abolitionist John Brown’s demise and afterlife. To quote from one broadside, “John Brown’s Entrance into Hell,” Come gentle muse and touch a strain, ’Twill echo back the sound again— On scenes that pass’d we now must dwell, When old John Brown arrived in Hell. When Pluto heard old Brown was hung Old Tophet with Hosannas rung; For well they knew the lying thief, Would make for them an honored chief. Brown to receive they now prepare, All eager in the joy to share; Old Satan from his throne came down And left his seat for Old John Brown. &c.45

No doubt which John Brown is meant with this caustic lyric. The question remains when it became John Brown the abolitionist whose soul was presumed to be marching on. One newspaper reference suggests it was established by mid1862. That didn’t leave very much time for John Brown the Fort Warren sergeant to put on mileage.46 John Hardy John Hardy was a brave little man, He carried a pistol every day; He killed a man in Shallow Town, ’Twas a sight to see John Hardy get away, Lord, Lord, ’Twas a sight to see John Hardy get away. John Hardy was standing at the gambling bar, And was not concerning the game; Up stepped a lady, threw down half a dollar, Said, “Deal John Hardy in the game,” etc. John Hardy picked up the half a dollar, And threw it against the ground,

218

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Saying, “The very first man that wins my money, I sure will blow him down.” A big buck nigger he won the money And picked it up from the ground; John Hardy he drew out his pistol, And shot that nigger down. John Hardy got on an old freight train, The old freight train was too late; And if the old train had n’t a-been behind time, John Hardy would have made his escape. John Hardy was a-standing at the station bars, So dark he could not see; Up stepped a policeman and took him by the arm, Says, “Johnny, come and go with me.” The policeman he arrested John And brought him on to jail; They no bail allowed for a murderer, And they locked John Hardy up in jail. John wrote for his father and mother to come And get him out on bail; They no bond allowed for murdering crime, So they kept John Hardy in jail. John’s father and mother crossed the deep blue sea, To get him out on bail; Says, “There’s no bond for a murdering man.” So they kept John Hardy in jail. John Hardy had a pretty little wife, She always went dressed in green; And coming down on the hanging ground, Says, “Johnny, you were always too mean.” John Hardy had a true little boy, He was all dressed in black; As coming down on the hanging ground, Says, “Papa, I wish that you were back.” John Hardy had a true little girl, She always dressed in red; As coming down on the hanging ground, Says, “Papa, I would rather be dead.” “I’ve been to the East and I’ve been to the West, I’ve been the wide world round; I’ve been to the river and I’ve been baptized, And now I’m on my hanging ground.”47

It was in Shawnee Camp in McDowell County, in the southwest corner of West Virginia in 1893. Two African Americans, John Hardy and Tom Bruce, were involved in a gambling game—either cards or dice—versions differ. Hardy was evidently a poor loser but a good

shot, and, laying his pistol on the gaming table, he threatened to shoot anyone who took his money. Tom did, and John did. Hardy fled, hiding out for a time, but was arrested. He escaped from custody and fled from the area, following railroad tracks, first east, and then west. But McDowell County Sheriff John Effler and his deputy, Tom Campbell, were clued in and followed Hardy, finally apprehending him. Hardy was arrested, tried, and found guilty by a jury and, on October 12, 1893, sentenced to hang. The final punishment was meted out on January 19, 1894, in Welch, on a gallows specially built for the event. By some accounts, Welch’s population of 300 swelled to 20 times that, as visitors packed the town to witness the execution. A ballad was written afterward. By whom and exactly when we don’t know; but within two decades, versions were being collected in West Virginia and adjacent regions. The text reprinted here, heard in Knott County, Kentucky, in the 1920s, preserves many factual details, but under the influence of traditional ballad refrains has got some facts wrong. The camp was Shawnee, not Shallow. Hardy did flee to the east and to the west, and possibly might have escaped if he had fled on a faster train. His mother did try to pay his bail—though she hadn’t crossed the sea to do it—but it wasn’t permitted for those accused of a capital offence. He was indeed married, but whether he had a son who spoke to him as the ballad says is not known; it’s certainly not unreasonable. Whether it was a lady who got him involved in the game is also unknown. The song is still widely sung in the southeastern states.48 Jay Legg Come all you true brave river boys, Some shocking tales to tell; We’ve lost one of our river boys, And the one that we love so well. Poor Jay went out one cold Friday morning, Those hotters [?] they came in, They fixed up a plot to kill poor Jay Just as soon as he came in. Poor Jay came in that cold Friday evening, He was tired and hungry too; He didn’t have time to set down and rest Till a bullet pierced him through. His little boy stood by his side, As mournfully did say, Unto his mommy he did ask, “What made you kill poor Jay?” “It was an accident,” she said, And she did not seem to care; She thought her own state’s evidence Would surely bring her clear. They had a curtains a-hanging by Which hung close by the cot, And with his own Winchester gun He received this fatal shot. Poor Jay lies down in his cold life’s blood As the last breath passed away;

220

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And “God in heaven,” he did ask, “Have mercy on poor Jay.” Poor Jay now’s a-sleeping in his new cold tomb, His trouble all is done; Poor Sarah she’s setting in the Clay County jail, And her trouble just begun.49 Jay Legg was shot and killed by his wife Sarah Ann on Elk River in northern Clay County, W. Va., 10 February 1904. The case caused something of a sensation in the area, partly because the slayer was a woman and partly because of the alleged circumstances. Sarah Ann Legg’s trial in April 1905 involved not only the charge of murder but the allegations and insinuations that she was unfaithful, that she plotted the murder, and that another party or parties were involved. Though she pleaded that the shooting was accidental, and though there were no reliable witnesses to the deed, she was convicted; but the conviction was overturned on appeal because of errors in the conduct of the trial.50

The ballad was known over a large portion of central West Virginia. The dialog between Sarah and the young son reflects accurately the testimony given at the murder trial. Legg himself was a lumberjack, and the opening stanza of the song as well as the tune and style reflect a shantyboy’s singing tradition. Lumbering had just become a thriving industry in West Virginia in the 1880s, and it is possible that the singing tradition was brought into the region by loggers who drifted in from the Northeast, where the woods had already been severely deforested. The singer of this version, Maggie Hammons Parker (1899–1987), came from a family with a rich musical tradition of fiddle and banjo tunes, ballads, play party songs, riddles, ghost and witch tales, and family anecdotes. The Explosion in the Fairmount Mines One bright morning, the miner just about to leave, Heard his dear child screaming in all fright. He went to her bed, then she looked up and said: “I have had such a dream, turn on the light.” Chorus: “Daddy, please don’t go down in that hole today, For my dreams do come true some time, you know. Oh, don’t leave me, daddy, please don’t go away, Something bad sure will happen, do not go.” “Oh, I dreamed that the mines were burning out with fire, Every man was fighting for his life. And some had companions and they prayed out loud, ‘Oh God, please protect my darling wife.’ ” Chorus. Then her daddy bent down and kissed her dear sweet face, Turned again to travel on his way, But she threw her small arms around her daddy’s neck, She kissed him again, and he heard her say, Chorus. Then the miner was touched, and said he would not go; “Hush, my child, I’m with you, do not cry.” There came an explosion and two-hundred men Were shut in the mines and left to die. Chorus.51

UPPER SOUTH

221

The title alone makes this a West Virginia song. With its misspelling of Fairmount, it recalls one of the greatest industrial accidents in the country, the Monongah, Marion County, disaster of December 6, 1907. It took place in the Fairmont Coal Company’s mines; the official death count was 362 men and boys, largely Italian and Polish immigrants. Few miners survived the underground blast. Investigators attributed the disaster to gas ignited by open lights or to coal dust ignited by electric arcs.52 The singer of this song (and doubtless its arranger), Blind Alfred Reed (1880–1956), was born in Floyd, Virginia, and died at Cool Ridge, West Virginia. Among the 21 selections he recorded for RCA Victor were several topical ballads and moralistic songs of his own composition. Reed’s “Fairmount Mines” is a minor reworking of a song by Reverend Andrew (Blind Andy) Jenkins, “Dream of the Miner’s Child,” recorded several times in 1925 by Vernon Dalhart. Jenkins unknowingly based his own song on an earlier British piece, “Don’t Go Down in the Mines, Dear Dad,” published in 1910 with words by Robert Donnelly and music by Will Geddes. The West Virginia Farmer Oh, the West Virginia hills, with their many rocks and rills, Where the farmer has to scratch away to see his gra’ry filled, In the morning up he jumps, and among the rocks and sumps, All along the hot and sultry day he hums. Chorus: Scratch away, scratch away, on the hot and sultry day. In the hot and sultry evening scratch away, And when the day is done, at the setting of the sun, He can feed his horse a little bite of hay. In the early days of spring, to his clearing he must cling, And never think of pleasure-time or any such a thing; He must chop and split and burn, and make every crook and turn, To see his patch of ground a crop of gray. Chorus: Work away, work away, in the hot and sultry day, In the hot and sultry evening work away; And when the day is done, at the setting of the sun, He can feed his horse a little bite of hay. When the sun is shining hot and of rest he thinketh not, He swings his scythe with vigor in his stony meadow lot; Till a “jacket” pops his nose, and to double size it grows, Then he stops a while to rub the itching spot. Chorus: Rub away, rub away, in the hot and sultry day, All the balance of the evening rub away, And when the day is done, at the setting of the sun, He can feed his horse a little bite of hay. In the early days of fall, that bring vigor to us all, When the farmer pulls his punkins and his hogs begin to call; When he finds them sick and dead with the cholera in the head, Then his happy dreams of sausage turn to gall. Chorus: Call away, call away, on the frosty autumn day, With tears in his peepers hear him call;

222

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And when the day is done, and he hath not found a one, He concludes he hasn’t got a pig at all. Now the winter’s come at last, brings the snow so thick and fast, That this foolish farmer thinks that he will get some rest at last; But he very quickly sees he must get some wood or freeze, There’s work again, and summer days are past. Chorus: Work away, work away, on the cold winter day, On the cold winter evening work away; And when the sun has set, and his nose and chin have met, He can feed his horse a little bite of hay.53

Farmers struggling in the rocky regions of West Virginia or Vermont must have looked with envy at their competitors in fertile settings like California’s central valley. We don’t hear many songs from the latter laborers extolling the ease with which they earned their daily bread, but we certainly hear complaints from farmers who toiled by the sweat of their brows to make a living. Patrick Gainer, who collected and published this song, gave no indication of its authorship; it has not appeared elsewhere. Billy Richardson’s Last Ride Through the West Virginia mountains came the early mornin’ mail, Old Number Three was westbound, the fastest on the rail; She pulled right into Hinton, a junction on the line, With a Baldwin Mountain engine they made the run on time. Billy Richardson at Hinton was called to take the run, To pull the fastest mail-train from there to Huntington; His fireman he reported for duty on the line, Then reading their train orders, left Hinton right on time. Then Billy told his fireman that he would happy be, If he could die while pullin’ a train like Number Three; “I want to die on duty, right in my cab,” said he, “While pullin’ east-bound Number Four, or west-bound Number Three.” The fireman then said, “Billy, you know you’re old and gray, Your name is on the pension list, you should retire some day.” But Billy said, “Dear fireman, the truth I’m tellin’ you, I must die right in my engine cab, and nothing else will do.” Then pulling down New River came west-bound Number Three, By Thurmond, then by Cotton Hill, no danger could he see; His head then struck a mail-crane while pullin’ down the line, He’ll never pull his train again to Huntington on time. He pulled the fastest time freight, he pulled the U.S. mail, He pulled the fast excursion to the music of the rail; He lost his life on duty in his engine cab so free, While pullin’ in Montgomery on west-bound Number Three. Now ladies, if your husband is a railroad engineer, You know he is in danger and death is ever near; You know he loves you dearly when he is by your side, Remember well that his next run may be his farewell ride.54

UPPER SOUTH

223

Most railroad accident ballads concern collisions or derailments. Engineer Billy Richardson met a different fate in an unlikely freak accident. On December 14, 1910, Richardson had taken the FFV train out of Hinton as usual. At 12:30 P.M., as he approached the mail crane at Scary, 20 miles west of Charleston, he blew the whistle for mail, leaned out of the cab to look back, and was struck on the temple by the crane. Fireman Cecil S. Lively took the train into Huntington, where an ambulance was waiting to take Richardson to the hospital, but it was in vain. Richardson died without regaining consciousness shortly after entering the hospital. He had been railroading for almost 46 years. Though the accident occurred in 1910, the ballad was not written until 1926. That year, Cleburne C. Meeks, a railroader for the Norfolk and Western from 1922 to 1967, heard Vernon Dalhart’s recording of “The Wreck of the Old 97.” As Meeks told it, I bought a Victor recording of that song and liked it so well that I set out to learn the address of the singer as I thought I could write the words to a song, and if so, I might have Mr. Dalhart record it for me. I happened to think about an old engineer that I knew when I was a small boy. His train No. 3 passed by my home every other day, and I liked the idea of being in the yard where I could see him and wave at him when he passed by my home. His name was Billy Richardson. Sure enough, I did write the lyrics to that song and Vernon Dalhart accepted it and had his partner Carson J. Robison write the music.55

And so it came to pass. Dalhart recorded the song—not once, but half a dozen times for different record companies. Through his numerous recordings, other singers learned the song, and it entered oral tradition in the Southeast. Meeks’s account is a counterexample to the usual assumption that a song about an historical event was written very soon after the event it describes. When there are commercial media involved, writers and performers may search their memories for material that can serve as the foundations of new compositions. Longing for the Spring The hills are very bare and cold and lonely; I wonder what the future months will bring. The strike is on—our strength would win, if only— O, Buddy, how I’m longing for the spring! They’ve got us down—their martial lines enfold us; They’ve thrown us out to feel the winter’s sting; And yet, by God, those curs can never hold us, Nor could the dogs of hell do such a thing. It isn’t just to see the hills beside me, Grow fresh and green with every growing thing; I only want the leaves to come and hide me, To cover up my vengeful wandering. I will not watch the floating clouds that hover Above the birds that warble on the wing; I want to use this GUN from under cover— O, Buddy, how I’m longing for the spring! You see them there below, the damned scab-herders! Those puppets on the greedy Owners’ String; We’ll make them pay for all their dirty murders— We’ll show them how a starveling’s hate can sting!

224

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They riddled us with volley after volley; We heard their speeding bullets zip and zing, But soon we’ll make them suffer for their folly— O, Buddy, how I’m longing for the spring!56

Olive Woolley Burt included this song in her collection of American ballads about murder, and murder emerges as its subject as the song unfolds. The song was written during a bloody coal miners’ strike in West Virginia in 1911–1912, during which many striking miners were killed or wounded. The song, composed in the depths of a bitter winter, expresses a wistful hope for spring—both meteorological and social. It is relatively literary for the genre and owes little to traditional poetry and songs. Whether it achieved any widespread popularity, even locally, is not known. Bluefield Murder I was born in Bluefield, a city you all know well, Brought up by good old parents, this story to you I’ll tell; My name is Walter Summers, the name I’ll never deny— I’m now behind the prison walls to stay until I die. My mother used to plead with me, my dear old father too, To quit this wild and reckless life and bad things not to do; But, alas, one fatal evening I roamed out in our town, To the house of Ethel Sullivan, I shot that poor girl down. The policeman came and got me and locked me in their jail, My friends all then turned me down, I could not get no bail; The jury found me guilty, I heard the old judge say, “I give this young man ninety nine years in the state penitentiary.” Now I’m sad and lonely, how sad nobody knows, The only song that cheers my heart is “Convict and the Rose.”57

The names mentioned in this murder ballad suggest that a true crime lies behind the story, but the details have not been learned. Presumably the town referred to is Bluefield, West Virginia, not the contiguous town of Bluefield, Virginia. Roy Harvey, who probably wrote the song,58 recorded it in 1928, so the events, if factual, likely occurred a few years before then. Harvey (or whoever wrote the ballad) used lines from similar traditional ballads as his model, in particular “The Boston Burglar” (see the section on Massachusetts songs in chapter 1) and “Ninety-nine Years,” a popular hillbilly ballad written by Bob Miller in 1932. The song mentioned in the last line was written by Ballard MacDonald and Robert King in 1925 and was quite popular in the southeastern states in the 1920s. For more information about Roy Harvey, see the notes to “The Virginian Strike of ’23,” discussed later. West Virginia Lad I’m a West Virginia lad, raised on ramps and mush and bread, With some meat of the rarest, purest kind; I know I am no fool, though I never went to school Nor had a peep inside of any college.

UPPER SOUTH

225

I’m a West Virginia lad, raised on ramps and mush and bread, With some meat of the rarest, purest kind; With some possum and some beef to bring a sweet relief And give rest to the weary, weary, mind. Our girls they can’t be beat, they’re good looking, kind and sweet, They are smart, cute, industrious, full of life; If a lad will do his part and has won his lassie’s heart, He is sure to have a pleasant, happy life. With his honey and his bee in this country he is free; He has honey of all the different kinds; With some ’possum and some beef to bring a sweet relief And give rest to the weary, weary, mind.59

Male readers of this song will certainly be tempted to rush to relocate in West Virginia. They are advised to check whether all the first-rate West Virginia lasses are still available, and still ensconced in the hills of West Virginia. The Virginian Strike of ’23 In the dear old town of Princeton in the year of ’twenty-three, Five hundred railroad employees were as happy as can be; Enjoying the highest prosperity, and nothing to worry them at all, But they believed in Satan and quit their jobs that fall. They were told from every corner and given good advice, But they would not listen, and now they’ve paid the price; They’ve roamed to every country, a-waiting for a call, To report at the Princeton roundhouse, and they’ve waited six years this fall. The trains are moving nicely, from Princeton, east and west, With men of good ability, while the poor boys take their rest; Their homes will ever be silent to the call boy’s daily call, Unless the Virginian Railroad will call them back this fall. I was one among the number that made the sad mistake, And left my good old railroad job, my engine did forsake; And now I’m sure downhearted, for I have no job at all, But I’d like to run an engine on the Virginian again this fall.60

On November 8, 1923, some 4,000 or 5,000 of the Virginian Railway’s engineers, or two-thirds of the crews, went on strike. They had several grievances. The strikers were threatened with dismissal if they were not back on duty by Saturday morning, November 10. At the time of the strike, the railroad and the union had been negotiating over differences for nearly a year. The Railroad Labor Board had asked both parties to appear at a hearing on November 14 and requested that the union not strike, but this request went unheeded. Within two months after the walkout, the Virginian had hired other engineers from other railroads to replace the strikers. Some of the new engineers had never handled a train in mountainous country, and the company suffered financial losses for a while and experienced four serious accidents, in three of which the blame was placed on unqualified engineers at the throttle.

226

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Roy Harvey (1892–1958) loved railroading and worked for the Virginian for years. A loyal member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, he walked off his job when the union struck in 1923. His family moved from Princeton to Beckley, West Virginia, and he worked as a salesman in the Beckley Music Store, gradually becoming interested in phonograph records. Between 1926 and 1930 he made numerous recordings, mainly with Charlie Poole’s very popular string band, the North Carolina Ramblers. Harvey’s song about the strike reflects bitter disillusionment with the union. Like many railroad men, he felt the union had misled them in the causes for the strike. Harvey wrote and recorded his song in the hopes that it would win him his job back, but it didn’t work. In 1942 he moved to Florida and took a job with the Florida East Coast Railway, where he remained until his death.61 The Wreck of the Virginian Come all you brave, bold railroad men and listen while I tell, The fate of E. G. Aldrich, a good man we all loved well; This man was running on a road known as Virginian line, He was a faithful engineer and pulled his train on time. He was the oldest on the road, we always called him Dad, He loved his engine very much, he was the best we’ve had; Frank O’Neal was his fireman, he was faithful, true, and brave, He stayed with Dad, he died with Dad, and filled a new-made grave. It was a bright spring morning on the twenty-fourth of May, The train crew was at Roanoke, they were feeling fine and gay; Train Number Three had left Roanoke en route for Huntington, These poor men did not know that they were making their last run. Dad pulled his train, a pleasing smile on his bright face did beam, He did not have to grumble, Frank sure kept him lots of steam; At eleven-fifty-two that day they’d just left Ingleside, An eastbound freight crushed into them; they took their farewell ride. It seems that all good engineers to duty always sticks, Dad entered into service in the year nineteen and six; He did not have to work to live, they begged him to retire, But Dad would not give his consent—to run was his desire. Dear ladies, if your husband runs an engine on the line, You may expect a message of his death most any time; All railroad men should live for God and always faithful be, Like Dad and Frank, they soon may pass into eternity.62

It was, as the ballad relates, on the morning of May 24, 1927, when just before noon, two Virginian Railway trains, a passenger and a freight, collided head to end, killing 2 and injuring 29. The accident was caused by the passenger train crew’s failure to obey a meet order. In the early years, trains in both directions used the same track, obliged to pass one another at specified points where there was a short passing track available. A meet order specified the location where an available siding would allow one of the trains to pull off the main line so the other could pass safely. The crew of the electric freight escaped serious injury, but engineer “Dad” Aldrich and fireman Frank O’Neal of passenger train Number 3 were scalded to death by steam from

UPPER SOUTH

227

the burst pipes. “Dad” had been with the railway since 1906 and lived not far from the Virginian’s Roanoke yard office. It was said that he was financially able to retire, but the love of his engine kept him on active duty. This ballad was written and recorded by Blind Alfred Reed, a fiddler, singer, and Methodist minister who was born in Floyd, Virginia, in 1880.63 Reed based his story on newspaper accounts that his wife read to him. Not long after his recording was issued, the Victor Company withdrew it from the catalog at the request of the Virginian Railway. Two other hillbilly musicians, both West Virginians, wrote and recorded their own songs about the accident.64 The Crime at Quiet Dell A widow and her children three at Parkridge Illinois, Was happy and contented with two daughters and her boy; And all was well until one day a letter to her came, Which said she would be wealthy if she’s only change her name. Chorus: She’d only change her name. (2) Which said she would be wealthy If she’d only change her name. Then came the stranger to her home and told her of his love; And promised her that life would be like heaven up above; This winsome stranger she believed, and with him then did go, To meet a fate so horrible no one on earth will know. ’Mid hills of West Virginia fair, near village Quiet Dell, A foul crime was committed there that shocked the depths of hell. Upon this scene a place was built away from sight and sound; With gallows in the upper part and prisons under ground. The prisons four without a door, devoid of air and light, With deadly gas jets on the walls presents a gruesome sight. The blood stain on the prison floor, the graveyard just outside, When taken altogether tells just how the victims died. Upon this fatal summer night, the crime-bent coward crept, Toward the prison down below where little Harry slept. Then took him to the floor above, up through the crude trap door; But little did he realize his life would soon be o’er. The poor boy’s mother next he brought, and as the trap door banged, He said, “Now boy, I’ve brought you up to see your mother hanged.” The cruel rope went round her throat, and as she dangled there, A scream from little Harry came that rent the midnight air. With tearful eyes the poor lad cried, “My own life I will give; Please have some mercy, Mister, let my own dear Mamma live.” The demon seized a hammer near, and struck with all his brawn, And as his life blood ebbed away, a little soul passed on. The poor starved sisters next were brought upon this horrid scene, To see their murdered loved ones, and to face their captor mean. Upon their knees they pleaded, but he heeded not their wails; And answered, “No, you two must go, when dead, you’ll tell no tales.”

228

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The other widow fifth in turn, was soon to learn her fate, To be mourned by her loved ones up in Massachusetts state. And when the sun arose next day, in splendor o’er the land, It shone upon five shallow graves wrought by a murderous hand. This fiend by fate came to our state, and brought with him a shame, To dear old West Virginia, shedding blood on her good name. This unjust name she don’t deserve, intelligence can tell; ’Twas too unjust to people there, who live at Quiet Dell. The stealthy fiend in human form from justice felt secure, But when confronted with the truth his nerve could not endure. The monster of this heinous crime now ponders in his cell, And shudders at the fate he’ll meet for deeds at Quiet Dell. This is a solemn warning then, to all the ladies fair, Do not confide in strangers that you meet from everywhere. A moral lesson this should teach, for one can never tell; Lest you be lured unto your doom like those at Quiet Dell.65

In around 1930, an ad appeared in various midwestern newspapers, reading, in part, “man, 38 years of age, 5' 5" —175 lbs., college graduate. Worth $150,000 or more. Has income of $400 to $3000 per month. . . . My business enterprises prevent me from making many social contacts. I am, therefore, unable to make the acquaintance of the right kind of woman. . . . Own a 10 room home . . . my wife would have her own car and plenty of spending money. Cornelius O. Pierson, P. O. Box 277, Clarksburg, West Virginia.” Though it would doubtless be read with great suspicion today, at the time, Mr. “Pierson” received 10 –20 replies daily. Mr. Pierson was in reality Harry Powers (born Herman Drenth in Holland in about 1892). After some shady dealings and a sojourn in prison, Powers moved to Clarksburg and married a divorcee, Louella Blanch Strother Kinsley. In late 1930 or early 1931, Mrs. Powers gave her husband $700 to have a storage shed built on property that had been her childhood home. Powers explained that the one room above, with four separate tiled rooms below (each with a gas jet), were to be used for storing vegetables. Powers’s lonely hearts letter brought him in contact with Mrs. Asta Buick Eicher, a Park Ridge, Illinois, widow with two daughters and a son, and concurrently with Mrs. Dorothy Pressler Lemke of Northboro, Massachusetts, an older divorcée. On August 26, 1931, Powers was taken into custody by local police, who had been asked by Park Ridge officials to look into the disappearance of Mrs. Eicher and her children. Residents in the neighborhood of Powers’s vegetable shed had noticed strange comings and goings at night and a rather putrid odor from the stream running past the property. Investigators searching the premises found the strangled bodies of Mrs. Eicher and her daughters and the bludgeoned body of her young son. Mrs. Lemke’s strangled remains were also recovered. Powers was arrested and charged. First he claimed he had been hired to drive the Eicher family to the scene of the crime by another man, who had committed the murders; then he confessed (he had been beaten in the interrogations); then he denied the crimes. Powers was nevertheless tried and found guilty and hanged on March 19, 1932, at the Moundsville penitentiary. He left the warden a letter, to be opened after his death, reaffirming his innocence. Two ballads were written and recorded; one of the songs was aired frequently on the local radio. Both songs are full of details that no one but the murderer could have known, and if Powers was steadfast in his denials, one wonders whence they came.66

UPPER SOUTH

229

At the bottom of the sheet music, following the lyrics, is the following: Note: While the horrible murders committed at Quiet Dell, are deplored all over the United States, they are especially so in West Virginia, happening as they did in our fair state. Neither the murderer nor his victims were natives of West Virginia. The composers of this song are very fully aware of the fact, that the detail of these horrid murders are not an inspiring “THEME” on which to build a song, and it was not written to appeal to the morbid fancies of some at all, but altogether to the contrary. (The scene has been carefully viewed by the writers, and every possible detail of the gruesome crime learned on the ground at first hand.) It is intended to put right the idea that some people in other states may possibly entertain, that West Virginia is not a good State. No state can possibly prevent crimes from being committed within its border, all together by any means, no matter how vigilent [sic] their officers may be. This song is also intended to serve as a warning to some that it is folly to listen to the alluring wiles and extravagant promises of total strangers, and also to again remind some of the old MORAL, “CRIME DOES NOT PAY.” The composers and publishers of this song, trust that the general public will take it in the light it is intended. Leighton D. Davies A. H. Grow Jack Rock Song Well there’s a little toy used to strike, you see, Made by elves in a hollow tree, It ain’t very big or expensive to make, But if you’re a scab you’ve made a big mistake. This little toy, he’s a sharp little guy, And if you cross him up, well, he’ll make you jump high, He ain’t very pretty, don’t need to be smart, But he can cripple a coal truck before it even starts. He’s made with two nails put together at night, And he’s a union weapon when he’s handled just right; He’ll help you, he’ll hurt you, if he’s made with good stock This little homemade weapon little toy called a jack rock. You can plant him in the ground and he won’t grow And just who thought him up, well, I don’t even know He just kind of lays there lookin’ up at you And if you’re haulin’ non union, he’s gonna catch you. Now he’s more dangerous than a loaded gun And you’ll go to jail if you’re caught usin’ one But the scabs shoot rifles and don’t have to stop But there’s a big reward out for who’s makin’ them jack rocks. Now they ain’t never caught him, and they won’t, you see, You can’t catch little elves in a hollow tree But you can catch scabs and I’ll bet you a dollar If you showed him a jack rock, he’d jump and he’d holler.

230

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Woe is me, woe is me, I hate little elves in a hollow tree They’re breakin’ the law and I wish they’d stop Because I have nightmares about them jack rocks.67

We seem to be living in an age in which terrorism, violence, and civil disobedience have become common responses to political disagreements. But in most cases where citizens resort to such tactics, whether in the United States or abroad, whether in the twenty-first or the eighteenth century, the perpetrators are convinced that they have no satisfactory alternative recourse. This song comes from a labor dispute in an industry that has suffered violence and conflict for the better part of a century: the coal industry. In 1989 the Pittston Coal Company, Virginia’s largest coal producer, with mines also in West Virginia and Kentucky, decided to withdraw from industry-wide workers’ health and welfare plans. Negotiations, disputes, and accusations finally resulted in the United Mine Workers (UMW) declaring a strike, which lasted for 10 months before a mediator appointed by the secretary of labor was able to bring about an agreement. By then, the union faced more than $7 million in fines on charges that some of the picketing had violated contract agreements; that strikers had engaged in unlawful, violent activities, including rock throwing and destruction of mining equipment; and that miners had illegally blocked access to the mines. One of the unlawful actions some miners engaged in was the subject of this song written by Elaine Purkey, a West Virginia songwriter who grew up in a coal-mining community and has been an ardent union supporter for many years. Purkey commented on her song thus: In 1988 and ’89 there was a $20,000 reward offered by Pittston Coal for information leading to the arrest of whoever was making “jack rocks.” Jack rocks are a tire-flattening device made by cutting the heads off two nails, bending them in 90 degree angles, crossing them and welding them together in the middle. No matter how you throw them, they land with a point up. They cause slow seepage of air from a tire—not blow-outs. The coal company hired guards dressed in full riot gear and trained for terrorist activity—guns and bombs against jack rocks. That really balances the scales, doesn’t it? A friend . . . said that there had never been a song written about a jack rock, so I wrote one!68

The song is written in the form of a so-called talking blues, a style that dates back at least to the 1920s. Strictly speaking, it is not a blues; rather, it is a rhymed chant set to musical accompaniment—in some ways a predecessor of today’s rap music. When Purkey introduces her song, she points out that the slow leaks caused by the jack rocks do not threaten lives, but only impede the transport of the coal. Nevertheless, not all miners approved of violent tactics, and the UMW officially tried to distance itself from such actions. There is no simple answer to the appropriateness of violence in civil disputes. One can only hope that one day, it will be completely unnecessary.69

NORTH CAROLINA The European history of North Carolina began with explorations in the sixteenth century: first a French expedition (1524), then Spanish visits (in particular, Hernando de Soto, 1540), and finally English contacts—notably Sir Walter Raleigh, who established a colony at Roanoke Island in 1585. That colony did not survive long—nor did a second settlement established a few years later. In 1629 King Charles I split off the portion of the Virginia

UPPER SOUTH

231

Colony south of Albemarle Sound to create a new colony, named, in his honor, “Carolana,” and offered it to his attorney general, Sir Robert Heath. Heath never made it to the New World, and King Charles II in 1663 renamed the land Carolina and granted the area to eight lords who had helped him regain the English throne. Not until the end of the seventeenth century was a portion of the Carolina colony set apart as North Carolina. Geographically, North Carolina consists of three principal regions: (1) easternmost is the Atlantic Coastal Plain, including the Tidewater bordering the ocean; (2) the Piedmont (“foothills”), lying between the coastal plain and the mountains; and (3) the Appalachian mountain region, bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains on the east and the Great Smoky Mountains on the west. Lying just offshore is a group of low sand dunes (barrier islands) that are together called the Outer Banks. Early settlement of North Carolina took place mainly in the easternmost regions. North Carolina’s early history was marked by sectional strife—first between the coastal north and coastal south, and then between the united coastal east and the western piedmont regions. The colony’s first capital was placed at the eastern city of New Bern (originally a Swiss settlement)—over western objections. In 1768 westerners organized the Regulator movement to oppose what they perceived as unfair political practices of the dominant east—a movement that contributed some of the region’s earliest folk song lore. The treasonous rebellion ended in an out-and-out battle between Regulators and the state militia in 1771. In 1789 North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, and the following year, the new state ceded to the federal government its westernmost regions— which later became the state of Tennessee. North Carolina hosted few battles during either of the two wars with England or the Civil War; hence there are not many traditional songs commemorating those conflicts. When Fanning First to Orange Came When Fanning first to Orange came He looked both pale and wan, An old patched coat upon his back An old mare he rode on. Both man and mare wa’nt worth five pounds As I’ve been often told But by his civil robberies He’s laced his coat with gold.70

In the 1760s many western North Carolinians were outraged by some of the practices of the courts, in particular, excessive taxes, dishonest sheriffs, and unreasonable legal fees. A movement, called the “Regulation,” began to swell, which, by 1768, had grown to a substantial civil uprising. Numerous songs were written espousing the Regulators’ cause; some 40 were said to have been written by one individual, Rednap Howell, who taught school in Chatham County. The preceding fragment is possibly one of his works. Edmund Fanning was born on Long Island and began his North Carolina career as an attorney, becoming successively “a county colonel, clerk of the superior court, member of the assembly, and a favorite of Governor Tryon. A man of fine address and ability, he regarded public office in the province as a means to enrich himself.” He was indicted by the Regulators in a Hillsboro court “for extortion in six cases, he was found guilty in all . . . and was fined, in each case, one penny.”71

232

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Poor Naomi Come all you good people, I’d have you draw near, A sorrowful story you quickly shall hear; A story I’ll tell you about N’omi Wise, How she was deluded by Lewis’s lies. He promised to marry and use me quite well; But conduct contrary I sadly must tell, He promised to meet me at Adams’s spring, He promised me marriage and many fine things. Still nothing he gave, but yet flattered the case, He says we’ll be married and have no disgrace Come get up behind me, we’ll go up to town, And there we’ll be married, in union be bound. I got up behind him and straightway did go To the banks of Deep river where the water did flow; He says now, Naomi, I’ll tell you my mind, Intend here to drown you, and leave you behind. O pity your infant and spare me my life; Let me go rejected and be not your wife. “No pity, no pity,” this monster did cry; “In Deep river’s bottom your body shall lie.” The wretch then did choke her, as we understand, And threw her in the river, below the milldam. Be it murder or treason, O! what a great crime, To drown poor Naomi and leave her behind. Naomi was missing, they all did well know, And hunting for her to the river did go; And there found her floating on the water so deep, Which caused all the people to sigh and to weep. The neighbors were sent for to see the great sight, While she lay floating all that long night; So early next morning the inquest was held, The jury correctly the murder did tell.72

An early recording by G. B. Grayson and Henry Whitter concludes with stanzas that carry the story further: John Lewis was took a prisoner and locked up in the jail, Was locked up in the jail around and was there to remain a while. John Lewis he stayed there six months or maybe more, Until he broke jail, into the army he did go.73

It is remarkable that a murder that occurred in about 1807 or 1808 in Randolph County, North Carolina, should still be widely sung in the southeastern states two centuries later. The circumstances of the ballad’s history are as interesting as the historical facts themselves—and both are subject to considerable uncertainty. Most accounts of the murder of

UPPER SOUTH

233

Naomi Wise are based on the story recounted by Braxton Craven, at one time president of Trinity College (in Randolph County). Craven wrote his account probably in 1851, and it was reprinted many times. His story was concluded with the ballad text given, which he claimed was well known in that part of the country (implying it dated from the time of the events themselves). In brief, Craven’s version of events was that young Naomi Wise was a lovely 19-year-old orphan living at the Adams’ house. One of her frequent visitors was Jonathan Lewis. Lewis was in love with Naomi, but his mother had higher aims for him and urged him to pursue Hettie Elliott, the sister of Benjamin Elliott, his employer. Lewis tried to woo Miss Elliott but was still in love with Miss Wise. As sometimes happens, an indiscretion was committed, and Naomi became pregnant. She told Lewis, and urged him to fulfill his previous promise to wed her. Lewis procrastinated as long as possible. Finally, one evening, he asked her to meet him at the spring and he would take her to a magistrate. When their wagon was crossing the river, Lewis revealed his plans and then drowned Naomi. A neighbor heard screams and came to investigate, but too late: the murderer had fled and the victim was not to be seen. A search the following morning revealed wagon tracks and horse footprints, and then a body was found, “marks of the ruffian’s fingers” on her neck. Lewis was suspected and found the following day. He was incarcerated though the evidence was circumstantial: the footprints near the river fitted his horse; a fragment of clothing found matched Lewis’s garments. Somehow, however, Lewis managed to escape his jail in Asheboro and fled—rumor had it that he went west to Ohio, where eventually he settled down, married, had a child, and prospered. Several years later, the citizens of Randolph County decided that Lewis should be brought back to justice. Three men were properly commissioned (one of them was a Colonel Craven—perhaps related to Braxton Craven?); they found Lewis, brought him back, and he was tried in 1815 but acquitted—though according to the court records, “that he was guilty of the act has never been doubted.” In the 1980s an English professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found, in a commonplace book that had been donated to UCLA’s library in 1952, a long narrative poem titled “A True Account of Nayomy Wise.” The poem had no direct connection with the traditional ballad, but, written (evidently) by a young girl who had been born in 1801, it is reasonable to assume it had been indited not long after the events described. This poem introduced some very different elements to the story. In contrast to Craven’s description of Naomi as a loving, lovely young girl, the poem related that she had had two children out of wedlock before her involvement with Jonathan Lewis: In Eighteen hundred Six the year She was over come a gain we here And by a lewis was defiled And a third time became with Child A sprightly youth a lively man Sutch was accounted Jonathan He held himself of high degree But too fond of Carnality Although her case was Surely Sad The girl it Seems apeard glad . . .74

In trying to reconstruct the actual events (court records or newspaper accounts have not been found), it is well to remember that neither Craven’s history and ballad nor the poem “A True Account” can be taken as wholly reliable. We are left with these facts: Naomi Wise

234

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

probably was murdered by Jonathan Lewis in about 1808. A ballad was written about the event, but whether soon after or more than four decades later by Braxton Craven (or in between), we can’t say. We can say that from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century, the ballad has thrived in oral tradition, having been recovered from more than 100 traditional singers—so that the editors of the North Carolina Ballads from the Frank C. Brown Collection have considered it “North Carolina’s principal single contribution to American folk song.”75 Frankie Silvers This awful dark and dismal day, Has swept my glory all away; My sun goes down, my days are passed, And I must leave this world at last. Judge Daniels has my sentence passed, These prison walls I’ll leave at last; Nothing can cheer my drooping head Until I’m numbered with the dead. His feeble hands fell fently down, His chattering tongue soon lost its sound; This strikes a terror to my heart, To see his soul and body part. This awful ghost I know I’ll see, Gnawing its flesh and misery; With flaming eyes it will say to me, “Why did you take my life away?” [Awful] indeed to think of death, In perfect health to lose my breath; But little time to pray to God, Now I must try that awful road.76

On the evening of December 22, 1831, while her husband, Charles Silver, was dozing, Frances (“Frankie”) Stewart Silver (not Silvers) dispatched him with an axe, then dismembered the body, burning some parts and squirreling away others under the floor of the cabin or outside in a hollow sourwood tree. When his absence was noted, she suggested that he had gone to buy his Christmas whiskey, and must have had some mishap on his way home. Eventually, suspicious neighbors and officers uncovered the truth—and the body parts. Frankie was tried in March 1832 in Morgantown, found guilty, and hanged on July 12, 1833—the only white woman in the state to have been convicted of a capital offense. Lore about Frankie Silver has thrived in North Carolina ever since the execution. Part of the community contended that Frankie had been abused badly by Charlie, and might have been exonerated had the truth been known. There were persistent rumors that she either confessed before her hanging; that she sang a song; that she was going to confess, but her father yelled to her, “Frankie, keep it in you!” The story has been told and retold in numerous formats and in recent years has inspired several treatments, including a fictionalized account,77 a scholarly study of the local stories,78 and a documentary video.79 The Silver cabin remains a tourist attraction, and there are still folks who believe that Frankie’s ghost can be seen or heard at night.

UPPER SOUTH

235

The author of the ballad, written in the form of a criminal’s last goodnight confessional, is not known (surely it was not Frankie herself ). It may have been written in the 1830s, but the earliest version known is a text of 13 stanzas printed in the Lenoir ( North Carolina) Topic in 1886. Earlier speculation that the Frankie Silver story was the basis for the ballad “Frankie and Johnny” is without foundation. As I Went Down to Newbern As I went down to Newbern, I went down there on the tide; I just got there in time, To be taken by Old Burnside. Old Burnside tuck me prisoner, He used me rough, ’tis true; He stole the knapsack off my back, And he did my blanket too. And we’ll lay five dollars down, Count them one by one; And every time we fight them, The Yankees they will run.80

New Bern, in the far eastern part of North Carolina, was established by Swiss immigrants in 1710 and was an early provincial capital. Union troops under the command of General A. E. Burnside captured New Bern on March 14, 1862. The unidentified author of this ditty was probably a solder in the Confederate Army commanded by General Laurence O’Brien Branch, who tried unsuccessfully to defend the city. One imagines there was once more to this song, but it has eluded preservation. What remains offers a snapshot of a military engagement at the level of the foot soldier, leaving any interpretations of the grander import of the events to other pens. Tom Dooley Refrain: Hang your head Tom Dooley, hang your head and cry, Killed poor Laura Foster, you know you’re bound to die. You took her on the hillside as God all-mighty knows, Took her on the hillside and there you hid her clothes. Refrain. You took her by the roadside where you begged to be excused, Took her by the roadside where there you hid her shoes. Refrain. Took her on the hillside to make her your wife, Took her on the hillside where there you took her life. Refrain. Take down my old violin, play it all you please, This time tomorrow it’ll be no use to me. Refrain. I dug a grave four feet long, I dug it three feet deep, Throwed cold clay o’er her, and tromped it with my feet. Refrain. This world and one more then where you reckon I’d be, If it hadn’t been for Grayson I’d ‘a’ been in Tennessee. Refrain.81

236

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

In local Wilkes County tradition, the love triangle involving Thomas C. Dula, Laura Foster, and Ann Melton was classically simple. According to that tradition, Dula, a Confederate veteran who had served with distinction, was in love with Foster, who was a sweet, lovely girl. Ann Melton, a jealous friend, induced Dula to murder Foster—or assisted him in so doing. Dula was arrested, tried, convicted, and hanged. His last act was to write a note exonerating Melton. She was tried separately afterward and acquitted, on the strength of his note. For decades it was locally believed that she was exculpated because she was so incredibly beautiful and because the jury consisted only of men. The reality was somewhat different. In about 1866, 23-year-old Dula became intimately involved with both Laura Foster and Ann Foster Melton. (It is possible the two women were related.) Melton at the time was married and had two children, but Dula became a regular visitor to the Meltons’ cabin (and to Ann’s bed). In fact, Dula seems to have been a man of considerable sexual appetites: he had intimate relations with a veritable cocktail of neighborly women, including Foster, Pauline Foster—Ann’s cousin, who was living with the Meltons—and probably others. Dula contracted syphilis—he believed from Foster—and transmitted it to Ann Melton. (It is more likely that he contracted the disease from Pauline, who was being treated for it at the time she came to the Meltons, and then transmitted it to both Foster and Melton.) At one time he swore he would kill the person who gave him the disease. In his anger, he and Melton concocted a plan for Foster’s murder, which was carried out on April 30 of that year. Dula had told Foster they were going to get married; he led her off, stabbed her, and buried the body (perhaps with Melton’s assistance). A few days later, Dula fled on foot to Tennessee, where he asked for employment on the farm of Colonel James Grayson, about 10 miles from the Tennessee–North Carolina state line. He remained there long enough to earn sufficient money for new shoes and then continued on his way. A few days later, deputies from Wilkes County, North Carolina, came looking for him. Grayson joined them, and they soon caught up with Dula, arrested him, and brought him back to North Carolina. Dula was held in jail for two months until the body was discovered around September 1. He was subsequently tried and convicted in January 1867. Dula (via his lawyer) appealed the decision twice and was denied both times; finally, he was hanged on May 1, 1868. In the opinion of a modern North Carolina attorney, Dula may have been guilty, but he was illegally arrested, illegally transported across the state line, unconstitutionally incarcerated, and convicted on circumstantial evidence.82 After these grim events, at least three songs were written that survived into the twentieth century; possibly there were others that were never preserved. The fullest narrative was “The Murder of Laura Foster” and was collected several times in North Carolina. The text given previously is representative of the second song; it is looser in structure and preserves fewer historical details—except, notably, the name of the Tennessean Grayson to whose farm Dula fled. This version, by the outstanding Wilkes County (North Carolina)–born fiddler-singer Gilliam Banmon Grayson (1888–1930), was the first commercial recording of the song ever made. In 1938 folk song collector Frank Warner recorded “Tom Dooley” from Frank Proffitt in northwestern North Carolina—and then again on a subsequent visit in 1940. This version was published by John A. and Alan Lomax in 1947 in a folk song anthology that contributed significantly to the repertoire of the folk song revival of the 1950s and 1960s.83 This collection provided the source for the Kingston Trio’s 1958 recording, which sold some 3.5 million copies before the records stopped spinning.

UPPER SOUTH

237

The Fate of Ellen Smith Come all you good people a story to hear, Of what happened unto me in June of this year. Poor Ellen Smith and how was she found, She was shot through the breast lying cold on the ground. Lying cold on the ground with her hands on her breast, The sheriff and his blood hounds they gave me no rest. They picked up their rifles they hunted me down, They found me eloping around near town. They took me to Stanton a trial to stand, To live or to die as the law may demand. If I could go back home I’d stay when I go, Around Ellen’s grave pretty flowers I would strow. Pretty flowers I would strow, pretty flowers I would strow, ’Round poor Ellen’s grave pretty flowers I would strow. So now I’m on the scaffold am compelled for to die, To my friends and relation I must say goodbye.84 Peter De Graff was convicted of the murder of Ellen Smith in the August 1893 term of Forsyth Superior Court, Judge Winston presiding. When he appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court, on several technicalities, the verdict of the lower court was affirmed. The opinion of Chief Justice Shepherd alludes to the flight of the prisoner to Roanoke and New Mexico and his subsequent return to North Carolina, and to a letter found in the bosom of the dead woman, alleged to be in the handwriting of the prisoner.85

In The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore is a much fuller text of 24 couplets, taken from a manuscript of 1911. Like the short one here (and other versions), it is presented as if written by the convicted De Graff, who protests his undying love for the murdered Ellen Smith and his complete innocence. No evidence has surfaced verifying (or disproving) De Graff’s authorship. All versions reported are sung to the tune of the hymn “How Firm a Foundation,” a hymn published in 1787, music by Joseph Funk (1832). Widely popular in America, it was sung at the funerals of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Robert E. Lee.86 Song of Emma Hartsell In eighteen ninety-eight Sweet Emmer Hartsell met an awful fate It was on one holy sabbath day When her sweet life was called away. It sets my brains in an awful whirl To think of that poor little girl, Who rose that morning fair and bright; They found her body in a mangled sight. It caused a many of a heart to grieve To think of that great horrible deed;

238

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Her friends they shed a many of tears, Her throat was cut from ear to ear. Just as the wind did cease to blow, They caught the men, it was Tom and Joe; The sheriff he drove in such dash, To get by the crowd, he couldn’t hardly pass. They got to town about half past seven, Their necks were broken before eleven. The people there were a sight to see; They hung Tom and Joe on a dogwood tree. Fathers and mothers, take warning from me, Never leave your children by their self you see; Take them with you wherever you go, And remember the crime of Tom and Joe.87

On May 30, 1898, young Emma Hartsell of Cabarrus County, four miles from Concord, was assaulted and murdered. News of the outrage was first reported by 24-year-old African American Joe Kiser. Kiser was held, handed over to authorities, and incarcerated. Very soon, another African American, Tom Johnson, 20, was arrested and jailed. Newspaper accounts did not reveal what, if any, evidence was gathered in support of the guilt of the two men. During the night a mob stormed the jail, broke the cell lock, and dragged the suspects out. The two were hanged from a single tree, continuing to protest their innocence. There was never a trial held (though it strains credulity that the perpetrator of the deed would be the one to reveal it). The episode followed an all-too-common pattern of lynchings in the South.88 J. E. Mainer (1898–1971), the singer of the preceding text, was born in Buncomb County, North Carolina, and lived most of his life in Concord, where he ran a record shop, led a string band, and performed frequently. The Hamlet Wreck See the women and children going to the train. Fare-you-well, my husband, if I never see you again; The engineer turned his head when he heard so many were dead; So many have lost their lives. Chorus: Ain’t it sad, ain’t it sad? Excursion left Durham, going to Charlotte, North Caroliny. Ain’t it sad, ain’t it sad? So many have lost their lives. Some of us have mothers standing at the train. “Farewell-well-well, my daughter, I may never see you again.” And the train began to fly, and some didn’t come back alive; So many have lost their lives. The Fireman said to the Engineer, “We are something late; We don’t want to meet up with the local freight.” The local was on the line, and they could not get there on time; So many have lost their lives.

UPPER SOUTH

239

When the news got to Durham, some said it was a lie, But there was some in the hospital almost ready to die. And their poor old mothers, you know, they were running from door to door. So many have lost their lives. Now, colored people, I will tell you to your face, The train that left Durham was loaded with our race. And some did not think of dying when they rode on down the line. So many have lost their lives. They put the dead in their coffins and sent them back to town, And then they were taken to the burying ground. You could hear the coffin sound, when they let those bodies down. So many have lost their lives.89

The annual excursion of the St. Joseph’s African Methodist Episcopal Sunday School of Durham turned from pleasure to horror on July 27, 1911, when their special train from Durham to Charlotte collided with a freight train. The manifest consisted of 912 holidaybound African American passengers—men, women, and children. Eight passengers were killed and 60 more seriously injured. A broadside ballad was written and published by the Reformer Publishing Company, an African American print shop in Durham. The editors of the volume including the preceding text do not say so specifically, but presumably the text is that of the broadside.90 It is an interesting example of African American balladry, and a typical one, in that—unlike most of the other ballads in these volumes—it is devoted more to comments on the events than to a chronological recitation of the accident as such. The chorus is reminiscent of ballads about the sinking of the Titanic, which occurred the following year, and both were derived from earlier gospel songs. The Marion Massacre A story now I’ll tell you Of a fearful massacree; Which happened down in Dixie On the borders of the sea. ’Twas in Marion, North Carolina, In a little mountain town; Five workers of the textiles; In cold blood were shot down. Tis e’er the same old story With the leaders of our land; Their ruled by mighty power And riches they command. It started over money, The world’s most vain desire; Yet we realize the laborer Is worthy of his hire. These men were only asking Their rights and nothing more; That their families would not suffer, With a wolf at every door.

240

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Why is it over money These men from friends must part; Leaving home and loved ones With a bleeding, broken heart. But some day they’ll meet them On that bright shore so fair; And live in peace forever There’ll be no sorrow there. There’ll be no sorrow there, There’ll be no sorrow there; In heaven above where all is love, There’ll be no sorrow there.91

In April 1929, three young textile workers at the Marion Manufacturing Company in Marion, North Carolina, approached the United Textile Workers’ Union of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and asked how they might obtain a union. After some discussions and planning, a preliminary organization was formed, and the leaders sent a petition to mill president R. W. Baldwin asking for the work shift to be reduced to 10 hours. He refused, and the workers struck on July 11. The strike collapsed in September, but the union did manage to obtain some concessions, including a workweek reduced to 55 hours (with corresponding pay decreases). Unrest continued, however, and in October, Baldwin asked the sheriff to assemble his deputies—a band of notorious local thugs—to protect the plant. The deputies entered the mill, drinking and goading workers, until at 1:30 A.M., one worker turned off the main power and called the workers out on strike. A crowd gathered outside the gates the next day to notify the day shift about the strike. The sheriff and his men were also present, and, uneasy, fired a tear gas bomb into the crowd. A 57-year-old handicapped worker assaulted the sheriff with his cane and was promptly shot by one of the deputies. Chaos erupted, the crowd broke and ran, and the deputies fired at the unarmed, fleeing men. Six men died, all shot in the back.92 The Lawson Family Murder It was on last Christmas evening, A snow was on the ground; ’Mid his home in North Carolina, Where this murderer he was bound. His name was Charlie Lawson, And he had a loving wife; But we’ll never know what caused him To take his family’s life. They say he killed his wife at first, And the little ones did cry; “Please, papa, won’t you spare our lives, For it is so hard to die.” But the ragin’ man could not be stopped, He would not heed their call; And kept on firin’ fatal shots, Until he killed them all.

UPPER SOUTH

241

And when the sad, sad news was heard, It was a great surprise; He killed six children and his wife, And then he closed their eyes. “And now farewell kind friends and home, I’ll see you all no more; Into my breast I’ll fire one shot, Then my troubles will be o’er.” They did not carry him to jail, No lawyers did he pay; He will have his trial in another world, On the final Judgment Day. They all were buried in a crowded grave, While the angels watched above; Come home, come home, my little ones, To the land of peace and love.93

Charles Davis Lawson, born in 1886 near Lawsonville, Stokes County, North Carolina, was a successful farmer in 1928 with a wife and six children (and a seventh on the way). He and his wife were well known and respected for the aid and comfort they gave to the less fortunate members of the community. In that summer, Lawson was starting to dig a foundation for a new storage cellar. As he swung his mattock, he failed to notice the taut wire fence; the mattock hit the wire, sprang back, and struck him forcefully in the head, nearly killing him. Though the visible injury was slight, his wife, Fanny, later began to notice some changes in Charlie’s behavior. Then, on Christmas Eve 1929, while the family was gathered for dinner, Charlie picked up his 12-gauge shotgun and killed his eldest daughter, Marie, and his wife. He struck the infant Mary Lou with the butt of the gun and did likewise to her brothers James, 4, and Raymond, nearly 3. The two other daughters, Carrie, 12, and Maybell, 7, ran from the house toward the home of their uncle Elisha for help. Charlie picked up his .25–20 rifle and ran in pursuit, catching them in a field, where he shot them both. He laid out the bodies in a tobacco barn, placing a stone under each one’s head and closing their eyes. He then returned home, laid out the other bodies, reloaded his shotgun, walked about a quarter of a mile from the house, and shot himself. An autopsy revealed a large brain tumor, probably caused by the mattock incident, and possibly the cause of temporary insanity. Virginia recording artist Walter “Kid” Smith read newspaper accounts of the incident and composed a ballad, which he and his musical companions recorded the following March. Others, especially in North Carolina, learned the song either from the recording or from hearing Smith himself, who often gave lectures at the Lawson home, where he told the story of the murder and concluded by singing his own composition.94 Chief Aderholt Come all of you good people and listen while I tell The story of Chief Aderhold [sic], the man you all know well; It was on a Friday evening, the seventh day of June, He went down to the Union Ground and met his fatal doom. They locked up our leaders, they put them into jail, They shoved them into prisons, refused to give them bail;

242

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The workers joined together, and this was their reply, “We’ll never, no we’ll never let our leaders die.” They moved the trial to Charlotte, got lawyers from every town, I’m sure we’ll hear them speak again upon the union ground; While Vera she’s in prison, Manville Jenckes in pain, Come join the Textile Union and show them you are game. We’re going to have a union all over the South, Where we can wear good clothes, and live in a better house; No, we must stand together, and to the boss reply, “We’ll never, no, we’ll never let our leaders die.”95

The first textile mill in Gastonia, in southwestern North Carolina, was built in 1848; in later decades, the city became one of the largest textile manufacturing centers of the nation. Several militant songs were created there during the bitter textile mill strike in 1929. A strike was called for September 14. A truck carrying union members to a meeting was stopped by a mob and overturned. When union members emerged and dispersed, they were fired upon. Union organizer Ella May Wiggins was shot in the breast and killed. Other unionists were convinced that she had been singled out because of her powerful union songs. One particularly effective composition focused on the killing of police chief O. F. Aderholt. The tune and language (in particular, the first stanza and the recurring last line of the second and fourth stanzas) borrow heavily from “Floyd Collins,” a popular song recounting the death of a cave explorer in 1925 (see the discussion of Kentucky, later). The strike was depicted in several novels, including Mary Heaton Vorse’s Strike! (1930) and Grace Lumpkin’s To Make My Bread (1932). I’m Going Back to North Carolina I’m (a)-going to take a train in the morning (3) For I never expect to see you any more. I’m going to cross the Rocky Mountains (3) For I never expect to see you any more. I’m going back to North Carolina (3) Lord I never expect to see you any more. How she cried when Mockten (?) left her (3) For she never expect to see him any more. One sweet kiss and I must leave you (3) For I never expect to see you any more. I’m (a)-going to spend my days with my momma (3) Lord I never expect to see you any more.96

Variations of this folk lyric have turned up with different titles, including “My Home’s in Charlotte, North Carolina,” “My Own True Love,” and “My Home’s across the Blue Ridge Mountains.” As it happens, the singer of this version, Crockett Kelly Harrell (1889–1942), was born in Wythe County, southwest Virginia, not far from the border with North Carolina. The North Carolina Hills Oh, the North Carolina hills, How majestic and how grand,

UPPER SOUTH

243

With their summits bathed in glory Like our Prince Immanuel’s land; Is it any wonder, then, That my heart with rapture thrills As I stand once more with loved ones On those North Carolina Hills? Chorus: Oh, the hills, the beautiful hills, How I love those North Carolina hills! If o’er sea or land I roam, Still I think of happy home, And the friends among the North Carolina hills. Oh, the North Carolina hills, Where my childhood hours were passed; Where I often wandered lonely And the future tried to cast. Many are our visions bright Which the future ne’er fulfills; But how sunny were my day-dreams On those North Carolina hills! Oh, the North Carolina hills, How unchanged they seem to stand; With their summits pointing skyward To the great Almighty’s land! Many changes I can see, Which my heart with sadness fills, But no change can be noticed On those North Carolina hills. Oh, the North Carolina hills, I must bid you now adieu. In my home beyond the mountains I will ever dream of you; In the evening time of life, If my Father only wills, I shall still behold the visions Of the North Carolina hills.97

This song has been found nowhere save this contribution to the North Carolina collection; the editors of the volume where it was published suspect that the contributor, O. L. Coffee, was its author. There is no tune provided; the style is certainly not traditional. We have, then, an example of an item that is called a folk song on the shakiest of grounds. But as a heartfelt tribute to the writer’s home state, it deserves to be remembered—especially by North Carolinians.

KENTUCKY In 1750 Thomas Walker, an explorer from Virginia, found a pass through the part of the Appalachians called the Cumberland Mountains west to what became Kentucky. This pass, called the Cumberland Gap, became the main passageway to the west, trod by such illustrious long hunters (so called for the duration of their travels, not the length of their

244

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

rifles) as Daniel Boone in the winter of 1767–1768. Boone followed a Native American trail called the Warrior’s Path, eponymously renamed Boone’s Trace and, still later, widened to become part of the Wilderness Road from Virginia to Kentucky. Others followed in the 1770s. Petitions to the Continental Congress for colony status were ignored, and by the time of the Revolutionary War, Kentucky was still a county of Virginia. Statehood was granted in June 1792, when Kentucky became the 15th state of the Union. During the divisive Civil War, Kentucky tried to remain neutral, a position that was respected by neither side, nor by contentious internal factions pushing one way or the other. Its land was the site of numerous battles. Hunters of Kentucky As sung by Mr. Ludlow, in the New Orleans and Western Country Theatres Ye gentlemen and ladies fair, who grace this famous city, Just listen, if you’ve time to spare, while I rehearse a ditty; And for the opportunity conceive yourselves quite lucky, For ’tis not often that you see a hunter from Kentucky. Refrain: Oh, Kentucky, the hunters of Kentucky, the hunters of Kentucky. We are a hardy free-born race, each man to fear a stranger, Whate’er the game, we join in chase, despising toil and danger; And if a daring foe annoys, whate’er his strength and forces, We’ll show him that Kentucky boys are “alligator horses.” Refrain. I s’pose you’ve read it in the prints, how Packenham attempted To make old Hickory Jackson wince, but soon his schemes repented; For we with rifles ready cock’d, thought such occasion lucky, And soon around the general flock’d, the hunters of Kentucky. Refrain. You’ve heard, I s’pose, how New Orleans is fam’d for wealth and beauty— There’s girls of every hue it seems, from snowy white to sooty. So Packenham he made his brags, if he in fight was lucky, He’d have their girls and cotton bags in spite of old Kentucky. Refrain. But Jackson he was wide awake, and wasn’t scared at trifles, For well he knew what aim we take with our Kentucky rifles; So he led us down to Cypress swamp, the ground was low and mucky, There stood John Bull in martial pomp, and here was old Kentucky. Refrain. A bank was raised to hide our breast, not that we thought of dying, But that we always like to rest unless the game is flying; Behind it stood our little force, none wish’d it to be greater, For ev’ry man was half a horse and half an alligator. Refrain. They did not let our patience tire, before they show’d their faces— We did not choose to waste our fire, so snugly kept our places; But when so near to see them wink, we thought it time to stop ’em, And ’twould have done you good, I think, to see Kentuckians drop ’em. Refrain. They found, at last, ’twas vain to fight, where lead was all their booty, And so they wisely took to flight, and left us all our beauty, And now, if danger e’er annoys, remember what our trade is, Just send for us Kentucky boys, and we’ll protect ye, ladies. Refrain.98

“The Hunters of Kentucky” is featured with two other songs on this New York broadside of around the 1820s. The woodcut depicts Gen. Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans. From the Library of Congress.

246

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Strategically placed at the mouth of the great Mississippi River, the city of New Orleans was the site of prominent battles in both the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The former encounter took place on January 8, 1815, between some 6,500 American troops, commanded by General Andrew Jackson, and a British force of about 8,700 soldiers under the authority of General Sir Edward Packenham. Packenham had led a fleet of 50 ships into the Gulf of Mexico in the fall of 1814, with New Orleans in his eye. Jackson found out and quickly led his forces to the city’s defense on December 1. The Americans built such effective barricades and earthworks that the actual fighting lasted only half an hour before the British withdrew, suffering considerably more casualties than the Americans (more than 2,000 against only 71). As it happened, the battle was of no political consequence; peace talks had already been under way at Ghent for some time, and a treaty had been signed on December 24, but news, traveling slowly by boat, did not reach the fighting troops until after the battle’s conclusion. Several songs were written in commemoration of the great American victory, including “Hunters of Kentucky” by Massachusetts poet Samuel Woodworth (1784 –1842), who was already well known for his poem “The Old Oaken Bucket,” set to music in 1826 by G. F. Kiallmark to become one of the best-loved songs of the century. Woodworth’s lyrics credit the martial skills of the Kentucky riflemen for the unexpected American victory. More likely, it was the fact that the British, trying to cross a muddy plain and storm the American fortifications, were sitting ducks for the riflemen, who could hardly see well enough in the dense smoke and haze of the battle to shoot with great precision.99 It stands to reason that Woodworth would have penned his poem while the smell of gunsmoke was still thick in the moist New Orleans air. However, the good poet must have had his mind on more ethereal matters, inasmuch as he did not deign to leave any early tangible evidence (in the way of copyright or publication or other printed reference) of the poem’s genesis: the earliest dated publication is in the 1826 edition of his collection Melodies, where it appears with the instruction, “Air—Miss Bailey.”100 Where was it before then? As theatrical performer Noah Miller Ludlow (1795–1886) recalled much later, he was in New Orleans when, in May 1822, his brother had sent him a clipping from the New York Mirror with the text of Woodworth’s poem “Hunters of Kentucky.” Ludlow was about to give a benefit performance, and Woodworth’s poem struck his fancy, and he costumed himself “in a buckskin hunting-shirt and leggins, which I had borrowed of a river man, and with moccasins on my feet, and an old slouched hat on my head, and a rifle on my shoulder, I presented myself before the audience.” Ludlow’s performance was stunningly successful; in fact, he had to perform it two or three times over at every one of his appearances. Unfortunately, Mr. Ludlow’s recollections nearly six decades later must be somewhat befuddled here (as they have been shown to be elsewhere). The New York Mirror, and Lady’s Literary Gazette commenced publication on August 2, 1823, with Samuel Woodworth as its first editor until July 24, 1824. It stands to reason the poem, if published in the Mirror, would have appeared in that interval and no earlier. Nevertheless, Ludlow’s account was that he performed “Hunters” in New Orleans in May and then in Nashville during the summer of 1822, four times each week.101 To muddy waters further: musicologist S. Foster Damon wrote that Woodworth wrote his poem specifically for the performer Mr. Petrie.102 Indeed, the earliest sheet music, published (without date) by George Willig of Philadelphia, is captioned as follows:

UPPER SOUTH

247

The Hunters of Kentucky, written by S. Woodworth, as Sung in Character by Mr. Petrie with unbounded applause at Chatham Garden Theatre, the Symphonies and Accompaniments by William Blondell.103

“Miss Bailey” is not mentioned, but the music provided by Mr. Blondell is certainly that well-known tune. Sheet music authority and publisher Harry Dichter, who reprinted the sheet music, tentatively dated it 1824, which others have accepted as reliable. Dichter may have based his date assignment on the fact that the new building, named the Chatham Garden Theatre, opened on May 17, 1824, and continued intermittently until 1828. (Mr. Petrie must have been one of the New York stage’s lesser luminaries; George Odell mentions his last name several times in his monumental Annals of the New York Stage, but never supplies a first name.) Although some anthologies date the song to 1815, the year of the events it concerns, the available evidence puts the song in the period 1822–1824,104 and the poem itself possibly earlier. In any event, the song’s wild popularity contributed significantly to pro-Jackson sentiment in 1828, when he ran successfully for president of the United States, and Wolfe suggested that, in fact, the song was written in support of Jackson’s earlier unsuccessful presidential campaign of 1824.105 Whatever the true genesis of Woodworth’s creation, it has long enjoyed a well-deserved popularity, owing as much to the poet’s consummate metrical pattern and perfect feminine rhymes as to the felicitous choice of tune. Colonel Sharp Come, gentlemen and ladies, and listen unto me, About a sad transaction which I will sing to thee; ’Tis of a brave young lawyer that lived in Kentucky state, And a true lover upon whom he patiently did wait. She said that she would marry him if he would avenge her heart Of an injury that had been done her by one named Colonel Sharp; She said that he had wronged her and brought her spirit low, And without satisfaction no pleasure could she know. He said, “My loving sweetheart, that’s pleasing talk to me, To kill a man that’s injured you I truly do feel free; For I never could expect you to become my wife, Unless I would protect you and surely take his life.” He made his preparations and unto Frankfort went, To kill this valiant colonel it was his full intent; He took him out to one side and gave to him a knife, But Sharp said I can’t fight you if this lady be your wife. He made a great endeavor to see him the next day, And hunted over Frankfort, but Sharp had gone away; He then returned to his love and told her what he had done, And they together both agreed to let him longer run.

248

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Within a few months after this couple they were wed, And then came thoughts of the colonel more strongly in their head; He said, “I’ll kill him secretly, then to my love I’ll return, When we’ll betake ourselves from here, in some other land sojourn.” She made a mask of black silk and put it on his head, That he might seem a negro as to the deed he sped; He moved along quite cautiously to get to Colonel Sharp, Then called him from his bedchamber and stabbed him to the heart. The lawyer made good his escape unto his loving wife, And told her how successfully he’d taken the colonel’s life; “As no one saw me do it and I made such haste to run, They cannot prove against me the deed that I have done.” She said, “My loving husband, you did just as you please, You’ve relieved me from much trouble and set my heart at ease, It is a great satisfaction for what the colonel done, And now we shall be happier, my best love you have won.” But justice followed on his track, they took him back again, Which turned the lady’s happiness and pleasure into pain; He was tried by judge and jury, and guilty he was found, Then taken to the prison house and in it he was bound. “Oh, my dear old father, do not troubled be, And you, my tender mother, give way to grief for me; For the laws of old Kentucky say that I must surely die, And leave my friends and kindred to meet my destiny. “And you, my own, my dearest wife, come stay a while with me, For soon I shall be called away into eternity; May heaven kindly bless you while here on earth you stay, And all my friends protect you and help you on your way.” She cried, “My dear, good husband, how can it ever be? And this our greatest trouble was caused by me; I always will be with you while on this earth you stay, And when the horrid deed is done, lie with you in the clay.” She had prepared a trusty knife, and made it very sharp, And while they thus together talked she stabbed it to her heart; Then gave it to her husband to follow the same course, But as he made a second thrust she warded off its force. The hour was drawing on apace, the execution near, While in his arms close folded he held the wife so dear, Bewailing the sad fortune which had become her part, While steadily the life blood was flowing from her heart. At last the appointed hour arrived—he from the gallows swung, And all around his friends deplored the crime that he had done; Had been the cause of misery to all in him concerned, To prove his tenderness to her for whom his bosom yearned.106 The killing on which this ballad is based occurred in Frankfort in 1824. . . . Jereboam O. Beauchamp, a young student of law living in Glasgow, Ky., learned from a fellow-student that Col. Sol. P. Sharp,

UPPER SOUTH

249

under whom Beauchamp expected to study law, had been guilty of seducing Miss Ann Cook. He conceived at once a contempt for Sharp, and through sympathy for the girl sought her acquaintance. He soon fell in love with Miss Cook, and asked her to marry him. She made one condition, that he kill Sharp. He agreed to the condition and tried to make Sharp fight. Sharp refused and kept out of Beauchamp’s way. Beauchamp made all his neighbors believe that he and his wife (the two had married in the mean time) were going to move to Missouri. He arranged that just before his proposed departure urgent business should take him to Frankfort, where Sharp held the position of attorneygeneral. Beauchamp, having disguised himself as a negro, called Sharp out of his home at night and killed him. He then sunk his disguise in the river, and, having put on his own clothes again, slipped back into his hotel. On the next day he returned to his home; but he was suspected, arrested, and convicted. He and his wife both tried to commit suicide by drinking poison. The wife died of the poison one hour after the husband was executed for his deed.107

The author of the ballad is not known, nor is Wehman’s source for the text given here; this suggests that a broadside copy was in circulation in the nineteenth century. The ballad follows the facts fairly closely, except in the significant detail of the chosen manner of suicide. Two other ballads about the affair were collected in Kentucky in the early 1900s.108 While in prison, Beauchamp wrote a lengthy confession.109 Several pieces of American literature were based on this episode, including Edgar Allen Poe’s fragmentary tragedy “Politian” and Robert Penn Warren’s novel World Enough and Time.110 My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night! The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, ’Tis summer, the darkies are gay; The corn top’s ripe, and the meadow’s in the bloom. While the birds make music all the day. The young folks roll on the little cabin-floor, All merry, all happy and bright; By’n by Hard Times comes a-knocking at the door: Then, my old Kentucky home, good-night! Chorus: Weep no more, my lady, Oh! weep no more to-day! We will sing one song For the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home, far away. They hunt no more for the possum and the coon On the meadow, the hill and the shore, They sing no more, by the glimmer of the moon, On the bench by the old cabin-door. The day goes by, like a shadow o’er the heart, With sorrow, where all was delight; The time has come, when the darkies have to part: Then, my old Kentucky home, good-night! Chorus. The head must bow and the back will bend, Wherever the darkey may go: A few more days, and the trouble all will end In the field where the sugar-canes grow.

250

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

A few more days for to tote the weary load, No matter, ’twill never be light, A few more days till we’ll totter on the road, Then my old Kentucky home, good-night! Chorus.111

Stephen Collins Foster (1826–1864) was America’s most successful popular songwriter of the nineteenth century and the composer whose songs remain more familiar, a century

This sheet music to Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home” (1853) was labeled number 20 in the series, Foster’s Plantation Melodies. Author’s collection.

UPPER SOUTH

251

and a half after his early death in a hospital charity ward from fever, alcohol, and depression, than any others of that century. Born in what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Foster was thoroughly a Northerner (in spite of one trip he made to the South), but his lyrics capture the ethos of antebellum Southern culture as did no one else’s. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that his lyrics created the ethos of a culture, rather than simply reflecting it: Foster’s South was the land Anglo Americans desperately wanted to believe in—where “darkies” were faithful to and loved their masters, and their masters, in turn, treated them as they would their own children—with only love and respect. “My Old Kentucky Home” speaks of hard times, of the end of the good old days—but it is not an end brought about by emancipation or abolition: his song was written in 1853, when the storm clouds of war were scarcely predictable. In fact, “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Old Folks at Home,” and possibly others were inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe’s powerful and influential novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. His first draft of the song is titled “Poor Uncle Tom, Good Night,” and the chorus reads Oh good night, good night, good night Poor uncle Tom Grieve not for your old Kentucky home Your bound for a better land Old Uncle Tom.112

Foster soon realized that the sentiments of his song had nothing in common with the spirit of Stowe’s story, and he obliterated the tenuous connections. Kentucky has honored Foster’s memory by making this the official state song. Cumberland Gap The first white man in Cumberland Gap, Was Doctor Walker, an English chap; Refrain: Lay down boys and take a little nap, They’re raising hell in Cumberland Gap. Daniel Boone on the Pinnacle Rock, He killed Indians with an old flint lock. Refrain. Cumberland Gap is a noted place, There’s three kinds of water to wash your face. Cumberland Gap with its cliffs and rocks, Home of the panther, bear and fox. Me and my wife, and our little chap, All made a living in Cumberland Gap. September morn in Sixty-two, Morgan’s “Yankee” all withdrew. They spiked Long Tom on the mountain top, And over the cliffs they let him drop. They burned the hay, the meal and meat, And left the rebels nothing to eat. Braxton Bragg with his rebel band, He run George Morgan to the bluegrass land. The rebels now will give their yell, They’ll scare the niggers all to hell.113

252

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

This common banjo and fiddle tune was widely known in the Southeast, especially around Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Harvey Fuson, who published the preceding version, considered it a square dance tune. Simple as it is, musically and textually, it holds a fair amount of early history of the Cumberland region. Located near the meeting place of Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee, between Middlesboro, Kentucky, and Cumberland Gap, Tennessee, the gap was the principal passage from across the Alleghenies and made possible the first wave of settlement of Kentucky. Unlike most other texts, which have far fewer details, this one recalls the discoverer of the gap, Thomas Walker, and one of its earliest trailblazers, Daniel Boone. The other historical references pertain to the Civil War. General Braxton Bragg was involved in several actions in Kentucky or Tennessee; he invaded Kentucky in August 1862, nearly succeeding in taking Louisville; at the Battle of Murfreesboro (Tennessee), or Stones River, he fought Union forces under General William Starke Rosecrans to a draw; and in September 1863, he defeated Rosecrans in the Battle of Chickamauga (Tennessee). Two months later, he was defeated by General Grant in the Battle of Chattanooga. Union Brigadier General George W. Morgan took possession of the gap in the summer of 1862 for a while. “Long Tom” was an 18-foot cannon with a range of approximately five miles. The Confederates hauled it to the top of Cumberland Mountain in 1861 but pushed it off a cliff when they abandoned the gap in the following year. The Union troops found it and brought it back to the top of the mountain, where they discovered they had no suitable ammunition, and General Morgan ordered it spiked and pushed over the edge again. Spiking meant driving a file into the cannon’s vent and breaking it off there, rendering the gun useless.114 The Battle of Mill Springs There lies a wounded soldier on the battlefield, His comrades gathered round him and by his side did kneel; And then this wounded soldier did raise his head and said: “Who will care for mother when her wounded boy is dead? “I was my parents’ only son to comfort in their old age, My heart is like a captive bird a-fluttering in its cage; I was my father’s only son, a mother’s only joy, And they will weep in tears for me, their dying soldier boy. “O tell my dear old father that in death I prayed for him, That one day I might meet him in a world that is free from sin; And tell my dear old mother not to mourn and cry, For her only son was a soldier and a soldier he did die. “And tell my little sister not to weep for me; I’ll sit no more by the fireside and nurse her on my knee; And sing to her them good old songs she used to have me sing, For her brother now lies wounded at the Battle of Mill Springs. “O when I was a little boy I used to hear them tell About the gallant soldiers, how lonely they did feel; Then I came to be a servant, it was my country’s call, Fighting for the Union, for the Union I did fall. “O listen, comrades, listen! ’tis a girl I speak of now, If she was only here this night to cheer my aching brow!

UPPER SOUTH

253

But little does she know of the battle as she sings, That her true love now lies wounded at the Battle of Mill Springs. “Alas! and now I’m wounded, no more of her I’ll see, But I hope one day to meet her in a world that is free from sin; Tell her that in death I murmured her sweet name, That she was just as dear to me as when from her I came. “O listen, comrades, listen! I have something more to tell.” They stopped to hear him speak again and he only said “Farewell.” He kissed the Stars and Stripes and he laid them by his side, Gave three cheers for the Union and bowed his head and died. And then this Battle of Mill Springs it was over, And thousands of wounded soldiers lie in a crimson grave, And many a wounded soldier did raise his head and tried, To gaze upon young Edward, who prayed before he died.115

The first major battle of the Civil War in Kentucky, the Battle of Mill Springs, or Logan’s Crossroads, took place not far from the Cumberland River, a little ways north of the Kentucky-Tennessee border. Not far to the east lay Cumberland Gap, the main route into southwest Virginia, and controlling this passage was of great strategic importance. Confederate troops attacked the Union Army to protect the long line of defense it had established across southern Kentucky, but the North fought back vigorously, ultimately resulting in the defeat of General Albert Sidney Johnston’s Confederate Army on January 19, 1862. Kentucky remained with the North through the duration of the war. The song was but one of many that were modeled—some closely, some more loosely— after the enormously popular “Bingen on the Rhine,” a poem by Lady Caroline Norton and set to music by the Hutchinson Family. Compare some of her words: A soldier of the legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s tears; But a comrade stood before him, while his life-blood ebb’d away, And bent with pitying glances to hear what he might say. . . . Tell my mother, that her other sons shall comfort her old age, And I was but a truant bird, that thought my home a cage. Ten Broeck and Mollie Old Timbrook was a black horse, black as any crow (2) Had a white ring around his forepaw, white as any snow. Yes, old Timbrook he come dartin’ like a bullet from a gun, (2) And old Molly she come creepin’ like a criminal to be hung. Johnny Walker, Johnny Walker, Johnny Walker my dear son, (2) Hold tight rein on Timbrook so that horse can run. Oh the cuckoo was a fine bird, hollers when he fly (2) But he never hollers cuckoo till the fourth day of July. Oh the race track it was dusty and the wind was high (2) Well you couldn’t see old Timbrook as he come darting by.

254

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Oh the children they did holler and the old folks squalled (2) But old Timbrook he beat Molly to the hole in the wall. I love my race horse, like to have my fun Yes, I love my race horse, like to have my fun, Old Mrs. went to the race track and lost all o’ her mon.116

We don’t have very many folk songs about race horses, but this one, thanks to Kentucky musician Bill Monroe, “the father of bluegrass music,” has been a staple in bluegrass music for half a century: Run, old Molly, run, run old Molly, run, Ten Brook’s gonna beat you to the bright shinin’ sun. Ten Brooks was a big bay horse, he rode that shaggy main, He run all ’round Memphis; he beat the Memphis train.

The song describes (very loosely) the last four-mile race in American turf history—on July 4, 1878, at the Louisville Race Track (later renamed Churchill Downs), when the Kentucky thoroughbred Ten Broeck defeated the California mare Miss Mollie McCarthy. According to one southern Illinois fiddler who saw the race, the song was being sung the following year at the fair by an old blind man. The song soon entered both white and black tradition, and either was based on, or assimilated elements from, an older English ballad about a similar horse race, “Stewball.” The version quoted in full here is from the singing of an African American blues musician whose repertoire included material more common in white than in black folk tradition. His version has turned the couplets (or quatrains) of the Anglo American ballad into the three-line verse characteristic of blues (AAB). The reference in the song to Johnny Walker is a confusion of Ten Broeck’s jockey’s name, Billy Walker, with the popular whiskey. (In Bill Monroe’s bluegrass version, “Walker” has been garbled to “Kyper.”) The verse about the cuckoo is a commonplace in English lyric folk songs that was probably incorporated into this ballad because July 4 happened to be the date of the race.117 The Ashland Tragedy Dear father, mother, sister, come listen while I tell All about the Ashland tragedy, of which you know full well. ’Twas in the town of Ashland, all on that deadly night, A horrible crime was committed, but soon was brought to light. Three men who did the murder, was Craft, Ellis, and Neal; They thought the crime they had concealed, but God the same revealed. George Ellis, one of the weakest, who could not bear the pain, To J. B. Powell, trembling, revealed the horrid stain. Ellis Craft, who was the leader, and had an iron heart, Caused a son and two lovely daughters from their mother’s embrace to part. Poor Neal, he may be innocent, but, from what George Ellis tells, The crime he has committed will send his soul to hell. He dragged poor Emma from her bed and threw her on the floor, Crushed her head with an iron bar, her blood did run in gore.

UPPER SOUTH

255

In my own imagination I can see her little hands Upheld, crying for mercy, murdered by cruel hands. Those little white hands so tender, upheld in prayer to him, Falls useless at her bleeding side, her eyes in death grow dim. Craft committed the same offence, and murdered the other two; While their forms were cold in death, Craft says, “What shall we do?” Then Neal proposed to burn them up, to hide their bloody stain, While some other three might arrested be, and them not bear the blame. Then, in tones of thunder, Craft told Ellis to get to camp, And pour oil on the children, while they stood with bloody hands. Then Craft he lit a match and touched it to their clothes, The flame loomed up with melting heat, and away the wretches goes. Then off they went, I have no doubt, as fast as they could go, And thought no one their bloody crime would ever, ever know. Then early the next morning the town in mourning wept, To see the children’s burning forms, the sight they can’t forget; Such screams and bitter weeping of friends that stood around, Their heart strings torn and bleeding, tears falling to the ground. Poor little Robert Gibbons, a helpless orphan child, Died in defence of his sister; to her he was loving and mild. For their three forms are buried, they sleep beneath the sod, Murdered while defending their virtues, and their souls are at rest with God. At rest in the golden city, where God himself gives light, Where crystal streams are flowing, in the city where there is no night; They’re with the white-robed angels, whose harps are made of gold, Whose crowns are set with brilliant stars, forever in the dear Lord’s hold. There is one thing yet I do remember well: Major Allen with his blood hounds caused tears and tide to swell; They hovered round those dreadful fiends that send death knell through town, Caused other friends from friends to part; for hell such men are bound. The people of Mt. Sterling, who rate themselves so high, Ought to be in favor of justice and say that he should die. I suppose they have forgotten that they have daughters too, And law and right should be their aim, to protect their children too. May law and justice be dealt out, and spread from plain to plain, And in the future day enjoy a moral land again! Now all dear fathers and mothers, a warning take by this, Stay at home with your children, and guard against crimes like this. Remember the advice I give you is from a true and loving heart; I hope you’ll take its earnest heed, from its teachings never part; Remember the world is wicked, no mortal you can trust; Trust God, who is all wisdom and doeth all things just.118

The victims in this gruesome affair were Fannie and Robert Gibbons and a Miss Emma Charcoola, who was staying with them at the time. Collector John H. Cox was told by the father of the woman from whom he received the preceding text that the song had been

256

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

composed by one Elijah Adams. The perpetrators of the murder were hanged in 1884— George Ellis by a local mob and William Neal and Ellis Craft by the sheriff after being properly tried and convicted. Elijah Adams “had a stack of ballads on the day of the hanging, stood on a big rock, and sold them as fast as three men could hand them out.” The hanging was at Grayson, Carter County, Kentucky. The motive for the killing has not been recorded. Just what seemed so offensive in Major Allen’s activities, intimated in the 11th stanza, is unclear. The following stanza seems to suggest that there was some disapproval over the pursuit of the perpetrators, but possibly the passage of four decades since the events took place had made the singer’s memory unreliable.119 Arch and Gordon When Archie went to Louieville, When Archie went to Louieville, When Archie went to Louieville Not thinking that he would be killed. When Gordon made his first shot (3) O’er behind the bed Arch did drop. Arch says, “Gordon, I didn’t mean no harm” (3) When Gordon shot Arch in his right arm. Hush now, Guvnor, don’t you cry (3) You know your son Arch has to die. Now you see what a sporting life has done (3) It has killed Guvnor Brown’s only son.120

Fulton Gordon had been the manager of the Kenyon Hotel at Frankfort when, in 1887, amid some scandal, he eloped with Nellie Bush. After the couple moved to Louisville, where Gordon became manager of an enterprise called the “Merchant’s Advice,” Mrs. Gordon became acquainted with Archibald Dixon Brown, the son of Governor John Young Brown. They rendezvoused regularly at Lucy Smith’s “disreputable resort” in Louisville, until Gordon became suspicious. A friend warned Brown, and he canceled his next appointment with Mrs. Gordon but agreed to meet with her on the following Tuesday. Gordon saw his wife with a note with the word Tuesday on it; with the aid of a friend who spied for him, Gordon learned of the assignation. Shortly after noon on Tuesday, April 30, 1895, Gordon surprised his wife and Arch Brown in flagrante delicto—specifically, in bed at Lucy Smith’s establishment. Gordon shot several times, wounding Brown in the left arm. Brown rolled out of bed and headed for the dresser, where his gun was. Gordon emptied his pistol into Brown, and Brown shot Gordon twice. Gordon grabbed Brown’s gun and shot him with that. Then Gordon shot his wife, who had attacked him. She stumbled out the door and died on the back porch. Police apprehended Gordon a few blocks away. Gordon was tried and convicted of justifiable homicide and freed on May 9. Folklorist D. K. Wilgus collected two fragmentary versions of the ballad in Kentucky in the 1950s, but it has not turned up elsewhere. As Wilgus noted, the ballad style was that of the African American blues ballad—a story song, but with a very weak narrative line, in which chronology gives way to editorial comment and community reaction. This is a ballad style that seems to have developed in the last decades of the nineteenth century out of a melding of African American and Anglo American song styles.

UPPER SOUTH

The Rowan County Crew Come all young men and ladies, fathers and mothers too, I will relate to you the hist’ry of the Rowan County crew; Concerning bloody Rowan and many hideous deeds, My friends, please give attention, remember how it reads. It was in the month of August, all on the election day, Johnny Martin he was wounded, they say by Johnny Day; But Martin could not believe it, he could not think it so, He thought it was Floyd Tolliver that struck the fatal blow. They shot and killed Saul Bradley, a sober and innocent man, Left his wife and loving children to do the best they can; They wounded young Ad Sizemore, although his life was saved, He seems to shun the grog-shops since he stood so near t’ his grave. Now Martin did recover, some months had come and passed, All in the town of Morehead those men they met at last, Tolliver and a friend or two about the streets did walk, They seemed to be uneasy, with no one wished to talk. They stepped into Judge Carey’s grocery and stepped to the bar, But little did they think, dear friends, they had met their fatal hour; The sting of death was near him, Martin rushed in at the door, A few words passed between them concerning the row before. The people were soon all frightened, began to rush out of the room, When a ball from Martin’s pistol lay Tolliver in the tomb; His friends did gather round him, his wife to weep and wail, Then Martin was arrested and soon confined in jail. He was put in the jail of Rowan, there to remain a little while, In the hands of law and justice to bravely stand his trial; The people talked of lynching him, at present they did fail, The prisoner’s friends soon moved him to the Winchester jail. Some people forged an order, their names I do not know, Their plan was soon agreed upon, for Martin they did go; Martin seemed to be discouraged, he seemed to be in dread, “They’ve sought a plan to kill me,” to the jailer Martin said. They put the handcuffs on him, his heart was in distress, They hurried to the station to get on the night express; Along the line she lumbered at her usual speed, There was only two in number to commit this dreadful deed. Martin was in the smoking car, accompanied by his wife, They did not want her present when they took her husband’s life; When they arrived at Farer’s they had no time to lose, A band approached the engineer and told him not to move. They stepped up to the prisoner with pistols in their hands, In death he was soon sinking, he died in iron bands; His wife she heard the horrid sound, she was in another car, She cried, “Oh, Lord, they’ve killed him!” when she heard the pistols fire.

257

258

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now the death of those two men have caused great trouble in our land, Caused men to leave their families and take the parting hand; Retaliating still at war, and it may never cease, I would that I could only see our land once more in peace.121

A version collected from a West Virginia woman ends with a stanza that leaves no doubt where the author’s sentiments lie: I composed this song as a warning, oh Beware young men! Your pistols will cause you trouble, on this you may depend. In the bottom of a whiskey glass a lurking devil dwells, Burns the breath of those who drink it, and sends their souls to hell.122

The Tolliver-Martin feud in eastern Kentucky’s Rowan County was one of the bloodiest, culminating in at least four deaths in Morehead in 1887. In 1888 a committee appointed by the Kentucky legislature to investigate the troubles reported the following: Your committee finds from the evidence that the feud and lawlessness in Rowan County commenced in August, 1884, and grew out of the election of W. Cook Humphrey as sheriff of the county. On the day of the August election, one Solomon Bradley was killed in a street fight. A dispute arose as to whether Floyd Tolliver or John Martin did the killing.123

A few months later, Tolliver and Martin met in a saloon; a quarrel broke out and Tolliver was killed. Martin surrendered to authorities, who jailed him, but the court, fearing violence, had him transferred to Winchester. The Tollivers were furious. The town marshal, a Tolliver clansman, took four men to Winchester with a forged order to transfer the prisoner. On the way back, a band of Tollivers stopped the train, boarded it, and shot and killed the handcuffed prisoner. The county attorney, accused by the Martins of engineering the hijack, was ambushed and wounded, after which he fled the county. A few weeks later, Deputy Sheriff Baumbartner was shot and killed in retaliation by the Tollivers. Morehead now erupted in open warfare. The governor sent the adjutant general of the state to the county to investigate. The leaders of the opposing sides were summoned to Louisville, the capital, and ordered to lay down their arms. They agreed—but almost immediately the armistice was broken. More killings were followed by more retaliations. Morehead citizens were terrified; of the town population of 700, 400 left. Finally, Boone Logan, a law-abiding citizen whose two younger brothers had been ruthlessly slain by the Tollivers, visited the governor and pleaded for some action; the governor demurred. Logan purchased several hundred dollars’ worth of arms and ammunition and put together a group of armed men. After offering the Tollivers one more chance to surrender—which they ignored—an open battle broke out on Railroad Street in Morehead. The dreaded Tollivers were wiped out—to the town’s relief.124 The events inspired several ballads, one of which has remained in oral tradition ever since. Authorship has been traditionally attributed to James William “Blind Bill” Day, a Rowan County, Kentucky, resident, later immortalized in Jean Thomas’s book The Singin’ Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow. Day was present when Tolliver was killed and is supposed to have sung and fiddled his song on the streets of Morehead, Rowan’s county seat. Most of the facts set out in the song are correct, though some small details have been garbled. Though Day made commercial recordings in the 1920s (under the pseudonym of Jilson Setters), he did not record this ballad; it was, however, recorded by other commercial artists of that decade.

UPPER SOUTH

259

J. B. Marcum It was on the fourth of May, half past eight o’clock that day, J. P. Marcum then was standing in the door, Of the courthouse of his town, where Curt Jett was waiting round, Just to get a chance to bring him to the floor. Thomas White, a friend of Jett, no worse man was ever met, Came a-walking through the court house hall; And as he was passin’ by, he looked Marcum in the eye, Knowing truly that poor Marcum soon would fall. Chorus: Marcum leaves a wife to mourn all her life, Two little children to be brave; It was little Curtis Jett, Thomas White and others yet, Were the men who laid poor Marcum in his grave. P. J. Hewing and his man, Sheriff Edward Callahan, Was across the street in Harker Brothers Store; Some believed they knew the plot, hence was listening for the shot, And to see Jett’s victim fall there in the door. White, he walked out on the street, stopped to see it all complete, Expecting soon to hear that fatal shot; Jett advanced across the hall, and with pistol, lead, and ball, He killed J. B. Marcum on the spot. They arrested White and Jett, when the courts in Jackson met, Where the prosecution labored with its might; And when Breathitt’s court was o’er, Judge Redwine could do no more, So he left for another court to right. There the jury disagreed, just one man begin to plead, That he thought both White and Jett should go free; And he held out to the last, and his vote he could not cast; Some believed Judge Jim Hargis paid a fee. Now they tried these men once more, not in Jackson as before, For they could not get their justice in that town; Then the courts in Hazard met and condemned both White and Jett, And the verdict of their guilt in it was found. Now the final trial is past, White and Jett are doomed at last, To the prison house where they will have to stay; There with men of other crime, have to labor all the time, Until death shall come and take them both away. Oh their mothers grieve today for the boys so far away, For there’s nothing that can sever a mother’s love; She will pray for them each breath, and will cling to them till death, And she longs to meet them in the court above. Chorus.125

In nineteenth-century Kentucky, the national pastime of murdering pregnant sweethearts shared the stage with a penchant for bloodletting family vendettas. It has been argued, not unreasonably, that this was the residue of the code of clan honor brought by Kentucky’s highland Scots ancestors. Whatever its source, eastern Kentucky has been

260

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

home to a generous share of family feuds, many of which ended up in bloodshed. Of the family feuds—“wars” or “troubles,” as they were also called—that between the Hargis and Cockrell clans was one of the most notorious, involving politics not only in Breathitt County, but in the state capital as well. The feud was based on residue from events of the 1880s, during an earlier feud between the Strongs (one of whom was Marcum’s uncle) and the Callahans (including Ed Callahan), but was renewed just before the turn of the century. In the election of 1898, Democratic candidate James Hargis won the position of county judge, and his crony, Edward Callahan, was elected sheriff. Their adversaries, the Fusionist Party (the Republicans joined by some disenchanted Democrats), filed suit to contest their defeat, and asked attorney James Buchanan Marcum to represent them. Hargis asked Marcum’s law partner, O. H. Pollard, to represent him and Callahan. The Fusionists lost their appeal, and in the course of events, old wounds were opened, warrants were sworn out, gunfire nearly exchanged, and the law firm of Marcum and Pollard dissolved in enmity. In early 1902 Marshal Tom Cockrell and Ben Hargis, Judge Hargis’s youngest brother, met in a blind tiger and got into an argument, and Ben was shot to death. Cockrell was arrested but eventually freed because no witnesses would consent to testify. In July 1902 Curtis Jett (actually related to both the Cockrells and the Marcums) got in an argument with Jim Cockrell, the town marshal. A week later, Cockrell was shot down in the town’s main street; Jett was widely suspected. One witness had seen the killers but, fearing for his life, fled town. Toward the end of the year, Marcum, dismayed by the continuing violence (and fearing for his own life), wrote a letter to the Lexington Herald decrying the feuding, noting that more than 30 feud-related murders had taken place in the county in the past year. His letter brought no action, but rather, only anticipation on the part of the citizenry that it wasn’t over. On April 13, 1903, Dr. Cox, a relative of the Cockrells, was ambushed and shot to death. On May 4, 1903, Marcum was shot down in the doorway of the Breathitt County Court House. Curtis Jett (the supposed assassin of Jim Cockrell in 1902) and Thomas White were accused of the murder. Under great pressure, Circuit Judge Redwine, who owed his election to the Hargis faction, granted a change of venue to Morgan County. But because the judge there was supposedly also a Hargis man, the commonwealth attorney withdrew his request to relocate the trial. At the trial in Jackson, the jury was hung, reportedly because of the stand of a single juror. Later rumor had it that he received $500 and a new Winchester rifle for his dissenting vote (see the sixth stanza). The governor ordered a change of venue to Harrison County, outside the mountains, where Jett and White were found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment.126 The lines of the penultimate stanza, saying the killers will have to remain imprisoned until their deaths, suggest that the ballad was written before 1914 –1915, when Jett and White were pardoned. The tune is the common tune of “Jesse James.” The Peddler and His Wife Just as the sun was a-rising high, One day in merry June; The birds were singing in the trees, All nature seemed in tune. A peddler and his wife were travelling along, Along a lonely way,

UPPER SOUTH

261

A-sharing each other’s toils and cares, They both were old and grey. They were laboring, toiling hard, A living for to make; Nor did not know, nor did they think, Then there their lives would take. Alas for them a scheme was laid By some treacherous men Their hearts is hard as any stone And did not fear for sin. They were hidden by the road With hearts like murderers came With voices hushed and with one plan To kill the worried man. Just then the wagon came in view, Shots ring upon the air; And while the echo died away, Those beings perished there. His wife fell out upon the ground And tossed her dying head; Those men rushed out and took her gold, Poor lady she were dead. The team rushed on with the dying man, Till kind friends checked its speed; Alas, alas, it was too hard To [stop this?] horrible deed.127 Now they are sleeping in their tomb, Their souls have gone above; Where thieves disturb them now no more, For all is peace and love.128

Ignorance prevents comparison of the ballad text with the historical record. Kentucky folk song collector Harvey Fuson stated that the events described in the ballad took place on Martin’s Fork on the Cumberland River in Harlan County, Kentucky, in the early 1900s. More details have not been reported. He thought it had been written by Charlie Oaks, who wrote or recorded several other ballads in this collection. Floyd Collins Oh, come all you young people, and listen while I tell The fate of Floyd Collins, a lad we all knew well; His face was fair and handsome, his heart was true and brave, His body now lies sleeping in a lonely sandstone cave. How said, how sad the story, it fills our eyes with tears, The memory, too, will linger for many, many years; The broken hearted father who tried his boy to save Will now weep tears of sorrow at the door of Floyd’s cave.

262

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

“Oh, mother, don’t you worry, dear father don’t be sad; I’ll tell you all my story in an awful dream I had; I dreamed I was a prisoner, my life I could not save, I cried, ‘Oh, must I perish within this silent cave!’ ” The rescue party labored, they worked both night and day, To move the mighty barrier that stood within the way; To rescue Floyd Collins, this was their battle cry, “We’ll never, no, we’ll never let Floyd Collins die!” But on that fatal morning, the sun rose in the sky, The workers still were busy, “We’ll save him bye and bye,” But oh how sad the ending, his life could not be saved, His body then was sleeping in the lonely sandstone cave. Young people, all take warning, from Floyd Collins’ fate, And get right with your maker before it is too late. It may not be a sand cave in which we find our tomb, But at the bar of judgment we too must meet our doom.129

On January 30, 1925, 38-year-old William Floyd Collins, an amateur spelunker, was exploring Crystal Cave, a small cave on his parents’ property not far from Mammoth Cave. Crystal Cave was a minor tourist attraction, but business was poor, and Floyd thought he might find another entrance to Mammoth Cave, which would be of great commercial value. As he was leaving the cave, he was caught in a narrow passage when he dislodged some rocks and his leg was pinned. After his disappearance was noted, friends found him the next day; food and an electric light were lowered down to him, but he could not be moved. A rescue team worked for many days, trying to dig another passage to him because the original passage had collapsed and was impassable. A radio broadcasting crew also arrived at the site, and the rescue effort became the first event of its kind with live radio coverage from the scene of the accident. Rescuers labored for more than two weeks, finally managing to reach him on February 17, by which time he was dead. It was determined that removing his body would be unsafe, and the passage was closed off. A funeral service was held aboveground, but Floyd’s brother Homer was not satisfied, and two months later, he and friends reopened the passage and, on April 23, retrieved the body and reburied it on the Collins property. Two years later, his father sold the family homestead and cave. The new owners exhumed the body and exhibited it in a glass case as a new tourist attraction. Then, in 1929, one night, someone broke into the shrine and stole the body. The owners continued to charge admission to the site, though a cloth covered the exhibit with a notice that the body had been temporarily removed for some cleaning and grooming. The body was later recovered (minus a leg) and restored to the exhibit in a chained casket. In 1961 Crystal Cave was purchased by Mammoth Cave National Park, and the shrine was dismantled and the body reburied.130 One journalist who investigated the story reported that as late as the 1960s, there were still strong feelings about Collins, and concluded that rivalries among family members were responsible for the antics involving the body.131 The Wreck of Number Four and the Death of John Daily Come railroad men and listen to me, A story you will hear; Of a wreck on the line of the line of the old L. and E. And the death of a brave engineer.

UPPER SOUTH

263

John Dailey was the engineer’s name, He rode through many, many years; But little did he think on that fatal day, That death was waiting so near. Now from Neon old Number Four sped, On her way with passengers and crew; John Dailey was needed in the cab, As though he would pull her through. The train left the rail as she rambled along, And beneath the cart he lay; He was pulled from the wreck by his fireman so true, And was dead in an instant, they say. Death came to him as an unseen foe, In a moment he passed away; As the train rambled on and a train rambled too, All seemed to be happy and gay. We never know when death is near, So a warning we should take; From the wreck on the line of the old L. and E. And engineer Dailey’s fate.132

On December 31, 1928, at 11:00 A.M., passenger train Number Four was derailed at Torrent, Kentucky, on the Eastern Kentucky Division line running between Lexington and Neon via Winchester and Ravenna. The train belonged to the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, which had purchased the stock of the Lexington and Eastern in 1910, but in 1928 locals continued to refer to the L & E, even though it had had long since ceased to exist. The main line was blocked because of a freight derailment earlier that day, so Number Four was routed over the branch through Torrent to Lexington. Rounding a sharp curve, the engine left the rails and overturned. Engineer John Dailey (his name is misspelled on the original record label), 50 years old, leaped from the engine, but his head struck a rock and he was killed—the only injury from the accident. Dailey had been with the L & N for 30 years.133 Which Side Are You On? Come all of you poor workers, Good news to you I’ll tell; Of how the good old union Has come in here to dwell. Chorus: Which side are you on? (2) We’ve starting our good battle, We know we’re sure to win; Because we’ve got the gun-thugs A-lookin’ very thin. They say they have to guard us, To educate their child; Their children live in luxury, Our children’s almost wild.

264

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

With pistols and with rifles, They take away our brea; And if you miners hinted it, They’d sock you on the head. They say in Harlan County, There are no neutrals there; You either are a union man Or a thug for J. H. Blair. Oh workers, can you stand it? Oh tell me how you can; Will you be a lousy scab, Or will you be a man? My daddy was a miner, He is now in the air and sun; He’ll be with you fellow workers Until the battle’s won.134

Harlan County, in eastern Kentucky bordering Virginia and just northeast of the Cumberland Gap, became one of the country’s major coal-producing regions in the early twentieth century. The Louisville & Nashville Railroad built its first line into the county in 1910, allowing for rapid development. By 1928 there were 59 mines producing nearly 15 million tons of bituminous coal. Coal mining was dangerous, difficult, and underpaid work. Most mine owners were unconscionably indifferent to the working conditions of their miners, resisting any changes in working conditions that might make life safer for their workers at the expense of profits. Because of inadequate safety precautions, mine explosions and cave-ins were a constant danger. A family could have several members employed in the mines and could easily lose all of them in a disaster. The hardships of mine life were not successfully challenged until the miners attempted to unionize, a goal not achieved without great loss of lives, owing to the mine owners’ bitter resistance. The bloody conflicts of unionization efforts of the 1920s and 1930s provided an abundance of material for the songwriters and singers of the period. When labor union representatives began serious efforts to establish unions among the mine workers in the 1930s, the mine camps themselves often became the scenes of pitched battles between the miners and the hired thugs of the owners; between strikers and strikebreakers. The spirits of the downtrodden miners and their families were often uplifted with the help of proud and militant union songs, though even the mere singing of such lyrics placed the singers in physical danger. The songwriters typically took tunes that the miners already knew well, such as hymns and spirituals. In 1931 Florence Reece, wife of Sam Reece, a Harlan union organizer, whote “Which Side Are You On?” to the tune of the Baptist hymn “Lay the Lily Low” after Sheriff J. H. Blair and his deputies broke into the Reece cabin and ransacked it, looking for Sam. It became one of the best-known songs to come out of Harlan’s labor conflicts.

TENNESSEE The first European exploration of what became Tennessee was under the Spanish flag and the leadership of Hernando de Soto in 1540; the Spaniards established a Mississippi

UPPER SOUTH

265

River landing place at the location of present-day Memphis but failed to maintain a regional presence. The French arrived in 1673; in the 1680s La Salle followed the Mississippi River down to its mouth and claimed all of the land in the river’s basin for France. In the late seventeenth century, English fur traders crossed the Appalachians from the colonies of Virginia and Carolina and entered into competition with the French. These rivalries eventually led to the French and Indian Wars of 1754 –1763—in effect an extension of the Seven Years’ War involving most of the countries on the European continent. As part of the Treaty of Paris marking the war’s conclusion in 1763, the French ceded all claims east of the Mississippi (including Tennessee) to the British. In the 1780s, the region passed into and out of the hands of North Carolina. Tennessee was finally admitted to the Union in 1796 as the 16th state. When the controversies of the 1850s led to the establishment of the Confederacy in 1861, the state’s citizens were divided, with the eastern part of the state opposing secession. The western majority, however, prevailed. Tennessee played host to numerous war campaigns; it was second only to Virginia in number of battles fought on its territory. Story of the Knoxville Girl I met a little girl in Knoxville, a town we all know well; And every Sunday evening out in her home I’d dwell. We went to take an evenin’ walk about a mile from town, I picked a stick up off the ground and knocked that fair girl down. She fell down on her bended knees, for mercy she did cry; “Oh, Willie dear, don’t kill me here, I’m unprepared to die.” She never spoke another word, I only beat her more, Until the ground around me within her blood did flow. I taken her by her golden curls, I drug her round and round, Throwing her into the river that flows through Knoxville town. “Go there, go there, you Knoxville girl, got dark and rolling eyes, Go there, go there, you Knoxville girl, you can never be my bride.” Starting back to Knoxville, got there about midnight, My mother she was worried, and woke up in a fright; Saying, “Son, oh son, what have you done to bloody your clothes so?” I told my anxious mother had been bleeding at my nose. “Call for me a candle to light myself to bed, Call for me a handkerchief to bind my aching head.” Roll and tumbled the whole night through as trouble were for me, Like flames of hell around my bed and in my eyes could see. They carried me down to Knoxville, they put me in a cell. My friends all tried to get me out but none could go my bail. I’m here to waste my life away down in this dirty old jail Because I murdered that Knoxville girl, the girl I loved so well.135

There is no Tennessee soil clinging to the roots of this ballad; it is one of those examples of imported songs that was modified, by altering a place name, so that superficially, it seems to be a Tennessee story. The ballad circulated widely in Britain on cheap print in the eighteenth century under a variety of names, including “The Wexford Girl,” “The Oxford Girl,” or “The Lexington Murder.” Quite likely, nothing more significant than the symbolic

266

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

X marks the spot was responsible for making Knoxville the New World setting for a distinctly Old World tale of seduction, betrayal, murder, and retribution. The original British author of this ballad has managed to keep his or her identity a secret, as well as when it was penned, and whether or not it was based on a true incident. Where and when it made landfall in an American port is also not known, but it traveled rapidly and widely and has been collected in most crannies of the country. It has undergone a variety of transformations, but its most common localization is to the Tennessee town of Knoxville. Generations of coursing along the streams of oral tradition have smoothed away the rougher cheap-press corners that it once had—such as stilted language, clumsy rhymes, tedious amplitude of details, abundant expressions of regret and anguish on the part of the narrator (especially after his conviction), stress on the shame to his family, and a closing moral addressed to the listeners or readers. Knoxville can take pride in the knowledge that its murdered girl ballad ranks up there with the best of them. Sweet Allalee Sweet Allalee, so dear to me, She’s gone forevermore; My home was down in Tennessee Before the cruel war. Chorus: Then carry me back to Tennessee, There’s where I long to be; ( Down in Tennessee) Among the fields of yellow corn With my darling Allalee. Oh why did I from day to day Keep wishing to be free? And from my master run away, And leave my Allalee? They say that I will soon be free And happy all the day; And if they’ll take me back again, I’ll never run away.136

This song was written in two distinct phases. In 1853, the song “Ella Ree” was published, with words by Charles E. Stewart and music by James W. Porter. It had the following chorus: Then carry me back to Tennessee, There let me live and die, Among the fields of yellow corn, And the land where Ella lie.

The relation to our song is clear, but obviously the text titled “Sweet Allalee” could not have been written in 1853 since the words clearly imply that the “cruel war” is now over. A dozen years later, in 1865, the prolific songwriter and publisher Septimus Winner revised the song extensively and published it as “Carry Me Back to Tennessee, or Ellie Rhee.” This is usually the version that has been preserved in folk song collections and on hillbilly recordings of the 1920s and 1930s—such as the text given here. Stewart’s original text says nothing about the war or slavery; in fact, we cannot even legitimately infer that the narrator

UPPER SOUTH

267

and his Ella Ree are African Americans. Winner changed all that into a typical postwar lyric rhapsodizing nostalgically on the wonderful plantation life that slaves had before they were so cruelly lured into flight and freedom. It should be noted that this was not always Winner’s philosophical stance: many of his songs were more forthrightly abolitionist in their sympathies. The Tennessee Boys Oh, Tennessee boys, I tell you Our fate is awful but ’tis true; The North and South once wore a yoke, But now the tie is forever broke. It was the year of sixty-one Those bloody battles first begun; So you, the boys of Tennessee, Into action soon must be. But, oh, my boys, to see you start, Leaving behind many a broken heart, Leaving your wives and sweethearts dear Filled with grief and many a tear. Your country called, and with might and main You bravely marched through mud and rain; From your good homes you were debarred Many a cold night while standing guard. But, alas! alas! my boys, we learn The scale with you was forced to turn; For on Thursday morn at break of day Our orders to march away. To the battle-field you did fly, Where many a noble and brave did die; There, stained with blood, did gain a name For lofty courage and goodly fame. We fought them bravely till Saturday night, And had the Yankees put to flight, But, alas! the North it sent a shower Which did our army overpower. The flag of surrender soon came up, Which was to you a bitter cup; And then you heard your general say, Lay down your arms, they have gained the day. There on the banks of Cumberland Lay the bodies of ten thousand men; Many of them quite helplessly, While some from wounds were doomed to die. Oh, may the God of heaven above Look down on all you in love, And send you back to those you adore, To live in peace forevermore.137

Septimus Winner’s recomposition of “Carry Me Back to Tennessee, or Ellie Rhee” was published in 1865, before expensively illustrated sheet music covers were the norm. Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

UPPER SOUTH

269

The few historical details given in the text suggest that it concerns the battle of Fort Donelson, in Tennessee, on the Cumberland River in February 1862. The Confederates, under General Simon Bolivar Buckner, defended the fort against General Grant’s Northern forces, which attacked on Thursday, February 13. The defence went well until Union gunboats arrived the next day. The South lost between 1,500 and 3,500 men, and some 15,00 surrendered to the victors on Sunday, February 16. A version of the ballad collected in Tennessee in 1982 names Buckner as “your general” who ordered the soldiers to lay down their arms (eighth stanza).138 There is a tradition in Tennessee that the song was written by the sisters of John and Jacob Vandergriff at Brown’s Chapel after the brothers returned from the war. Their title was “Hickman’s Boys,” and the name “Hickman” replaces “Tennessee” in the first line. New York publisher Henry J. Wehman included the preceding text in one of his song collections for 1889 without attribution. Either he copied an older broadside, or some reader sent him the text. The Wehman text is sufficiently different from the 1982 version to indicate considerable rewriting by some hand, but which version is the older is difficult to say. The Battle of Shiloh Come all you valiant soldiers, and a story I will tell, It is of a noted battle you all remember well; It was an awful strife, and will cause your blood to chill, It was the famous battle that was fought on Shiloh’s hill. It was the sixth of April, just at the break of day, The drums and fifes were playing for us to march away; The feeling of that hour I do remember still, For the wounded and the dying that lay on Shiloh hill. About the hour of sunrise the battle it began, And before the day had vanished we fought them hand to hand; The horrors of the field did my heart with anguish fill, For the wounded and the dying that lay on Shiloh hill. There were men of ev’ry nation laid on those bloody plains, Fathers, sons and brothers were numbered with the slain; That has caus’d so many homes with deep mourning to be fill’d, All from the bloody battle that was fought on Shiloh Hill. The wounded men were crying for help from everywhere, While others, who were dying, were offering God their prayer. “Protect my wife and children, if it is thy holy will!” Such were the prayers I heard that night on Shiloh Hill. And early the next morning, we were call’d to arms again, Unmindful of the wounded and unmindful of the slain; The struggle was renewed, and ten thousand men were kill’d, This was the second conflict of the famous Shiloh Hill. The battle it raged on, though dead and dying men Lay thick all o’er the ground, on the hill and on the glen. And from their deadly wounds the blood ran like a rill. Such were the mournful sights that I saw on Shiloh Hill. Before the day was ended the battle ceased to roar, And thousands of brave soldiers had fell to rise no more;

270

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They left their vacant ranks for some other ones to fill, And now their mouldering bodies all lie on Shiloh Hill. And now my song is ended about those bloody plains, I hope the sight by mortal man may ne’er be seen again; But I pray to God, the Savior, “if consistent with thy will, To save the souls of all who fell on bloody Shiloh Hill!”139

In Palestine of the Old Testament, it was an early sacred shrine of the Israelites. In south central Tennessee, it was a Methodist meetinghouse a few miles from one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. There, at Shiloh, on April 6, 1862, a Confederate army of 40,000 men under General Albert S. Johnston attacked General Ulysses S. Grant’s army of 45,000 men, who, taken by surprise, were engaged in their normal Sunday morning activities. Johnston’s men steadily drove the Union troops back, but the rebel troops were inexperienced and lacked discipline, and Johnston himself was killed. His successor, General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, ordered the attack suspended at the end of the day, giving the Union armies time to gather 25,000 reinforcements. The following day, Grant attacked the Confederates and forced them to withdraw to Corinth, Mississippi, thereby regaining all the ground he had lost. The two-day battle ended without a conclusive victory for either side. Casualties numbered more than 10,000 in each army. Several ballads were composed about the Battle of Shiloh, at least three of which entered oral tradition (see also the following song). This, the more widely known, is a fine nonpartisan piece that dwells on the realities of mortal combat. The compiler of the little volume that included the preceding text credited it to M. R. Smith, of Company C, Second Regiment Texas Volunteers, with instructions that the air was “Wandering Sailor.” However, in both text and tune, it is very reminiscent of “Texas Rangers,” a song of several decades earlier, and author Smith may well have had that older piece in his mind when he wrote his jeremiad. The Drummer Boy of Shiloh On Shiloh’s dark and bloody ground the dead and wounded lay, Amongst them was a drummer boy that beat the drum that day; A wounded soldier rais’d him up—his drum was by his side— He clasp’d his hands, and rais’d his eyes, and prayed before he died. “Look down upon the battle-field, O Thou our Heavenly friend, Have mercy on our sinful souls”—the soldiers cried Amen! For gather’d ’round, a little group, each brave man knelt and cried— They listen’d to the drummer boy who pray’d before he died. “On Mother!” said the dying boy, “look down from Heaven on me! Receive me to thy fond embrace! O take me home to thee! I’ve lov’d my country as my God, to serve them both I’ve tried.” He smiled—shook hands—death seiz’d the boy who pray’d before he died. Each soldier wept then like a child—stout hearts were they and brave— The Flag his winding-sheet! God’s Book the key unto his grave; They wrote upon the simple board these words, “This is a guide To those who mourn the drummer boy who pray’d before he died!”140

Written by the well-known songwriter of the late nineteenth century, Will S. Hays (published by D. P. Faulds, Louisville, 1862), this ballad became a favorite for decades

UPPER SOUTH

271

in the South. In 1890 historian Henry Howe visited the sister of a soldier who was known as the “Drummer Boy of Shiloh”: his name was John Winton Clem, born in Newark, Ohio, on August 13, 1851. The boy ran away when less than 10 years of age to enlist as a drummer. “Johnnie was a universal favorite with the people, being a bright, sprightly boy, and very small of his age—only thirty inches high. The family are now living in garden-like surroundings on the outskirts [of Newark], on the Granville road, where I went to have an interview to get the facts of his history.”141 Clem did not die at Shiloh, but his military career continued into the 1890s, so just what influence he had on Hays’s song is questionable. Coal Creek Troubles My song is founded on the truth, in poverty we stand; How hard the millionaire will crush upon the laboring man. The miner’s toiling underground to earn his daily bread, To clothe his wife and children and see that they are fed. Some are from Kentucky, the place known as my birth, As true and honest-hearted men as ever trod the earth. The Governor sent the convicts here and works them in the bank, The captain and his soldiers are lying by in rank. Although the mines are guarded, the miners true and fair, They mean to deal out justice, “A living” they declare; The corruption of Buchanan brought the convicts here, Just to please the rich man and take the miner’s share. The miners acted manly when they turned the convicts loose, You see, they did not kill them, and give them no abuse; But when they brought the convicts here they boldly marched them forward, The miners soon was gathered and placed them under guard. Soon the miners did agree to let them take their place, And wait the legislature to act upon the case; The law had made no effort to lend a helping hand, To help the struggling miner or move the convict band. Buchanan acted cruelly to put them out to toil, He says he has not room enough for the convicts in the walls; He has no law to work them, only in the pen, Why should they be on public work, to rob the laboring man? I’m in sympathy with the miners, as every one should be, In other states they work free labor, and why not Tennessee? The miners, true and generous, in many works and ways, We all should treat them kindly, their platform we should praise. The Lord in all His wisdom will lend a helping hand, And if we hold out faithful God will strive with man; He gives us happy sunshine, a great and glorious light, He’ll give us food and raiment, if we only serve Him right.142

On July 14, 1891, the anniversary of Bastille Day, some 500 militant union members stormed the mines of the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company to free the state

272

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

convicts leased to private operators. Armed conflicts continued for two years and spread to nearby communities; eventually, the state militia suppressed the mine workers. Nevertheless, the struggle was not in vain, as the convict lease system was soon terminated. James W. Day, singer and author of the preceding text, was a blind fiddler and ballad writer who was discovered by song collector Jean Thomas. Thomas, giving Day the more romantic name of Jilson Setters, took him on tours to England and in the United States and arranged recording sessions for RCA Victor and with the Library of Congress. The Girl I Loved in Sunny Tennessee On a morning bright and clear to my old home I drew near, Just a village down in sunny Tennessee; I was speeding on a train that would bring me back again, To my sweetheart who was waiting there for me. It was but a few short years, since I’d kiss’d away her tears, As I left her at my dear old mother’s side; And each day we’ve been apart, she’s grew dearer to my heart Than the night I asked of her to be my bride. Chorus: We could hear the darkies singing, as she said farewell to me; Far across the fields of cotton, my old homestead I could see; As the moon rose in its glory, then I told life’s sweetest story To the girl I loved in sunny Tennessee. When the train drew up at last, old familiar scenes I passed I kissed my mother at the station door; And as old friends gathered ’round, tears on every face I found, For I missed the girl who was waiting there for me. So I whispered, “Mother dear, where is Mary, she’s not here!” All the world seemed lost, and sadness came to me; For she pointed to a spot in the churchyard’s little lot Where sleeps the girl I loved in sunny Tennessee.143

This popular song of 1899 by Harry Braisted and Stanley Carter won a favorite spot in the hearts of Appalachian folk; a dozen or so hillbilly recordings were made in the 1920s and 1930s, and it has also been collected from noncommercial singers. The last year of the century seems surprisingly late for a song with such a strong antebellum flavor (darkies and fields of cotton evoke the Old South of the 1850s), and the lyrics would raise many an eyebrow today, but to southern singers of a century ago, it might have signaled the death not only of Mary, but of an entire vanquished society. Shut Up in Coal Creek Mine Shut up in the mine of Coal Creek, We know that we must die; But if we trust in Jesus, To heaven our souls shall fly. Our lamps are burning dimly, Our food is almost gone; Death’s grasp is sure but awful, Till we will be carried home.

The sheet music cover for “The Girl I Loved in Sunny Tennessee” (1899) featured white title letters against a red, green, and brown background. Author’s collection.

274

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Goodbye dear wives and children, May you be treated kind; For now our time has come to die, Shut up in the Coal Creek mine. Eleven of us were prisoned, And two dear ones have died; Nine more are left to suffer, And die in the Coal Creek mines. Farewell, dear wives and mothers, You’re left behind to mourn; But if you follow Jesus, We’ll meet in heavenly home. Dear friends, you should take warning, And listen to what we say; You’re now in the world of sunlight, So there you’d better stay. Shut up in the mine of Coal Creek, We know that we must die; But if we trust in Jesus, To heaven our souls shall fly. Goodbye, dear wives and children, May you be treated kind; For now our time has come to die, Shut up in the Coal Creek mine.144

One of the country’s worst mining disasters (and there are many from which to choose) struck Tennessee in 1902. A methane explosion at the Fraterville mine at Coal Creek on May 19 killed 184 miners; there were no survivors. The preceding song was recorded by Green Bailey, a singer-schoolteacher born in Clark County, Kentucky, in 1900. He had learned the ballad “Shut Up in Coal Creek Mine” in around 1920 from a coal miner who had come west. Bailey was very interested in ballads about local history and recorded a number of them in the 1920s. It was believed that the song about the accident was found “scratched on a piece of slate by the body of a victim” of the explosion.145 It was certainly the case that, as they slowly suffocated underground, many trapped miners wrote farewell letters to wives and children, whom they knew they would never see again. One resident of the region, Ollie Massengill Fritts, one of whose relatives had died in the disaster, had saved copies of some of the letters found among the recovered bodies of the dead miners. Years later, after her death, her grandson, Carl H. Fritts Jr., found those letters among her papers and posted them on a Web site dedicated to the Fraterville explosion.146 Comparison of the surviving texts of the letters with Bailey’s song suggests that, if not actually written by a dying miner, the song was written by someone who was familiar with the letters. (Some writers have speculated that the song came not from the Fraterville disaster, but from a later explosion at the nearby Cross Mountain mines near Briceville, Tennessee, on December 9, 1911; however, the agreement between song and letters makes a stronger case for Fraterville as the site.) Bailey’s is the only version to have been recorded, but the song must have been more widely known previously. James Taylor Adams collected fragments of the ballad from

UPPER SOUTH

275

different relatives of his living in Kentucky and Virginia, but only his first stanza is the same as Bailey’s. Tennessee folksinger G. B. Grayson recorded a piece titled “Coal Creek Mines” a month after Bailey’s recording, but it was never issued, and we don’t know for certain whether it is the same song. The perspective of the song, written from the vantage point of the trapped miners themselves, is unusual among ballads about mine disasters and makes a particularly powerful impact. The ballad is written in three-fourths time and is a good example of how that rhythm can be very effective for narrative songs. Hispanic corridos, the equivalent of ballads, generally employ three-fourths time also. The city of Coal Creek no longer appears on maps of Tennessee: in 1933, after the construction of the Norris Dam by the Tennessee Valley Authority, it was renamed Lake City. There is still a river called Coal Creek that passes less than a mile west of Lake City. Both Fraterville and Briceville are very near the creek—about two miles and four miles southwest of Lake City, respectively. The following excerpt is from a report from the commissioner of labor, 1902: The mine opened in 1870 was one of the oldest in the State and had been in almost continuous operation; 200 men and boys were employed. The furnace was not fired from Saturday night until Monday morning, and ventilation was stagnated. The mine was considered to be non-gassy although gas was known to be present in that section of the old and abandoned Knoxville Iron Company mine into which openings had recently been made. The miners had not been in the mine more than an hour when at 7:20 a. m. thick smoke and dust were seen coming from the ventilating shaft and from the mouth of the mine. Rescuing parties were organized and penetrated about 200 feet where they came upon the body of a victim of the afterdamp. They could go no farther and returned to await dispersal of the deadly gas. At 4 o’clock a rescue corps again entered. Brattices had been destroyed, and along the main entry the force of the explosion was terrific, timbers and cogs placed to hold a squeeze were blown out, mine cars, wheels, and doors were shattered, and bodies were dismembered. In other parts of the mine no heat or violence was shown, and suffocation had brought death to those whose bodies were found there. A barricade had been placed across 15 right entry near the heading to protect the miners there from the deadly afterdamp. The 26 men found there must have lived for several hours, as notes were written as late as 2 p. m. At first it was thought that the gas had come from the old mine, but later inspectors indicated that the gas was liberated from overhanging strata by the “creep” that had begun with unusual violence shortly before the explosion. The gas accumulated because of inadequate ventilation and was ignited by the open lights. Dust was thick in the mine and was blown up and burned in the explosion. No sprinkling was done. Recommendations by the mine inspector that had not been carried out were for cleaning and enlarging airways, rebuilding brattices and doors, increasing the furnace capacity, tests for gas, and removing dust. Testimony given before the commissioner on June 6, 1902, was emphatic in condemning the laxity of the officials: The mine foreman was not competent, and the company had not installed a fan as the State inspector had recommended.147

The following excerpts contain transcripts of the letters written by the trapped miners to their loved ones and saved by Ollie Massengill Fritts: J. E. Vowel Letter We are shut up in the head of the entry with little air and the bad air is closing in on us fast. It is about 12 o’clock. Dear Ellen, I will have to leave you in bad condition. But dear wife, put your trust in the Lord to help you raise my little children. Ellen, take care of my little darling Lillie. Ellen, little Elbert said he believed in the Lord. He said he was saved if we never see the outside again, he would meet

276

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

his mother in heaven. He would meet his mother in heaven if he never lived to git out. We are not hurt bad, only perishing for air. There is but few of us here. I don’t know where the other miners are at. Elbert said for you all to meet us in heaven, All the children meet us both in heaven. Harry Beech Letter Alice, do the best you can. I am going to rest. Goodbye Alice. Elbert said the lord had saved him. Do the best you can with the children. We are all perishing for air to support us, but it is getting so bad without any air. Charlie said for you to wear his shoes and clothing. It is now 1-1/2 o’clock. Marvell Harmon’s watch is now in Andy Wood’s hands. Ellen, I want you to live right and come to heaven. Raise the children the best way you can. Oh how I would love to be with you. Goodbye to all of you. Bury me an Elbert in the same grave. Tell little Ellen goodbye. Goodbye Ellen. Goodbye Horace. We are together. It is now 25 minutes after 2 o’clock. A few of us are alive yet, Jacob and Elbert. Oh God for one more breath! Ellen, remember me as long as you live. Jim Herman Letter Dear darling Mother, Brother and Sister, I have gone to heaven. I want you all to meet me in heaven. O dear friends, don’t grieve for me for I am in sight of heaven. O dear Sarah, stay at Fathers or your Fathers. Pay all I owe if possible. Bury me at Pleasant Hill if it suits you. If not bury me anywhere it suits you all. Bury me in black. This is about 1-1/2 o’clock. So good bye dear darling father.148 The New Market Wreck The Southern Railway had a wreck at ten o’clock one morn, Near Hodge’s and New Market ground, the place, the date, adorned. The twenty-fourth of September, the year nineteen and four, Was when that awful wreck occurred of both the rich and poor. The conductor on the westbound train did make a grand mistake, He never read his orders right and caused that awful fate. He hurt one hundred and a half, and there were seventy dead, I hope he has forgiveness now and lives without a dread. The conductor on the eastbound train had kissed his darling wife, And when he got on board the train he had to give his life. I trust that he was pure in heart and now in with the blest, And that his wife will meet him there and be with him at rest. The trains were goin’ east and west and speeding on their way, They ran together on a curve and what a wreck that day. The cars were bursted, torn, and split, and spread across the track, You’ll see a picture of the wreck just over on the back. And oh, the men and women’s cries did echo through the air, Such cries were never heard before of human in despair. The little children cried aloud for mercy to their God, But now they all are dead and gone and under earthly sod.149

Two passenger trains on the Southern Railway met in a head-on collision on the forenoon of September 24 near Hodge’s Station, Tennessee, with such force that both engines and several coaches were demolished, crushing to death no fewer than 62 persons, mostly passengers in the forward coaches of the eastbound train, besides injuring many others. The engineers of both trains were among the killed. No one in the sleepers was injured. Westbound train Number 15, a local, and eastbound train Number 12, a heavy through train, carrying three sleepers, were directed by orders to meet and pass at New Market,

UPPER SOUTH

277

R. H. Brooks of Whitesburg, Tennessee, published his sheet music version of the ballad, “The New Market wreck,” in 1906. Inserted in the four-page brochure was a single sheet with instructions for playing train imitations on the organ. From the Library of Congress.

a regular stopping point. The westbound train disregarded the order and went on toward Hodge’s, the usual meeting place, and the collision occurred about a mile and a half beyond New Market. The conductor of Number 15 was reported as admitting his responsibility for the collision, having misread the order. The engineer, being dead, could not explain his part in causing the calamity.150 Two ballads were written and circulated after this dreadful collision in middle Tennessee; the first was the work of Charlie Oaks, a blind musician from Richmond, Kentucky, who traveled about in the early 1900s singing his songs and selling broadsides of them. One of his broadsides of “The Southern Railroad Wreck” was reprinted in 1909 in the Journal of American Folklore. The second ballad was written by Robert Hugh Brooks, of Whitesburg, Tennessee, copyrighted in 1906, and published in a religious song book in 1915. The last line of the second verse, “You’ll see a picture of the wreck, / Just over on the back,” suggests that the song was first published as a separate two-sided song sheet prior to the book’s publication.151 The text given here, and other recordings of ballads about the New Market wreck, are all based on Brooks’s song. Beale Street Blues I’ve seen the lights of gay Broadway, Old Market Street down by the Frisco Bay, I’ve strolled the Prado, I’ve gambled on the Bourse,

278

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The seven wonders of the world I’ve seen And many are the places I have been. Take my advice folks, and see Beale Street first. You’ll see pretty Browns in beautiful gowns, You’ll see tailor-mades and hand-me-downs, You’ll meet honest men and pickpockets skilled, You’ll find that bus’ness never closes till somebody gets killed. You’ll see Hog-Nose rest’rants and Chitlin’ Cafes, You’ll see Jugs that tell of bygone days, And places, onces places, now just a sham, You’ll see Golden Balls enough to pave the New Jerusalem. If Beale Street could talk, if Beale Street could talk, Married men would have to take their beds and walk, Except one or two, who never drink booze, And the blind man on the corner who sings the Beale Street Blues. I’d rather be here than any place I know, (2) It’s goin’ to take the Sargent for to make me go, Goin’ to the river, may-be, bye and bye, Goin’ to the river, and there’s a reason why, Because the river’s wet, and Beale Street’s done gone dry.152

Since ancient times, humans have placed their settlements along rivers, lakes, or seas, and the meeting place of two bodies of water was usually a site of particular desirability. Tennessee’s largest city, Memphis, is situated at the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers in the southwest corner of the state, just across the river from Arkansas and about 10 miles north of Mississippi. Memphis is the commercial center of the Mississippi Delta region and was the first stopping place for blacks who emigrated north in large numbers after the Civil War and again during the Great Depression. At the beginning of the twentyfirst century, its population was 61 percent African American. Beale Avenue (its correct title, though there are continual efforts to change it to conform with the song that made it famous) is home to the city’s vast music and entertainment district, whose quotidian lifestyle was captured in W. C. Handy’s immortal “Beale Street Blues” (1917). The song is hardly a blues—and wasn’t originally titled as one. Handy had already paid a tribute to Memphis with his “Memphis Blues” (copyrighted 1912, originally without words). The wonderful imagery of “If Beale Street could talk (2) / Married men would have to take their beds and walk” provided African American novelist James Baldwin with the title for his 1974 novel of racism and struggle, If Beale Street Could Talk. William Christopher Handy (1873–1958) was born in Florence, Alabama. He began his musical career as a coronetist and turned to composition in 1907; his first publication was “Memphis Blues” (1912). Handy did not create the blues, but he developed it out of African American folk blues music, regularized it, and established it as a major pop music genre. The John T. Scopes Trial All the folks in Tennessee are as faithful as can be, And they know the Bible teaches what is right; They believe in God above and His great undying love,

UPPER SOUTH

279

And they know they are protected by His might. Then, to Dayton came a man with his new ideas so grand, And he said, “We came from monkeys long ago!” But in teaching his belief, Mr. Scopes found only grief, For they would not let their old religion go. Chorus: You may find a new belief, it will only bring you grief, For a house that’s built on sand is sure to fall; And wherever you may turn, there’s a lesson you will learn, That the old religion’s better after all. Then the folks throughout the land saw his house was built on sand, And they said, “We will not listen any more!”; So they told him he was wrong, and it wasn’t very long, ’Til he found that he was barred from every door. Oh, you must not doubt the word that is written by the Lord, For if you do, your house will surely fall; And Mr. Scopes will learn that wherever he may turn, The old religion’s better after all. Chorus.153

John T. Scopes may have departed this earth (he died in 1970), but his spirit is getting no rest. Back in 1925, the state of Tennessee’s legislature passed a law making it a crime to teach the principles of evolution in schools. Scopes, a science teacher and football coach at Dayton, Tennessee’s, high school, expressed bewilderment to an engineer friend, George W. Rappelyea, that the state should supply him with a textbook that presented the theory of evolution but forbid teaching it, and thought this must be unconstitutional. Rappelyea suggested that he swear out a warrant against Scopes for violating the state law in order to test its constitutionality. This was done on May 5, and two days later, Scopes was arrested. Within a week, the nationally renowned orator and Fundamentalist leader William Jennings Bryan—three times presidential candidate and former secretary of state—eagerly volunteered his formidable oratorical prowess to the prosecution. Shortly after, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York announced that they would defend Scopes and that three distinguished lawyers, the renowned Clarence Darrow, Bainbridge Colby, an eminent corporation lawyer, and Dudley Field Malone, a leading Catholic layman, had volunteered their services to the defense. With such prominent names involved, the case immediately became a cause célèbre, and by the time the trial was to begin on July 10, lawyers, expert witnesses, and journalists were crawling about the small, sleepy town of Dayton like maggots on a corpse. The colorful event’s subsequent weeks were vividly depicted in the play and motion picture Inherit the Wind. During the trial, Darrow, who was widely believed to be an agnostic, brought Bryan to the stand to testify as an expert witness on the Bible, in the course of which he elicited from Bryan the statement that the Bible is to be accepted as literally true. Although the ACLU had brought to Dayton numerous religious and scientific authorities to testify on the Bible and the scientific theory—and to argue that there were other ways to interpret the meaning of holy scripture—Judge Raulston did not allow them to testify. He ruled that the trial was not to determine the constitutionality of the law, but merely whether or not Scopes had violated it. Darrow and the others agreed that there was no sense contesting Scopes’s guilt on that count, and on July 21, he was found guilty and fined the minimum sum of $100. On July 26, Bryan died in his sleep in his Dayton hotel room. The following year, the Tennessee supreme court heard the appeal case, eventually

280

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

upholding the constitutionality of the law but reversing the conviction on a technicality. Not until 1967 did the state repeal the law; but by that time, there was a growing movement in support of creationism, and several other states introduced legislation similar to Tennessee’s original law or some variant thereof. In the months after the Dayton “monkey trial” (as it was crudely characterized), a half dozen songs were recorded: • “The John T. Scopes Trial,” written by Carson J. Robison and recorded by Vernon Dalhart (July 10, 1925—the day the trial began) and by Charlie Oaks (August 7, 1925)

• “Scopes Trial,” probably written by Charles Nabell and recorded by him (ca. October 1925) • “Bryan’s Last Fight,” written by Carson J. Robison and recorded by Vernon Dalhart (August 10, 1925)

• “The Death of William Jennings Bryan,” written and recorded by Charlie Oaks (August 7, 1925) • “The Bible’s True,” written by Uncle Dave Macon and recorded by him (April 14, 1926) • “You Can’t Make a Monkey Out of Me,” recorded by the Gentry Family (October 3, 1928), by the Eva Quartette (August 1927), and by the Ashford Quartet (December 1929)

All these songs were directed toward a fundamentalist southern audience that would (for the most part) support Scopes’s conviction; Robison was confident enough of that outcome that he wrote as much in his lyrics, even though the trial had not yet been concluded.154 Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train The people of Tennessee want to know who wrecked our gravy train, The one we thought was run so well, and now who can we blame? They want to know who greased the track and started ’em down the road, This same ol’ train contained our money to build our highway road. Chorus: But now we’re up against it and no use to raise a row, For of all the times I’ve ever seen, we’re sure up against it now; The only thing that we can do, is to do the best we can, (So) follow me, good people, I’m bound for the promised land. Now I could be a banker, without the least excuse, But look at the Treasurer of Tennessee and tell me what’s the use? We lately bonded Tennessee for just five million bucks, The bonds were issued and the money tied up and now we’re in tough luck. Chorus. Some lay it all on parties, some lay it on others, you see, But now that you can plainly see what’s happened to Tennessee; The engineer pulled the throttle, the conductor rang the bell, The brakeman hollered “all aboard” and the banks all went to hell. Chorus.155

Tennessee entertainer extraordinaire Uncle Dave Macon (1870–1952) probably wrote and recorded this caustic commentary on financial scandal in Tennessee in the early 1930s. In 1929 a grand state road construction program began to run into problems as the state was financially unable to raise the necessary money. In the following year, the failure of the Holston-Union National Bank and the Bank of Tennessee lost $6 million in Tennessee’s state funds. A scandal ensued involving Tennessee’s governor Henry Horton and the owner of the Nashville Tennessean newspaper. In 1931 Edward Hull “Boss” Crump, the mayor of Memphis, led a movement to impeach Horton on grounds of corruption

UPPER SOUTH

281

and using the powers of office to his own advantage and gain, but the movement failed. Uncle Dave used another song he recorded, “We Are Up against It Now,” as a model for this song. Arcade Building Moan It was on one Thursday morning, March the twentieth day, I think it was about two A.M., I believe I can firmly say; The women and the children was screamin’ and cryin,’ Not only that, they was slowly dyin’; Oh, listen, listen, how the bell did ring When the Arcade Building burnt down. I want you to listen, listen how the bells was ringing, And the people fell to the ground; They jumped through the windows, ran down the stairways and out the door; They was looking for safety, or they could not live no more. Oh, it was sad, sad, oh how sad When the Arcade Building burnt down. The brave firemen, they could not go home to eat; The Salvation women with coffees and cakes kept them on their feet; But the Lord saved Clyde Davis, death was so nigh, Carl Melcher and his wife were separated by the fire, Oh, listen, listen, how the bell did ring When the Arcade Building burnt down. (Play it!) Oh, it was sad that morning, Several people lost their lives when the Arcade Building burnt down. What a moan in Knoxville, They jumped through the windows, ran down the stairways and out the door; They were looking for safety or they could not live no more; Oh, it was sad, sad, oh how sad When the Arcade Building burnt down.156

On March 20, 1930, at 2:00 A.M., Knoxville’s Arcade Building, a two-storey brick structure on Union between Market and Walnut, caught fire. It housed several small businesses and a number of apartments. One shop was a barber supply store run by a German immigrant, Carl Melcher. Clyde Davis leaped from the window of his apartment and landed on a pedestrian, escaping serious injury. Everyone else got out safely, except for one family. Melcher’s body was found a block away, unburned but with hands badly scorched. It was learned that earlier, he closed out his bank accounts and ordered a 55-gallon barrel of gasoline delivered to his store. Melcher was suspected of arson until an autopsy revealed that he had died of shock, and the barrel of gasoline was found unused.157 Leola Manning, who wrote and recorded the song about the fire, was a popular Knoxville African American musical entertainer in 1930, though she maintained a day job as a cafeteria worker and was also an aspiring evangelist. She recorded her account a mere two weeks after the conflagration. Topical ballads are not common in African American song tradition, so this is an unusual piece in several respects. Her refrain (“wasn’t it sad . . . when the Arcade Building burnt down”) recalls songs about the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 (“wasn’t it sad when the great ship went down”) and the gospel songs on which the latter were based.

282

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

My Children Are Seven in Number (Tune: “My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean”) My children are seven in number, We have to sleep four in a bed; I’m striking with my fellow workers, To get them more clothes and more bread. Shoes, shoes, we’re striking for pairs of shoes. (2) Pellagra is cramping my stomach, My wife is sick with T.B.; My babies are starving for sweet milk, Oh, there’s so much sickness for me. Milk, milk, we’re striking for gallons of milk. (2) I’m needing a shave and a haircut, The barbers I cannot afford; My wife cannot wash without soapsuds, And she had to borrow a board. Soap, soap, we’re striking for bars of soap. (2) My house is a shack on the hillside, Its floors are unpainted and bare; I haven’t a screen to my windows, And carbide cans do for a chair. Homes, homes, we’re striking for better homes. (2) Oh, Aid Truck go over the mountain, Oh, Aid Truck come back with a load; For we are just getting a dollar A few days a month on the road. Gas, gas, we’re bumming a gallon of gas. (2) They shot Barney Graham our leader, His spirit abides with us still; The spirit of strength for justice, No bullets have the power to kill. Barney, Barney, we’re thinking of you today. (2) Oh, miners, go on with the union, Oh, miners, go on with the fight; For we’re in the struggle for justice And we’re in the struggle for right. Justice, justice, we’re striking for justice for all. (2)158

On July 1, 1933, textile workers at the Harriman Hosiery Mills plant in Harriman tried to organize a local union of the Hosiery Workers, part of the United Textile Workers of America. Over the next year, hundreds of workers, most of them women, in this east Tennessee community became embroiled in a bitter strike against the town’s largest employer. Between late July and early October 1933, union officials tried to discuss recognition, a contract, and the rehiring of the fired workers with company agents. The company’s refusal to consider union recognition, bargaining, or a contract resulted in a union strike vote on October 3. Key issues in the strike included the firing of 23 union activists in July 1933, union recognition, and use of collective bargaining. As was the case in many mill and mine operations, the company that owned the mill also owned the town in which the workers

UPPER SOUTH

283

were required to live. Their lives, both inside the workplace and out, were therefore completely controlled by their employer. Over the next several months, company officials fired union activists, threatened to cancel employee insurance, insisted on reapplication of all employees, hired new operatives from outside Harriman, obtained an antistrike injunction, and used Roane County sheriff’s deputies as company guards. The halfhearted intervention by federal officials produced no favorable results for labor. By March 1934, the strike had been lost, and the community was divided into factions supporting strikers or owners. A management lockout on June 25 led to a last-minute resolution of the strike on company terms. The July 1934 agreement was arranged by federal negotiators, who consulted neither union officials nor striking workers.159 She Sleeps beneath the Norris Dam Way down in sunny Tennessee, Beneath blue Dixie’s skies, In the silvery lake of Norris, Where my poor darling lies. I helped construct that tower of strength, I worked from day to day; Not thinking that the Norris Lake Would take my love away. We went out in a motor boat, Trying out its speed; They told us it was dangerous, But youth would not take heed. The boat it gave a winding swerve, And threw an awful spray; My darling she was gone from me, When it had cleared away. Take me back to Tennessee, When I am free from care; Lay me down in the Norris Lake, So I can be with her. We’ll both be in our watery grave, I hope we won’t be found; We’ll both be in our watery grave, Above the Norris dam.160

“She Sleeps beneath the Norris Dam” appears to describe an actual tragedy, but it may be fictional. An early version of the song was written in the late 1930s by Kirby Trent of Sneedville, Tennessee, and circulated locally. Clay Cope later met him and helped him to get the song recorded. Several years later, Clay and his brothers Charlie and Lester enjoyed a successful musical career on Knoxville radio. In late 1945 they recorded several songs for the King record label in Cincinnati, among which was their version of the song. To the surprise of everyone involved, it became a popular hit locally—so much so that the brothers wrote a sequel to it, “Let Me Sleep in Tennessee.” In 1982 the two surviving Cope brothers rerecorded the song for the Tennessee Folklore Society.161

284

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Norris Dam was created by the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933; see the notes to “Shut Up in Coal Creek Mine” in the preceding discussion.

NOTES 1. Indentured servitude was an unbreakable contractual agreement by which an individual agreed to work for another in exchange for room, board, training, and/or pay. In the American colonies, most indentured servants were poor Europeans who hoped to escape from their intolerable social and economic conditions by journeying to America. They traded four to seven years of their labor in exchange for the transatlantic passage. At first, indentured servants came mainly from England, but later they came increasingly from Ireland, Wales, and Germany. They were primarily, although not exclusively, young men (Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Indentured Servitude” and “Immigration”). 2. Taken mostly from Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Virginia.” The year 2007 marking the quadricentennial of the establishment of Jamestown, a great deal of material has appeared of late, both in book and magazine form and in TV specials. 3. From Peter Buchan, Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland Hitherto Unpublished (Edinburgh: William Patterson, 1875), 2:205–6. 4. From Elihu Jasper Sutherland, “Vance’s Song,” in Southern Folklore Quarterly 4 (1940): 251–54. Sutherland obtained this text with Ezekiel Duty’s help from W. P. Vance, a great grandson of Abner Vance, supposed author of the song. Daniel, Bob, and Bill Horton were relatives of the murdered man. A recorded version by Uncle Branch W. Higgins can be heard on the CD, Virginia Traditions: Native Virginia Ballads and Songs (Global Village CD 1004). 5. John Harrington Cox, Folk-Songs of the South Collected under the Auspices of the West Virginia Folk-Lore Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925), 207. 6. For more details, see Sutherland, “Vance’s Song.” 7. From sheet music, published in 1841 by Firth and Hall, New York, “As sung by R. W. Pelham in the principal Theatres in the United States”—without authorship. Punctuation has been added; the original had none. However, the original spelling has been preserved. 8. In his biography of the American folk poet–songwriter, Woody Guthrie, journalist-folklorist Ed Cray recounts how in Woody’s early days on live radio in Los Angeles, he several times used the term on the air, and it wasn’t until one listener wrote in and pointed out that the word was offensive to some listeners that an astonished Guthrie was sensitized to different connotations of the word. In Oklahoma in the 1920s, where he grew up, the term was used neutrally—a slurred pronunciation of negro. Guthrie was certainly no bigot, and throughout his career, he was outspoken for the rights of all peoples of any race, color, or belief. He would never knowingly use an offensive term. 9. A plausible analogy is with rock-and-roll music of the 1950s and 1960s: songs performed by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, or the Supremes were so idiosyncratically rendered that other artists were hesitant to try to cover them. 10. From the singing of James Taylor Adams and Finley Adams, recorded March 27, 1939, by Herbert Halpert in Dunham, Kentucky, and issued on Virginia Traditions: Native Virginia Ballads, Blue Ridge Institute LP BRI 004. 11. Doug DeNatale, brochure notes to Virginia Traditions, 7. 12. From Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs (Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1948), 2:250–52; sung by Mrs. Judy Jane Whittaker of Anderson, Missouri, May 4, 1928. 13. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Bull Run, Battle of.” 14. Laws, Native American Balladry, 127, [A 18]. As sung by Stanley Bâby of Toronto, Canada, for Edith Fowke. Issued on Songs of the Great Lakes, Smithsonian Folkways LP FM 4018. 15. From a broadside published by Auner of Philadelphia; copies are held at Brown University’s John Hay Library, catalog no. HB 6297, and at the Library Company of Philadelphia. The latter collection holds a completely different ballad, “The Monitor and Merrimack,” published by James D. Gay.

UPPER SOUTH

285

16. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Monitor v. Virginia” and Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe CD-ROM, s.v. “Monitor and Merrimack, Battle of the.” 17. As sung by Carl T. Sprague, March 1972, in Bryan, Texas, and issued on Classic Cowboy Songs, Bear Family BCD 15456. 18. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Fredericksburg, Battle of.” 19. From Josiah Combs, Folk-Songs of the Southern United States, ed. D. K. Wilgus (Austin: University of Texas Press for AFS, 1967), 157–58. 20. Accounts published in the Washington Post, September 2, 1892, and the National Police Gazette, August 20, 1892, can be seen on the Blue Ridge Institute’s Web site (http://rtonline1 roanoke. com/vhosts/blueridgeinstitute/ballads). For more details, see William E. Lightfoot, “The Ballad ‘Talt Hall’ in Regional Context,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 42 (1978): 361–73. 21. From the sheet music, words and music by James Bland, published by Oliver Ditson Company, Boston, copyright by J. F. Perry and Company, 1878. 22. From Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. ( Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 189–90; reprinted from Railroad and Current Mechanics 22 ( November 1913): 446 – 47. 23. For more details, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 183–94. 24. As sung by the Arizona Wranglers, in Hollywood, 1929. Issued on Train 45: Railroad Songs of the Early 1900s, Rounder CD 1143. 25. More details about the accident, the ballad’s early history, and the litigation regarding its disputed authorship, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 197–226. 26. From Robert W. Gordon collection at the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Culture (letter no. 3257), sent to Gordon in 1927 by Mary H. Russell of Lynchburg, Virginia. Beattie’s name was spelled “Beatty” in her text. 27. For more details, see Norm Cohen, “ ‘Henry Clay Beattie’—Once a Folksong,” JEMF Quarterly 9 (Autumn 1973): 97–101. 28. From Mellinger Henry, Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands ( New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938), 316 –17. Obtained from Miss Dixie McLean, Crossnore, Avery County, North Carolina, July 1929. A recorded version by Hobart Smith can be heard on Anglo-American Ballads, Vol. 2 (Rounder CD 1516; a reissue of Library of Congress LP AFS L7). 29. From Henry, Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands, 319–20. Obtained from Professor Artus M. Moser at Lincoln Memorial University, Harrogate, Tennessee, 1932. A recorded version by Spence Moore can be heard on the CD, Virginia Traditions: Native Virginia Ballads and Songs (Global Village CD 1004). 30. Peter C. Aceves, “The Hillsville Tragedy in Court Record, Mass Media, and Folk Balladry: A Problem in Historical Documentation,” Keystone Folklore Quarterly 16 (1971): 1–38. 31. From a recording by the Floyd County Ramblers (Sam McNiel, John Willie Boone, Walter L. Boone, and Banks McNiel) made August 29, 1930, by RCA Victor in New York and issued on Victor 40307, 78 rpm, in October 1931. 32. From the recording by Andrew Jenkins, made June 3, 1927, in Atlanta, Georgia, and issued on OKeh record 45115, 78 rpm, under the pseudonym of Gooby Jenkins in August 1927; transcribed by Charles L. Perdue Jr. in “ ‘Gruver Meadows’: Anatomy of a Murder Ballad,” Folklore and Folklife in Virginia 4 (1988): 59–65. 33. Details ibid. 34. As recorded by the Carter Family on November 22, 1929, in Atlanta and issued on Victor V-20207, 78 rpm, in March 1930. The complete recordings of the Carter Family have been reissued on In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain, Bear Family BCD 12865 KL (12-CD set). 35. From Doug DeNatale’s brochure notes to Virginia Traditions: Native Virginia Ballads, Blue Ridge Institute LP BRI 004, p. 15. 36. From Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (n.p.: C. J. Krehbiel, 1904), 2:411. The mention of Uriah in the fifth stanza must refer to the biblical book, 2 Samuel 11–12, in which it is described how King David, lusting after the beautiful Bath-Sheba, sent her husband Uriah into

286

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

a doomed battle so he would be killed. The implication in the ballad is that there was some act of treachery involved on the part of those who ordered the action. 37. Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, p. 411. 38. As sung by Al Hopkins and His Buckle Busters, recorded December 20, 1928, in New York City and issued on Brunswick 318, 78 rpm, in July 1929; reissued on The Hillbillies/Al Hopkins and His Bucklebusters, vol. 3, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Document DOCD 8041. Words in parentheses are not repeated when the entire line is repeated. Johnny cakes, possibly corrupted from journey cakes or Shawnee cakes, was a New England term for flat, fried, or baked corn cakes. A puncheon floor was made from heavy, roughly dressed logs with only one face finished flat. 39. From a broadside, “John Brown,” published by C. S. Hall, Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1861. Music arranged by C. B. Marsh. A copy of this and other broadsides of the song can be seen at the Library of Congress Web site (http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss). 40. As reprinted in C. A. Browne (revised by Willard A. Heaps), The Story of Our National Ballads ( New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960), 177, by Edna Dean Proctor. 41. According to Browne, Story of Our National Ballads, it was composed by William Steffe in 1855. 42. “John Brown’s Original Marching Song,” Johnson, Song Publisher, Philadelphia, n.d. 43. See Browne, Story of Our National Ballads, for more details. 44. James J. Fuld, The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk, 5th ed. ( New York: Dover, 2000), 133. 45. From broadside, “John Brown’s Entrance into Hell,” C.T.A. Printer, Baltimore, March 1863. It can be seen at the Library of Congress Web site (http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss). “Tophet” is an Old Testament name for the underworld. 46. “The soul of John Brown goes marching on . . . ,” referring to the abolitionist in the Placerville (California) Weekly Mountain Democrat of June 14, 1862, quoting from another newspaper, the Independent. 47. From Cox, Folk-Songs of the South, 186–88; contributed by Professor J. H. Combs of West Virginia University; obtained in Knott County, Kentucky. For references to other collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), [I 2]. 48. For more historical details, see Richard Ramella, “John Hardy: The Man and the Song,” Goldenseal 18 (Spring 1992): 47–51. 49. From the singing of Maggie Hammons Parker, recorded November 8, 1970, by Carl Fleischhauer and Dwight Diller at Stillwell, Pocahantas County, West Virginia, and issued on The Hammons Family: A Study of a West Virginia Family’s Traditions, Library of Congress LP album L65-66; reissued as The Hammons Family, Rounder CD 1504/05. 50. From Alan Jabbour’s song notes to the album The Hammons Family. 51. Lyrics as recorded by Blind Alfred Reed in Camden, New Jersey, December 19, 1927, and issued on Victor 21191, 78 rpm. 52. Archie Green, Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs ( Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 135–36. 53. From Patrick W. Gainer, Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills (Grantsville, WV: Seneca Books, 1975), 109 –10. Collected from Henry B. Bryant in 1950 in Nicholas County. 54. As recorded by Vernon Dalhart, September 14, 1926, in New York City and issued on Columbia 15098-D, 78 rpm (as by Al Craver). 55. Quoted in Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 233, where more details can be found. 56. Printed by Olive Woolley Burt, American Murder Ballads and Their Stories (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 188. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. www.oup.com. 57. As sung by Roy Harvey and the North Carolina Ramblers, recorded February 16, 1928, in Ashland, Kentucky; issued on Brunswick 250, 78 rpm, in September 1928; reissued on Roy Harvey: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, vol. 2, Document DOCD 8051.

UPPER SOUTH

287

58. Harvey was the only singer to record the song prior to the 1960s. Another “Bluefield Murder” song, recorded by Emry Arthur in 1930, is not the same, but simply a localization of “Boston Burglar.” 59. From West Virginia Folklore 3 (1953): 65, from the singing of Roy A. West. The “ramp” is a wild woods onion plant, or leek, that settlers delighted in. 60. Composed by Roy Harvey and recorded by him (under the pseudonym of Roy Harper) and Earl Shirkey on October 22, 1929, in Johnson City, Tennessee, and issued on Columbia 15525-D, 78 rpm, in April 1930. 61. For more details, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 592–95. 62. Written by Blind Alfred Reed and recorded by him in Bristol, Tennessee, on July 28, 1927; issued on Victor 20836, 78 rpm, in September 1927 and reissued on Blind Alfred Reed (1927–1929), Document CD DOCD-8022. 63. For more on Reed, see note 51. 64. For more details, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 250 –53. 65. From the sheet music by Leighton D. Davies, music, and A. H. Grow, words, 1931. A recorded version by Frank Welling and John McGhee was made in 1932 and issued on several 78-rpm recordings including Banner 32333 and Conqueror 7940. 66. For more details, see Donald Lee Nelson, “The Crime at Quiet Dell,” JEMF Quarterly 8 (Winter 1972): 203–10. 67. From Elaine Purkey’s self-produced CD, Mountain Music/Mountain Struggle!, originally recorded in 1993. I am grateful for her permission to reprint this text. 68. From insert notes to the CD. In ordinary Appalachian usage, a jackrock is a small, rounded stone, especially one suitable for throwing; see Dictionary of American Regional English, ed. Frederic G. Cassidy (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1996), 3:88. 69. For more information on Purkey, see Paul Gartner, “ ‘One Day More’: Activist Songwriter Elaine Purkey,” Goldenseal 32 (Summer 2006): 14 –20. 70. Quoted by Reverend E. W. Caruthers, A Sketch of the Life and Character of the Rev. David Caldwell, D.D. (Greensborough, NC: Swaim and Sherwood, 1842), 116. As reported heard sung at a wedding in Chatham in 1765. 71. Henry M. Belden and Arthur Palmer Hudson, eds., The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1952), 2:647– 48. For more on the regulator movement, see Arthur Palmer Hudson, “Songs of the North Carolina Regulators,” William and Mary Quarterly, Ser. 3 4 (October 1947): 470 –85. 72. As published in the Greensboro Patriot by Charlie Vernon [Braxton Craven], April 29, 1874, p. 1; reprinted, with slight alterations, in Braxton Craven, Naomi Wise, or the Wrongs of a Beautiful Girl. A True Story, Enacted in North Carolina 80 Years Ago (n.p.: M. Penn, 1884), 16–17. Reprinted in Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 2:692–93. 73. “Ommie Wise,” as sung by G. B. Grayson, recorded in 1927 for Victor Talking Machine Company, Victor 21625, 78 rpm; reissued on Anthology of American Folk Music, Smithsonian Folkways. 74. Reprinted literatim et punctatim by Eleanor R. Long-Wilgus, Naomi Wise: Creation, ReCreation, and Continuity in an American Ballad Tradition (Chapel Hill, NC: Chapel Hill Press, 2003). 75. Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 2:690. 76. From the singing of Clarence Ashley and Byrd Moore, recorded October 23, 1929, in Johnson City, Tennessee, and issued on Columbia 15536-D, 78 rpm (as by Byrd Moore and his Hotshots) in May 1930; reissued on Old-Time Mountain Ballads, County CD 3404. For references to collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 182–83 [E 13]. 77. Sharyn McCrumb, The Ballad of Frankie Silver ( New York: Dutton, 1998). 78. Daniel W. Patterson, A Tree Accurst: Bobby McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 79. The Ballad of Frankie Silver, featuring traditional storyteller Bobby McMillon (Davenport Films for the University of North Carolina Curriculum in Folklore).

288

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

80. From Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 2:658; punctuation has been regularized. Obtained from Thomas Smith, Zionville, 1913, who heard it sung by E. B. Miller, Boone, North Carolina, May 7, 1913. Miller said it was very popular during the war in Watauga County. The song’s title was supplied by the editors of the publication. 81. As recorded by G. B. Grayson (with Henry Whitter, accomp.), September 30, 1929, in New York City, issued on Victor V-40235, 78 rpm, in May 1930; reissued on The Recordings of Grayson and Whitter, County CD 3517. 82. See John Foster West, The Ballad of Tom Dula: The Documented Story behind the Murder of Laura Foster and the Trials and Execution of Tom Dula (Durham, NC: Moore, [1970]), and West, Lift Up Your Head, Tom Dooley: The True Story of the Appalachian Murder That Inspired One of America’s Most Popular Ballads (Asheboro, NC: Down Home Press, 1993). 83. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Folksong: USA (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947). 84. As recorded by Green Bailey, November 30, 1928, in Richmond, Indiana, and issued on Gennett 6702, 78 rpm and associated labels; reissued on Old-Time Mountain Ballads, County CD-3504. 85. Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 2:714. 86. From http://www.cyberhymnal.org. 87. From J. E. Mainer, Songs as Sung by J. E. Mainer and His Mountaineers (Concord, NC: J. E. Mainer, n.d., ca. 1968), 29, with minor changes in punctuation and spelling. Mainer and his band recorded the song for the Blue Jay Record Company on record 202, 45 rpm. The recorded text has a few minor variations from the printed one. For references to collected texts, see Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 2:684 –87. 88. Details from Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 2:684 –87. 89. “Hamlet Mishap Provides Theme for Folk Verses,” Durham Morning Herald, March 17, 1929, sec. 4, pp. 1, 4. 90. Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 674. 91. Recorded by Frank Welling and John McGhee in New York, October 22, 1929, and issued on Paramount 3194, 78 rpm, under the pseudonym of the Martin Brothers; reissued on Paramount Old Time Recordings: Ballads and Blues, JSP 7774B. 92. From John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), 129 –30. 93. From the recording by the Carolina Buddies (Walter Smith and Lewis McDaniel), made March 25, 1930, in New York City and issued on Columbia 15537-D, 78 rpm, in June 1930. Reissued on Walter Smith & Friends, vol. 1, 1929–March 1930, Document DOCD 8062. 94. For more details, see Donald Lee Nelson, “The Lawson Family Murder,” JEMF Quarterly 9 (Winter 1973): 170–73, and M. Bruce Jones with Trudy J. Smith, White Christmas Bloody Christmas (Trinity, NC: UpWords, 1990). 95. Burt, American Murder Ballads, 186–87. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. www.oup.com. 96. As sung by Kelly Harrell in Asheville, North Carolina, on August 25, 1925; issued on OKeh 40505, 78 rpm. Reissued on Kelly Harrell: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, vol. 1, 1925–1926, Document CD DOCD 8026. 97. From Belden and Hudson, Frank C. Brown Collection, 3:477. Contributed by O. L. Coffey of Shull’s Mills, Watauga County, in 1939. The epithet “prince Immanuel” has been used to refer either to Jesus himself or to a reincarnation of Jesus—especially among African American religionists. 98. From “Jolly Tom,” The American Naval and Patriotic Songster. As sung at various places of amusement, in honor of Hull, Jones, Decatur, Perry, Bainbridge, Lawrence, &c. &c. &c. (Baltimore: n.p., 1834), 56–58. Almost identical texts were printed on broadsides in Boston by Leonard Deming, ca. 1829–1831, and by William Rutler, no. 1, Snow’s Wharf, Boston; the latter can be seen on the Library of Congress Web site under American Singing: Nineteenth Century Song Sheets. John and Lucy Allison recorded a version on their 78-rpm album, Ballads of the American Revolution and the War of 1812: A Program of Early American Songs from the Collection of John Allison (Victor P-11). 99. For more details, see John William Ward, Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), esp. chap. 2, “The Hunters of Kentucky.”

UPPER SOUTH

289

100. Samuel Woodworth, Melodies, Duets, Trios, Songs, and Ballads, Pastoral, Amatory, Sentimental, Patriotic Religious, and Miscellaneous, Together with Metrical Epistles, Tales, and Recitations ( New York: J. M. Campbell, 1826). The title notwithstanding, this is a collection of poems, not songs as such. The air to which it was set, alternately called “Unfortunate Miss Bailey” and “Miss Bailey’s Ghost,” was an English composition first published in George Colman’s 1805 comic opera, “Love Laughs at Locksmiths.” 101. Noah M. Ludlow, Dramatic Life as I Found It ( New York: Benjamin Blom, 1966), 237–38, 241. A search of the poems published in the New York Mirror from inception through the end of 1824 did not turn up “Hunters of Kentucky.” 102. S. Foster Damon, Series of Old American Songs ( Providence, RI: Brown University Library,1936). 103. Harry Dichter, “The Hunters of Kentucky,” Musical Americana facsimile, Philadelphia, 1956. 104. Perhaps the earliest reference to the song appeared in the Argus of Western America ( Frankfort, KY), July 9, 1824, p. 2. There a letter from Daniel Boone in support of the political candidacy of General Desha quoted in one stanza of the song (with minor variations). This established that the song was circulating by mid-1824, if not earlier. 105. Richard J. Wolfe, Secular Music in America, 1801–1825: A Bibliography ( New York: New York Public Library, 1964). 106. From Wehman’s Song Book, no. 24 (ca. October 1889), 24. For a collected text, see E. C. Perrow, “Songs and Rhymes of the South,” Journal of American Folklore 28 (1915): 166–68. A recording titled “The Murder of Colonel Sharp” by Doug Wallin was issued on Far in the Mountains— Volume 3 (Musical Traditions MTCD 323-4). 107. From E. C. Perrow, “Songs and Rhymes from the South,” Journal of American Folk-Lore 28 (1915): 166. 108. Cited in Hubert G. Shearin and Josiah H. Combs, A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs (Lexington, KY: Transylvania, 1911), 16, 19. A copy of one of these is in the Western Kentucky Folklore Archive in the University of California, Los Angeles Ethnomusicology Library. 109. The Confession of Jereboam O. Beauchamp, Who Was Executed at Frankfurt, Ky. (Bloomfield, KY, 1826); reprinted, along with Ann Cook’s letters, the trial transcript, and a vindication of Sharp written by his brother, in Loren J. Kallsen, ed., The Kentucky Tragedy: A Problem in Romantic Attitudes ( New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963). 110. For more details, see Kallsen, Kentucky Tragedy. 111. From the sheet music “My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night,” as sung by Christy’s Minstrels, written and composed by Stephen C. Foster, Firth, Pond, and Company, New York, 1853. 112. Quoted in Ken Emerson, Doo-Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), 192. 113. From Harvey H. Fuson, Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands (London: Mitre Press, 1931), 176–78, from the author’s family tradition. As Fuson prints the song, the first line of each stanza is repeated twice. 114. From http://www nps.gov/archive/cuga/longtom htm. 115. From Cox, Folk-Songs of the South, 264 – 65. Cox received it from Miss Violet Noland of Davis, Tucker County, West Virginia, in 1916; she had obtained it from Mr. John Reese, who learned it when a boy and wrote it down in 1880. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 125 [A 13]. A related ballad by Sarah Ogan Gunning was issued on the LP, Girl of Constant Sorrow (Folk Legacy FSA-26, 1965). 116. Recorded by John Byrd in Grafton, Wisconsin, ca. April 1930, and issued on Paramount 12997, 78 rpm, as “Old Timbrook Blues.” Reissued on John Byrd & Walter Taylor (1929–1931): Complete Recordings in Chronological Order, Story of Blues CD 3517-2. 117. See D. K. Wilgus, “Ten Broeck and Mollie: A Race and a Ballad,” Kentucky Folklore Record 2 (July–September 1956): 77–89. 118. From Cox, Folk-Songs of the South, 189–91. Contributed by Mrs. Hannah Bradshaw of Matewan, Mingo County, West Virginia, in July 1918. Mrs. Bradshaw had learned it about 30 years

290

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

earlier from a printed copy in Ashland, Kentucky. For references to other ballads about the Ashland murders, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 204 –5 [F 25/26/27]. 119. Details from Cox, Folk-Songs of the South. 120. From D. K. Wilgus, “Arch and Gordon,” Kentucky Folklore Record 6 (1960): 51–56. From the singing of Mrs. Will Cline, Delaware, McLean County, Kentucky, May 1956. The tune is similar to “Careless Love.” 121. From Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 2:160 – 61; sung by Mr. Jim Cherry, Fayetteville, Arkansas, January 30, 1942; he had learned the song, he said, in 1893. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 186 [E 20]. Two recordings, one by Alva Greene and the other by Mary Lozier, can be heard on Meeting’s a Pleasure, Vol. 2: Cruel Willie (Musical Traditions MTCD 342). 122. From Josiah H. Combs, Folk-Songs of the Southern United States, ed. D. K. Wilgus (Austin: University of Texas Press for American Folklore Society, 1967), 161– 62. 123. Quoted by Jean Thomas, Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky ( New York: Oak, 1964), 16 –17. 124. From James Watt Raine, The Land of Saddle-bags ( New York: Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1924), 150 –57. 125. As sung by Doc Hopkins in Los Angeles, 1965, recorded by D. K. Wilgus. Issued on Doc Hopkins, Birch LP 1945. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 185 [E 19]. 126. For more historical information, see Donald Lee Nelson, “The Death of J. B. Marcum,” JEMF Quarterly 37 (Spring 1975): 7–22, and references therein. 127. As recorded by Hayes Shepherd, “The Appalachia Vagabond,” March 1930 in Knoxville; issued on Vocalion 5450, 78 rpm, in September 1930; reissued on The Music of Kentucky: Early American Rural Classics 1927–37, vol. 2, Yazoo CD 2014. 128. Last verse taken from Fuson, Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands, 117. See Laws, Native American Balladry, 203– 4 [F 24], for references to other collected versions. 129. As sung by Vernon Dalhart, recorded September 9, 1925, and issued on Victor 19779, 78 rpm. 130. For more historical information, see Roger W. Brucker and Robert K. Murray, Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins, rev. ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983). 131. L. Parker “Pick” Temple, personal communication, late 1970s. 132. As recorded by Green Bailey in Richmond, Indiana, on August 29, 1929, and issued on Challenge 425, 78 rpm (as by Dick Bell). 133. For more details, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 255–56. 134. From Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest, 171. The expression in the air and sun in the last stanza means blacklisted and unemployed. 135. As sung by Bill and Earl Bolick (“The Blue Sky Boys”) in Charlotte, North Carolina, August 1937, and issued on RCA Bluebird B-7755; reissued on Within the Circle/Who Wouldn’t Be Lonely, Blue Tone Records BSR CD 1003/4. 136. As recorded by Mac and Bob (Lester McFarland and Robert Gardner) in New York City on December 8, 1927, and issued on Vocalion 5199, 78 rpm, in July 1928. 137. From Wehman’s Collection of Songs, no. 24 (October 1889), 33. 138. “Hickman’s Boys,” sung by Russ Vandergriff of Hamilton County, Tennessee, 1982. The recording was issued on Historical Ballads of the Tennessee Valley, Tennessee Folklore Society LP TFS-105. 139. From Francis D. Allan, Allan’s Lone Star Ballads: A Collection of Southern Patriotic Songs Made during Confederate Times ( New York: Burt Franklin, 1970), 44 – 45. For a traditional text, see Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 2:272–73; as sung by Mrs. Judy Jane Whittaker of Anderson, Missouri, on May 4, 1928. 140. From Allan, Allan’s Lone Star Ballads, 145. For references to traditional versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 126 [A 15].

UPPER SOUTH

291

141. Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, 2:73. 142. As sung by Jilson Setters [James William Day] in 1937 in Ashland, Kentucky, for J. A. Lomax, Library of Congress AFS 1017, 78 rpm. Day’s song was recorded by Mike Seeger on Tipple, Loom and Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the South, Smithsonian Folkways FH 5273. Thomas published Setters’s text in Ballad Makin,’ 195–97. 143. From the singing of Lester MacFarland and Robert A. Gardner (Mac and Bob), recorded in New York City on June 17, 1929, and issued on Brunswick 409, 78 rpm, titled “Sunny Tennessee.” Mac and Bob’s version is very close to the original sheet music, except the fourth line of the second stanza should be, “For I missed the one that I’d been longing for.” 144. As sung by Green Bailey of Kentucky, recorded August 29, 1929, and issued on Challenge 425. Reissued on Rounder LP 1026. 145. James Taylor Adams, Death in the Dark: A Collection of Factual Ballads of American Mine Disasters (Big Laurel, VA: Adams-Mullins Press, 1941), 99. 146. “Fraterville Mine Disaster of 1902,” http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/3415/ FMD html. 147. Bureau of Mines files, http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/3415/FMD.html. 148. Letters and statement from accident report taken from Carl H. Fritts Jr.’s Web site, “Fraterville Mine Disaster of 1902,” http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Acres/3415/FMD html. 149. Recorded by Gene Austin (vocal) and George Reneau on September 12, 1924, in New York City; released on Vocalion 14930, 78 rpm, in February 1925. 150. Adapted from Railway Age, September 30, 1904, p. 480; reprinted in Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 228. 151. For more details, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 227–29. 152. Originally titled “Beale Street,” words and music by W. C. Handy, copyright 1916, 1917 by Pace and Handy Music Company; copyright renewed by W. C. Handy. 153. Written by Carson J. Robison, transcribed from recording by Vernon Dalhart, July 10, 1925, and issued on Columbia 15037-D, 78 rpm. 154. The colorful events of the trial were admirably depicted in the play and motion picture Inherit the Wind. See also Norm Cohen, “Scopes and Evolution in Hillbilly Songs,” JEMF Quarterly 20 (Winter 1970): 174 –81; R. M. Cornelius, “Their Stage Drew All the World: A New Look at the Scopes Evolution Trial,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 40 (Summer 1981): 129 – 43; and Fay-Cooper Cole, “A Witness at the Scopes Trial,” Scientific American, January 1959, pp. 120 –30. Cole was more than a witness—he was one of Darrow’s colleagues. In 1996 William Jennings Bryan College of Dayton issued a cassette recording, “Scopes Trial Songs and William Jennings Bryan Speeches,” including all the recordings mentioned here and others and issued a selected, annotated bibliography on Bryan, the trial, creation, and evolution—in commemoration of the centennial anniversary of Bryan’s famous “Cross of Gold” speech. 155. From Uncle Dave Macon, recorded December 17, 1930 in Jackson, Mississippi, and issued on OKeh 45507, 78 rpm; reissued on Hard Times Come Again No More, vol. 2, Yazoo CD 2037. 156. As sung by Leola Manning in Knoxville, Tennessee, April 4, 1930, and issued on Vocalion 1492, 78 rpm; reissued on Historical Ballads of the Tennessee Valley, Tennessee Folklore Society LP TFS-105, and on Rare Country Blues, Document DOCD 5170. 157. For more details, see Jack Neely, “The Moan: A Forgotten Fire, Remembered in a Song,” only at http://www.metropulse.com/dir_zine/dir_2005/dir_1508/t_cover/html. 158. From Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest, 166. Written by Eleanor Kellogg. 159. Patrick D. Reagan, Tennessee Technological University; from Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture (http://tennesseeencyclopedia net). 160. Recorded by Clay and Lester Cope in Bean Station, Tennessee, in 1982, and issued on Historical Ballads of the Tennessee Valley. 161. Charles Wolfe, brochure notes to Historical Ballads of the Tennessee Valley, p. 22.

4 Deep South and the Ozarks

In 1663 King Charles II gave a group of eight Englishmen a charter grant to “Carolina,” the area between Virginia and Spanish Florida. Charleston was founded in 1670. Many early settlers came from the English colony on the small Caribbean island of Barbados, whence they brought their island’s slavery system. By 1740 they had been joined by a considerable number of wealthy planters, whose slave holdings constituted more than half of the population. Europeans from the continent settled in the new colony as well. Swiss and German settlers founded New Bern in 1710; French Huguenots, fleeing persecution in French Canada, were also drawn to the colony in the 1740s. Meanwhile, farther south, James Edward Oglethorpe convinced King George II to grant him and his associates a charter to the land between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers (now northern Georgia), where English debtors could find an opportunity for a new start in life. Between 1732 and 1740, some 1,800 freed debtors and other destitute émigrés were offered paid passage. In 1734 German Lutherans from Salzburg began to arrive and settled in New Ebenezer. Soon they were joined by more Scots highlanders. Florida’s history was altogether different. Its first European colonizers were Spanish, who followed in the footsteps of Juan Ponce de Leon, searching for the fabled fountain of youth in the peninsula in 1513 and again in 1521. De Leon’s quest was unsuccessful, but he did find a fountain of warmth, which is still visited faithfully each winter by sunseekers from New York and New England. Another colony was established in 1561 but abandoned three years later because of a hurricane. (Evidently, the lesson was soon forgotten.) Spaniards were more successful with Saint Augustine, established in 1565 and still thriving. A group of French Huguenots established Fort Caroline in 1564, but they were massacred by the Spanish the following year. A Greek colony was established in 1790.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

293

In the 1700s English settlers began to move in from Georgia to the north, and by the end of Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), all the Spanish colonists had been driven back to St. Augustine. In 1763, as part of the conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, Spain ceded Florida to Great Britain, under whose rule it remained until the Treaty of Paris in 1783, when Britain returned Florida to Spain. The influx of American settlers eventually induced Spain to cede the province to the United States in 1819. Internal migration from eastern Georgia helped to settle western Georgia and Alabama in the first half of the nineteenth century.

SOUTH CAROLINA In the sixteenth century, Spanish explorers and French Huguenots trod South Carolina’s soil but found it uncongenial, and their footprints all faded away. The first permanent establishment was the English town of Charles Town in 1670. It was permanent mainly in name: after 10 years, it was moved across the river to a location better situated for trade and defense. The colony saw several Revolutionary War battles, starting with the British capture of Charles Town in 1780, followed by encounters at King’s Mountain and Cowpens. In December 1782 the British evacuated Charles Town, and shortly thereafter the name was changed to Charleston. After the war’s conclusion, the colony ceded to the federal government its lands west of the Appalachians, and on May 23, 1788, it became the eighth state to ratify the federal Constitution. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 provided a great impetus to the development of cotton cultivation, which became the major crop by midcentury. Approximately 60 percent of the population in 1860 was African American, 98 percent of whom were slaves. The throne of king cotton united white South Carolinians in opposition to the abolition movement; being one of only three states with an African American majority made them particularly uneasy. Following the presidential election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union.1 Battle of King’s Mountain ’Twas on a pleasant mountain The Tory heathens lay; With a doughty major at their head, One Ferguson they say. Cornwallis had detach’d him, A thieving for to go, And catch the Carolina men, Or bring the rebels low. The scamp had rang’d the country In search of royal aid, And with his owls, perched on high, He taught them all his trade. But ah! that fatal morning, When Shelby brave drew near!

294

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

’Tis certainly a warning That ministers should hear. And Campbell, and Cleveland, And Colonel Sevier, Each with a band of gallant men, To Ferguson appear. Just as the sun was setting Behind the western hills, Just then our trusty rifles sent A dose of leaden pills. Up, up the steep together Brave Williams led his troop, And join’d by Winston, bold and true, Disturb’d the Tory coop. The royal slaves, the royal owls, Flew high on every hand; But soon they settled—gave a howl, And quarter’d to Cleveland. I would not tell the number Of Tories slain that day; But surely it is certain That none did run away. For all that were a living, Were happy to give up; So let us make thanksgiving, And pass the bright tin-cup. To all the brave regiments, Let’s toast ’em for their health; And may our good country Have quietude and wealth.2

On October 7, 1780, Major Patrick Ferguson took a force of 1,400 Loyalists (i.e., to the British crown) to make a stand on top of the wooded ridge called King’s Mountain near Cherokee Ford, about a mile and a half south of the South Carolina state line, and sent word that “he defied God Almighty and all the rebels out of hell to overcome him.” His words were ill chosen, and Ferguson was killed in the final assault; all who would not surrender were slaughtered. The American victory gave “new life to an apparently lost cause.”3 On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the battle, the Honorable J. T. Preston delivered a vivid account of the action. As the battle approached its climax, the patriots rushed forward to meet the shock as Dupoistre’s regulars, with set bayonets and sabres in rest, came rushing down upon them. Not Agincourt nor Cressy, with all their chivalry, ever felt a shock more fearful than that; but had the heavens rained British bayonets, it would not have stopped these patriots. The destinies of America, perhaps of mankind, depended on their muscle. Like martyrs, they went to the death—like lions they rushed to the carnage. Officer and soldier, with bloodshot eyes and parched tongues, bounded upon the huddling enemy until their fierce glare and hot

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

295

breath could be seen and felt by the craven Tory and his bull-dog master; and at the moment they were crouching together for the last spring, a wild, terror-stricken shriek rose above the battle—a yell for quarter. A white flag was run up, arms thrown down, and God’s champions shouted, “Victory! Liberty!” That shout echoed from the mountain to the sea, and far along the shore to where the majestic Washington sat almost weeping over the sad horrors of the South. His great heart leaped with prophetic joy as this beam of hope came borne on the triumphant voice of his beloved and trusted men of “West Augusta”; for the men who sent that shout were the very men of whom Washington said he would “trust to them to maintain American liberty after all else had failed.” He knew the mountain was the birthplace, but never the grave, of liberty. . . . It was a total defeat, and a capture of nearly a quarter of Cornwallis’s army.4

The success of the Americans at King’s Mountain, over the forces of Ferguson and Depuyster, has been the subject of numerous ballads. The one subjoined was written a short time after the action and published on a small sheet the following year. Save de Union A mighty angry quarrel rose Among the Tariff ’s friends and foes, And South Ca’lina, in a fit, De Union vows to curse and quit. Chorus: But save de Union old folks, young folks, Old Virginny never tire. Virginny love her sister State And most as much the Tariff hate, But while the Tariff she despise, De Union very much she prize, Chorus: So save de Union old folks, young folks, Old Virginny never tire. She send her son Mas’ Watkins Leigh, De South Ca’lina folks to see, To tell ’em just to wait a while, And better times will on us smile. Chorus. The Tariff chief, name Henry Clay, Who love his country much dey say, Begin to fear its danger great, And says, “I join my native State Chorus: To save de Union old folks, young folks, Old Virginny never tire.” Calhoun, a great Ca’lina man, Abominates the Tariff plan, But he too say, “Oh yes, ’tis right, And Clay, let’s me and you unite, Chorus. McDuffie, too, when he see dat, Off-hand begin to smell de rat— He say, no doubt Calhoun is wise, And we must do what he advise, Chorus.

296

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Den all de folks in Congress Hall, De ladies, gentlemens an’ all, All smile upon Calhoun and Clay, And say, “well done, dat is de way, Chorus. And when Ca’lina hear de news, She come into Virginny’s views; She smile upon Mas Watkins Leigh, And says “my Nullies all agree, Chorus.5

In 1832–1833 the federal government faced a monumental crisis, largely precipitated by South Carolina’s brilliant orator and statesman John C. Calhoun. Calhoun proposed anonymously and then supported publicly his doctrine of nullification—the theory that, since the Constitution was a compact among the sovereign states, any one state could declare an act of Congress unconstitutional. At this time, the issue in question was the tariff, but Calhoun was presciently looking forward to what he anticipated would be a great conflict over the question of slavery. The tariff issue was Calhoun’s opportunity to lay the groundwork for that coming struggle. To his dismay, most of the southern states and their leaders (including Jefferson Davis, later president of the Confederacy) rejected his nullification doctrine, and he was politically isolated for the duration of his career. Under Calhoun’s leadership, South Carolina nullified the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832, in response to which President Jackson sent federal troops into the state to establish authority. Calhoun resigned as Andrew Jackson’s vice president in 1832, won election to the Senate, and spent the remainder of his years fighting the slavery abolitionists. Several prominent political figures are named in this witty satire, written in pseudodialect to the tune of the popular minstrel song of ca. 1832 “Clar de Kitchen”: “Mas(sa) Watkins” was Benjamin Watkins Leigh, a Virginia lawyer and statesman; “McDuffie” was South Carolina governor George McDuffie, an advocate of nullification; Henry Clay was “the great compromiser” who proposed a compromise tariff bill. Charleston Gals As I walked down the new cut road, I met the tap and then the toad; The toad commenced to whistle and sing, And the possum cut the pigeon wing. Along came an old man riding by, If you don’t mind, your horse will die; If he dies, we’ll tan his skin, And if he lives, we’ll ride him agin. Chorus: Hi, ho, for Charleston gals! Charleston gals are the gals for me. As I went walking down the street Up steps Charleston gals to take a walk with me. I kep’ a-walking and they kep’ a-talking, I danced with a gal with a hole in her stocking.6

Whistling toads and dancing possums are equally at home in children’s songs and songs from the antebellum blackface minstrel stage. The latter was the venue of this piece of

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

297

nonsense—notwithstanding that the immediate source is an 1867 collection of songs from plantation slaves.7 A similar verse appears in “Turkey in the Straw,” from the 1860s: As I was gwine down the road I met Mister Te’pin and I met Miss Toad; Every time Mis’ Top’ would sing The old toad cut de pigeon wing.8

The gal with the stockings in disrepair also makes an appearance in another song from this era, “Bowery Gals” or “Buffalo Gals,” where we hear I danc’d all night and my heel kept a rocking And I balance to de gal wid a hole in her stocking She was prettiest gal in de room.9

(“Buffalo” is not a place name, but a slang epithet for African American.) Battle of Fort Sumter Hark! don’t you hear that rumbling sound? Fort Sumter’s cannons roar; See! the soldiers falling down, Whilst bomb shells on them pour. The city now is all on fire, Its flames light up the sky; See! its blazing higher and higher And thousands here must die. Here, brothers meet in deadly strife, And one or both must fall; And whilst they are fighting for their life, They are killed by a cannon ball. Now the battle waxes strong, All along the Fort and wall; The enemy tries to get upon, But here they have to fall. Behold! their battery now is on fire, Their soldiers have to flee, The flames cause many to expire, They lose the victory. Now let them all like Haman hang Upon their gallows-tree; Every one of this mean gang, Who fought against Liberty. Our constitution and our laws, Our soldiers will maintain; They will bravely fight in freedom’s cause, Until their foes are slain. Honor and justice are on our side; We are battling for our right;

298

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

All tyrants who would us divide, Against them we will fight. Our country’s flag must honored be! Her credit we’ll maintain; We will assert her Liberty, And in her cause remain. May heavenly wisdom guide us all And keep us in the right; And cause all tyrants now to fall, Who would their country fight. —William Rice, Rice City, Coventry [Rhode Island], April 12, 186110

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede. When the Southern states withdrew from the Union, they seized and occupied most of the federal forts within their territory. Fort Sumter, however, in the mouth of the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, remained in Union hands. In 1861, during President Lincoln’s first full day in office, he learned that Major Robert Anderson, commander of the garrison at Fort Sumter, had provisions sufficient only for a month. and could obtain no supplies from the mainland. Sumter had become a symbol of the Union, and Lincoln, feeling obliged to protect it, sent a supply ship to its aid in April. On April 11, 1861, General P.G.T. Beauregard, commanding the Confederate troops in Charleston, demanded that Anderson surrender the fort. Anderson refused, and at 4:30 the following morning, Beauregard ordered his batteries to open fire on the fort. For a day and a half, Anderson returned the fire. Though the relief expedition reached the harbor, it was unable to land any men, and Anderson, with Sumter badly damaged by fire, was forced to surrender the fort. It was the Civil War’s first battle.11 The author of this ballad, William Rice of Rhode Island, was presumably a Northerner, yet it is difficult to judge with which side his sympathies lay. The song could be easily adapted to any war, which suggests that perhaps it was based on an earlier song. The allusion to Haman in the biblical book of Esther, who was hanged on the gallows he had ordered built for Mordecai, implies that the rebels will be heist on their own petard (i.e., destroyed by their own blast). Other broadsides were published commemorating the battle, some from the Southern perspective: South Carolina, a Patriotic Ode Land of the Palmetto tree, Sweet home of Liberty, Of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, Land of Old Sumter’s pride, From every mountain side, Let Freedom ring. Carolina! Mother! thee, Home of the noble free, Thy name I love; I love thy rocks and rills, Thy woods and templed hills,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

299

My heart with rapture thrills, Like that above. Though fratricidal war, Threatens thy peace to mar, Thy sons will stand; And hurl the invader forth, Back to the bankrupt North, E’er yet the yankee moth Shall stain thy land. Our father’s God, to thee, Author of Liberty, To thee we sing; Long may our land be bright, With freedom’s holy light, Protect us by thy might Great God! our King.12

No tune was indicated on this unattributed broadside of 1861, but it is obviously intended as an answer to “America, My Country ’Tis of Thee”—which, in turn, was set to the tune of the English “God Save the King.” “America,” the poem, was written by Reverend Samuel Francis Smith in 1831, but the earliest sheet music was published in 1861 at the beginning of the Civil War. The cabbage palmetto has been South Carolina’s official state tree since 1939 (and also Florida’s, as of 1953). The Battle at Charleston Harbor On the seventh day of April, in eighteen sixty-three, The South Atlantic Squadron, with colors waving free, New Ironsides, (the flag-ship,) with the Monitors in train, In majesty advanced through the channel, up the main. The Weehawken led the van; Passaic, Patapsco, New Ironsides, Catskill, Nantucket and Kuk-Keo, Nahant and Montauk—all in order now most fine, Our Navy, iron-clad, steamed up for battle line. Brave Admiral Dupont cried, “My boys, now up-cheer, With fortitude move on—direct for Sumter steer; Our flag shall wave its stripes in front of Sumter’s walls, The stars shall throw their light, ’mid the storm of iron balls.” The Iron fleet advanced beyond the northeast face Of Sumter’s belching cannon, while Moultrie she kept pace; The fire of Cumming’s Point, the balls from Battery Bee, Burst round our Iron-clads like a pelting storm at sea. The sheeted flames of fire, like the vivid lightning, flash Across the battle-waters, while balls with iron clash; Our Monitors in turn hurl their massy bolts of thunder, Dislodging guns at Moultrie, and tore the walls of Sumter. The South Atlantic squadron, full two hours in attack, Three thousand shot were hurled, she nobly bore the shock;

300

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

But the bold and fearless Keokuk being struck with ninety balls, She sank, with colors flying above her damaged hull.13

Two years after the Battle of Ft. Sumter, Charleston harbor again became the scene of warfare. In January 1863, two Confederate rams, taking advantage of the absence, for the first time in months, of blockading vessels, darted from the harbor and inflicted slight damage on federal ships before they were driven off. Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont then assembled a number of ironclad warships (called monitors) and, on April 7, launched an attack on Fort Sumter. Imperfect steering apparatus disarranged the line of battle, sunken obstructions impeded movement, and a bombardment of shelling took a heavy toll, forcing Du Pont to retire. The ballad describes the intense fighting but is vague about the battle’s outcome. Overladen with details and as devoid of any human interest as a bilge pump, the ballad was clearly destined for oblivion. Charleston Earthquake It was a pleasant August evening, and the city was at rest, Peace and quiet reigned on every hand, When a dreadful crash was heard, that struck terror to the souls Of every one who heard it throughout the land; The people were distracted, from their houses they did flee, For they felt that they were safer in the street; The houses they were tumbling down, and the crowds did hurry on To escape the terrible doom that they might meet. Chorus: Mothers with their children clasped so tight in their arm, Left their homes where they had dwelt for many a year, To wander up and down, and sleep upon the cold, damp ground, For no place of safety but the parks was near. Everything was in confusion, both the rich and poor alike, Were praying for the morning to appear, To break the gloom that hung o’er them upon that wretched night That filled their hearts with misery and fear; Amidst the great excitement, a poor, old, feeble man, Although weak, his life he tried hard to save, But as he reached the landing the walls did tumble in, Beneath the ruins he had found a silent grave. Chorus: Charleston is in ruins, and the people are in want, Let every one do what is in their power To aid the poor unfortunates that are now in distress And send relief for them in this, their saddest hour.14

In its long history (the city was South Carolina’s first), in addition to suffering the slings and arrows of major military actions, Charleston has been devastated by many natural disasters: by hurricanes in 1699, 1875, and 1854; by epidemic in 1699 and 1854; by fire in 1749; and by earthquake on August 31, 1886. The latter temblor damaged 90 percent of the city’s buildings. This ballad describing that earthquake’s punishing effects was set to the tune of “The Milwaukee Fire,” a tragedy that preceded the earthquake by some two years.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

301

The Bottle Alley Song “Where you git dem bongee shoes?” “Git ’em from Mullally.” “Where Mullally keep he store?” “Corner King and Bottle Alley.” “Where you git dat mookum at?” “Git ’em from Mullally.” “Where Mullally keep he store?” “Corner King and Bottle Alley.” “Where you git dat pongee shirt?” “Git ’em from Mullally.” “Where Mullally keep he store?” “Corner King and Bottle Alley.” “Where you git dem broadcloth drawers?” “Git ’em from Mullally.” “Where Mullally keep he store?” “Corner King and Bottle Alley.” “Where you git dat balmacan?” “Git ’em from Mullally.” “Where Mullally keep he store?” “Corner King and Bottle Alley.” “Where you git dat dog-bed suit?” “Git ’em from Mullally.” “Where Mullally keep he store?” “Corner King and Bottle Alley.”15

In Charleston, in the early 1900s and thereafter, Mr. Mullaly was the proprietor of a secondhand clothing store on the corner of King and Bottle Alley. This song, with variations, was sung well into the 1960s in Charleston. Charlestonians remembered it being sung by African American shoe-shine “boys” as a patter accompanying the slapping of their cloths and by waiters, delivery boys, nursemaids, and others. The song is replete with words in Gullah—a pidgin language spoken along the southeastern coast and on the Sea Islands that blends words and phrases of many African languages with English.16 Bottle Alley acquired its name from the rows of bottles planted neck-down in the ground demarking its boundaries. The Death of Ellenton Where the broad Savannah flows along to meet the mighty sea There stood a peaceful village that meant all the world to me; ’Twas the home of happy people, I knew each and every one, All my kin and all the friends I loved, the town was Ellenton. But the military came one day and filled our hearts with woe: “We’ll study war right here,” they said, “the little town must go.” Then they came with trucks and dynamite, the din and dust rose high, As I stood and gazed in silence there and watched my hometown die. Then they brought bulldozers by the score where children used to play, Pushed over all the trees we loved and scraped the flowers away;

302

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now the homes are gone, the schoolhouse too, the sweat and toil of years, And with them all of our hopes and joys of past and future years. The little church was hauled away, the fields are brown and bare, And in their place a mighty plant—they build the H-bomb there; Now the smoke hangs o’er the valley like the mist before my eyes, That has been there ever since the day I saw my hometown die. All the friends we’ve known and loved we’ll meet upon some other shore, But Ellenton—fair Ellenton—is gone forevermore.17

In 1949 the Soviet Union exploded its first nuclear bomb, and the doors to the very exclusive club of nuclear states, of which the United States had been the only member, were blasted open with a mushroom-shaped cloud of smoke. Fearing for national security, President Truman, in 1950, approved the production of a weapon orders of magnitude more powerful: a fusion (or hydrogen) bomb. A site in South Carolina on the Savannah River was selected for the production facility, and some 6,000 residents of Ellenton and three other smaller towns were requested to vacate their homes. Ellenton residents moved homes and buildings 14 miles north and established New Ellenton. The song was recorded by a South Carolina family that performed mostly gospel songs locally and on records; “Pa” Johnson, the family patriarch (and guitarist), cowrote the song. The text is a sparring ring for regionalism and nationalism. Johnson’s sense of patriotism keeps him from criticizing directly the decision to make the bomb—and to do so in his former hometown—but a strong love of home and community undercuts patriotic fervor.

GEORGIA Georgia’s inaugural history reads like a page in the journal of failed utopian societies undertaken by European humanists. In 1732 George II granted James E. Oglethorpe and others a charter for a colony to include all the land between the Savannah and Altamaha rivers, extending west to the Pacific Ocean. Oglethorpe and his associates (the “trustees” of Georgia) planned a haven for the poor, the indebted, and the victims of religious persecution. Over the next two decades the English colonists were joined by German Lutherans and members of other central European persecuted religious groups as well as by Scots, Welsh, northern Italians, and Swiss. Oglethorpe hoped to create a model society, where none would be rich or poor. Immigrants were given free land and start-up supplies but were not allowed to sell, lease, or will the land away. They were expected to support themselves off the land through their own labor. In 1735 the trustees prohibited strong drink and slavery. Alas, tender idealism knelt before the sword of harsh realism. The settlers complained that the colony would never prosper until citizens could buy, sell, and own slaves for field work. They contended they could not compete successfully against other colonies because wage labor was so much costlier to the farm owner than slave labor. The trustees had to abandon their original plans, and by the mid-1750s slavery was legal, land could be transferred, and liquor could be made and sold. The trustees surrendered their charter to the king, and Georgia became a royal colony like all the others, governed by a governor and royal council and a colonially elected legislature. Georgia was slow in committing to the resistance toward Britain that grew into a Revolution, but after the 1775 battles at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, pro-independence

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

303

Georgians had their way. In 1778 the British captured Savannah, and within a few months they overran most of Georgia and reestablished British rule. British troops were not fully driven out of the colony until 1782. In 1788 Georgia became the fourth state to adopt the proposed federal Constitution. By the 1850s Georgia was among the southern states united in opposition to proposed congressional legislation barring slavery from the country’s new Western territories. Many Georgian leaders urged compromise, and the Compromise Measures of 1850 temporarily ameliorated contention. A year following Lincoln’s presidential election, Georgians voted for secession, in spite of the efforts of many state leaders to adopt moderation. The first major battle in Georgia took place in September 1863, when Union troops were routed at the Battle of Chickamauga. Georgia’s most bitter memory from the War between the States was General Sherman’s march across northern Georgia from Atlanta, left burning behind him, to Savannah on the coast. Within a few months of the surrender, white Georgians regained their political rights: under President Andrew Johnson’s plan of Reconstruction, the seceded states were to reestablish governments accepting Union principles and would then be readmitted to the Union. Georgian delegates repealed the 1861 act of secession and recognized the abolition of slavery but created a new constitution that effectively reasserted white supremacy. Michael Row the Boat Ashore Michael row de boat ashore, hallelujah, Michael row de boat ashore, hallelujah. Michael boat a gospel boat, hallelujah. (2) I wonder where my mudder den [there]. (2) Michael boat a music boat. (2) Brudder, lend a helpin’ hand. (2) Sister, help for trim dat boat. (2) Gabriel blow de trumpet horn. (2) Jordan stream is wide and deep. (2)18

Off the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida are a chain of low-lying, sandy islands that were settled and claimed by Spain in 1568. By the end of the seventeenth century, they were part of the English colony of Carolina. In the eighteenth century, they were private estates awarded to various individuals. After the War for Independence, parts of the lands were integrated into the respective American states. Eventually, Spain ceded the lands still under its control to the United States with the rest of Florida in 1821. Plantations on the islands cultivated rice and cotton. After the Civil War, abandoned plantations were confiscated and the land given to freed slaves. The Carolina islands still are home to a largely African American population that has retained many old Africanderived customs and folkways. The local language dialect is called Gullah and has been shown to retain many old Africanisms that have long since disappeared elsewhere in the New World. In the 1860s a group of abolitionists published a collection of African American “slave songs” collected mainly in the Georgia Sea Islands. One of their finds that was revived with great success in the urban folk song revival of the 1960s was “Michael Row the Boat

304

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Ashore.” To call it simply a “rowing song,” as has been done, is to turn a blind eye to the main function of this and many other ostensible work songs and spiritual songs of the period. They were in fact freedom songs—musical expressions of social discontent and longing for better living conditions in this world, not only the hereafter. I Am Sold and Going to Georgia O! When shall we poor souls be free? When shall these slavery chains be broke? Chorus: I am sold and going to Georgia, Will you go along with me? I am sold and going to Georgia, Go sound the Jubilee. I left my wife and child behind, They’ll never see my face again; Chorus. I am bound to yonder great rice swamp, Where my bones will find a grave; Chorus. Farewell, my friends, I leave you all, I am sold, but I have done no fault; Chorus.19

At the bottom of the sheet on which this was published is the statement, This Song is usually sung by the chained gangs of slaves who are on their way, being driven from Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky, to the more southern states for sale. The last line of each verse is the chorus, and gives a most impressive effect when sung—as it often is—by 60 or 150 voices echoing the plaintive grief of their hearts. This last line is intended as an appeal to all who have it in their power to aid in bringing about the jubilee of emancipation. —J.W.C. Pennington, D.D.20

Invocation of the jubilee recalls the Old Testament book of Leviticus 25. One of the Mosaic laws included instructions that the year after every seventh sabbatical year (i.e., after every 50th year) was to be a jubilee year, in which all debts were forgiven and all slaves were to be freed, and all hereditary property restored to its original owner(s). Pope Boniface VIII established the Year of Jubilee (or Holy Year) in 1300 as a centenary observance, reduced, in 1342, by Clement VI to every 50 years and, in 1470, by Paul II, further to every 25 years. The year begins on Christmas Eve, with the opening of the Holy Doors at the Roman basilicas of St. Peter, St. John Lateran, St. Paul Outside-the-Walls, and St. Mary Major, and ends with their closing on the following Christmas Eve. “Sound the Jubilee” is thus a clarion call to bring about the end of slavery; a plea answered secularly for the rebel states with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863) and three years later throughout the entire nation with the 13th Amendment (December 6, 1865). I’se Trabling Back to Georgia I’se trabling back to Georgia Dat good ole land to see, De place I left to wander, De day dat I was free;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

305

I’se getting old and weary, And tired of roaming too, So on my way to Dixie, I’ll say good-bye to you. Chorus: I’se trabling back, yes, trabling back, I’se trabling night and day, I’se trabling back to Georgia, I’se trabling night and day; I’se trabling back to Georgia, For I cannot keep away. I’se trabling back to Georgia, De place where I was born, Among de fields of cotton, De sugar-cane and corn; So happy wid ole massa, A living in de lane, To see de ole plantation, I’se trabling back again. Chorus. To live and die in Georgia, Dat’s good enough for me, I’ll hoe de corn and cotton, And, oh, so happy be; I’ll hunt de coon and possum, And dance, and sing and play, And when I once get back dere, I’ll neber come away. Chorus. I’se trabling back to Georgia, To see de darkies dere, And see my ole Aunt Dinah, Oh, golly, won’t she stare! We’ll dance all night till morning, By de banjo’s sweet refrain, And have a celebration, When I get back again. Chorus.21

This song, published on a broadside in the 1870s, comes from the blackface minstrel stage and is one of many examples of the minstrel singers’ desperate attempts to reassure their white audiences that the enslaved African American plantation workers really loved their masters and their lives in bondage. “Travelling Back to Georgia” suggests that the narrator was freed after the Civil War and went north, only to realize how much better life was in the antebellum South. Today, this “banjo’s sweet refrain” rings hollow. The Marching Song of Sherman’s Army on the Way to the Sea Our camp fires shone bright on the mountains That frowned on the river below, While we stood by our guns in the morning And eagerly watched for the foe— When a rider came out from the darkness

306

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

That hung over mountain and tree, And shouted, “Boys, up and be ready, For Sherman will march to the sea.” When cheer upon cheer for bold Sherman Went up from each valley and glen, And the bugles re-echoed the music That came from the lips of the men. For we knew that the stars in our banner More bright in their splendor would be, And that blessings from Northland would greet us When Sherman marched down to the sea. Then forward, boys, forward to battle, We marched on our wearisome way, And we stormed the wild hills of Resaca— God bless those who fell on that day. Then Kenesaw frowned in its glory, Frowned down on the flag of the free, But the East and the West bore our standards, And Sherman marched on to the sea. Still onward we pressed, till our banners Swept out from Atlanta’s grim walls, And the blood of the patriot dampened The soil where the traitor flag falls. But we paused not to weep for the fallen, Who slept by each river and tree, Yet we twined them a wreath of the laurel As Sherman marched down to the sea. O, proud was our army that morning, That stood where the pine darkly towers, When Sherman said, “Boys, you are weary; But to-day fair Savannah is ours.” Then sang we a song for our chieftain, That echoed o’er river and lea, And the stars in our banners shone brighter When Sherman marched down to the sea.22 Marching through Georgia Bring the good old bugle, boys! we’ll sing another song— Sing it with a spirit that will start the world along— Sing it as we used to sing it fifty thousand strong, While we were marching through Georgia. How the darkeys shouted when they heard the joyful sound! How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found! How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground, While we were marching through Georgia. Yes, and there were Union men who wept with joyful tears, When they saw the honor’d flag they had not seen for years; Hardly could they be restrained from breaking forth in cheers, While we were marching through Georgia.

Henry C. Work’s Civil War song, “Marching Through Georgia,” was still popular enough in 1913 to justify further publications, such as this one. Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

308

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

“Sherman’s dashing Yankee boys will never reach the coast!” So the saucy rebels said, and ’twas a handsome boast, Had they not forgot, alas! to reckon with the host, While we were marching through Georgia. So we made a thoroughfare for Freedom and her train, Sixty miles in latitude, three hundred to the main; Treason fled before us for resistance was in vain, While we were marching through Georgia. Chorus: Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the Jubile [sic]! Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free! So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea, While we were marching through Georgia.23

The hard granite of Georgia’s Stone Mountain is insufficient to fashion a monument large enough to itemize the destruction of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating March to the Sea. After his army had forced Confederate General John Bell Hood’s troops to evacuate Atlanta on the night of August 31–September 1, Sherman pursued the fleeing rebels, but then realized he would gain little and lose the benefits of his victory. Before leaving Atlanta, and after ordering civilians to evacuate, the federal forces burned the city. On the march they were ordered to destroy mills, cotton gins, and warehouses but to respect private homes. But boys being boys, in defiance of their orders, the soldiers not only seized foodstuffs and livestock for the army but destroyed railroad lines, burned bridges and public buildings, and plundered private homes. On November 15 Sherman commenced his great cross-country march with 62,000 men, laying waste to the economic resources of Georgia in a 50-mile-wide swath of destruction. By the anniversary of the birth of the Prince of Peace he had captured the city of Savannah and reached the coast, thereby establishing important supply lines for the Union armies. Sherman undertook this venture in hopes of obliterating potential supplies for the opposition, but it was on his own initiative. In fact, he carefully disconnected his lines of communication with his superiors so he couldn’t be ordered to stop. Lincoln received no direct bulletins from Sherman’s army, but had to rely on local newspapers for progress reports. Here are two different musical reflections on Sherman’s great venture. The first was written by Adjutant Byers of the Fifth Iowa while a prisoner in Columbia, South Carolina. It was, according to historian Henry Howe, “frequently sung by the captives as a relief to the monotony of their prison life. After Wilmington was taken it was sung in the theater, producing immense enthusiasm.”24 The second is by one of the nineteenth century’s great songwriters, Henry Clay Work (1832–1884), whose most memorable compositions (he wrote both words and music) include “Grandfather’s Clock,” “The Ship That Never Return’d,” and “Kingdom Coming.” Work’s “Marching through Georgia” contrasts strongly with Byers’s song—a lighthearted, almost humorous ditty that, perhaps deliberately, overlooked the more brutal aspects of the march. It was not published until after the war’s conclusion. It was still being recorded and collected from traditional singers in the mid-1900s. Columbus Stockade Blues Way down in Columbus, Georgia, Want to be back in Tennessee;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

309

Way down in Columbus Stockade, Friends have turned their back on me. Chorus: Go and leave me if you wish to, Never let me cross your mind; In your heart, you love some other— Leave me, darlin’, I don’t mind. Many a night with you I’ve rambled, Many a hour I’ve spent with you; Thought I’d gained your heart forever, Though you have proved false to me. Chorus. Last night while I lay sleeping, I dreamed that I was in your arms; When I woke I was mistaken, I was peepin’ through the bars. Chorus: Go and leave me if you wish to, Never let me cross your mind; In your heart, you love some other— Love, I’ve got the walkin’ blues.25

Tom Darby (1884 –1971) and Jimmie Tarlton (1892–1979) were a cantankerous pair, arguing constantly about their music and how they should be paid for their recordings (flat fee or royalty), but they managed to produce seven dozen fine recordings of old-time hillbilly music between 1927 and 1933. “Columbus Stockade Blues” was put on disc at their second recording session and proved to be one of their most enduring compositions. Later, both men claimed authorship, but Darby’s claim seems more likely; in any case, it is built up largely of older traditional verses, so at most Darby should get some acknowledgment for arrangement. Darby asserted the idea for the song came from his brother William Clevis Darby, whose habit it was to sojourn in local jails, including the Columbus, Georgia, prison, most of his life.26 Tarlton was born in South Carolina but lived most of his days in Phenix City, Alabama. Darby lived across the border in Georgia’s Columbus. Delia Holmes Delia, Delia, Why didn’t you run, See dat desperado Had a forty-fo’ smokeless gun, Cryin’ all I had done gone. Chorus (repeated every six or eight stanzas): All I had done gone. (2) Good-bye mother, friends and all, All I had done gone. Now Coonie an’ his little sweetheart, Settin’ down talkin’ low; Axed her would she marry him, She said, “Why sho’,” Cryin’ all I had done gone. When the time come for marriage,

310

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

She refuse’ to go; “If you don’t marry me, You cannot live no mo’.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. Shot her with a pistol, Number forty-fo’, “You did not marry me, You cannot live no mo’.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. Turned po’ Delia over, On her side very slow; She was cryin’ “Coonie, Please don’t shoot no mo’.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. Death had proceeded, It wasn’t so very long, Till her mother come runnin’ With a bucket on her arm, Cryin’ all I had done gone. “Tell me, my darlin’, What have you done wrong, Cause Coonie to shoot you With that forty-fo’ smokeless gun?” Cryin’ all I had done gone. “Some give a nickel, Some give a dime, Help to bury, This body of mine.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. Threw down his pistol An’ tried to get away; Officers picked him up In just a few day. Cryin’ all I had done gone. Placed him in jail Till his trial should come; “Tell me now officer, What have I done?” Cryin’ all I had done gone. They axed him did he remember this, “A girl that you were in love, An’ spoken things unto her, That instantly taken her nerve?” Cryin’ all I had done gone. “She moved closely beside of me An’ threw her arms around.” “Do you remember little Delia Holmes,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

And which you shot down?” Cryin’ all I had done gone. “Have I now any bond, Or can I get one, For the crime that I am charged, I plead guilty I have done?” Cryin’ all I had done gone. The judge that tried him, Handsome with the time, Say, “Coonie, if I don’t hang you, I’ll give you ninety-nine.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. “Ninety-nine years in prison, Workin’ ’mong the stone, Hope that you’ll get sorry That you have wrecked a home.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. Coonie went to Atlanta, Drinkin’ from a silver cup; Po’ li’l’ Delia’s in the cemetery, I hope to never wake up. Cryin’ all I had done gone. Delia’s mother Taken a trip out west, Just to keep from hearin’ the talk Of po’ li’l’ Delia’s death. Cryin’ all I had done gone. Everywhere the train would stop You could hear the people moan, Singin’ dat lonesome song, “Po’ Delia’s dead an’ gone.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. Rubber tire buggy, Rubber tire hack, Take you to de cemetery, Don’t never bring you back, Cryin’ all I had done gone. Coonie wrote to the Governor, Asked him, “Pardon me, I was charged with murder In the first degree.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. “The judge was liberal In givin’ me my time; Happened that he didn’t hang me, But he give me ninety-nine.” Cryin’ all I had done gone.

311

312

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

“I am now a murderer, Serving a long, long time; And if you will pardon me, I’ll not be guilty of another crime.” Cryin’ all I had done gone. “This is Coonie in Atlanta, Workin’ ’mong the stone, Have been here for forty-five years, And I’m now needed at home.” Cryin’ all I had done gone.27

The ballad writer has most of the details of this Savannah, Georgia, murder wrong. On Christmas Eve, 1900, 14-year-old Delia Green (not Holmes) was fatally shot by her “boyfriend” Moses “Cooney” Houston at the home of Willie West in the Yamacraw section of town—a working-class black neighborhood. Delia and Cooney had apparently been intimate for some months but got into an argument that evening, Delia calling Cooney a son of a bitch and asserting that he had no control over her. Cooney picked up a gun belonging to the Wests that was on the table (Cooney had earlier brought it back to the Wests from the repair shop) and shot Delia, who died early the following morning in her bed at home—thus mooting the question of control. Houston, who was 14 or 15 years old, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to prison. He was paroled by Governor John M. Slaton in October 1913, after serving 12 and a half years. The ballad is very similar to that of “Frankie and Johnny,” which concerned a St. Louis shooting the previous year (see the discussion of Missouri songs, later)—so similar, in fact, that some texts are difficult to categorize as one song rather than the other. Either the author of “Delia” borrowed from the “Frankie” ballad, or both were based on earlier traditional material. Many of the lines of “Delia” can be found also in the “McKinley” ballad about the presidential assassination of the same year. Around the 1890s, a new ballad style seems to have emerged in the American Southeast among African American singers that combined elements of the traditional Anglo American narrative ballad with the African American tendency to comment editorially on events, rather than simply relate them in chronological fashion. They have been categorized as “blues ballads.” Violent crimes were a favorite theme for blues ballad writers and usually events only of local significance—stories that would probably not have been publicized far from the city where the events transpired. They would therefore usually have been written by local songwriters and locally circulated—unless some special circumstance, such as a popular songwriter turning the story into a commercial song (as with “Frankie and Johnny” or “Casey Jones”), provided the means for wider dissemination. “Delia” never achieved the popularity of “Frankie” or some of the other blues ballads of the 1890s, but somehow it made its way to the Bahamas, where it was kept alive long enough for John McCutcheon to include it in his 1927 book Island Song Book and for Alan Lomax to record it in 1935 in Nassau.28 From such sources, eclectic singers such as Pete Seeger added it to their repertoires, and from there it became one of the favorites of the folk song revival in the 1950s and 1960s, being recorded by numerous artists, including Josh White, Bob Gibson, Bob Dylan, Waylon Jennings, and Johnny Cash. Ben Dewberry’s Final Run Ben Dewberry was a brave engineer, He told his fireman, “Don’t you ever fear;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

313

All I want is the water and coal, Put your head out the window, watch the drivers roll; Watch the drivers roll, watch the drivers roll; Put your head out the window, watch the driver roll.” Ben Dewberry said before he died, Two more roads that he wanted to ride; His fireman asked him what could they be, Said “The old Northeastern and the A and V.” “The A and V,” he said, “the A and V, It’s the old Northeastern and the A and V.” On the fatal morning it begin to rain, Around the curve come a passenger train; Ben Dewberry was the engineer, With the throttle wide open and without any fear. He didn’t have no fear. (2) He had her runnin’ wide open without any fear. Ben looked at his watch, shook his head, “We may make Atlanta but we’ll all be dead.” The train went flyin’ by the trestle and switch, Without any warning then she took the ditch. Yeah, she went in the ditch, well, she took the ditch, Without any warning then she took the ditch. The big locomotive leaped from the rail, Ben never lived to tell that awful tale. His life was ended and his work was done, When Ben Dewberry made his final run. He made his final run. (2) When Ben Dewberry made his final run.29

On August 23, 1908, near Buford, Georgia, not far north from Atlanta, 12-year-old Lewis Cooksie was playing beside the railroad tracks, waiting to see the train go by. He idly speculated what a train wreck would look like (he later told authorities) and, picking up one of the railroad spikes (or perhaps it was a bolt) lying about, he placed it across the track. Not long after, the Southern Railroad’s northbound passenger train Number 38 came roaring by, under the command of 50-year-old Benjamin Franklin Dewberry. The engine struck the spike and toppled over, crushing the steam pipes. Dewberry hit the brakes, as he held to his post, hoping to reduce the number of fatalities. He died soon after from his injuries. The ballad was written almost 20 years later by Reverend Andrew Jenkins (b. 1888), a blind preacher and songwriter who lived in Atlanta. Jenkins wrote hundreds of religious songs and event ballads in the 1920s for recording artists, including Vernon Dalhart and Jimmie Rodgers and his own singing family. This one was ( presumably composed and) copyrighted in 1927 and recorded in November of that year by Rodgers. Since most of the lines in the song are to be found in older blues ballads and songs, one assumes that Jenkins, contemplating for a railroad wreck song to capitalize on the commercial success of “The Wreck of the Old 97,” “Casey Jones,” and similar songs, cobbled together some familiar verses and structured them around an engineer he had remembered from years earlier. There is very little in the song that is specific to the unusual details of the Dewberry wreck—and in fact some statements are incorrect (Dewberry was leaving Atlanta, not headed south toward the metropolis).

314

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Little Mary Phagan Little Mary Phagan, she went to town one day, She went to the pencil factory to get her little pay; She left her home at ’leven when she kissed her mother good bye, Not one time did the poor child think she was going there to die. Leo Frank met her with a brutely heart, we know, He smiled and said, “Little Mary, now you go home no more.” He sneaked along behind her till she reached the metal room, He laughed and said, “Little Mary, you met your fatal doom.” She fell upon her knees, to Leo Frank she pled, Because she was virtuous he hit her ’cross the head; The tears rolled down her rosy cheeks, the blood flowed down her back, She remembered telling her mother what time she would be back. He killed little Mary Phagan, was on one holiday, And called for old Jim Conley to take her body away; He took her to the basement, bound hand and feet, Newt Lee was the watchman, when he went to wind the key, Down in the basement little Mary he could see; Down in the basement little Mary lay asleep. He called for the officers—the names I do not know, Hey came to the pencil factory, saying, “Newt Lee, you must go.” They took him to the jailhouse, locked him in a cell, The poor old innocent nigger knew nothing for to tell. I have a notion in my head when Frank come to die, He took examination in the courthouse in the sky. Astonished at the question, the angels they did say, Why he killed little Mary upon one holiday; Come all of you good people, wherever you may be; Supposing little Mary belonged to you or me? Her mother sits a weeping, she weeps and mourns all day, She prays to meet her baby in a better world some day; Judge Roan passed the sentence, you bet he passed it well, Solicitor Hugh M. Dorsey sent Leo Frank to . . .30

Nearly 14 years old, Mary Phagan of Marietta, Georgia, worked in the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta, where she affixed the metal ends on the erasers. On April 26, 1913, she went to the factory to collect some pay and to see if the metal supply, which was temporarily exhausted, had been replenished. She collected her pay from Leo Frank, a 29-year-old Jewish superintendent who had moved to Atlanta from Brooklyn a few years before. What happened in the following hours was never determined with certainty, but the next morning, Mary’s body was found in the basement, bruised, blackened, choked with a cord, and ravaged. Suspects included Frank; Newt Lee, the African American watchman; and Jim Conley, an African American janitor. Lee was suspected first, arrested, and tortured for a few days to elicit a confession. Frank was arrested on April 29 because of suspicious behavior on his part. In August, Frank was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged. On June 21, 1915, after various shifts of the wheels of justice into neutral, Governor Slaton,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

315

uncertain of Frank’s guilt, commuted his sentence to life imprisonment. Many Georgians were furious. On August 16, two dozen men forced their way into the prison, abducted Frank, and hanged him. For decades after, questions of anti-Semitism and racism continued to color the discussions of who really assaulted young Mary Phagan. Fiddlin’ John Carson was a familiar figure at political and social events in Atlanta, playing his fiddle and singing at all sorts of occasions. With his daughter and musical accompanist Rosa Lee Carson, he wrote a ballad about the episode and sang it frequently after the lynching. Rosa Lee recorded this version in 1925.31 Dupree Blues Betty told Dupree, “I wants me a diamond ring.” (2) “Now listen, mamma, your daddy bring you mostly anything.” He had to killed a policeman, and he wounded a ’tective too, Killed a detective, wounded a policeman too; “See here, mama, what you caused me to do.” Hired him a taxi, said “Can’t you drive me back to Main?” (2) I’ve done a hangin’ crime, yet I don’t never feel ashamed. “Standin’ there wonderin’ would a matchbox hold my clothes.” (2) Said, “A trunk was too big to be bothered on the road.” ’rrested poor Dupree, placed him in the jail, (2) Yet the mean old judge went and refused to sign him any bail. Wrote a letter to Betty, and this is the way the letter read, (2) “Come home to your daddy, I’m almost dead.” Betty went to the jailer, cryin’ “Mister jailer, please, (2) Please, Mister jailer, let me see my used-to-be.”32

Frank Dupree had the distinction of being the last man to be legally hanged in Georgia. On December 15, 1921, teenaged Frank Dupree walked into the Nat Kaiser jewelry store on Atlanta’s busy Peachtree Street and asked to examine a $2,500 diamond ring that was on display. He was handed the ring and walked over toward the door as if to get a better view of it, followed by Irby Walker, a store detective in the employ of the Pinkerton Agency, as a precaution. Suddenly, Dupree pulled a gun and ran for the door; Walker tried to stop him and was shot dead. Dupree ran down the street and escaped into the nearby Kimball House Hotel. As he emerged from another exit, an innocent bystander, Mr. West, got in his way, and Dupree shot him twice. Dupree engaged a taxi to take him to Chattanooga, Tennessee, 70 miles away, where he sold the ring to a pawnbroker for $600: half in cash, the balance to be delivered later. After several blunders, pursuing law officers finally caught up with Dupree and arrested him. He was tried, convicted, and hanged on September 1, 1922.33 A few years later, folk song collectors Howard W. Odum and Guy B. Johnson obtained a text, “Dupree Tol’ Betty,” in Georgia, and in 1930 came the first of many commercially recorded versions by African American musicians. Rhythm and blues singer Chuck Willis had a fairly substantial hit in 1957 on the Atlantic label. A completely independent ballad was written by Reverend Andy Jenkins and recorded by him in 1925; that song has been recovered from Anglo American folksingers in the Southeast. The two ballads offer an interesting comparison of the differences in African American and Anglo American

316

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

narrative song styles. Jenkins’s ballad concluded with the moralizing sentiments typical of the broadside ballad tradition: Come here, pappa, come here quick, And see the last of your son; See what the smoking of a vile cigarette And the sporting life has done. Come here, Betty, listen to me, Take these parting words I say: Take this message for Frank Dupree, And meet him in heaven some day.34 The Wreck of the Royal Palm On a dark and stormy night, the rain was fallin’ fast, The two crack trains on the Southern road with a scream and whistle blast Were speedin’ down the line, for home and Christmas day, On the Royal Palm and the Ponce de Leon was laughter bright and gay. Then comin’ ’round the curve at forty miles an hour, The Royal Palm was makin’ time amid the drenchin’ shower; There come a mighty crash, the two great engines met, And in the minds of those who live is a scene they can’t forget. It was an awful sight, amidst the pouring rain, The dead and dyin’ lyin’ there beneath that mighty train; No tongue can ever tell, no pen can ever write, No one will know but those who saw the horrors of that night. On board the two great trains the folks were bright and gay, When like a flash the Master called; they had no time to pray; Then in a moment’s time, the awful work was done, And many souls that fatal night had made their final run. There’s many a saddened home since that sad Christmas day, Whose loved ones never will return to drive the gloom away; They were on the Royal Palm as she sped across the state, Without a single warnin’ cry they went to meet their fate. We are on the road of life, and like the railroad man, We ought to do our best to make the station if we can; Then let us all take care, and keep our orders straight, For if we get our orders mixed, we’ll surely be too late.35

On December 23, 1926, two Southern Railway trains, the northbound Ponce de Leon and the southbound Royal Palm, collided just outside the city limits of Rockmart, Georgia. Nineteen persons were killed and 123 injured. According to the Interstant Commerce Commission’s analysis, the accident occurred because the “road foreman of engines who had relieved the engineman either failed to have a thorough understanding with the engineman as to the contents of a meet order or else he forgot it.”36 The blame for the disaster was laid at the hands of the crew of the Ponce de Leon, which was under orders to take a siding south of Rockmart and let the Royal Palm on through. The engineer and firemen of the Ponce de Leon were unable to account for themselves,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

317

having died in the wreck. When the Royal Palm’s engineer saw the Ponce de Leon heading up the main line, he correctly perceived the problem and instantly applied the brakes, after which he and his fireman jumped to safety. As a result, the Royal Palm escaped with relatively slight injury, the Ponce de Leon taking the brunt of the impact. Hardest hit were the engine and the first four cars, including a baggage car, a “combination baggage car and negro coach,” a day coach, and a diner. While memories of the disaster were still fresh, the Reverend Andrew Jenkins of Atlanta composed this ballad. Jenkins, an evangelist and newsboy, was a prolific writer of ballads and religious pieces, many of which found their way into oral tradition; see also his “Ben Dewberry’s Final Run” earlier in this chapter. Jenkins’s text is fairly general; other than the mention of the day of the accident and the two trains’ names, there is nothing specific to this wreck. The ballad could apply to any head-on collision. Thomas E. Watson Down in the state of Georgia there lived a famous man, His name was Thomas Watson, he is known throughout the land; A man of mighty power and with an iron will, He’s gone but not forgotten, the sage of Hickory Hill. Oh, how he fought and struggled for his native state, And though they schemed ag’in’ him, he learned to watch and wait; His sorrows they were many, his foes were fierce and strong, But Watson never wavered all through the battle long. He lost his precious children, while battling for his state, His path was strewn with sorrow, how sad did seem his fate; He was loved by many a Georgian, and honored by his foes, No greater man in history, as everybody knows. He wrote the Jeffersonian, it covered Dixie land, In helped the Southern people to see and understand; It made us love Tom Watson, so noble and so true, He did a work for Georgia no other man could do. Tom Watson ran for Senate, he made a dandy race, They never thought he’d make it, but he kept up his pace; The South was all excited, Tom Watson’s day had come, The state, with highest honor, sent him to Washington. ’Twas early in the morning, right close to four o’clock, Without a single warning, the South received a shock; The sage of old McDuffie was laying cold and still, There was no man in Georgia, Tom Watson’s place to fill. There is a grave in Georgia, where silent willows weep, In a little town of Thomson, our mighty statesman sleeps; In old McDuffie County, Tom Watson lies at rest, And in that fallen hero our Georgia lost her best.37

Georgia populist Tom Watson (1856 –1922) was a political legend as well as a talented traditional fiddler, a skill he put to good use when he was on the campaign trail for the Georgia state legislature in 1882 and later. Two Georgia hillbilly musicians wrote tributes

318

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

to Watson after he died: Fiddlin’ John Carson recorded his own “Tom Watson Special” in November 1923, and Reverend Andrew Jenkins wrote “Thomas E. Watson” in 1925 using the same tune he employed for his earlier song “The Death of Floyd Collins” (see the discussion on Kentucky in chapter 3). It was recorded for four different record labels between late 1925 and early 1926 by recording artist Vernon Dalhart. While still in his teens, Watson, the son of a fiddler, entertained at local barbecues and schoolhouse dances with music and original ditties such as his own description of himself: He goes to parties and to balls With fiddle music brimmin’ Who plays in one way for the men, Another for the women. . . . By rare good taste and rarer luck He variegates his fiddling, And whiles away the tedious hours By heterogeneous diddling.38

Nominated by the Populist Party as its vice presidential candidate in 1896, he achieved national recognition for his egalitarian, agrarian agenda. Although his terms of elective office were short, for more than 30 years his support was essential for many men running for public office in Georgia. In addition to his political achievements, Tom Watson was a practicing lawyer, publisher, and historian. He is remembered for being a voice for populism and the disenfranchised and, later in life, a southern demagogue and bigot. The Ballad of Talmadge It’s sunny again in Georgia, No finer breathing place, Since the undertaker Throwed dirt in Talmadge face. Now he’s gone, poor man, he’s gone. He split his guts wide open, Wore his tonsils sore, With mean and hateful cussin’; Now he can’t cuss no more. He’s gone, poor man, he’s gone. He promise when he Governor Us colored good as dead. Sure God I ain’ a-grievin’ ’Cause he shoo’d off hisself instead. He’s gone, poor man, he’s gone. I got thinkin’ maybe Jesus Done left us in the lurch; Then Devil he take Talmadge, I flew right back to Church. He’s gone, poor man, he’s gone. He weren’t so good lookin’, He don’t dress him so nice,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

319

But prettiest sight I ever see When they ship him home on ice. He’s gone, poor man, he’s gone. Rubber tire buggy, Soft down cushion hack, Drag him to the cemetery, Forget to bring him back. He’s gone, poor man, he’s gone. Old iron is iron, But tin it never last; So we come to the end of our story, ’Cause that’s all that I has. He’s gone, poor man, he’s gone.39

Eugene Talmadge (1884 –1946), who succeeded Richard B. Russell Jr. as governor in 1933, was the major figure in Georgia politics for the next 12 years. In his first two terms he strenuously opposed efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration to establish its New Deal programs of economic relief in the state. However, Talmadge’s successor, Eurith D. Rivers, was a Roosevelt supporter, and various federal and state relief programs were carried out in Georgia during his two terms. The state’s revenues failed to meet the cost of its relief services, however, and Talmadge was elected again in 1940 on a platform of economy in state government. He continued most of Rivers’s programs, despite his past opposition to them. He was elected to a fourth term as the state’s chief executive in 1946 but died before taking office.40

FLORIDA Florida’s first quarter millennium (from 1513 to 1763) was spent under the rule of either the Spanish or the French, but the songs considered in this section reflect only British colonization and rule and later U.S. independence. Britain divided its newly acquired territory into East Florida (most of the present-day state) and West Florida, including parts of present-day Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. When the Revolutionary War broke out, Florida remained loyal to the Crown, and many loyalists from the other colonies fled there. Thus, at war’s end, Florida did not become part of the new nation, but passed successively from British to Spanish to American hands—the latter transaction completed in 1821. In 1845 Florida became the 27th state of the Union. In January 1861, one month after South Carolina first blazed the pathway to secession, Florida followed its lead. Only one significant battle was fought on Florida soil—a Confederate victory at Olustee in 1864. Consequently, the war left a fainter footprint on the state’s musical landscape than was the case in states farther to the north. They Are Taking Us beyond Miami They are taking us beyond Miami, They are taking us beyond the Caloosa River, They are taking us to the end of our tribe, They are taking us to Palm Beach, coming back beside Okeechobee lake. They are taking us to an old town in the west.41

After the United States acquired Florida in 1819, Andrew Jackson, then territorial governor, inaugurated a policy of tribal removal to make more land available for white settlers. The Seminole Indians resisted fiercely, and a series of destructive wars followed. After the

320

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

capture of their leader Osceola in 1837 and the end of the Second Seminole War in 1842, several thousand Seminole were forcibly relocated west to the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). After the Third Seminole War in 1858, another 250 were sent west. The rest were allowed to remain, and their descendants signed a peace treaty with the United States in 1935. Native American songs are seldom narrative in the manner of European American songs, and even more rarely contain references to specific historical events, but this one, dating from the 1840s, is an exception. Whether the third line is a geographic or temporal reference is uncertain. The singer, Susie Tiger, was born at the time of the relocation. Her Seminole name was Omalagi, meaning “Let Us All Go” (i.e., to Oklahoma).42 Old Folks at Home Way down upon de Swanee Ribber, Far, far away, Dere’s wha my heart is turning ebber, Dere’s wha de old folks stay. All up and down de whole creation, Sadly I roam, Still longing for de old plantation And for de old folks at home. Chorus: All de world am sad and dreary, Ebry where I roam, Oh! darkeys, how my heart grows weary, Far from de old folks at home. All round de little farm I wandered, When I was young, Den many happy days I squandered, Many de songs I sung. When I was playing wid my brudder, Happy was I— Oh! take me to my kind old mudder, Dere let me live and die. One little hut among de bushes, One dat I love, Still sadly to my mem’ry rushes, No matter where I rove. When will I see de bees a humming, All round de comb? When will I hear de banjo tumming, Down in my good old home?!43

Florida’s official state song (at least, one of them—so declared in 1935) is another dose of nostalgia from the pen of the beloved Stephen C. Foster—notwithstanding that the first publication of the sheet music (quoted previously) credits famed minstrel musician E. P. Christy. Several of Foster’s early dialect minstrel songs were published pseudonymously, most likely because Foster was more invested in his genteel parlor songs; so he had sold Christy the right to publish “Old Folks” over Christy’s own name for $10, though he retained rights to royalties. Foster’s brother and biographer, Morrison Foster, recounted how the river’s name was chosen. Stephen had come into his office asking for a two-syllable southern river’s name. “Yazoo” and “Pedee” were suggested, but neither was suitable.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

321

So they pulled down an atlas and found “Swanee” in Florida. Morrison’s recollection is not complete (and possibly not accurate)—or possibly both Foster brothers were nearsighted and could not read “Suwannee” properly. Stephen’s own manuscript has “Pedee” as first choice, then crossed out and replaced with “Swanee.” Probably he was tempted by “Pedee River,” but declined it because it had been used in an 1844 song, and so he took it upon himself to rename the Suwanee with only two syllables. No matter that the resulting river is fictitious; so is the world of the southern plantation that Foster conjures up. Truth aside (as happens all too often in song lyrics and politics), the song is a gem, both musically and poetically. The original quaint (some might say, offensive) dialect is reproduced in this version, though generally contemporary printings whitewash all of it out. Foster may not always have received adequate rewards from his songwriting, but he can rest assured that plenty other not so old folks are reaping abundant returns: ASCAP records 116 current copyrights on “Old Folks at Home.”44 Aaron Hart It was in eighteen and eighty in the first part of that date, On which you may consider while I proceed to state; It was on the twelfth of April, so early in that day, When little Aaron Hart so still he went away. He seemed to be determined to follow Willie home, But through his childish wisdom there in the woods he roamed; And after he was missing the news was sent around; The hours were not many before we reached the ground. In looking at his parents with tears their eyes were blind, Their troubles were so many they had almost lost their mind; But some they had to tarry to bury his uncle’s wife, While all the rest proceeded to save little Aaron’s life. In hunting for little Aaron, and finding where he went, His tracks they looked so harmless till every heart relent. We hunted for little Aaron all through the woods so rough, Our hearts was almost melted—I think it was enough. We hunted for little Aaron all around that dreadful bay, With solemn thoughts and feelings we searched there one whole day; Little Aaron still did wander and blunder through the dark, It’s true we built up fires, but he did not heed the spark. There is no one knows the sorrows that did little Aaron crown, When he was cold and hungry, his bed was the cold ground It’s true his age was tender—three and a half years old— But still God did preserve him through dangers and through cold. Three days and nights he wandered, all in this dreadful state, But still we all proceeded to hunt him soon and late; The fourth day in the morning, near about the hour ten, Little Aaron was discovered by some few of the men. Aaron’s father being present when his suffering son was found, He was so filled with joy he fell unto the ground; I’ll tell you there were many that seemed to shout with joy, To think that they had found that suffering little boy.

322

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The number that was present when Aaron was carried in, Was somewhere near the sixty that made their shouting ring; When Aaron’s mother saw him and found he was alive, I can’t express her feelings although she seemed revived. Composed by F. B. Harris, as one who hunted there, With the rest of my relations those troubles I did bear; Though thanks that now are given to Immanuel’s Social Band Is for restoring Aaron—on this I say, “Amen.”45

According to folklorist Alton Morris, the original song was composed by F. B. Harris in Plant City. This text was written down by Miss Gladys West, Plant City, who obtained it from her mother, who learned it from Harris. The incident happened in Polk County in 1880. There were two brothers named Hart, one of whom was Aaron. His aunt died and his cousin was sent home to get something needed for the funeral. Aaron, three and a half years old, tried to follow his cousin over a trail through the scrub and became lost. The song has not been reported elsewhere—doubtless because of both the stilted language and the specificity of the narrative. The Lost Boys of East Bay There’s a story so sad I’m about to relate, Of a ship that has left here and gone to her fate; Of the fatherless children and the mothers who wait, The news of their loved ones and their hard cruel fate. Chorus: Oh, your hearts will turn towards them in pity, I know, When the surf beats loud and the stormy winds blow; Let their friends look towards Heaven, where their spirits today Look down on their sad homes on the shores of East Bay. ’Twas the year ninety-four on an October day, They sailed from their homes on the shores of East Bay; Not a thought of their fate as the farewell they say, As each kissed some loved one and sailed from the Bay. But the saddest of all is the tale I now tell, How the storm swept Sand Island like the furies of Hell; How each raging sea claimed its victims that day, Those sixteen brave lads from the shores of East Bay. Oh, that mother who’s left without husband or son To cheer her at evening when the day’s work is done; But those kind-hearted men will go out never more, In struggle to drive the grim wolf from the door.46

Alton Morris reported that this song was composed following a disastrous hurricane that swept along west coast in 1894; the singer said it was written by Mr. Harry Evans in 1894. Sand Island is at the entrance of St. George’s Sound near Apalachicola. Herlong’s Train Hand me down my walking cane this morning; Oh, hand me down my walking cane this morning so soon;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

323

Hand me down my walking cane, See if I can’t catch old Herlong’s Train, This morning, this morning so soon. I got me a wife and a sweetheart too, this morning; I got me a wife and a sweetheart too, this morning so soon; I got me a wife and a sweetheart too; My wife don’t love me but my sweetheart do, This morning, this morning so soon.47

Herlong’s Train was a small train running from Gainesville through Rocky Point and Micanopy to Fairfield. It was initially chartered as the Gainesville, Rocky Point, and Micanopy Railroad before 1894. The original company failed and the road was sold to Mr. L. L. Hill, who changed its name to the Gainesville and Gulf Railway. Later it was taken over by F. J. Lisman Company of New York and renamed the Tampa and Jacksonville Railroad. In July 1927 the Seaboard Air Line acquired the road and changed its name to the Jacksonville, Gainesville, and Gulf Railway, under which it operated until 1942. This was the first and only train to serve the Micanopy territory. “The arrival of the train occasioned a social gathering at the station tri-weekly.”48 The song is a parody of “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” written by James A. Bland in ca. 1880. West Palm Beach Storm On the sixteenth day of September, In nineteen twenty-eight, God starting riding early, He rode ’till very late. Chorus: In the storm, oh in the storm; Lord, somebody got drowned in the storm. He rode out on the ocean, Chained the lightning to his wheel, Stepped on land at West Palm Beach, And the wicked hearts did yield. Over in Pahokee, Families rushed out at the door; And somebody’s poor mother Haven’t been seen anymore. Some mothers looked at their children, As they began to cry, Cried, “Lord, have mercy, For we all must die.” I tell you wicked people, What you had better do; Go down and get the Holy Ghost And then you live the life, too. Out around Okeechobee, All scattered on the ground,

324

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The last account of the dead they had Were twenty-two hundred found. South Bay, Belleglade, and Pahokee, Tell me they all went down; And over at Chosen, Everybody got drowned. Some people are yet missing, And haven’t been found, they say; But this we know, they will come forth On the Resurrection Day. When Gabriel sounds the trumpet, And the dead begin to rise, I’ll meet the saints from Chosen, Up in the heavenly skies.49

The personification of God in the opening stanza almost suggests a sermon from the pulpit. The devout souls who wrote and /or sang this ballad—and, in fact, many other narratives about natural disasters—invariably invoked the warning to all listeners that a similar fate would befall them as well if they were not faithful, God-fearing individuals. The ballad was probably written shortly after the disastrous south Florida hurricane of 1928. Alton Morris, who collected this song, obtained another ballad on the same disaster, “Miami Hairikin.”50 The Fate of Lee Bible I have traveled through life and I have seen many sights That filled me with sorrow and pain, But the saddest of all is a good man to fall, Never to rise again. I’ll tell you a tale, where women turned pale, And men stood on trembling feet; It was at that great race, and we all know that place, Way down on Daytona Beach. Lee Bible was there, with his wife sweet and fair, That world’s speed record to gain; All the people that were there were happy and gay, Knew nothing but laughter and smiles. As the car raced away, Lee Bible that day Knew not the great danger ahead; In a moment of time, in the midst of his prime, That brave young mechanic was dead. All the people that day, that were happy and gay, Left the beach with their hearts full of pain; .... .... As a lone camera man standing there on the sand, Taking reels of the great race that day;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

325

Our summons will come, and our work will be done; We must all meet the great judgment day. As you make life’s great strife, ever dare to do right, Never trifle with chance away; Be brave and be true, in all that you do, Or you will be sorry some day.51

Lee Bible was killed in a race car crash at Daytona Beach on March 13, 1929, while attempting to break the speed record of 213 miles per hour. The cameraman was also killed by the crash. The words and music of this ballad were written by Reverend Andrew Jenkins and recorded by him as “Tragedy on Daytona Beach” two days later in Atlanta, Georgia. His recording was issued on 78 rpm OKeh 45343 (as by Blind Andy) in April 1929. This was doubtless the source of the version recovered by Morris.

ALABAMA In the two and a half centuries after its first invasion by Spanish explorers, the lands to become Alabama were riven by struggles for control by British, French, and Spanish parties, not to mention the native tribes. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 bestowed upon the British rights to the only settled parts of the state, namely, the Mobile Bay region. Between 1783 and 1813, Mobile was claimed by Spain, and not until that latter date did Spain relinquish all claims to the area. General Jackson’s defeat of the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend in 1814 resulted in most of the natives being relocated to the Oklahoma Territory. Alabama was established as a separate territory in 1817 and was admitted to the Union as the 22nd state two years later. On the eve of the Civil War, in spite of efforts at industrialization, 95 percent of the state’s population was rural, and blacks constituted nearly half of the total. Alabama seceded from the Union in 1861 and was not readmitted until 1868. Racial and political turbulence marked the period of Reconstruction—not completely resolved for another century.52 Andrew Jackson’s Raid When forces were marched, four thousand brave men, On the fourteenth of March to Fort Stratton again; When Jackson reviewed us and marched us on, We had plenty of cannon and tories [sic] not one. In six days we came to Fort William below, Established a station and manned it also; On the twenty-fourth day we marched away, To storm the stronghold on the Tallapoosa. At first we attempted by the cannon ball To shatter the breastwork and beat down the wall; But vengeance and carnage it did grow so warm, We charged on the stronghold and took it by storm. Here is health to the congress with an army so strong, Here is health to the poet that composed the song; Here is health to the brave boys who fought on the plain, And a double to those who will try it again.53

326

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Creek War (1813–1814) was waged against the Creek Indians, who had allied with the British during the War of 1812. Its successful conclusion (from the U.S. perspective) resulted in the Creeks ceding vast land holdings in Alabama and Georgia. The Shawnee leader Tecumseh, who had expected British help in recovering hunting grounds lost to settlers, traveled to the south to warn of dangers to native cultures posed by whites. Factions arose among the Creeks, and a group known as the Red Sticks preyed upon white settlements and fought with those Creeks who opposed them. On August 30, 1813, the Red Sticks swept down upon 553 surprised frontiersmen at Ft. Mims, a crude fortification at Lake Tensaw, north of Mobile, and massacred many of the occupants. The Ft. Mims massacre stirred the southern states into a vigorous response. An army of 5,000 militiamen was led by General Andrew Jackson, who succeeded in wiping out two Indian villages, Tallasahatchee and Talladega, that autumn. The following spring, hundreds of Creeks gathered at what seemed an impenetrable village fortress on a peninsula on the Tallapoosa River, awaiting the Americans’ attack. On March 27, 1814, at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend ( Tohopeka, Alabama), Jackson’s superior numbers (3,000 to 1,000) and armaments (including cannon) demolished the Creek defenses, slaughtering more than 800 warriors and imprisoning 500 women and children. The power of the Indians of the Old Southwest was broken. At the Treaty of Ft. Jackson signed on August 9, the Creeks were required to cede 23 million acres of land, comprising more than half of Alabama and part of southern Georgia. Much of that territory belonged to Indians who had earlier been Jackson’s allies.54 This is the only text of the ballad known to have survived. The man who sent it to Professor Belden in 1905 used to hear it sung by his grandfather, who may well have learned it soon after the events described. The song’s author toasts himself in the final stanza but modestly conceals his identity. The Rose of Alabama Away from Mississippi’s vale, With my old hat there for a sail, I crossed upon a cotton-bale To Rose of Alabama. Chorus: Oh! Brown Rosey, Rose of Alabama. A sweet tobacco posey is the Rose of Alabama. I landed on a sandy bank, I sat upon a hollow plank And there I made the banjo twank, For Rose of Alabama. Chorus. Oh! after d’rec’ly, bye-and-bye, The moon rose white as Rosey’s eye; Then like a young coon out so sly, Stole Rose of Alabama. Chorus. The river rolled, the crickets sing, The lightning-bug he flashed his wing, Then like a rope my arms I fling Round Rose of Alabama. Chorus. I hug so long I cannot tell, For Rosey seemed to like it well;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

327

My banjo in the river fell, Oh! Rose of Alabama. Chorus. Like an alligator after prey, I jump’d in, but it float away, But all the time it seem’d to say: Oh! Rose of Alabama. Chorus. And every night, in moon or shower, To hunt that banjo for an hour, I meet my sweet tobacco flower, My Rose of Alabama. Chorus.55

This silly piece is undated, but the publisher’s address suggests it must have appeared in 1859–1860; the song itself may be a few years earlier. It is a tale of fantasy—a river trip from a slave in Mississippi to rejoin his true love in Alabama. The implication is that they were previously separated by the sale of one of them. In spite of the imagery of the banjoplunking slave and his tobacco-perfumed sweetheart, what is most remarkable about the text (for 1860) is the absence of degrading caricature: the love story is treated with relative sympathy. Too often, songs from this period are drenched in mockery and abuse—as if the African American slaves were actually incapable of any such noble feelings as love. John Henry Blues John Henry was a very small boy, Fell on his mammy’s knee; Picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel, “Lord, a hammer’ll be the death of me, Lord, a hammer’ll be the death of me.” John Henry went up upon the mountain, Come down on the side; The mountain so tall, John Henry was so small, Lord, le lay down his hammer and he cried, “Oh, Lord,” He lay down his hammer and he cried. John Henry was on the right hand, But that steam drill was on the left; “Before your steam drill beats me down, Hammer my fool self to death, Lord, I’ll hammer my fool self to death.” The captain says to John Henry, “[I] believe my tunnel’s fallin’ in.” “Captain, you needn’t not to worry, Just my hammer hawsing in the wind, Just my hammer hawsing in the wind.” “Look away over yonder, captain, You can’t see like me.” He hollered out in a low, lonesome cry, “This hammer’ll be the death of me, Lord, this hammer’ll be the death of me.” John Henry told his captain, “Captain, you go to town,

328

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Bring John back a twelve-pound-hammer, And he’ll whup your steam drill down, [And?] he’ll whup your steam drill down.” For the man that invented that steam drill Thought he was mighty fine; John Henry sunk a fo’teen foot, The steam drill only made nine, The steam drill only made nine. John Henry told his shaker, “Shaker, you better pray; For if I miss this six-foot steel, Tomorrow’ll be your buryin’ day, An’ tomorrow’ll be your buryin’ day.” John Henry told his lovin’ little woman, “Sick and I want to go to bed; Fix me a place to lay down, child, Got a rollin’ in my head, Got a rollin’ in my head.” John Henry had a lovely little woman, Called her Polly Ann; John Henry got sick and he had to go home, But Polly broke steel like a man, Polly broke steel like a man. John Henry had another little woman, The dress she wore was blue; She went down the track and she never looked back “John Henry, I’ve been true you to you.”56

Few American songs have been as widely recorded (more than 400), as frequently copyrighted (more than 270), as intensively studied, and as controversially debated as the ballad about the construction laborer “John Henry.” The placement of the song in the section of Alabama songs (rather than West Virginia songs) reflects an aspect of that controversy: in fact, some readers will argue vociferously that the song does not belong here. The story concerns the construction of a railroad tunnel sometime in the late 1800s. In the process of blasting a tunnel through a mountain, holes were dug for the placement of dynamite charges. The standard digging procedure involved a pair of workers, one manipulating a long steel drill, the other hammering it. A new, steam-driven mechanical hole digger was being tested. A contest was arranged between the new device and the best of the steel drivers—the African American named John Henry. Upon the outcome of this contest might depend the livelihoods of numberless manual laborers. John Henry bested the machine, digging 14 feet to its 9 (this refers to the depth of the hole necessary for planting the charge—not an unreasonable figure at the time). But the superhuman exertion proved fatal, and he died very soon after his pyrrhic victory. Fragments of songs about this worker named John Henry were collected early in the 1900s; in the 1920s it was widely known throughout the southeastern quarter of the country and turned up frequently on hillbilly and blues records. The song seemed to be known by everyone, both black and white. Its factualness was assumed. But was it true?

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

329

Two academics with a deep interest in folklore and folk song, Louis Chappell and Guy B. Johnson, undertook extensive studies in the 1920s to determine the truth behind the story. Each published a book on the subject; each was unable to reach a definitive conclusion regarding Henry’s historicity. But the best evidence seemed to place the contest, if it occurred, in 1870–1872 in West Virginia, when the C & O Railroad was constructing the Big Bend Tunnel (officially, the Great Bend Tunnel) near the Greenbriar River in Summers County. Chappell’s and Johnson’s work was unfortunately marred by considerable rivalry of a very uncollegial sort, and their results—Chappell’s in particular—were regarded at the time with some skepticism. Not that they didn’t interview retired construction workers who claimed to remember John Henry or the contest; the problem, rather, was that the various recollections of 50 years earlier were so mutually inconsistent as to invalidate one another. And there the matter rested for another 80 years. Then, two researchers—Scott Nelson, an historian, and John Garst, a retired chemistry professor and longtime folk song scholar—found other clues to follow up, partly thanks to the wealth of archival material now available on electronic media that Johnson and Chappell never dreamed of. They each found evidence for John Henry’s story that placed the contest not at Big Bend Tunnel in West Virginia, but rather, at one of the following locations: 1. nearby Lewis Tunnel in Virginia in 1871; New Jersey–born John William Henry was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1866 at Richmond, Virginia, and was leased to the C & O to work on the tunnel (Nelson’s thesis) 2. near Dunnavant, Alabama, in 1887, at Oak Mountain Tunnel, during the construction of the Columbus & Western. John Henry was probably John Henry Dabney, born a slave to a Dabney family in Hinds County, Mississippi (Garst’s thesis)

Both arguments have some very plausible supporting data, but neither is close to being conclusive. The decision to place the song under the heading of Alabama rather than either of the other two states is done more as a goad to other potential researchers than as a vote in favor of the Alabama thesis—though at the present, it seems slightly more convincing. In any event, the difficulty in determining the historical underpinnings to the John Henry legend are as much a testament to how readily the story has been accepted by individuals and communities throughout the country—a talley of all the sites that have made some claim to the story would be very extensive indeed. The song has endured without diminution for well over a century in both Anglo American and African American tradition. Its theme has inspired stories, legends, novels, drama, movies, sculpture, paintings, and postage stamps. Its popularity rests on many factors: a lively, rousing tune serving as vehicle to a compelling action drama; the satisfying tale of human supremacy over machine, with the covert warning that progress in the factory, the field, and also the office continually threatens the job securities of those trained in older skills; and the not insignificant racial aspect of the indomitable former slave of a downtrodden culture besting the most technologically advanced challenge the dominant culture could offer. Why shouldn’t the song survive? Railroad Bill Railroad Bill, got so bad, Stole all the chickens the poor farmers had, Well, it’s too bad for Railroad Bill.

330

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Railroad Bill, went out west, Shot all the buttons off a brakeman’s vest, Well, it’s too bad for Railroad Bill. Railroad Bill, got so fine, Shot ninety-nine holes in a [killer Shine?] Well, it’s ride, Railroad Bill. Railroad Bill, standing at the tank, Waiting for the train you call Hancy Nank, Well, it’s ride, Railroad Bill. Railroad Bill, standing at the curve, Gonna rob a mail train but he didn’t have the nerve, Well it’s too bad, Railroad Bill. Railroad Bill, he lived on a hill, He never worked or he never will, Well it’s ride, Railroad Bill. (repeat second stanza)57

Back in the 1890s, along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad’s routes through Alabama and western Florida, folks were terrorized by a “negro desperado by the name of Morris Slater, alias Railroad Bill.” Slater’s modus operandi was to steal into L & N freight trains, liberate merchandise while the train was in transit, and then detrain and reap his unjust rewards. Slater’s star first rose in about 1894 and peaked on July 3, 1895, when he shot and killed 37-year-old Sheriff Edward S. McMillan. After this offense, a posse was gathered to find the badman, and the search continued until March 7, 1897, when Slater was shot down in a grocery story in Atmore, Alabama, by storekeeper Bob Johns and Constable Leonard McGowan of Escambia County. While Slater’s philosophy of self-help would seem to have won him few friends, he was nevertheless regarded with some approval by African Americans of the day, who were inclined to see anyone who defied the white establishment as deserving some accolades. Slater inspired many tales of great powers: he could be killed only by a solid silver bullet; he could transmogrify himself into various animal shapes to evade capture; he would generously leave the food he removed from railroad boxcars outside the cabin doors of indigent blacks at night. Song fragments about Railroad Bill began to turn up in the early 1900s. Most versions that have been collected (especially those from commercial hillbilly and blues musicians in the 1920s and later) have few historical details. A text supposedly sung as early as 1906 had the following couplet: Railroad Bill did not know That Jim McMillan had a forty-fo’,

—one of the few recoveries with at least one historical person mentioned.58 Birmingham Town I’ve travelled east and west, I [often?] stopped to rest, But I’ve never seen a town like Birmingham.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

Chorus: Oh my, she has certainly won the prize, Prettiest little town in Alabam; San Francisco was a lolla, And she lost her bottom dollar, And she’ll never beat a town like Birmingham. Oh my, she has certainly won the prize, Swiftest little town in Alabam. San Francisco was a lolla, And she lost her bottom dollar, And she’ll never be a town like Birmingham. I have travelled through Albalia [sic], Egypt and Australia, I went to see the Mikado in Japan, And the King and Queen of Spain Invited me to come again, ’Cause I like the air I get from Birmingham. Chorus: Oh my, she has certainly won the prize, Sweetest little town in Alabam. San Francisco was a lolla, She lost her bottom dollar, And she’ll never be a town like Birmingham. Oh my, she has certainly won the prize, Perfect little town in Alabam; San Francisco was a lolla, And she lost her bottom dollar, And she’ll never be a town like Birmingham. I have traveled all around New York and Alabam, That is the jewel of Uncle Sam; These words he had to say, “Don’t you give this town away!” Said, “What makes [four winds?] beat is Birmingham!” Chorus: Oh my, she has certainly won the prize, Perfect little town in Alabam. San Francisco was a lolla, She lost her bottom dollar, And she’ll never be a town like Birmingham. Don’t believe what I say is true? I’ll tell you what you do: I’ll send you to a friend that’s always right; He will tell you in a minute San Francisco she ain’t in it, But old Birmingham is certainly out of sight. Chorus: Oh my, she has certainly won the prize, Greatest little town in Alabam. San Francisco was a lolla, And she lost her bottom dollar, And she’ll never beat a town like Birmingham.

331

332

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

I have traveled east and west, I [never?] stopped to rest, But I’ve never seen a town like Birmingham.59

At the end of the Civil War, as the nation came to recognize the industrial value of the iron ore that gave northern Alabama’s Red Mountain its name, railroads were built to carry the ore to other markets. In about 1871 the town of Birmingham, named for its industrial namesake in England, was laid out at the intersection of the major east–west and north–south rail lines. The growing town soon became the iron and steel center of the reconstructed South. The slang term lolla first appeared in print in 1886. That, and historical factors, suggest the song was a product of the turn-of-the-century decades. Either Tom Darby or Jimmie Tarlton must have had a special fondness for this bit of nonsense as they recorded it at their first recording session. The song had been recorded a few years earlier by Tennessee musician George Reneau, and it makes little more sense in his recording. Darby and Tarlton used the familiar tune of “Jesse James,” while Reneau had used that of “Little Log Cabin in the Lane,” but the words have little traditional background. And that relieves oral tradition of a great responsibility. Birmingham Jail Down in the levee, levee so low, Late in the evenin’ hear the train blow; Hear the train blow, love, hear the train blow— Late in the evenin’ hear the train blow. Roses love sunshine, violets love dew, Angels in heaven know I love you; Write me a letter, send it by mail, Send it in care of Birmingham Jail. Birmingham Jail, love, Birmingham Jail, Send it in care of Birmingham Jail. Bessie my darling, Bessie my dear, Bessie I love you, foolish I do. Down in the meadow, down on my knees, Prayin’ to heaven to give my heart ease. Bird in a cage love, [burning?] so low, Kiss me once more love, then I must go.60

Burgeoning industries in late-nineteenth-century Birmingham attracted a variegated population of diverse ethnicities and social strata. Violence and rowdiness became a familiar component of city life. The city jail behind city hall frequently packed in standing-roomonly crowds on weekends. In the early twentieth century, when more capacity was needed, the city built a new jail several miles into the countryside. Jimmie Tarlton contended that in 1925, he was serving an 85-day sentence there for moonshining and wanted to be at the side of his ailing girlfriend, Bessie. He said he wailed his song to the prison guards and the warden and was soon pardoned. Tarlton was not the most straightforward of informants. He may have added Bessie’s name to the song and used it as suggested, but the lyrics are considerably older; often titled

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

333

“Down in the Valley,” they were reported as early as 1910—and already associated with Birmingham Jail back then.61 Immensely popular after the Darby & Tarlton record was issued, the song was covered by more than a dozen different hillbilly musicians or groups in the 1920s and 1930s. [In Selma, Alabama] We’ve got a rope that’s a Berlin Wall, A Berlin Wall, a Berlin Wall; Well, we’ve got a rope that’s a Berlin Wall In Selma Alabama. Well, hate is the thing that’s a Berlin Wall, A Berlin Wall, a Berlin Wall; Well, hate is the thing that’s a Berlin Wall, In Selma, Alabama. Well, Ol’ George Wallace helped build that wall, etc. Well, we’re gonna stay here till it falls, etc. Well, love is the thing that’ll make it fall, etc. Well, we’ve got a rope that’s a Berlin Wall, etc.62

A Confederate munitions manufacturing center during the American Civil War, Selma fell to Union troops after a nearby battle on April 2, 1865. But the war left a burning fuse unextinguished, and exactly 100 years later, it ignited the city in political, social, and racial conflict. Selma became the center of a major black voter registration drive led by Martin Luther King Jr.; after encountering violent opposition in the city, King organized two protest marches to Montgomery, the state capital, but both were brought to their knees by resistance from armed state troopers. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was joined by many urban youths who had been captivated by the folk revival of the preceding decade. They fashioned simple but effective propaganda songs built on old gospel songs, spirituals, and folk songs of the Southeast. Authorship was rarely documented, and many songs were indeed put together as if by committee—perhaps one of the few vindications of the largely discredited nineteenth-century theory of folk song composition by a primitive “singing dancing throng.”

MISSISSIPPI In the spring of 1541, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto reached the mighty Mississippi River and the land subsequently named for it. But his quest for gold and silver was unrewarded, and, having no interest in jazz or blues, he left no settlements at New Orleans. That fell to French Canadian explorers at the very end of the seventeenth century, who established several settlements and retained control of the territory until the Treaty of Paris of 1763, when the land was transferred to British hands. The Spanish regained a foothold in Natchez after the outbreak of British-American hostilities and did not leave until 1798. That year, Congress created the Mississippi Territory, which was divided into two states: Missisippi in 1817 and Alabama two years later. Heavily agricultural, Mississippi’s characteristic pattern consisted of large farms and plantations supported by African American labor—first as slaves, then tenant farmers,

334

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

sharecroppers, or (nominally) as employees. Until World War II, Mississippi’s population was predominantly African American, but a steady exodus of blacks after the war shifted the balance. The Battle of Vicksburg On Vicksburg’s globes and bloody ground A wounded soldier lay, His thoughts were on his happy home, Some thousand miles away. Chorus: His thoughts were on his happy home Some thousand miles a way. Oh comrades dear, come close to me, My heart’s with you today, Come hear the word I have to send Some thousand miles away, An’ when you meet my mother dear, Be careful how you speak, The cords of life are almost run, Her heart may be too weak, An’ there’s another so dear to me, She’s gentle as a fawn, She lives behind yon distant glow, Down by the murmurin’ stream, An’ when I’m dead take this here ring An’ bear it to yon shore, Tell Molly ’tis the gift of one Who sleeps to wake no more, An’ here’s a tress her own hand gave, With it I never shall part, An’ when I’m dead don’t you forget To press it to my heart. The blood fast trickled down his side, A tear stood in his eye, He sighed, I ne’er shall see thee more, Sweet maid, before I die. Oh comrades dear, come close my eyes, An’ make my last cold bed, Before the mornin’ sun shall rise I shall be numbered dead.63

By the spring of 1862, the Confederates had lost Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, and Memphis in Tennessee and New Orleans in Louisiana, leaving the city of Vicksburg, perched on a bluff along the eastern shore of the Mississippi River, the primary remaining stronghold of Southern defense of the Mississippi River. The capture of Vicksburg would give the Union control of virtually the entire river, isolating the Confederate states west of the river from those in the east.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

335

In May 1862 Union forces made an unsuccessful attempt to take the city by means of a naval expedition, but the attack failed, as did a maneuver in December involving both Grant’s and Sherman’s armies. In April 1863, against Sherman’s advice, Grant boldly decided to attack Vicksburg from the east. He marched his troops down the west side of the Mississippi River in Louisiana, where they crossed the river from Hard Times, Louisiana, to Bruinsburg, Mississippi, on April 30. Simultaneously, Sherman’s forces moved north of Vicksburg and exchanged fire with the Confederates to create a diversion during the river crossing. Grant marched his army northeast, to meet Sherman’s forces coming south; together there were now more than 40,000 Union soldiers below Vicksburg. Two assaults on the fortress starting on May 19 failed and siege operations were begun; these lasted for almost six weeks. On July 4, 1863, the Confederate defenders surrendered the city, along with more than 30,000 soldiers. The surrender of Vicksburg, with the victory at the Battle of Gettysburg the previous day, marked the turning point of the war. The ballad tells of a dying soldier’s last requests; it is so general that but for the initial garbled line of the first stanza (which must have been “On Vicksburg’s bloody battlefield”), there is no linkage to the events at Vicksburg. The song is in fact a recomposition of “Buena Vista Battlefield,” concerning a battle in the Mexican War of the 1840s, one version of which begins, On Buena Vista battlefield A dying soldier lay, His thought were on his mountain home Some thousand miles away; He called his comrade to his side For much he had to say, In briefest words to those who were Some thousand miles away.64 Casey Jones Come all you rounders, for I want you to hear The story told of an engineer; Casey Jones was the rounder’s name, A heavy right-wheeler of a mighty fame. Caller called Jones about half past four, He kissed his wife at the station door; Climbed into the cabin with his orders in his hand, Says, “This is my trip to the holy land.” Through South Memphis yards, on the fly, He heard the fire-boy say, “You’ve got a white eye.” All the switchmen knew, by the engine moans, That the man at the throttle was Casey Jones. It had been raining some five or six weeks, The railroad track was like the bed of a creek; They rated him down to a thirty-mile gait, Threw the south-bound mail about eight hours late. Fireman says, “Casey, you’re running too fast, You run the block-board the last station you passed.”

336

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Jones says, “Yes, I believe we’ll make it through, For she steams better than I ever knew.” Jones says, “Fireman, don’t you fret, Keep knocking at the fire-door, don’t give up yet; I’m going to run her till she leaves the rail, Or make it in on time with the Southern mail.” Around the curve and down the dump, Two locomotives were bound to bump; Fireman hollered, “Jones, it’s just ahead, We might jump and make it, but we’ll all be dead.” ’Twas around this curve he spied a passenger train; Reversing his engine, he caused the bell to ring. Fireman jumped off, but Jones stayed on— He’s a good engineer, but he’s dead and gone. Poor Casey Jones was all right, For he stuck to his duty both day and night; They loved to hear his whistle and ring of number three, As he came into Memphis on the old I. C. Headaches and heartaches, and all kinds of pain, Are not apart from a railroad train; Tales that are in earnest, noble and grand, Belong to the life of a railroad man.65

If truth be told, John Luther “Casey” Jones made his mark on history by his thoroughly unprofessional conduct: by running his engine too fast in order to make up lost time, he was unable to avoid a fatal train wreck. It happened outside the small town of Vaughan, Mississippi, on the night of April 30, 1900. Nicknamed for the town of his childhood, Cayce, Kentucky, Jones was running the Illinois Central’s (I. C.) Cannonball Express, the southbound fast passenger train, when it collided with the caboose and three freight cars that were standing on the main track, the rest of the train being on a side track. Trying to make up 95 minutes of lost time, Jones, who had, during much of his career, a reputation as a “fast roller,” was nearly back on schedule when his fireman, Simeon Webb, saw red lights on the track, which signaled that something was in the way. “Jump, Sim!” were Jones’s last words, as he applied the brakes. Webb jumped and lived; Jones perished as he heroically applied the brakes to lessen the impact of the unavoidable crash. Three months later the I. C. determined the total cost of the damage to be $3,323.75, not counting compensation to the injured. (To put the I. C.’s magnanimity into perspective: in today’s dollars, it would be equivalent to roughly $725,000.) Casey Jones was sufficiently well known along the I. C.’s lines that before long, his unfortunate death was being memorialized in a host of songs—in both the Anglo American and the African American ballad traditions. Soon after the wreck, African American engine wipers around the railroad yards at Canton, Mississippi, made up a ditty about Jones, based on older folk songs. Perhaps independently, some of his white colleagues began to put together verses in the broadside ballad style. The text quoted here is the earliest that was published: in 1908, eight years after the accident. Somehow, two vaudevillians, Eddie Newton and Lawrence Seibert, stumbled across one of those songs and, in the rollicking, ragtimey, dance-crazed turn-of-the-century years, completely transformed the tragic tale

Popular music turned the disaster of Casey Jones’ wreck into the “greatest comedy hit in years; the only comedy railroad song.” The sheet music cover (1911) features a fictitious engine and the photos of the song’s author and composer. Author’s collection.

338

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

into a comic cabaret song of sorts (at least, that’s how the sheet music cover described it). The sheet music that they published in 1909 took the country by storm by the following year. On the other hand, the 1908 text was so lubricated with railroad lingo that it clearly must have been written by and for railroad men. Kenny Wagner It was down in Mississippi not many years ago, A young man started out in life, a life of sin and woe. Now Kenny Wagner was his name, a bandit bold and free; He shot down Sheriff McIntosh and fled to Tennessee. He was captured up in Tennessee and put into the jail. He had no one to help him out, no one to go his bail. But Kenny broke the jail one night, and he made his getaway. He thought that he could go through life and never have to pay. It was out in Texarkana where Kenny met his fate. A woman sheriff called his hand and he pulled his gun too late. He was taken back for trial right where the deed was done. The judge to Kenny turned and said, “No more you’ll pull your gun.” For Kenny Wagner broke the law, and he threw his life away And right behind the prison bars he’ll sit till judgment day. So, folks, take fair warning and heed this kind advice: Don’t ever break the laws of God; you’ll always have to pay.66 Kinnie Wagner’s Surrender I am sure you have heard my story From the Kinnie Wagner song; How down in Mississippi, I took the road that’s wrong. It was down in Mississippi, Where I murdered my first man; When the sheriff there at Leachville, For justice took his stand. Then I went from Mississippi, To the state of Tennessee; Two men went down before me, Ere they took my liberty. Then I wandered through the country, But I never could find rest; Till I went to Texarkana, Away out in the West. Again I started drinking, and Again I pulled my gun; And within a single moment, The deadly work was done. The sheriff was a woman, But she got the drop on me;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

339

I quit the game and surrendered, Gave up my liberty. I’m now in Mississippi, And I soon shall know my state; I’m waitin’ for my trial, But I do not dread my fate. For still the sun is shinin’, And the sky is blue and fair; But my heart is not repinin’, For I do not fear the chair. I’ve had my worldly pleasures, I’ve faced a many a man; But was out in Texarkana, Where a woman called my hand. Young men, young men, take warnin’, Oh take my last advice; If you start the game in life wrong, You must surely pay the price.67

After five killings and an escape from the Blountsville, Tennessee, prison, Kenny Carl Wagner surrendered, on August 19, 1926, to a lady sheriff in Texarkana, Texas. Two ballads were written about his escapades within three months: “The Fate of Kinnie Wagner” by Carson J. Robison and “Kinnie Wagner’s Surrender” by Andrew Jenkins. Both were recorded by Vernon Dalhart (the Jenkins ballad by others also) before the end of the year. Both songs have been collected in Mississippi and elsewhere, attesting to the ability of those two prolific songwriters to compose event ballads sufficiently in the style of traditional southeastern balladry to be absorbed by that tradition.68 There must also have been other songs: the first two lines of the second ballad refer to “the Kinnie Wagner song,” but this was the first of the two ballads to be recorded. Avalon Blues Got to New York this mornin’, just about half-past nine, I got to New York this mornin’, just about half-past nine; Hollerin’ one mornin’ in Avalon, couldn’t hardly keep from cryin’. Avalon my hometown, always on my mind. (2) Pretty mama’s in Avalon want me there all the time. When the train left Avalon, throwin’ kisses and wavin’ at me. (2) Says, “Come back, daddy, and stay right here with me.” Avalon’s a small town, have no great big range. (2) Pretty mama’s in Avalon, they sure will spend your change. New York’s a good town, but it’s not for mine. (2) Goin’ back to Avalon, near where I have a pretty mama all the time.69

John Hurt was 36 years old when he left his home in the tiny burg of Avalon in northwestern Mississippi to travel to New York at the invitation of a producer for the OKeh record label. At his second recording session, in December 1928, he got so homesick for

340

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

his home that he put together and recorded “Avalon Blues.” It was through this title that blues collectors rediscovered him 35 years later at his home; he was unaware that he had been lost.

LOUISIANA In 1682 Robert Cavelier, Lord de La Salle, claimed the land where the Mississippi met the gulf as the property of King Louis XIV; afterward, primary control alternated between French and Spanish hands (ceded by King Louis XV to his cousin, the King of Spain, in 1762, retrieved by Napoleon in 1800), until the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Thereupon, the newly acquired land was divided into the territory of Orleans—most of the present state of Louisiana—and the territory of Louisiana. Orleans became the 18th state, Louisiana, in 1812. Sentiments in the 1860s were sharply divided between pro-Union and proConfederacy factions, but the latter predominated, and the state seceded in 1861, not to be readmitted until 1868. The roots of the modern French presence in Louisiana reach back to the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, when French Protestants (Huguenots) fled persecution in France. They emigrated across the Atlantic to establish colonies in what they called Acadie, or Acadia, on both sides of what is now the United States–Canada border. During Queen Anne’s War, the English gained possession of Acadia; provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 specified that the Acadians were to have religious freedom, freedom to remain in the country or depart, and the right to retain all their possessions in spite of the change of hands. But British rulers were not always faithful to this commitment, and initially liberal policies grew increasingly strict. Finally, in 1755, when the Acadians refused to take the oath of allegiance demanded by the British, they were ordered to leave their villages. In a decade, more than 8,000 were deported, half of whom died at sea. Eventually, many of the surviving exiles were given haven in southern Louisiana, which was then still under French rule. Perhaps because of the intermingling of several very distinct ethnic cultures in the state, Louisiana has given rise to some vibrant and distinctive musical traditions. Two are the result of the French connection: the Cajun (from “Acadian”) and creole, which represents the hybridization of the Franco American with the local African American population. The music of the latter group is called “zydeco.” New Orleans itself is considered the birthplace of jazz music, an idiom that arose around the turn of the century, partly from the region’s older marching brass band traditions. Louisiana Earthquake Come, my dear friends and neighbors all, Come, listen while I tell you; Concerning of a mighty call, Took place in Lou’siana. Oh Sunday night, as you may know, While we were all a-sleeping; The Lord from heaven looking down, And set this earth to shaking. Some jumping up ran out of doors, Others they followed after;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

341

Others they stood with lifted hands, Crying, “Lord, what’s the matter?” As for myself, I must confess, I could but stand and wonder; Expecting any moment for Some louder clouds of thunder. Rest of that night was spent in grief And wising for the morning; Soon as daylight it did appear, The elements were darkened. A full six months had rolled around, But the earth it still kept shaking; While the Christians go with their head bowed down, And the sinners’ hearts were aching.70

Though the West Coast, in particular, California, generally springs to mind when the subject of earthquakes is raised, in fact, one of the worst quakes in the United States occurred in the Mississippi Valley (it was then part of the recently purchased Louisiana Territory) on December 16, 1811. Called the New Madrid earthquake because its epicenter was in the city of New Madrid, Missouri, it was felt as far north as upper Canada and south to New Orleans and was violent enough to cause the Mississippi River to reverse the direction of its flow for a few minutes. Major aftershocks continued for weeks afterward, and minor ones for years. The entire geography of the Mississippi Valley was transformed as a result of the geologic event. The last stanza suggests that the song was written in mid-1812. A longer text of 14 stanzas was written into a hymn book in the early 1800s by the book’s owner, Martha Aldredge of Lenoir, North Carolina. The additional stanzas are all of a homiletic nature, in the same spirit as the last two lines given in this version.71 Jackson’s Victory Come, all you brave Americans, don’t let us disagree, Come listen to my story, and plainly you shall see; We are the brave Americans that never fear’d the foe, Brought on by General Jackson, you very well do know. Chorus: So cheer up my lively lads, and never have it said, That the free sons of America were ever yet afraid. ’Twas on the tenth of October, the morning being clear, We espied a famous army of British Grenadiers; At one o’clock we fired a shot, and they returned the same, Fight on, my boys, says Jackson, for now begins the game. Chorus. At one o’clock, my brave boys, the battle did begin, And in two hours after, the battle we did win; ’Twas with our glit’ring broad-swords we cut & slash’d the foe, While Jackson he commanded, and bid us where to go. Chorus. The plains they were all cover’d with the wounded and the slain, Three hundred of their best men lay dead upon the plain, The rest run to the mountains as fast as they could fly; Cheer up my brave Americans, we’ve gain’d the victory. Chorus.

342

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Here’s a health to general Jackson, also, to all his men, To soldiers and officers, who did so bravely stand; To officers and soldiers, who caus’d the foe to flee, It’s our delight, brave boys, to fight for Jackson and liberty. Chorus. Come all you brave Americans, the wars are now all o’er, We’ve fought and gain’d our liberty as many have before, With a glass of brandy in our hands as you may plainly see, We’ll show the British Grenadiers that Uncle Sam is free. Chorus.72

Some battles are fought before war is officially declared; this one concerns a battle that was fought after the war ended. The War of 1812 between the United States and its former mistress, Great Britain, had already been formally concluded with the Treaty of Ghent on December 24, 1814, but word had not gotten past the alligators in the Mississippi delta country, and so the Battle of New Orleans was fought unnecessarily. For more background, see the notes to “Hunters of Kentucky” in chapter 3. Numerous songs were written in joyful celebration of the American victory; this one was published, without attribution, by the prolific Boston broadside printer Leonard Deming from an address that he occupied from 1832 to 1837. He must therefore have copied it from an earlier print—or, more likely, taken it from oral tradition. That might explain the erroneous date of October 10 since really, the battle was fought on January 8. Also, the fight’s duration was closer to one-half an hour, rather than two hours. The stated number of British slain is close to the actual figure of 289. More remembered from this war episode is the widely known fiddle tune “Eighth of January.” Arkansas singer-songwriter Jimmy Driftwood (né Jamesse Morris) composed “The Battle of New Orleans” to that tune; it became a number one, million-selling recording by country singer Johnny Horton in 1959.73 The Lakes of Pontchartrain O’er swamps and alligators I’m on my weary way, O’er railroad ties and crossings my weary feet did stray; Until at close of evening, some higher ground I gained; ’Twas there I met with a Creole girl on the Lakes of Pontchartrain. “Good-eve to you, kind maiden! my money does me no good; If it were not for the alligators, I’d stay out in the wood.” “Oh, welcome, welcome, stranger! altho’ our house is plain, We never turn a stranger out on the Lakes of Pontchartrain.” She took me to her father’s house, she treated me quite well; Her hair in flowing ringlets about her shoulders fell. I tried to paint her beauty, but I found it was in vain, So beautiful was the Creole girl on the Lakes of Pontchartrain. I asked her if she would marry me; she said that could never be; She said she had a lover, and he was far at sea. She said she had a lover, and true she would remain, Till he came back to her again on the Lakes of Pontchartrain. Adieu, adieu, fair maiden! I never shall see you more; I’ll ne’er forget your kindness, in the cottage by the shore. At home in social circles our flaming bowls we’ll drain, And drink to the health of the Creole girl on the Lakes of Pontchartrain.74

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

343

While the overwhelming proportion of interpersonal relationships between European Americans and the Native Americans resulted in either death, deception, disease, or disaster, there were a number of songs depicting romantic relationships between the cultures— generally doomed to failure. An early-nineteenth-century broadside ballad of British origin was titled “The Indian Lass” and recounted how a sailor at a distant port far from home is befriended by a Creole girl in a local ale house; they spend the night in bed together, and when morning comes, he departs from his tearful bedmate. He thinks fondly of her when home and drinks a toast to her memory. “Lakes of Pontchartrain” seems to be a recomposition of the British piece, though any references to nocturnal sporting have been expunged and it is now she who brushes him off with assertions of a lover of her own. (One wonders if it is the English sailor of “The Indian Lass” for whom she waits in vain.) The expurgation of sexual references is common in British ballads transplanted in American soil in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries; the exchange of the roles of the two characters bespeaks an attempt to put the Native Americans on the same moral plane as the newcomers. Lake Pontchartrain is a large, shallow body of water just north of New Orleans that drains into the Gulf of Mexico. It was named in 1699 in honor of King Louis II, Count of Pontchartrain. Maitre

Bainjo

Voyez ce mulet là, Maitre Banjo Comme il est insolent, Chapeau a la coté, Maitre Bainjo, Le canne a la main, Maitre Bainjo, Bottes qui fait, “Crin, crin,” Maitre Bainjo, Voyez ce mulet là, Maitre Banjo, Comme il est insolent.

Look at that mulatto there, Mr. Banjo, Doesn’t he put on airs! Hat cocked on one side, Mr. Banjo, Walking-stick in hand, Mr. Banjo, Boots that squeak “cran, cran,” Mr. Banjo, Look at that mulatto there, Mr. Banjo, Doesn’t he put on airs!75

Once, long before Hurricane Katrina washed much of New Orleans’s treasured history into the Gulf of Mexico, there was an open plaza near the French Quarter where, as long ago as the eighteenth century, slaves were allowed to congregate and dance and sing on Sundays when they didn’t have to work. It was called “place de negres,” or informally, “Congo Square”—as if a small piece of real estate from the Dark Continent had been magically detached from central Africa and transplanted at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The custom originated when Louisiana was under either Spanish or French rule and was allowed to continue into the nineteenth century, after the region was sold to the United States. One of the songs said to have been sung during those festive Sundays was “Monsieur Banjo,” and a version was printed in one of the first collections of slave songs in 1867.76 Franco American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who grew up in New Orleans, included elements of African American music in his compositions, and musical pieces such as this influenced his compositions “The Banjo” (1855) and “Bamboula” (1849)—the latter a dance popular in Congo Square.77 The song, in creolized French, pokes fun at the Africans who, given a temporary simulacrum of freedom, dressed themselves up in elegant hats and garments, boots and walking sticks—much in the manner cruelly caricatured in the antebellum drawings of “Zip Coon” that festooned broadsides, sheet music, and other ephemeral publications. The English translation loses the pejorative double entendre of mulet (mule) and mulâtre (mulatto). A more respected survival from the slaves’ fascination with the fancy haberdashery of their

344

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

masters still lives in the elaborate and elegant costumery of New Orleans’s annual Mardi Gras festival. The banjo itself, an instrument of African origin, was associated strongly with the enslaved African American population in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries—so much so that by the twentieth century, urban African Americans refused to have anything to do with the instrument. One of Robert W. Gordon’s correspondents, C. E. Roe, sent him this text—virtually identical with the one published in 1867. Roe had learned it in about 1901 at the University of Minnesota from a fellow student who used to live in New Orleans. Congo Square is now part of Louis Armstrong Park, a name aptly chosen to honor one of America’s greatest jazz musicians. Armstrong and his fellow creators of the jazz idiom owed much to the African legacy that echoed long ago in “place Congo,” and this simple ditty, now confined to the tattered pages of children’s songbooks, binds in a few lines of text and tune an abundance of African American symbolism: tailored elegance, rhythmic dance, syncopated melody, instrumental invention, and above all, social segregation. Capture of New Orleans Come all you Union-loving men, wherever you may be; I hope you’ll pay attention now and listen unto me, Concerning of a gallant ship, the Brooklyn is her name, Whose name deserves to be engraved upon the list of fame. It was in December sixty-one, as you shall understand, Secession’s gloom had overcast Columbia’s happy land; The Brooklyn left the Delaware her mettle for to try, With Louisiana’s Rebel fleet, who’s boast was very high. Tom Craven was our Captain’s name as you shall understand, As brave a naval officer as any in the land; With Lowry for our first luff—the Brooklyn she did steer, Down through the Gulf of Mexico in search of Privateers. It was in the month of April, the fleet being all complete, That was to capture New Orleans, the Rebels to defeat; From Pilottown the fleet steamed up, resolved not to return, Until the Louisiana fleet we’d sink, destroy and burn. The Rebels they were well prepared their city to defend; From bank to bank between two forts there did a chain extend; Fort Philip with its eighty guns well counterscarped all round, While Jackson with one hundred more upon the left side frowned. With battering rams and fire rafts, and all the gunboat fleet, The Rebels they were well prepared the Union tars to meet; With sand and floating batteries upon the river side, Bold Duucan in Fort Jackson brave Farragut defied. On the twenty-fourth of April, before the break of day, The Hartford being flag-ship, then a red light did display; The light was seen throughout the fleet, then up went cheer on cheer, The Union fleet got under weigh and for the forts did steer. As we went around the point of land that brought the forts in sight, From rifled guns with shot and shell they soon commenced the fight;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

The Hartford she stood boldly up—the Brooklyn where was she? But look right under Jackson’s guns, it’s there Black Jack you’ll see. The Rebel’s shot flew thick and hot, the Brooklyn she was there; Tom Craven he is on the poop, she’s in his special care; Bold Lowry says we’ll beat our foes and then give three cheers, Our first broadside like thunder roared, which banished all our fears. Courage, undaunted Brooklyn’s crew, your hour is nigh at hand, Brave Lowry on the quarter deck says by you he will stand; And if by chance the Brooklyn sinks between those forts to-night, Our flag shall be the last thing seen when she goes out of sight. The Rebels well supplied their guns, and Duncan he did say, There are the Yankees close to us, so at them fire away; And if you sink their ship to-night the Mortar-boats will run, And then our Louisiana fleet will capture every one. What is that dreadful noise we hear, like thunder it does roar; The Hartford has got up in range, and in the grape does pour; The Pensacola on the right, the Richmond comes up too, And with their nine-inch shot and shell they breech Fort Philip through The gunboats follow quickly up, and send in grape in turn, While close on board the Brooklyn a fire raft does burn; The Hartford ’s now all in a blaze, for joy the Rebels shout, The Brooklyn drops and covers her—the fire is put out. The chain being cut the night before the Union fleet goes through, The Rebel fleet above the forts then tries to bring us too; The battering ram comes down to us, old Tom sees her approach; The Brooklyn’s head sheers off to port, alongside she does broach. The Mississippi now comes up to have a little fun, The ram declines a butting match and from her tries to run; The good old ship manoeuvered round, and when she got in reach, She butts the ram between the eyes and jammed her on the beach. Full twenty gunboats they did have when first the fight begun, In less than twenty minutes we sunk them every one; The Union fleet now gives three cheers and up the river steams, With nothing to oppose them ’till they get near New Orleans. The Chalmette batteries next we take; the river now is clear; We spike their guns and give three cheers, and for the city steer; From each masthead throughout the fleet the stars and stipes doth fly, The city’s ours, the fleet comes to, and off it we do lie. So here’s success to Farragut and all the Union fleet, Which by their bold, undaunted pluck the Rebels did defeat; A grateful country long will mourn the loss of those who fell, Defending of their country’s flag from traitor’s shot and shell. And here’s to brave McClellan, he’ll break Secession’s coil, And only one flag soon shall wave upon Columbia’s soil; He’ll beat the Rebel forces wherever they may be, The Union still shall be preserved, we’ll let all nations see.

345

Navy man William Densmore was credited with writing this song about the naval battle of New Orleans, which took place in 1864. The broadside was probably published soon afterward. From the Library of Congress.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

347

So to conclude, there’s one thing more I’d have you understand, Our ship, she is always ready with Secesh to try her hand; And when the war is over we’ll all go North once more, Having bravely done our duty in the Brooklyn sloop-of-war.78

By the 1860s, New Orleans was the most populous city of the South. A major trade center and seaport, it also became a prime military center for the Confederacy, and a prize worthy of capture. On April 18, 1862, Commander Farragut positioned his fleet to bombard the two Confederate forts straddling the Mississippi River just south of New Orleans: forts Jackson and Saint Philip. After six days of ineffectual assault, he proceeded up the river, where he encountered and defeated a Confederate flotilla. Continuing to the city, he forced the surrender of New Orleans on April 25; the forts capitulated three days later. Congress rewarded him with a vote of thanks and promotion to the rank of rear admiral. The ballad quoted was written by a crewman on one of the ships in Farragut’s fleet; whether officer or ordinary sailor is not indicated, but he was clearly proud and jubilant over his comrades’ victory, and eager to do battle again. Too long and detailed for easy memorization, the ballad was probably forgotten soon after the war. The Hennessy Murder Kind friends, if you will list’ to me, A sad story I’ll relate; ’Tis of the brave Chief Hennessy And how he met his fate. On that quiet autumn evening When all nature seemed at rest, This good man was shot to death— May his soul rest with the blest. Why men commit such crimes as these, ’Tis very hard to tell; For such satanic fiends there should Be no place but Hell; ’Tis not alone the murdered man Who suffered by this crime, But the hearts of all good citizens Lay hurt from time to time. Chorus: Chief Hennessy he was murdered For no cause that we all know; And the murderer in prison he will pine; Why men have such will That for vengeance they can kill, Such men with Satan surely must combine.79

David Hennessy, the New Orleans chief of police, was relieved of his worries one night in October 1890 by a bullet on a rainy street. His dying words were, “The Dagos did it!” Dago, a pejorative slang term for Italian, was automatically inferred to mean Mafioso at the time, and a handful of known members of the Mafia were rounded up and detained. Eight were arrested and jailed, to be held for trial, but a mob of angry citizens broke in to

the jail removed the prisoners, and dispensed their own brand of justice with the aid of a number of accessible trees. Ella Speed Well the first time I shot Ella, I shot her through the side, The second time, I could not tell where; But the third time I shot her, I shot her through the head, You know that shot must have killed poor Ella dead. When they all got the news that Ella Speed was dead, They goes home and dresses up in red; There was two white horses side in side, Gonna take Ella for a last farewell ride. Ella ’fore she died, last words she said, “Tell my sisters please don’t do like me, That’s fall in love with everyone, With everyone that you see.” One of these mornings while you’re having fun, Somebody gonna do like Ella done; Now Ella she went out just to have some fun, She got shot at with a Colt forty-one. Well they shot Ella, didn’t shoot her no more, She staggered across the barroom floor; Ain’t it hard, man it’s true, You can love someone don’t love you. Well, the last words I heard Ella say, “Tell my sisters please don’t do like me, That’s fall in love with everyone, With everyone that you see.”80

Louis “Bull” Martin shot Ella Speed after a rendezvous at West End, a resort on Lake Pontchartrain, on September 2, 1894. Ella, 28-year-old wife of Willie Speed and mother of two, contributed to the family income by working as a prostitute. Martin, a 28-year-old of Italian descent, was employed as a bartender. He shot Ella in her room in the French Quarter at around 9:30 A.M., and she died shortly after. He turned himself in the next day, claiming he had shot her by accident: she was despondent because he said he was going to leave New Orleans. Somehow she got hold of his pistol, which he tried to recover. In the struggle, she was shot. Martin was convicted of manslaughter and given a 20-year sentence but was free by 1901.81 Bull and Ella chose a good decade for their affair if they wanted to be remembered in song: as noted elsewhere (see “Delia,” “Frankie,” and “Brady”), a number of crimes involving African Americans were put to music and have endured for more than a century. All use the four-line stanza of standard Anglo American balladry, rather than the innovative three-line stanza introduced in the early 1900s in blues songs. Rounder’s Luck The only thing a rounder wants, Is suitcase and a trunk;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

349

And the only time he’s satisfied, Is when he’s on the drunk. Fill up those glasses to the brim, Let the drinks go merry ’round; We’ll drink to the health of the rounder, poor boy, Who hoboes from town to town. My mother she’s a seamstress, She cuts and sews on jeans; My daddy he’s a gambling man, He gambles in New Orleans. Oh mamma, mamma, how could you sew, And treat that rounder so cold; That’ll beat [?] the rounder of all his pride And wear your crown of gold. There’s a place down in New Orleans, That’s called the Rising Sun; Where many a poor boy to destruction has gone. And me, oh Lord, for one. Oh, tell my youngest brother Not to do the things I have done; And to shun that place down in New Orleans That’s called the Rising Sun. I’m goin’ back to New Orleans, My race is almost run; Gonna spend the rest of my wicked days, Beneath that Rising Sun.82

Back in the 1820s, almost two centuries before Hurricane Katrina stirred New Orleans into a political gumbo, Conti Street sported an establishment called the Rising Sun. It seemed to be a hotel, but there were suggestions that the guests there were accorded more than the usual hostelry amenities. By the mid-twentieth century, it was assumed that the place had been a brothel; that’s certainly consistent with the lyrics. There is, though, a contrary opinion that the place was a women’s prison; that description could also fit the lyrics. The song is closely associated with the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, when it was recorded by numerous artists—Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Dave van Ronk, Bob Dylan, and the Animals, among them. Most of them owe their inspiration to the first publication of the song—in John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax’s influential collection Our Singing Country (1934). The song is certainly much older than that: the first recording was made the preceding year by Clarence Ashley, and an even earlier version was collected by Robert W. Gordon in 1925. Ashley thought he had learned the song from his grandfather, and it makes sense that the song is from the nineteenth century. The recording transcribed here, by Homer Callahan, was made a year after Ashley’s was issued and may have been learned from it. The song title was not Callahan’s but was added by the recording producer.83 Whether the song really is connected with the structure of the 1820s remains to be proven. La Danse de Mardi Gras Captain, captain, wave your flag, Let’s get on the road.

350

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Captain, captain, wave your flag, Let’s go to the other neighbors’ place. The Mardi Gras riders get together once a year To ask for charity; They are going to go from door to door All around the hub. The Mardi Gras riders come from everywhere. Yes, my good old comrade; The Mardi Gras riders come from everywhere, All around the hub. The Mardi Gras riders come from everywhere. But mainly from Grand Mamou. The Mardi Gras riders come from everywhere, Now, all around the hub. Will you welcome this band of Mardi Gras riders? Will you welcome this band of big drunks? The Mardi Gras riders ask permission [from the master and mistress] to come in. They ask permission to come in With all politeness. Give us a little fat hen So that we can make a fat gumbo. Give us a little fat hen All around the hub. Give us a little bit of lard, If you please, my friend; Give us a bit of rice, All around the hub, my friend. The Mardi Gras rider Thanks you a lot for your good will. We invite you all to the dance tonight, Over there at Grand Mamou. We invite you all to the big dance, All around the hub. We invite you all for the big gumbo, Over there in the kitchen. We invite you all for the big gumbo, Over at John Vidrine’s place. Captain, captain, wave your flag, Let’s get on the road. Captain, captain, wave your flag, Let’s go to the other neighbor’s place.84

Mamou, in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana, is one of the cultural centers of Cajun life and home to a country celebration of Mardi Gras that is “more traditional, more folk, and

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

351

more fun than its sophisticated and gaudy New Orleans cousin.”85 In the 1950s, as in the late eighteenth century, early on Mardi Gras morning, horsemen with masks and uniforms rode from house to house, stopping to eat and drink and dance. The ride ( la course) ended late in the afternoon, when the tired, muddy, and perhaps inebriated riders paraded through town, displaying their haul: fowl and rice to make a large communal gumbo, after which the festivities continued until dawn.86 Ma Blonde Est Partie (Jolie Blonde) Jolie Blonde, ’gardez donc, quoi t’as fait Tu m’as quitté pour t’en aller; Pour t’en aller avec un autre, oui, que moi, Quel espoir et quel av’nir mais moi je peux avoir?

Pretty blonde, look at what you’ve done,

Jolie blonde, tu m’as laissé moi tout seul, Pour t’en aller chez ta famille Si t’aurais pas ecouté tous les conseils de les autres, Tu serais ici-t avec moi-z-aujourd’hui.

Pretty blonde, you left me all alone

You left me to go— To go with someone other than me; What hope and what future can I have?

To go back to your family; If you hadn’t listened to the advice of the others You’d be here with me today.

Jolie blonde, tu croyais il y avait juste toi Il y’a pas juste toi dans le pays pur moi aimer Je va’s trouver juste une autre jolie blonde Bon Dieu sait, moi, j’aime tant.

Pretty blonde, you thought you were the only one; You’re not the only one in the world for me to love; I will find another pretty blonde,

Jolie blonde, mourir, ça serait pas rien C’est de rester dans la terre aussi longtemps Moi j’vois pas quoi faire si tu reviens pas, bébé T’en revenir avec moi dans la Louisiane.

Pretty blonde, to die would be nothing, It’s just staying in the ground for a long time; I don’t know what I’ll do if you don’t come back, baby, Come back to me in Louisiana.87

God knows, that I love so much.

Through much of the second half of the twentieth century, the tune most strongly associated with Louisiana Cajun music was a song about a lovesick young man whose blonde sweetheart has left him—“Jolie Blonde.” By midcentury the waltz tune had become a country and western hit and was sung throughout the Southwest—but transmogrified into silly English lyrics whose subtext was “even these ridiculous words are better than your unintelligible foreign ones.” The song was first recorded in 1929, by Amedee Breaux, supposedly about one of his wives, but his stepson stated it was his sister and accompanist Cleoma Breaux who actually wrote the words.88 Mystery of the Dunbar’s Child The eleventh, month of August, In the year of 1912. The kidnapping of the Dunbar’s child

352

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

That was a mystery sad to tell. It was down on Lake Swayze, On a warm sunny day, Everyone was enjoying happiness, At a picnic they gave that day. You know, the two children, they wandered off, Bobby and his comrade alone. When the returning of the other child, He just said, “Oh, Bobby’s gone.” But where did little Bobby go? Everyone tried to know. And they started searchin’ Opelousas, And along Lake Swayze shore. You know they searched and searched for miles around Almost the whole night long, No one couldn’t imagine Where poor Bobby Dunbar’s gone. So they drag the lake and they dynamite Almost the whole next day, Until someone had suspicion Some kidnapper taken Bobby away. A reward was bein’ offered, To see if Bobby could be found. Everyone joined in the search, you know, In and out the little town. No one heard of anything, you know, About that missin’ child. The father and mother of the Dunbar child, It almost drove them wild. For months and months they looked and listened To hear something of their boy, And at last they heard about Walter’s child, That he called his pride and joy. They were summoned to Hub, Mississippi, You know that little country town, And everyone shouted out with joy So glad that Bobby had been found. You know, then, he was taken in custody, Given to the Dunbars, brave and bold. But the Dunbar crowd cried and rocked with wails, “Sure, there, that’s my child that Walters stole.” Poor Walters was taken to prison, And he was placed in Opelousas jail. And he was charged of kidnapping, Without the benefit of bail. He said, “I am an innocent man, And believe a wretch like me, If I could see the Governor face to face,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

353

I am sure he would set me free. Julie Anderson is proved his mother, And I pray she’s not dead. You can picture their resemblance, From his feet up to his head.” Oh, the jurymen found him guilty, And the clerk he wrote it down. The judge passed the sentence, Penitentiary he was bound. He was brought for safe keeping To dear old New Orleans. There he appealed for a new trial Through the Court of Supreme. He says, “I know God wouldn’t have me punished, For a crime that I didn’t do. I hope and trust each and everyone, Some day’ll find out that I am true.” Stop searching all over New Orleans, And all those desolate lands. Oh, I am glad to tell you all, That Walters is now a free man.89

The fate of four-year-old Bobby Dunbar was a mystery when he disappeared from the family picnic on Louisiana’s Lake Swayze in 1912; it was a mystery 16 years later when Richard “Rabbit” Brown recorded a ballad about the event, and it was still a mystery in 2006 when Dunbar’s putative granddaughter, Margaret Cutright, resolved to employ DNA testing to establish her relationship to Bobby Dunbar. Bobby Dunbar was kidnapped (or at any rate, disappeared) at a country picnic on a local lake resort at Opelousas, Louisiana, on August 23, 1912. The woods were searched, the swamps were dynamited (in hopes of buoying a body to the surface), and alligators were cut open, all in vain. The child turned up eight months later in Hub, Mississippi, though sufficiently changed in appearance that there was considerable question whether it was the same boy. The boy was in the company of William Walters, an itinerant preacher, who was arrested for the crime. The boy’s parents, Percy and Lessie Dunbar, rushed to Hub, where they confronted the child. Lessie was uncertain—even though the child bore a mole and a scarred toe that were consistent with their son’s appearance. The child showed no signs of recognition. Lessie wanted a day to think it over. The next day, she was certain. Walters, though, insisted the boy was Bruce Anderson, the love child of his brother and Julia Anderson, a woman who had cared for their aged parents back in North Carolina. It was another half year before Julia Anderson could get to Opelousas to examine the boy. She was also uncertain—as was the boy, though the lapse of so much time could account for their confusion. Walters was tried and convicted and given a life sentence that was subsequently set aside by the state supreme court. In 1999 Margaret Cutright, granddaughter of Bobby Dunbar/Bruce Anderson, became caught up in the story and determined to learn the truth. She visited the home of Walters’s lawyer and found his granddaughter still living there. The original defense files were squirreled away in a closet. Cutright tracked down Julia Anderson’s other descendents and found some willing to submit to a DNA test to determine if they were any kin of hers. Early in 2008 tests proved that the child was indeed an Anderson and not a Dunbar.90

354

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The singer who recorded this ballad, Richard “Rabbit” Brown, was a New Orleans–born African American guitarist-singer who boated tourists out on Lake Pontchartrain and entertained them with his music. He was what is called a “songster”—an African American folksinger whose repertoire consists of preblues songs and ballads. He recorded commercially a number of ballads that are much more narrative in style than the ones usually found among other African American folksingers of the same period. The apparent incohesiveness of his song reflects both the complicated circumstances of the historical events and also the fact that 16 years had elapsed since they occurred. It is possible, but unlikely, that Rabbit Brown was the ballad’s composer. The fact that everyone involved in the case was Anglo American is circumstantial evidence against his authorship. On the other hand, if he regularly dealt with white clients, he may well have written and sung songs about events that were of interest to his audience. Whoever composed the ballad was quite familiar with traditional Anglo American balladry. This is most readily apparent by comparing the first four lines of the eighth stanza with the following, from a Missouri variant of a ballad most commonly known as “The Boston Burglar”: The jury found me guilty, The clerk he wrote it down; The judge pronounced the sentence, You’re bound for Frankfort town.

Other lines of “Mystery” are not traceable to older ballads. But then, unusual circumstances do not readily lend themselves to the verses of earlier texts. Death of Huey P. Long Oh they shot Huey Long in Louisiana. As he walked on the Capitol stair Yes they killed Huey Long in Louisiana As he strolled from the Capitol there. Poverty was his share back in childhood He was one of a family of nine; Living in the clay hills of Louisiana But he soon left those red hills behind. And at sixteen he left a place called Winnfield Parish Went to Shreveport where he went to school; They expelled him for starting some trouble, Claiming that Huey broke every rule. In a short span of years he gained power Louisiana made him governor; He was kind, he was cruel with his power When they made him a state senator. He was soon known throughout all this glorious land, Many foes spoke of him right or wrong Louisiana has lost a great leader When that bullet pierced through Huey Long. Just as long as a man is Huey Long always fought in the open Friend and foe knew that he had no fear

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

355

He made friends, he made foes, many times came to blows Ever fighting what he thought was wrong; Louisiana has lost a great leader When that bullet pierced through Huey Long.91

Huey P. Long (1893–1935) was a flamboyant and demagogic governor of Louisiana and a U.S. senator whose social reforms and radical welfare proposals were ultimately overshadowed by the unprecedented executive dictatorship that he perpetrated to ensure control of his home state. After passing the bar examination in 1915 and winning election to the state railroad commission, he ran unsuccessfully for the Louisiana governorship in 1924. In 1928 he ran again and won. Long effected many desirable legislative changes, including welfare programs, free textbooks, road and bridge construction, and expansion of state university facilities. His method of financing these programs with increased inheritance, income, and oil taxes won him the bitter enmity of the wealthy and of the oil interests. Long’s dark side was his inclination to near-dictatorship. He surrounded himself with gangsterlike bodyguards and tried to control by intimidation members of the legislature. Long was at the height of his power when assassinated on September 10, 1935, in Baton Rouge by Carl Austin Weiss, the son of a man whom he had denigrated. The ballad, to the tune of “Red River Valley,” was recorded three days after his death. So efficient could the hillbilly recording machinery be that another ballad, “Our Senator Huey Long,” was recorded on the day of the assassination.

ARKANSAS Like the other states along the Gulf of Mexico and the lower parts of the Mississippi Valley, the land that became Arkansas was first explored and settled by French and Spanish interests. Present-day Arkansas became part of the United States with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and in 1806, most of it was established as the Arkansas District. In 1812 this land parcel became Arkansas County of the territory of Missouri. In 1819 the separate Arkansas Territory was organized, with its capital at Arkansas Post. In 1836, after experiencing a tripling of its population in 15 years, it became the 25th state. The new state’s population continued to grow, largely from immigration from states to the east. In 1860, 21 percent of its U.S.-born population had been born in Tennessee, and another 22 percent were from the Carolinas, Alabama, and Georgia. This heavy flux from the Appalachian region established the general characteristics of early Ozark musical lore. Although a slave state, Arkansas did not secede from the Union until May 1861—five months after South Carolina did so. Arkansas took this action only after the Confederate capture of Fort Sumter and President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers. Union sentiment was strong in the mountainous north of Arkansas; about 6,000 Arkansans joined the federal forces—about one-tenth of the number who fought for the Confederacy. Little Rock fell to federal troops in 1863. Down in Arkansas I had a cow that slobbered bad, Down in Arkansas, I spent all the money I ever had Down in Arkansas,

356

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Carried her to old Doctor Smith’s Asked him what to do for it, He said teach that cow to spit Down in Arkansas. Chorus: Down in the Ark-anDown in the Ark-anDown in Arkansas, The only girl I ever loved Was down in Arkansas. There was a wedding on our street Down in Arkansas, A girl named Oats married a man named Wheat, Down in Arkansas, As they walked down the aisle, you see, The piano played on the minor key, They played “What Shall the Harvest Be” Down in Arkansas. I knew a man named David Crockett, Down in Arkansas, He carried his false teeth in his pocket, Down in Arkansas. He went stirring around and around, He hitched up his horses and drove them to town, The darn teeth bit him when he sat down, Down in Arkansas.92

Outsiders have long characterized the Ozark mountain folk as primitive, if not downright backward. And most Ozarkers have been happy to let the strangers have their fun— and even to foster songs and other lore that fortify the misperception. (One of folklorist Vance Randolph’s books of Ozark stories was titled We Always Lie to Strangers.) The preceding is probably such an example; but the bit of musical wit that follows is undoubtedly Arkansans’ finest moment in table turning. The Arkansas Traveler This piece is intended to represent an Eastern man’s experience among the inhabitants of Arkansas, showing their hospitality and the mode of obtaining it. Several years since, he was travelling the state to Little Rock, the capital. In those days, railroads had not been heard of, and the stage-lines were very limited; so, under the circumstances, he was obliged to travel the whole distance on foot. One evening, about dusk, he came across a small log house, standing fifteen or twenty yards from the road, and enclosed by a low rail fence of the most primitive description. In the doorway sat a man, playing a violin; the tune was the then most popular air in that region—namely, “The Arkansas Traveller.” He kept repeating the first part of the tune over and over again, as he could not play the second part. At the time the traveller reached the house it was raining very hard, and he was anxious to obtain shelter from the storm. The house looked like anything but a shelter, as it was covered with clapboards, and the rain was leaking into every part of it. The old man’s daughter Sarah appeared to be getting supper, while a small boy was setting the table, and the old lady sat in the doorway near her husband, admiring the music.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

357

The stranger, on coming up, said: Stranger: How do you do? Old Man: I do as I please. Stranger: How long have you been living here? Old Man: D’ye see that mountain thar? Well, that was thar when I come here. S: Can I stay here to-night? O.M.: No! ye can’t stay here. S.: How long will it take me to get to the next tavern? O.M.: Well, you’ll not get thar at all, if you stand thar foolin’ with me all night! S.: Well, how far do you call it to the next tavern? O.M.: I reckon it’s upwards of some distance! S.: I am very dry—do you keep any spirits in your house? O.M.: Do you think my house is haunted? They say thar’s plenty down in the graveyard. S.: How do they cross this river ahead? O.M.: The ducks all swim across. S.: How far is it to the forks of the road? O.M.: I’ve been livin’ here nigh on twenty years, and no road ain’t forked yit. S.: Give me some satisfaction if you please sir. Where does this road go? O.M.: Well, it hain’t moved a step since I’ve been here. S.: Why don’t you cover your house? It leaks. O.M.: ’Cause it’s rainin’. S.: Then why don’t you cover it when it’s not raining? O.M.: ’Cause it don’t leak. S.: Why don’t you play the second part of that tune? O.M.: If you’re a better player than I am, you can play it yourself. I’ll bring the fiddle out to you—I don’t want you in here! (Stranger plays the second part of the tune.) O.M.: Git over the fence, and come in and sit down—I didn’t know you could play. You can board here, if you want to. Kick that dog off that stool, and set down and play it over— I want to hear it agin. (Stranger plays the second part again.) O.M.: Our supper is ready now: won’t you have some with us? S.: If you please. O.M.: What will you take, tea or coffee? S.: A cup of tea, if you please. O.M.: Sall, git the grubbin’-hoe, and go dig some sassafras, quick! (Old man plays the first part.)

358

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

S.: (To the little boy) Bub, give me a knife and fork, if you please. Boy: We hain’t got no knives and forks, sir. S.: Then give me a spoon. B.: We hain’t got no spoons neither. S.: Well, then, how do you do? B.: Tolerable, thank you; how do you do sir? (Old man plays the first part again! ) The stranger, finding such poor accommodations, and, thinking his condition could be bettered by leaving, soon departed, and at last succeeded in finding a tavern, with better fare. He has never had the courage to visit Arkansas since!93

For a century and a half, the American fiddle tune “The Arkansas Traveler” has been linked with a humorous dialog between a rustic fiddler and a city traveler who politely tries to elicit from the fiddler accommodations, or at least directions. The fiddler responds sarcastically, deliberately misunderstanding and making fun of the traveler at every opportunity—and relishing the situation immensely. Only when the exasperated traveler offers to play the second part of the fiddle tune does the astonished fiddler suddenly turn gracious host. There are numerous layers of implications in this sketch, but the most prominent is that the country bumpkin, usually the object of the urbanite’s scorn, handily gets the upper hand of the encounter. The revelation that the city traveler himself is a violinist and knows the rest of the tune is a later accretion to the story and completely changes the nature of the story—perhaps undoing the carefully constructed moral that city folks aren’t that smart after all. The dialog is ancient; an English broadside of the last quarter of the eighteenth century titled “The Broken Bridge, a Favourite Dialogue between the Traveller and the Insolent Carpenter” has many of the same exchanges, and some parts are still older.94 The tune was first published as sheet music in 1847, though it may have an earlier origin. The dialog was first printed in 1859; the version given here is five years later. The Battle of Elkhorn Tavern My name is Daniel Martin, I’se borned in Arkansas; I fled from those base rebels Who fear not God or law. I left my aged father And my beloved wife; I’se forced to go to Rollie For to try to save my life. I jined in Phillips’s regiment— I’m not ashamed to tell— My colonel and my officer They treated me mighty well. I served four months at Rollie Through sleet, snow, and ice, And next received my orders: Go meet old Sterling Price.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

That old secession traitor He didn’t like the fun; He gathered up his rebel band, To Arkansaw he run. We were close pursuing them By night and by day, And a many of those base rebels We killed upon the way. We followed through to Pea Ridge, And there we stopped our chase; But that poor frightened rebel band Rolled on in mighty haste. They joined old Ben McCullough, Old Mackintosh and Rain, And they mustered eighty thousand, And here they come again. They marched through pomp and splendor, Led on by brave Van Dorn, And there they found us waiting At the tavern called Elkhorn. They threw themselves around us In the dark shade of night, And planted out their batteries And waited till daylight. We opened up our batteries, Which made the mountain roar, And on the ground in many a place Was red with human gore. We shot old Ben McCullough, Old Slack and Mackintush, And shot old Sterling in the arm And sent him in a rush. Reckon what secesh will think When we tell ’em of our rhyme About old Sterling Price— He’s a-gettin on quick time. Segal’s after him In a mighty purty gait; He wants to whip the old secesh And drive him from our State.95 Battle of Pea Ridge It was on March the seventh in the year of sixty-two, We had a sore engagement with Abe Lincoln’s crew; Van Dorn was our commander, as you remember be, We lost ten thousand of our men near the Indian Territoree.

359

Several songs and poems were written commemorating the battle of Pea Ridge of 1862; this one did not enter oral tradition. The chorus shows that it was set to the tune of “Dixie.” From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

361

Cap Price came riding up the line, his horse was in a pace, And as he gave the word “retreat,” the tears rolled down his face; Ten thousand deaths I’d rather die than they should gain the field, From that he got a fatal shot, which caused him to yield. I know you brave Missouri boys were never yet afraid, Let’s try to form in order, retreat the best we can; The word “retreat” was passed around, it caused a heathen cry, Helter-skelter through the woods, like lost sheep they did fly. At Springfield and Cartherage a-many-a hero fell, At Lexington and Drywood, as near the truth could tell; But such another carnage of did I ever see, Happened on old Pea Ridge near the Indian Territoree.96

Located in northwest Arkansas just south of the Missouri state line, Pea Ridge was the site of the only important Civil War battle fought in Arkansas. On March 6 –7, 1862, 11,000 Union soldiers under General Samuel Curtis defeated 16,000 Confederate troops, aided by 800–1,000 Cherokees, commanded by generals Earl Van Dorn, Sterling Price, and Ben McCulloch. After a fierce opening assault from the rear, the Confederates initially gained the advantage. After a desperate struggle with severe losses on both sides, Union forces counterattacked on March 8. The Confederates were forced to retreat. Several ballads were written on this battle, sometimes called “The Battle of Elkhorn Tavern,” two of which are given here. The second of these, not reported elsewhere, has deteriorated somewhat in the century between its composition and its recovery by folklorist Mary C. Parler.97 Henry DeMarsan published a broadside with another Pea Ridge song that seems not to have entered oral tradition.98 Arkansas Sheik Come all you Missouri girls and listen to my noise, Never you marry an Arkansas boy; If you do, I’ll tell you what’ll be, (Cold) corn bread and ’lasses and sassafras tea. (2) When you go a courtin’ I’ll tell you how to dress, A buckskin huntin’ shirt and this is the best, And old cloth hat with no brim crown, An old pair of shoes with the heels run down. (2) First thing he does whenever he goes in, He takes a chew tobaccer and he slobbers on his chin; The first thing he says whenever he sits down, “Madam ain’t your johnny cakes a bakin’ too brown?” (2) They milk a little brindle cow, they strain it in a gourd, They put it the corner and they cover with a board, Some gets a little and some gets none, (And) this is the way the Arkansawyers run. (2) An old board roof and a puncheon floor, An old pole bedstead, an oak board door; Sleeping on the slats with a handful of straw, Tryin’ to get along with a mother-in-law.

362

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

An old blind mule and an old milk cow, A razor back hog and a bull tongue plow He had his poke salad and his sassafras tea But the Arkansas sheik is a mystery to me. (2) Now I’ve sung you all my song and I guess you’re glad its through The Arkansas sheik is a feelin’ kind of blue; He got drunk and he took in the town, Cause the Arkansas gal turned his damper down. (2)99

This is our third encounter with a variant of this song; the others are “De Free Nigger” (Virginia) and “West Virginia Gals” (West Virginia). In this version the song has been turned back into a state-versus-state rivalry, as in the original 1841 sheet music text. In 1841 it was Virginia versus Carolina; here it is Missouri versus Arkansas. As in the West Virginia song, all allusions to African Americans have been whitewashed out. In titling the song “Arkansas Sheik”—not a title encountered in other renditions—Puckett and McMichen were probably trying to capitalize on the success of pop songs of the day with sheik in the title—notably, “Sheik of Araby.” Both Puckett and McMichen were from north Georgia. Other state variants include “Kansas Boys,” “Kentucky Boys,” “The Texian Boys,” “Mississippi Girls,” “Alsea [Oregon] Boys,” “Cheyenne [Wyoming] Boys,” “On the Road to California,” “Don’t Marry the Mormon Boys,” and “Illinois Gals.” Eureka! There is a stream, they say, Where crystal waters flow, Will cure any man whether sick or well, If he will only go. Chorus: We’re coming, Arkansas, We’re coming, Arkansas, Our four-horse team will soon be seen In the hills of Arkansas. To Eureka Springs we are bound To go and try our luck; But the chicken-hearted people had better stay home And try a sick man’s pluck. I tell you the roads are rough, If you don’t believe it just go; There are hills and hollows, rocks and stumps On the way to Arkansas. I tell you the Springs are tough, And you will find them so; The ways of the people so wicked and rough, Then away from the Springs we’ll go. Chorus: We’re leaving Arkansas, We’re leaving Arkansas, Our four-horse team will no more be seen In the hills of Arkansas.100

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

363

In 1864 a song making fun of Idaho and its residents (see the discussion of Idaho songs in chapter 8) was sufficiently popular that it was used as the basis for a similar song about Arkansas titled “Eureka!” (the name of an Arkansas town). At first it sounds like this is a delightful place, but by the song’s end, the listener is not so sure. My Name Is John Johanna My name is John Johanna, I came from Buffalo town For nine long years I’ve travelled this wide wide world around, Through ups and down and miseries, an’ some good days I saw But I never knew what misery was till I went to Arkansas. I went up to the station, the operator to find, Showed him my situation, and where I wanted to ride; Said, “hand me down five dollars lad, a ticket you shall draw, Then [land you safely?] railway in the State of Arkansas.” I rode up to the station, then chanced to meet a friend, Alan Catcher was his name although they called him Cane, His hair hung down in rat tails below his under jaw, He said he run the best hotel in the state of Arkansas. I followed my companion to his respected place, Saw pity and starvation was pictured on his face; His bread was old corn dodger, his beef I could not chaw, He charged me fifty cents a day in the state of Arkansas. I got up that next morning to catch that early train, He said, “Don’t be in a hurry, lad, I have some land to strain, You’ll get your fifty cents a day, and all that you can chaw; You’ll find yourself a different lad when you leave old Arkansas.” I worked six weeks for the son-of-a-gun, Alan Catcher was his name, He stood seven feet two inches, as tall as any crane; I got so thin on sassafras tea I could hide behind a straw, You bet I was a different lad when I left old Arkansas. Farewell you old corn rabbits, also you dodger pills, Likewise you walking skeletons, you old fatback [?] hills, If you ever see my face again I’ll hand you down my paw, I’ll be lookin’ through a telescope from home to Arkansas.101

There are numerous songs and tales in different oral traditions about the traveler who, like John Johanna in this song, gets a lot less than he is promised. Kelly Harrell, the Virginia-born singer of this text, probably learned it in the early 1900s (he was born in 1889), by which time it had already become somewhat garbled. There are no nineteenthcentury texts, but some from Missouri have a line “It was in the year of . . .” and the year is 1871 or 1882; these bracket a plausible time range for the song’s origin. It is more usually titled “An Arkansas Traveler.” The Arkansas Song Come all of my fellow citizens, wherever you may be, I’ll tell you of an accident that happened unto me;

364

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

I know I was a careless lad, I know I broke the law, So I’ll step out to hear them shout for me in Arkansas. As I rode down to Harrison Town a day or so ago, .... The crowd that followed after me, I’m sure they had no doubt, But what I’d dwell in the Berryville Jail before the week was out. They ’rested me on King’s River, I might have killed a crowd, If it hadn’t a been for the shackles and chains that ring so clear and loud. They read to me the summons, told me to hush my jaw, That I would dwell in the Berryville jail, Carrol County, Arkansas. It’s now I lay in the Berryville jail, lay there for to weep and wail, No one so near to care for me, or take me out on bail; So I’ll stay here till circuit court, go through a course of law, And then take a ride by the marshall’s side to Little Rock, Arkansas. Now here is one thing that I have left out, to you I’m going to replace, It is that horse, that noble horse, that horse I rode on the race. Well, I hope he will be well cared for, his bed be made of straw, So he can live and die with a ripe old age in the state of Arkansas. Now here’s another thing I’ve now left out, to you I’m going to tell, It is that girl, that pretty little girl, that girl I loved so well; If ever I gain my liberty, have bread and meat to chaw, I’ll live at home with the girl I love in the state of Arkansas.102

This rather unusual narrative has some unusual details, but the author (if it is indeed autobiographical) has discreetly declined to tell us precisely what he (or she) did that resulted in a term in prison. Not many ballad heroes set out to study law so that they can obtain their own freedom. The song has not been reported elsewhere. It would seem to date from the latter half of the nineteenth century. My Happy Little Home in Arkansas Come see me neighbors, come along I’ll be there to greet you At my happy little home in Arkansas. I’ll show you cotton, show you cane Show you every kind of grain At my happy little home in Arkansas. We’ll go hunting in the mountains An’ we’ll bathe in the mineral springs At my happy little home in Arkansas.103

Good manners requires that we leave Arkansas on a complimentary note; this little song should balance out the critical opinions with the favorable ones. It was collected several times in the twentieth century and probably dates from the late nineteenth century. The Counties of Arkansas There’s Benton, Carroll, Marion, Boone in a line, With Fulton, Sharp, Randolph and Claythey make the northern nine,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

365

Then Greene and Mississippi and Crittendon on the east, St. Francis, Lee and Phillips too, Desha and Chicot least. Hurrah, hurrah, let’s make old Arkansas The banner state for enterprise, good schools and moral law, Hurrah, hurrah, for Arkansas hurrah, The best of all her counties fine is our own Ouachita. Columbia, Miller, Ashley, Fair, Union and Lafayette Along our southern boundary line of thirty-three are set, Sevier and Little River, Polk and Scott among the best, Sebastian, Crawford, Washington are ranged along the west. Then Bradley, Drew and old Calhoun and Ouachita you know, With Hempstead and Nevada make another southern row, Montgomery, Howard, Pike and Yell, all counties rich and fine, With Logan, Franklin, Madison stand next the western line. Then Newton, Searcy, Izard, Stone, Craghead and Lawrence fine Will make, if Sharp be counted in, another northern line, While Poinsett, Crass, Woodruff, Monroe just next the east we see, With Arkansas and Lincoln near that line will double be. Pulaski in the center stands, which Perry bounds northwest, With Faulkner north and Lonoke east, Saline doth bound the rest, Just south of these are Jefferson, Grant, Garland, Hot Springs too, While Cleveland, Clark and Dallas fair still further south we view. North central counties are Conway, Van Buren, Cleburne, White, With Pope and Johnson on the left, and Jackson on the right, And this leaves Independence alone in this roll call, And judging by her grand old name this matters not at all.104

How many schoolchildren today can recite the names of the counties of their home state? For that matter, how many civic leaders can? This didactic song is a reminder how educational priorities have shifted in the last century; whether for the better or the worse is for the reader to decide. The song was used in the schools of Camden, Ouachita County, Arkansas, for many years, according to Vance Randolph. It was thought to have been written by Mrs. Annie Coble Wilson, a pioneer schoolteacher there.

MISSOURI Missouri and adjacent lands passed from French hands to Spanish (1764) and back to French (1800) before purchase by the United States in 1803. Spain lured settlers from the United States with offers of free land and Spanish citizenship; these pioneers joined the some 10,000 residents, most of whom were French settlers from the earlier period. Spain had also allowed slavery, which soon posed another problem in the early 1800s: since the passage of the Northwest Ordinance in 1787 outlawed slavery in territory ceded from Britain, Missouri attracted settlers from the southern states, who wanted to bring the institution with them in their new settlements. Missouri achieved statehood as a slavery state in 1821 under the Missouri Compromise of 1820, by which new states were to be admitted in pairs, to preserve the balance between free and slave states in the Union. Still, conflicting views of the institution caused severe conflicts, leading to serious violence, in the 1830s.

366

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Laws were enacted to prohibit teaching any black to read or write and to prevent any free black from entering the state. The case of the Missouri slave Dred Scott, who sued for his freedom on the grounds that his master had for a time moved him into the free state of Illinois and the free territory of Wisconsin, resulted in a Supreme Court decision in 1857 that legalized slavery in all the territories. The 1850s were years of increasing dissension, worsened by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which, by providing for local determination of slavery, heightened the antagonisms between factions. Missouri stayed within the Union during the Civil War, but Missourians fought on both sides; those who sympathized with the Confederacy were dealt with harshly after the war.105 Joe Bowers My name is Joe Bowers, I have got a brother Ike, I came from old Missouri, all the way from Pike, I’ll tell you why I left thar, and why I came to roam, And leave my poor old mammy, so far away from home. I used to court a gal thar, her name was Sally Black; I axed if she’d marry me, she said it was a whack; Says she to me, “Joe Bowers, before we hitch for life You ought to get a little home to keep your little wife.” “Oh! Sally, dearest sally, Oh! Sally, for your sake, I’ll go to California and try to raise a stake.” Says she to me: “Joe Bowers, you are the man to win, Here’s a kiss to bind the bargain,” and she hove a dozen in. When I got in that country, I hadn’t “nary red,” I had such wolfish feelings, I wished myself most dead; But the thoughts of my dear Sally soon made them feelings git And whispered hopes to Bowers, I wish I had ’em yit. At length, I went to mining, put in my biggest licks, Went down upon the boulders just like a thousand bricks, I worked both late and early, in rain, in sun, in snow. I was working for my Sally, ’twas all the same to Joe. At length I got a letter from my dear brother Ike, It came from old Missouri, all the way from Pike, It brought to me the darndest news, that ever you did hear, My heart is almost bustin’, so pray excuse this tear. It said that Sal was false to me, her love for me had fled, She got married to a butcher, the butcher’s hair was red And more than that the letter said, it’s enough to make me swear, That Sally had a baby, the baby had red hair. Now I’ve told you all I can about this sad affair, ’Bout Sally marrying a butcher, that butcher had red hair, But whether ’twas a boy or gal child, the letter never said, It only said the baby’s hair was inclined to be red.106

The ballad “Joe Bowers” is a western adaptation of an ballad of British origin titled “The Girl I Left Behind.” It tells a similar story—a young man leaves his true love to find

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

367

Joe Bowers may have been entirely fictitious, but that did not prevent his purported picture from being published. From William E. Connelley, Doniphan’s Expedition and the Conquest of New Mexico and California (Kansas City: Bryant & Douglas Book and Stationery Co., 1907).

his fortune to mutual vows of fidelity, only to be discarded by her later. Joe is a regular workhorse; his love for Sally drives him to no limits in the quest for gold. The Bowers story adds a fillip—doubtless very amusing to the wild western audiences for whom the song was sung back in the 1860s—about Sally’s new love and her child. Did the baby come before she married the lowlife knife wielder? Had Joe been gone more than the standard gestation period? Identifying Ike and his brother as denizens of Pike County, Missouri (“pikers”), would have immediately set up the audience for a story of some lower-class folk; in much the same way, okie and arkie came to have pejorative connotations a century later. And for Sally to take up with a butcher—a man whose meat-handling activities may not always have fallen under the scrutiny of the Department of Agriculture—rubs Joe’s nose in his shame even more. It has been recovered not only from singers out west, but also in Michigan, West Virginia, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, to name but some of the outlying states. The authorship of “Joe Bowers” is not known for certain, but the number of distinguished candidates whose names have been thrown in the ring by their supporters is remarkable. They include Mark Twain; the California poet George Horatio Derby (“Squibob”); songwriter Will S. Hays (credited on at least one broadside); John Woodward, a western actor and singer in the 1860s; and John A. Stone (“Old Put”), author of two important songsters of the 1850s and credited with over 50 songs of the gold rush days. Stone himself crossed the plains from Pike County to California in 1850 and toured the mining camps with a small group of singers. He would be a good bet for the author, but his failure to include the song in one of his several publications weakens his advocates’ case. The earliest known publication of the song was in 1860, in the second edition of Johnson’s Original Comic

368

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Songs (San Francisco); it did not appear in the first edition of 1855. This suggests a date of composition between these two publication dates. According to one account, in 1849, Captain McPike organized a band of 200 gold hunters, who crossed the plains to California. Among them was an ox driver named Joe Bowers—a good-natured greenhorn seeking his fortune so that he could win over his sweetheart. One of the party was Frank Swift, later a journalist, who, one evening, composed a song about Joe Bowers and sang it around the campfire. The ballad was added to nightly, until it attained considerable length.107 The War in Missouri in ’61 Come all my jolly Union boys, to you the truth I’ll tell, About old Claybourn Jacks of whom you know so well. He undertook a project, and he didn’t quite succeed: It was the forcing of Missouri from the Union to secede. There was a man in Congress whose name was Tom Price. He talked to the governor and gave him good advice; He told him the line of policy in which he was pursuing That sooner or later the state he would ruin. The next step of the governor, I don’t think it very wise, It was the violation of the Harney compromise. If you don’t know how he did it, I can tell you on the square: It was by raising on large scales the means of warfare. He sent his boys to St. Louis, I suppose for to drill, They hadn’t been there long before they got their fill. They were under a commander, I suppose his name was Frost; When Lyon came and took them, and not a man was lost. When the governor found he was beat at this he swore he’d cut a dash, He went up to the treasury and wagged off with the cash. And then he went to Boonville to finish out his swell, And in his proclamation a lie he did tell. The Lion also pursued him, he traveled night and day Hoping to get to Boonville before he run away. When they saw the Lion coming, with Frank Blair by his side, Said one unto another, “Boys, it’s time for us to slide.” So they opened up their batteries and they thought they’d have some fun, But the third time the Lion roared the Dixie boys run. The next fight was at Carthage. The Rebs thought they’d have their fun Where they surrounded Sigel—and wished they’d ne’er begun; For in a little creek bottom about three hundred yards around Thirteen hundred boasting Dixie boys lay dead upon the ground. Says Parson to old Price, “I think we’d better give it o’er, I don’t think it will pay us to fight him any more. He can’t be beat for skill, and he don’t lack for wit, For he can whip the devil and all the time retreat.” Old Parson met McCullogh; a sad story he did tell: “Thirteen hundred of our bravest boys this day bid us farewell.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

369

By the roar of Totten’s battery and the wielding of their blades All of our one-horse generals lie back in the shade.” Then again at Springfield they heard the Lion roar; Grape-shot and minnie [i.e., minié] balls like hail around did pour. The Lion received a shot that sent him to his den, And the bursting of a bomb did the work for old Ben. And now, my jolly Union boys, don’t make fun of my grammar I’m sure I’ve made my living with my plow and my hammer. I’m going to tell you my name, whether you want to know it or not; I live in Miller County and my name is B. F. Lock.108

This ballad offers considerably more local history than one usually encounters in a traditional ballad; in fact, whether it actually circulated in oral tradition is uncertain. Professor Belden, who published it, provided identifications for the various people named: Claiborne F. Jackson was Governor of Missouri in 1861, and worked with Sterling Price to have Missouri join the Southern states. Thomas Lawson Price was a business man and promotor especially of railroads; he opposed Gov. Jackson’s efforts to align Missouri with the seceding states. Gen. William S. Harney commanded U.S. troops in St. Louis in the spring of 1861; the “Harney compromise” was a settlement of a dispute between the U.S. troops and the state Militia at the time. Brig. Gen. Daniel M. Frost commanded the state Militia at Camp Jackson when Gen. Lyon demanded and received their surrender on 10 May 1861. Gen. Lyon was killed at the battle of Wilson’s Creek near Springfield. Gen. McCullough participated in the battle; he was killed at the battle of Elkhorn Tavern in Arkansas in 1862. “Parsons” probably refers to Lewis Baldin Parsons, a New York-born lawyer who had settled in St. Louis in 1854 and helped in organizing land and water transport of the army.109

The Brush Creek Wreck Come all you railroad runners, with you I’ll interfere, To tell you of destruction near a coal town called Bevier. The two o’clock express train was an hour behind the time. She jumped the track at sunset to leave a mournful crime. They got old twenty-two engine and sent her on the fly, But little did those people think they were going out to die. It whistled for the signal as they sailed across the ridge; Just then the switch flew backwards and sent them through the bridge. Dick Ash, he stopped his engine and ran back to the place Where he heard cries of “Murder,” but he could not see a face. His clothes he tore from breast to gore and threw them on the deck To help the killed and wounded that lay beneath the wreck. The first he found was Connor, grand foreman of the day, Who was lying there beneath the wreck and not one word could say. There lay that noble doctor, twould cause all tears to start, He was down beneath the palace car with a snag run through his heart. Now when old Brookfield heard of this she did all on earth she could, Made ready for excursions and sent for Doctor Wood;

370

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

She made a grand procession with torchlight and the band; But the cries of those poor widows no human heart could stand. Old Brookfield acted faithful and no time did she roam, Until she made excursions and sent them to their home.110 Awful Calamity Two Wrecks at One Time on the H. & St. Jo. Five Men Killed and Others Dangerous Wounded. The Morning Passenger Train in the Ditch—Construction Train on Its Way to the Relief, Goes Through a Bridge.

A special extra edition of the Brookfield Gazette (Missouri) was issued on Tuesday, March 1, 1881 (the paper came out regularly on Thursdays), to tell readers of the double tragedy on what was then the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, just east of Bevier in Macon County, Missouri. On that morning, the westbound passenger train jumped the track, throwing engine, baggage cars, and four coaches into the ditch. Ten persons were injured, none fatally. Word was sent to the town of Brookfield, and a wrecking train, carrying derrick, section hands, and two doctors, was dispatched. At Brush Creek, about halfway to Bevier, the train tipped off the bridge and into the stream, resulting in a wreck considerably more destructive than the one it had been sent to rescue: 5 men were killed and another 15 injured. Dr. O. H. Wood was one of those killed in the second wreck. Altogether, 10 men were killed in the two wrecks.111 The ballad singer (or perhaps the original writer) has garbled facts somewhat; Dr. Wood was killed on the second train, though the lyrics suggest he was on the first train (there would not have been a “palace” car on the rescue train). There are some other peculiarities: cries of “murder” and labeling the accident a “crime” seem excessive; and the characterization of faithful old Brookfield is an odd one for a town. The ballad was written down (according to the collector) within a short time of the wreck, so perhaps we should look askance at the writer, rather than the singer. Jesse James Jesse James was a lad that killed many a man, He robbed the Danville train; But that dirty little coward that shot at Mr. Howard, Has laid Jesse James in his grave. It was little Robert Ford, that dirty little coward, I wonder how he does feel; For he ate of Jesse’s bread and slept in Jesse’s bed, Then laid Jesse James in his grave. Chorus: Poor Jesse had a wife, to mourn for his life, Children they were brave; But that dirty little coward, that shot at Mr. Howard Has laid Jesse James in his grave.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

Outlaw Jesse James inspired a number of songs; this sheet music cover (1911) belonged to one that did not enter oral tradition. Author’s collection.

It was with his brother Frank, he robbed the Gallatin bank, And carried the money from the town; It was at this very place they had a little chase, For they shot Capt. Sheets to the ground. They went to the crossing not very far from there, And there they did the same, With the agent on his knees he delivered up the keys To the outlaws Frank and Jesse James. It was on a Wednesday night, the moon was shining bright, They robbed the Danville train;

371

372

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The people they did say for many miles away, It was robbed by Frank and Jesse James. It was on Saturday night, the moon was shining bright, Talking with his family brave, Robert Ford came along like a thief in the night, And he laid Jesse James in his grave. The people held their breath when they heard of Jesse’s death, And wondered however he came to die. It was one of the gang called little Robert Ford, He shot Jesse James on the sly. This song was made by Billy LaShade, As soon as the news did arrive, He said there’s no man with the law in his hand Can take Jesse James alive.112

Jesse Woodson James (1847–1882) was born in Clay County, Missouri, and his early years were spent in the company of his loving parents. But he grew up in turbulent times, punctuated by border warfare, Civil War (he joined Quantrell’s raiders), and postbellum violence. Like many young men of action, he found himself without a legitimate cause when the Civil War ended, and he was easily drawn to a life of crime. He committed his first bank robbery in 1866 and was implicated in 10 others, not all proven. The most memorable was the disastrous Northfield, Minnesota, raid (see the song “Cole Younger” in the section on Minnesota songs, in chapter 5) in 1876, from which he managed to escape without being caught. His carried out his first train robbery in 1873 near Adair, Iowa; he was involved in six more by 1881. While James was still alive, there began a gradual transformation of his image in the public’s mind to that of a latter-day Robin Hood, a characterization that owed less to fact than to wishful thinking; most of the noble deeds attributed to James—such as leaving a $1,000 bill at the table of a poor widow who fed him—have been shown to have had no factual basis. On April 3, 1882, James was 35 years old, living with his family in St. Joseph, Missouri, under the assumed name of Thomas Howard, when he was shot in the back by his cousin Robert Ford. It was a pleasant Sunday morning; James was standing on a chair to adjust a picture of populist hero and former president Andrew Jackson hanging askew on the wall. With his back to Ford, he presented the silver-crazed Judas an irresistible target. Ford and his brother Charley had joined the James gang some months earlier, long nursing a plan to betray him for the $10,000 reward on his head. Ford’s cowardly act failed to win him the hero status he had hoped for; he was killed some time later in a barroom brawl after living the life of a social outcast. ( Ford’s psyche was subjected to mass media analysis in the 1948 film I Shot Jesse James.) Several ballads were written about James, some very soon after the assassination. The most common one was attributed to Billy Ga(r)shade (or, as here, LaShade), a Missouri printer who knew the James. The text reprinted here is the earliest known publication of the song—in a self-published work from 1887 that has survived in very few copies. The songbook offers no author credits; in five short years the ballad had escaped from its creator, never to be returned. The Meeks Murder I’m one of Mister Meeks’ little girls, An’ if you’ll lend an ear,

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

373

I’ll tell you all the saddest tale That ever you did hear. We lived upon the Taylor’s farm, Not many miles from town; One night while we was all asleep The Taylor boys come down. They wanted to take my papa away; My mamma answered no; We could not be left here alone, But the family all could go. We got into the wagon then, An’ rode to Jenkins Hill, An’ all at once we knew not why, But the team was standin’ still. They murdered my mamma an’ papa too, An’ knocked baby in the head; They murdered my brothers an’ sisters four An’ left me there for dead. An’ now my little song you’ve heard, An’ the rest you all know well; I’m left an’ orphaned here alone In this wide world to dwell. I want you all to pray for me, That I may meet them there; In heaven above where all is love, There’ll be no murderin’ there.113

Vance Randolph, who collected this and three other texts about the murder that took place on May 11, 1894, near Browning, Missouri, quoted from the Encyclopedia of the History of Missouri: The Taylor brothers, William P. and George E., were prosperous and prominent citizens, of Linn County; one a banker and the other a schoolteacher and both farmers. Nevertheless, their reputations were somewhat questionable: George was believed to have killed a man in Stone County, and William to have committed arson in Bowning (near the north edge of Linn County). In 1894 he was indicted for cattle-stealing. Gus Meeks of Milan (in the adjoining county to the north), lived on a farm owned by Taylors, had been employed by Taylor in the rustling business and convicted. In prison, he made a confession and was pardoned by the governor to testify against Taylor. Thereupon Taylor proposed to Meeks to find him a good job elsewhere. On the night of 11 May the Taylor brothers appeared with a wagon and team at Meeks’s house in Milan and bundled him, his wife, and his three children into it to drive them to the promised new job. At the foot of Jenkins Hill, near Browning, the whole Meeks family (the Taylors believed) were killed with an axe, and the bodies stuffed under a haystack on George Taylor’s farm near by. The Taylors they set fire to the stack to cover up the traces of their crime, and George harrowed the ground around the stack to obliterate the wheel-tracks. But the hay was damp and would not burn. Toward morning Nellie Meeks, one of the children supposed to be dead, recovered consciousness and crept to the house of a neighbor named Carter, revealing the crime. The Taylors fled, but were captured in August in Arkansas. They were tried (under change of venue) in Carroll County, and convicted; but George escaped before

374

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

the time set for the execution, and has never been heard from since. William Taylor was hanged at Carrollton 30 April 1896.114

According to H. M. Belden, there were altogether five ballads about the murder that survived long enough to be collected in the twentieth century. There was a widely believed local tradition that Nellie Meeks, the surviving child, used to sing this piece at carnivals in the 1890s, but a cousin of hers firmly denied it. Maxwell’s Doom I came to North America, Old England I forsook, I took the name of Maxwell, alias U. M. Brooks. I was so very reckless, a spendthrift too was I. I murdered Arthur Preller my wants to satisfy. My name is U. M. Brooks, my name I did deny. I leave my aged parents in sorrow here to die. How little did they think that I in all my youth and bloom Would on the tenth of August meet my fatal doom. I went down to the station, I boarded a Frisco train; I knew that after such a crime I could not there remain. The speed of the train so very fast, I thought that I was free; I did not think they’d telegraph so far ahead of me. I jumped aboard the big steamboat saying, “Now I know I’m free.” An officer arrested me on the New Zealand sea. They took me back to old St. Louis and placed me in a cell, For the crime I had committed at the Southern Hotel. I remember the last farewell to mother and sister so young, How they pleaded with Governor Moorhouse that I might not be hung. They would not even grant me time to have my father come Across the briny water to say “Farewell, my son.” I put my hopes in heaven; all earthly joys have fled. I know my friends will grieve for me long after I am dead And laid to rest in all my peaceful grave. I hope to meet in heaven and be forever blessed.115

According to Professor Belden, dean of Missouri folk song collectors, Hugh Mottram Brooks, under the alias of Walter H. Lennox-Maxwell, murdered C. Arthur Preller—both were Englishmen—with chloroform and strangulation on April 5, 1885, at the Southern Hotel in St. Louis. The following day, Brooks left for San Francisco, where he embarked on a ship for New Zealand. When his hotel room was opened a few days after Brooks’s departure, Preller’s body was found stuffed in a clothes trunk. Brooks was arrested before debarking at Auckland, extradited, and tried and convicted in May 1886 in St. Louis. His conviction was appealed at successively higher courts, eventually being affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court on January 23, 1888. The ballad is modeled after “Charles Guiteau” and its predecessors, most notably “The Lamentation of James Rodgers” (discussed in the section on New York songs). The Bald Knobber Song Adieu to old Kirbyville, I can no longer stay, Hard times and Bald Knobbers has driven me away;

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

375

Hard times and Bald Knobbers has caused me for to roam; My name is Robert Cobart, near Kirbyville’s my home. My friends and relations, it’s much against my will To leave my dear old mother and go from Kirbyville; But for the sake of dear ones, who wants me for to go, I’ll arm myself with weapons, and off to Mexico. Bald Knobbers are no gentlemen, they’re nothing more than hogs, They tried to hunt me down, boys, and treat me like a dog; With their guns and their horses they tried to hunt me down, And treat me like the Taylor boys, who now lies in the ground. There’s one big Bald Knobber who is a noted rogue, He stole from Joseph Bookout some sixteen head of hogs; Walked boldly in the courthouse and swore they was his own, He stole them by the drove, boys, and horsed them over home. There is another Bald Knobber who rides a pony blue, He robbed old Nell Macully, and Mr. Thompson too; He took from them their money, boys, and from them rode away, And now the highway robbers is the big men of the day. There is one big black rascal whose name I will expose; His name is Nat MacKinney and he wears his Federal clothes; He tries to boss the people and make them do his will, There’s some that does not fear him, but others mind him still. To raise a Bald Knobber excitement I made a splendid hand, I don’t fear judge nor jury, I don’t fear any man. And if they want to try me, they’ve nothing else to do, I’ll take my old Colt’s patent, and I’ll make an opening through. .... .... But there’s a day a-coming, boys, when they will hunt their dens, And if I’m not mistaken there is some will find their ends.116

Writing in the 1940s, collector Vance Randolph explained, The Bald Knobbers were vigilantes organized in 1884, in Taney County, Mo., to defend law and order in an outlaw-ridden settlement. They were so named because they held meetings on a certain “bald knob” between Branson and Kirbyville. Their leader was a Springfield saloon-keeper named Nat. N. Kinney. The organization soon degenerated into a mob of irresponsible night-riders; many were imprisoned, several were hanged for murder. . . . The Bald Knobber dictatorship ended in 1889, but there are still many people in Taney County who feel very strongly about the matter, and retain bitter memories of the persons and incidents mentioned in the “Bald Knobber Song.” I should not care to sing this song publicly, even today, in either Forsyth or Kirbyville.117 Been on the Job Too Long (Duncan and Brady) Twinkle, twinkle, ’lectric star, Yonder goes Brady on a ’lectric car; Makin’ his way to the freedom [line/land?], He’s gonna kill him a sucker like a bulldog man. Refrain: ’Cause he’s been on the job too long.

376

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Brady was a worker on the telephone wire, ’Long come Duncan with a shinin’ star, Looked at old Brady right through the specs, He says, “There’s no use in talking, Brady, get your checks.” Brady replied and he answered “No,” Duncan showed him a sight that was never before; Says, “Now Brady you’re running your arrest,” Old Duncan shot a hole through Brady’s chest. Brady had a little twenty-five, Kill a man about a half a mile; Duncan had a big forty-four, Well, he laid old Brady in the barroom door. Early in the morning, just about nine, Corpse was in the hack all fondly lined; White and the black all gathered around, They’re gonna take Mr. Brady to the buryin’ ground. Brady went to hell with a crutch on his arm, Said, “Mister Devil, well I ain’t here long”; Devil says, “It is just this a way, Well, there’s never been a sucker here that got away.” Brady had a little twenty-five, Kill a man about a half a mile; Duncan had a big forty-four, Well, he laid old Brady in the barroom door.118

St. Louis was founded as a fur traders’ post in 1764 on the bank of the Mississippi River and only 10 miles below its confluence with the Missouri River. By the end of the nineteenth century it had fallen prey to political corruption, racial tensions, social upheaval, and musical creativity. Perhaps involved with all of these was the wildly popular brothel run by Babe Connors, whose staff provided not only corporeal stimulation but also esthetic delights. The most memorable entertainer by some accounts was a chanteuse known as Mama Lou—a short, chunky, not particularly attractive African American who belted out songs in the ragtimey style that was just becoming fashionable. A number of African American blues ballads have been associated with the Connors–Mama Lou establishment; if she didn’t create them, she certainly helped to popularize them. During the 1890s at least three murders involving the African American working-class community were turned into songs that have survived for over a century now: “Duncan and Brady” and the two ballads that follow. Harry Duncan shot James Brady in a saloon operated by African American Charles Starkes at 715 North 11th Street, St. Louis, on October 6, 1890. At around 8:30 P.M., a crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside the saloon to watch a sparring match between Luther Duncan and Bob Henderson. Complaints brought some police officers, one of whom, John J. Gaffney, got in an argument with Duncan and was beaten and briefly knocked out. On regaining consciousness, he fired his revolver in the air. The shots attracted other policemen, including Irish-born officer James Brady. Meanwhile, Gaffney, weak and bleeding, entered the saloon after Duncan to apprehend him. Harry Duncan (relationship not given) tried to impede Gaffney and struck him with a billiard cue stick. Other officers entered the saloon and attempted to arrest Harry Duncan, and shots were exchanged by

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

377

various parties. Brady entered at about this moment and ordered Duncan to surrender. He fired a shot at Duncan, who was crouched behind the counter. As he leaned over the counter, Duncan jumped up and shot Brady. Other officers fired at Duncan. Duncan was finally arrested, and Brady died from his wounds. Feelings between the African American and Irish American communities were far from cordial in those years, and Duncan’s attorneys requested a change of venue outside St. Louis so their client could receive a fair trial. Nevertheless, he was found guilty in November 1892 and was hanged on July 27, 1894, after a series of stays. For years afterward, there were some who argued that it was saloon keeper Starkes who had fired the fatal shot, not Duncan. On his way to his execution, Duncan, who had worked as a Pullman porter but also acted and was highly regarded as a singer, reportedly gave a note to a fellow prisoner with his final statement, written in a poem. It was published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch on August 9, 1894; it has no evident relation to the song that survived.119 Fragments of the ballad were reported in the 1920s, by which time it had made its way to Texas, Nebraska, Alabama, and North Carolina. The recording quoted here, the first made of the ballad, was by a North Carolina hillbilly band. Some historical details have become lost or garbled; in some versions it is Brady who kills Duncan. In this text, Duncan is the policeman. The references to electric car and telephone line are inexplicable, except by misunderstanding or accretion from some other song. Stagolee Police and officer, how can it be, You can ’rest everybody but cruel Stagolee, Refrain: That bad man, O cruel Stagolee. Billy Lyons told Stagolee, “Please don’t take my life,” Says, “I got two little babes and a darling lovin’ wife.” Refrain: He’s a bad man, O cruel Stagolee. “What I care about your two little babes, your darling lovin wife,” Said, “You done stole my Stetson hat, and I’m bound to take your life.” Refrain. Gentlemens of the jury, what you think of that? Says Stagolee killed Billy Lyons ’bout a five dollar Stetson hat. Refrain. Boom boom, boom boom, when the 44, When I spied Billy Lyons he was lyin’ down in the floor. Refrain: That bad man, O cruel Stagolee. Standin’ on the gallows, Stagolee did curse, The judge said, “let’s kill him before he kills some of us.” Refrain: He’s a bad man, O cruel Stagolee. Standin’ on the gallows with his head way up high, At twelve o’clock they killed him, they was all glad to see him die. Refrain. Police and officers, how can it be, You can arrest everybody but cruel Stagolee. Refrain: That bad man, O cruel Stagolee.120

At around 10:00 P.M., as Santa’s sleigh was flying earthward in 1895, Lee “Stack Lee” Shelton shot William Lyons at Bill Curtis’s saloon at 11th and Morgan streets, St. Louis,

378

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

one block from where Duncan shot Brady after a violent brawl (see preceding song, “Been on the Job Too Long”). Lyons died in the hospital six hours later, on December 26. The two men were friends but started quarreling earlier in the evening over politics. As the verbal altercation acquired physical aspects, Lee seized Lyons’s derby and damaged it. In retaliation, Lyons grabbed Lee’s hat. The angry exchange escalated rapidly; most of the patrons fled the saloon in fear. Lyons reached into his pocket as if to pull out a weapon; Shelton didn’t wait to see what it was, but shot Lyons with his 44. He stooped to retrieve his hat as it rolled from Lyons’s limp hand and walked calmly out of the saloon. Lee was tried and convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to prison for 25 years, commencing October 7, 1897. He was pardoned in 1909.121 The first fragmentary song about the affair was collected in 1911, and the first full text was printed in 1919. The recording quoted here was made in 1965 by Mississippi songster John Hurt, who had a brief recording career in the late 1920s and then was rediscovered in the 1960s and enjoyed considerable popularity on the folk revival circuit. Frankie Frankie was a good girl, Everybody knows, She paid one hundred dollars For Albert a suit of clothes, He’s her man and he did her wrong. Frankie went down to the corner saloon, She ordered a glass of beer, [S]he asked the barroom keeper “Has my lovin’ Albert been here? He’s been here, but he’s gone again.” “Ain’t gonna tell you no stories, Frankie, Ain’t gonna tell you no lies, But Albert passed her about an hour ago With a girl called Alice Fry, He’s your man and he’s doin’ you wrong.” Frankie went down to the corner saloon, Wasn’t gonna be gone long, [S]he peeped through the keyhole in the door, Spied Albert in Alice’s arms. “You’s my man, and you’s doin me wrong.” Frankie called Albert, Albert says “I don’t care,” “If you don’t come to the woman you love, I’m gonna haul you out of here. You’s my man, and you’s doin’ me wrong.” Frankie shot Albert, Shot him three or four time, Says, “Stand back, got the smoke in my gun Gonna see is Albert dyin’, He’s my man and he did me wrong.” Frankie and the judge Walked outside a’cryin’

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

379

The judge says to Frankie, “You gonna be justified For killin’ your man, and he did you wrong.” Dark was the night, Cold was on the ground, The last word I heard Frankie say, “Done laid old Albert down, He was my man, and he done me wrong.” Frankie was a good girl, Everybody knows, She paid one hundred dollars For Albert a suit of clothes, He’s her man and he did her wrong.122

In 1935 a Portland, Oregon, woman named Frankie Baker filed a $100,000 lawsuit against Mae West and Paramount Productions on the grounds that the motion picture She Done Him Wrong had defamed her character. She was indeed the Frankie in the longpopular song “Frankie and Johnny.” The events that inspired the ballad took place in St. Louis on October 15, 1899. Twenty-three-year-old Frankie’s boyfriend was Allen Britt, a handsome and talented young pianist. But Britt had a roving eye and landed other girlfriends, in particular, one Alice Pryor. One night, Allen and Alice went to a party, to Frankie’s consternation. When Britt returned to Frankie’s home around 3:00 A.M. Sunday morning, he started abusing Frankie, finally pulling out a knife and menacing her with it. Frankie reached under her pillow, withdrew her pistol, and shot him once—but effectively. A coroner’s jury declared the killing was justifiable homicide in self-defense, but she had to stand trial anyway. On November 13, she was tried and acquitted; she was even given her gun back. During the course of Frankie’s 1935 defamation trial, her lawyer brought to the stand expert witness Nathan Ben Young, a young African American attorney and journalist who was familiar with fin de siècle music in St. Louis. It was Young’s conviction that an African American songwriter named Bill Dooley had penned the ballad “Frankie and Johnny.” Sigmund Spaeth, renowned popular song historian and “tune detective,” took the stand and testified that he heard the ballad first in 1901, while he was a student at Haverford College near Philadelphia. Other witnesses testified to hearing the ballad years earlier—in other words, that it predated the Britt murder. One presumes that the passage of more than three decades left the memory in less than perfect condition—either that, or the witnesses were actually thinking of some other similar murder ballad. The earliest publication of a song titled “Frankie and Johnny” was in 1912, although the tune had been published eight years earlier as “He Done Me Wrong: The Death of Bill Bailey.” Yet there is no question that the folk song preceded the popular sheet music version: many folksingers, white and black, recorded the song using names closer to the historical ones: Ernest Thompson recorded (1924) “Frankie Baker,” and Arkansas Woodchopper recorded (1931) “Frankie and Albert”—the latter an obvious elision for “Al Britt.” Frankie lost her lawsuit.123 The Iron Mountain Baby I have a song I would like to sing, It’s awful, and it’s true;

380

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

About a babe thrown from a train By a mother, I know not who. This little babe, but a few days old, Was in a satchel lain; Its little clothes around it folded And thrown out from a train. The train was running at full speed, The north-bound number four; And as they crossed Big River bridge She cast it from the door. A father unkind, a mother untrue, But this I am bound to say: It must have pierced a mother heart To cast her child away. The valise was fourteen inches long In which the child was found, Six inches wide, five inches deep, And very closely bound. They bruised its head, and hurt its arm, The fall upon the ground. A dear old man lived on a farm This poor little baby found. It was Bill Helm found this child; He heard its helpless cry, And took it to his loving wife, Who would not let it die. They washed and bathed its little head, And soon they hushed its cry. May God protect them while they live, God help them when they die. This little baby, bless its heart, I cannot tell its name; It has a mother to take its part, A father just the same. They call him William Moses Gould Because he has no name; And if he lives to be a man He’ll wear it just the same. Come one, come all, attention give, This lesson is for you; Teach your children how to live And tell them what to do. This wicked world is full of sin. God help us all to pray And be prepared to enter in The fold at judgment day.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

381

The judgment day will come to all, The rich as well as poor; For God will take his children home, For Jesus is the door. This ends my song, my story’s told. I’ll say to all goodby Until we gather round the throne In that bright home on high.124 On the fourteenth of August, 1902, a small satchel was dropped from a train on the Iron Mountain division of the Missouri Pacific railway near Irondale, Washington County. A farmer named Helms living in the neighborhood came upon it a few minutes later and found that it contained a living baby. He took it home, cared for it, and after a few years adopted the child, who grew up as William Helms. A dozen years ago young Helms, then working on a newspaper at West Plains, was written up in the Kansas City Star (16 January 1927). I had previously learned that the ballad about him was the work of J. T. Barton, a United Baptist preacher living at Buick in adjoining Iron County, and wrote to him about it. He told me that he made the song five days after the finding of the child, that he fitted it to the tune of “Hicks’s Farewell,” and that it was printed and sold “all over the country” to raise money for the support of the child (the Helmses being poor country folk); that he “never charged anything” for the composition of it. A rather complete account of the making of one ballad on a local happening.125

This is an unusual ballad about a (hopefully!) unusual occurrence. For that reason, the writer, Reverend Barton, had no clear traditional models to guide him, and he wrote a unique poem set to a familiar traditional melody. Written so soon after the events, it is not unreasonable for it to adhere so well to the facts—except for the writer’s speculations about the feelings of the mother and father (in fact, it was never determined just who discharged the satchel from the train, or why) regarding their actions. The four final stanzas are all strictly homiletic in nature, having nothing directly to do with the story. The baby was called William Moses Gould because William was Helms’s name; Moses, because he was found—figuratively—in the bullrushes; and Gould, because Jay Gould was at the time owner of the Missouri Pacific railroad. Later he was known just as William Helms. The song has been collected only three times, and all in Missouri or Arkansas, most recently in 1972.126 Barton’s model, “Hicks’s Farewell,” was a once widely known religious piece, written in the 1840s, or perhaps earlier.

NOTES 1. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “South Carolina,” “Georgia,” and “Florida.” 2. Frank Moore, Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1964), 335–37. 3. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 259. 4. Moore, Songs and Ballads. 5. Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents: Harmonies of Discords of the First 100 Years (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 246; reprinted from the Richmond Enquirer, October 25, 1833, where it was headed, “The following Song, written by Mr. LeRoy Anderson, of Virginia, was sung with great taste and spirit during the past season of fashion and gaiety at Saratoga.” Punctuation modified.

382

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

6. William Francis Allen, Charles Picard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, Slave Songs of the United States (New York: Oak, 1965), 142– 43; source not identified. 7. The relation of minstrel stage music to traditional plantation slave music is complicated by agenda-driven commentaries and obscured by our lack of examples of plantation music prior to the Civil War. The common assertion that minstrel stage performers were inspired by plantation music and based their material on it is weakened by the fact that almost all the early blackface minstrels were northern whites who never saw a southern plantation. Nevertheless, it is still possible that slaves (and, of course, whites) learned from the very popular minstrel music and incorporated elements into their own tradition—this song is at least one attestation to that. Thus, by the time a song was recorded from exslaves in the late 1860s, we are hard-pressed to assay its indebtedness to the two intertwined genres. 8. As sung (approximately) by Billy Golden on Berliner 726 Z, 78 rpm. Topin and top are “terrapin.” 9. From Book of 1001 Songs, or Songs for the Million (New York: William H. Murphy, n.d., ca 1846), 1:245. 10. From a broadside in the Hay Library at Brown University. Catalog no. HB 8304. 11. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Civil War, American.” 12. From a broadside at the Library of Congress, Charleston, South Carolina, 1861. The unbroken text has been divided into stanzas. 13. Broadside printed by Harris, Philadelphia, April 1863; by A. Anderson, Philadelphia. To the tune of “Napoleon’s Grave.” A copy can be viewed at the Library of Congress Web site (http:// memory.loc.gov/ammem/amsshtml/amsshome.html). Punctuation modified slightly. 14. From Wehman’s Collection of Songs, no. 15 (ca. July 1887), 12. Author not identified. 15. From Claude Henry Neuffer, “Bottle Alley Song,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 29 (1965): 234 –38. Neuffer provides glosses to the Gullah words: bongee = “cheap,” “secondhand,” or “pongee-colored cloth-top shoe”; mookum = “cheap and shoddy”; balmacan = “long-tailed Jimswinger coat”; dog-bed suit = “one that looks as if a dog has slept on it.” 16. A pidgin is a simplified language that serves as a means of communication among peoples of different language backgrounds. When that pidgin language becomes the accepted language of a group, as did Gullah, it is called a “creole.” 17. As sung by the Johnson Family Singers, recorded May 7, 1951 (probably) in Nashville, Tennessee; issued on Columbia 20896, 78 rpm, and reissued on Folk Music in America: Songs of Local History and Events, Library of Congress LP LBC 12, and on University Press of Mississippi, The Johnson Family Singers, We Sang for Our Supper (book and CD; 1998). 18. As printed in Allen et al., Slave Songs, 59. 19. From a broadside printed without date or place. A copy is in Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Culture. 20. Ibid. 21. From a broadside, no. 874, published by Henry J. Wehman, New York (1874). 22. From Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (n.p.: C. J. Krehbiel, 1904), 1:597–8. 23. From the sheet music “Marching through Georgia, Song and Chorus, in Honor of Maj. Gen. Sherman’s Famous March ‘from Atlanta to the Sea.’ ” Words and music by Henry Clay Work. S. Brainard’s Songs, Cleveland, Ohio, 1865. 24. Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, vol. 1. 25. As recorded by Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton in Atlanta, Georgia, November 10, 1927; issued on Columbia 15212-D, 78 rpm; reissued in boxed CD set, Darby and Tarlton: Complete Recordings, Bear Family BCD 15764. 26. Ed Kahn, brochure notes to Darby and Tarlton, p. 16. 27. From Chapman J. Milling, “Delia Holmes—A Neglected Negro Ballad,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 1 (December 1937): 3–8. From the singing of Will Winn, African American itinerant musician. 28. John and Evelyn McCucheon, The Island Song Book (Chicago: privately printed, 1927); Lomax’s recording of the Nassau String Band’s “Delia’s Gone” has been reissued on Deep River of Song: Bahamas 1935, vol. 2, Rounder CD 1832.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

383

29. As recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in Camden, New Jersey, on November 30, 1927, and issued on Victor 21245, 78 rpm, in April 1928. The recording has been reissued on numerous LPs and CDs, including Train Whistle Blues (Living Era CD AJA 5042); Jimmie Rodgers—First Sessions, 1927–1928 (Rounder CD 1056); and The Singing Brakeman (Bear Family box set BCD 15540 FI). 30. As recorded by Rosa Lee Carson on June 24, 1925, in New York City, and issued on OKeh 40446, 78 rpm, in October 1925. 31. For more historical background, see Leonard Dinnerstein, The Leo Frank Case ( New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), and Harry Golden, A Little Girl Is Dead (Cleveland, OH: World, 1965). 32. As recorded by Willie Walker in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 6, 1930, and issued on Columbia 14578-D, 78 rpm. Transcribed by Chris Smith, “A Hangin’ Crime: A Balladic Blues and the True Story Behind It, Part I,” Blues and Rhythm 96 (February 1995): 4. For references to other collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), 251 [I 11]. 33. Details from Smith, “A Hangin’ Crime.” 34. From “Frank Dupree” by Andy Jenkins, recorded April 15, 1925, in Atlanta, Georgia, and issued on OKeh 40446, 78 rpm (as by Blind Andy). For references to collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 188 [E 24]. 35. As recorded by Vernon Dalhart in New York City on January 14, 1927, and issued on Columbia 15121-D, 78 rpm, in February 1927; reissued on Songs of the Railroad, Vetco LP 103. 36. Summary of Accident Investigation Reports, No. 33: Condensed Statement of Accidents Investigated during the Year Ended Dec. 31, 1926 (Washington, DC: Interstate Commerce Commission, Bureau of Safety, 1927), 27. For more details, see Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd rev. ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 248– 49. 37. Transcribed from recording by Vernon Dalhart made in New York City on November 24, 1925, and issued on Columbia 15053-D, 78 rpm, under the pseudonym of Al Craver. 38. Quoted by C. Vann Woodward in his biography, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel ( London, 1938), 34 –35. 39. John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), 120. Collected by Lawrence Gellert. 40. For more on Talmadge, see http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-1393. 41. From Frances Densmore, Seminole Music, Bulletin 161 of the U.S. Bureau of Ethnology (New York: Da Capo Press, 1972), 201; sung by Susie Tiger, probably in 1933. 42. Densmore, Seminole Music, xxvi. 43. From the sheet music “Old Folks at Home. Ethiopian Melody as sung by Christy’s Minstrels.” Written and composed by E. P. Christy. Firth, Pond, New York, 1851. 44. For more on Foster’s life and work, see Ken Emerson, Doo-Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997), and William W. Austin, “Susanna,” “Jeanie,” and “The Old Folks at Home”: The Songs of Stephen C. Foster ( New York: Macmillan, 1975). 45. From Alton C. Morris, Folksongs of Florida (New York: Folklorica, 1981 [1950]), 121–23 (reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida). Punctuation has been modified, and the original eight-line stanzas have been rewritten as quatrains. 46. Ibid., 105; recorded from singing of Miss Elsie Surber, Panama City (reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida). 47. Ibid., 34. Text furnished by Mrs. J. E. Maynard, Micanopy (reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida). 48. Ibid. (reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida). 49. Ibid., 102. Communicated by Mrs. J. R. York, Pahokee, who received it from Mr. C. A. Knowles of the same city (reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida). 50. Ibid., 103 (reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida). 51. Ibid., 106 –7 (reprinted with permission of the University Press of Florida). Punctuation has been modified, and the original six-line stanzas have been rewritten as quatrains. Recorded from singing of Mrs. John Beal, Daytona Beach. 52. See Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Alabama.”

384

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

53. From H. M. Belden, Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (Columbia: University of Missoui Press, 1940), 297. Received in 1905 from General Roby of Hamburg, Arkansas, who learned it from his grandfather’s singing. The word tories in the fourth line is Belden’s conjectural reading of the illegible manuscript. Belden also suggests that “Fort Stratton” should probably be “Fort Strother.” 54. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Creek War.” 55. From a broadside published by Henry De Marsan, 38 Chatham Street, New York, n.d. This broadside can be seen at the Library of Congress Web site (http://rs6.loc.gov/ammem/amsshtml/ amsshome html). 56. As recorded by Fiddlin’ John Carson, March 1924, in Atlanta, Georgia; issued on OKeh 7004, 78 rpm; reissued on Fiddlin’ John Carson, vol. 1, 1923–1924, Document DOCD 8014. 57. As recorded by Frank Hutchison on July 9, 1929, in New York City, issued on OKeh 45425, 78 rpm, in March 1930; reissued on Old Time Music from West Virginia, Document DOCD 8004. 58. For more details, see Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 122–31; also Ed Williams, “Railroad Bill,” Envirosouth 10 (1986): 4 –8. 59. As recorded by Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton in Atlanta, Georgia, April 5, 1927; issued on Columbia 15197-D, 78 rpm; reissued in boxed CD set, Darby and Tarlton: Complete Recordings, Bear Family BCD 15764. A lolla is a “lollapalooza”—something extraordinary. Bottom dollar = “last dollar.” 60. As recorded by Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton in Atlanta, Georgia, November 10, 1927; issued on Columbia 15212-D, 78 rpm; reissued in Darby and Tarlton: Complete Recordings. 61. See Belden, Ballads and Songs, 488; “Down in the Valley” communicated by Frank Jones of the West Plains High School. 62. From brochure notes to Radio Station WNEW’s Story of Selma, Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5595, p. 1. 63. Collected by Vance Randolph and published in Ozark Folk Songs, vol. 2 (Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1948). In another text, the second couplet of the fourth stanza reads “That lives up on that murmuring stream / That overlooks the lawn,” thus preserving the rhyme scheme. 64. From John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1911), 34 –36. 65. From Railroad Man’s Magazine 5 (May 1908): 764, submitted by a reader in response to a request in the March issue. 66. From Arthur Palmer Hudson, Folksongs of Mississippi and Their Background (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1936). Collected from John M. Whitney of Vicksburg. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 179–80 [E 7]. 67. Recorded by Vernon Dalhart on September 14, 1926, and issued on Columbia 15098-D, 78 rpm (as by Al Craver) in January 1927. For references to collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 179–80 [E 8]. 68. For more background on both of these songs, see Richard Sweterlitsch, “Ballads and a Mississippi Badman,” Mississippi Folklore Register 12 (1978): 47–57. 69. Recorded by Mississippi John Hurt in New York City, December 21, 1928, and issued on OKeh 8759, 78 rpm; reissued on Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings, Columbia/ Legacy CK 64986. 70. From the singing of Stella Walsh Gilbert of Saltville, Virginia, as recorded on Old-Time Music at Clarence Ashley’s, Smithsonian Folkways FA 2355; reissued on The Original Folkways Recordings: 1960– 62, Smithsonian Folkways FS 40029/30. Her text came from a manuscript book of songs taken from the singing of her grandfather, Enoch Ashley. 71. See Arthur Palmer Hudson, “A Ballad of the New Madrid Earthquake,” Journal of American Folklore 60 (1947): 147–50. 72. From a broadside published by L[eonard] Deming, Boston, n.d. A copy is in Brown University’s Hay Library, catalog no. HB 684.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

385

73. See Laws, Native American Balladry, 122–23, for a reference to “The Battle of New Orleans,” a traditional ballad text [A 7]. 74. From Albert H. Tolman and Mary O. Eddy, “Traditional Texts and Tunes,” Journal of American Folk-Lore 35 (October–December 1922): 387–88. Sung to Mr. Hoyt E. Cooper, Manilla, Iowa, by Mr. M. Peak, Hurtsville, Iowa. The octets have been rewritten as quatrains. A recorded version by Mrs. Frances Perry can be heard on Folk Music from Wisconsin, Rounder CD 1521-2, reissued from Library of Congress LP album Folk Music from Wisconsin, AFS L55. 75. Sent to Robert W. Gordon by C. E. Roe, June 1929 (letter no. 3756). 76. Allen et al., Slave Songs, 174. 77. For a description of the scene, see George Washington Cable, “The Dance Place in Congo,” Century Magazine 31 (February 1886): 517–32; reprinted in Bruce Jackson, ed., The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-century Periodicals (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967), 189–210. 78. From a broadside, undated, no publisher given, but crediting Wm. Densmore. U.S. Ship Brooklyn, with the composition. The broadside can be seen on the Library of Congress Web site (http://memory.loc.gov). 79. From Olive Woolley Burt, American Murder Ballads and Their Stories (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 166 – 67; heard by her husband at the Silver King mine in Park City, Utah, in 1930. By permission of Oxford Universtiy Press, Inc. www.oup.com. 80. Sung by Mance Lipscomb, Texas sharecropper, in 1960; issued on Texas Songster, Arhoolie CD 306. 81. The facts behind the story were uncovered by John Cowley and John Garst and published in Sing Out! 45 (Spring 2001): 69–70. 82. As recorded by Homer Callahan on April 11, 1935, in New York City, issued on ARC 6-02-59, 78 rpm, in February 1936; reissued on The Callahan Brothers, Old Homestead CD OHCD 4031. 83. For an extensive account of the song’s history and dissemination, see Ted Anthony, Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007). 84. Sung by Savy Bee Deshotels, as recorded by Dr. Harry Oster in 1956 –1959 and issued on Folksongs of the Louisiana Acadians, Arhoolie CD 359. Translation from the booklet. “The hub” is the town center—le moyeu. 85. Harry Oster, brochure notes to Folksongs of the Louisiana Acadians, p. 16. 86. Ibid. A similar custom is followed among the descendents of French settlers in Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, and Ste. Genevieve, Missouri. For a song text and discussion, see the song “La GuiAnnee” on Folksongs of Illinois #1, Illinois Humanities Council CD ILHC07-01. 87. Recorded by Amadée Breaux, Ophy Breaux, and Cleoma Breaux Falcon in Atlanta, Georgia, April 18, 1929, and issued on Columbia 40510-F, 78 rpm; reissued on Jole Blon: 23 Artists, One Theme, Bear Family BCD 16618 AJ. Transcription and translation (slightly modified) from Ann Allen Savoy, Cajun Music: A Reflection of a People (Eunice, LA: Bluebird Press, 1984), 1:84 –85. 88. Twenty-three different recordings of “Jolie Blonde” and derivative pieces have been reissued on one CD: Jole Blon: 23 Artists, One Theme, Bear Family BCD 16618 AJ. 89. As sung by Richard “Rabbit” Brown, 1927, recorded for Victor Talking Machine Company and issued on Victor 35840. The transcription is based on one by R. R. MacLeod in Document Blues—1 (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1994), 38–39. 90. From Butch Weir, “A Tale of Two Children and DNA Solves Mystery of One,” Picayune Item (Picayune, Mississippi), January 10, 2008. 91. Recorded by Hank Warner in New York City, September 13, 1935, and issued on ARC label 5-11-61, 78 rpm. Sung to the tune of “Red River Valley.” 92. From Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 3:34 –35. Manuscript copy from Dr. George E. Hastings, Fayetteville, Arkansas, January 1942, who received it from one of his students at the University of Arkansas. 93. Introduction and dialog as given in The Arkansas Traveller’s Songster (New York, 1864), 1–5?. 94. See Mike Yates and Tony Russell, “Tracing the Arkansas Traveller,” Old Time Music. There are numerous studies of “The Arkansas Traveler.” “From the Archives: ‘The Arkansas Traveler,’ ” JEMF Quarterly 6 (Summer 1970): 51–57, gives references to recorded versions and reprints on text

386

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

from 1896. Archie Green’s “Grahics #67: The Visual Arkansas Traveler,” JEMF Quarterly 6 (Summer 1970): 31– 46, focuses on pictorial representations and derivations. Catherine Marshall Vineyard, “The Arkansas Traveler,” in Backwoods to Border, ed. Mody C. Boatright and Donald Day (Dallas: SMU Press, publicaitons of the Texas Folklore Society 18, 1967; repr. of 1943 edition), 11– 60, and James R. Masterson, “A Traveler, a Cabin and a Fiddle,” in Tall Tales of Arkansaw (Boston: Chapman and Grimes, 1943), present numerous early versions and discuss the story’s history. 95. From Belden, Ballads and Songs, 368– 69. Secured by Miss Simmons in 1903 from Ethel Doxey of Carroll County, Arkansas. “Rollie” is Rolla, Missouri, an important federal military post in the Civil War. “Slack” is William Yarnel Slack, a lawyer from Chillicothe, who was mortally wounded at the battle on March 7. “Segal” is probably General Franz Sigel, a German officer who led Union troops into the Ozarks and who is mentioned in several Civil War songs. 96. From Mary Celestia Parler, An Arkansas Ballet Book (Norwood, CT: Norwood Editions, 1976), 4. Collected by Parler from Allie Long Parker, Pleasant Valley, Arkansas, April 6, 1958. Max Hunter recorded Parker singing the ballad twice—on January 14 (Max Hunter Collection 0012 [MFH 23], Springfield-Greene County Library, Missouri) and March 27, 1958 (Max Hunter Collection 0049 [MFH 23]). His own rendition can be heard on Ozark Folksongs and Ballads, Folk-Legacy FSA 11. 97. For references, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 124 –25 [A 12]. 98. Battle of Pea Ridge, by 36th Regiment Illinois Volunteers. CPM 000771-BROAD. 99. As sung by Riley Puckett, accompanied by Clayton McMichen, recorded October 26, 1928, in Atlanta, Georgia, and issued on Columbia 15686-D, 78 rpm, in August 1931; reissued on Hard Times Come Again No More, vol. 2, Yazoo 2037. Words in parentheses are not sung in one of the two repetitions. For a collected version, see “The Arkansas Boys,” sung by Ed Stephens of Jane, Missouri, 1928, in Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 3:12–13; reprinted in Norm Cohen, Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), 120. 100. Sung by Maggie Morgan of Springdale, Arkansas, 1942. Printed in Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 3:14 –16. 101. As recorded by Kelly Harrell and the Virginia String Band in Camden, New Jersey, on March 23, 1927, and issued on Victor 21520, 78 rpm, in September 1928; reissued on the CD box set Anthology of American Folk Music, Smithsonian Folkways SFW 40090-1-A. What sounds like “strain” in the fifth stanza should be “drain.” The line in the last stanza that ends with what sounds like “fatback hills” in other texts reads “cane-brakes and those chills.” See Laws, Native American Balladry, 230 [H 1], for references to other collected texts. 102. From Parler, An Arkansas Ballet Book, 2–3. Collected by her from Harrison Burnett, Fayetteville, July 13, 1954; the singer could not recall the second line of the second stanza. The original text of eight-line stanzas has been rewritten as quatrains. 103. From the Max Hunter Collection, as sung by Barry Sutterfield, Marshall, Arkansas, on May 26, 1969. Available at http://maxhunter missouristate.edu/0741/index html. 104. Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 4:406. Manuscript copy obtained from Dr. George E. Hastings of Fayetteville, Arkansas, January 6, 1942, who had it from a student at the University of Arkansas; sung to the tune of “The Bonnie Blue Flag,” a Civil War song. 105. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Missouri” and Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Missouri.” 106. From a broadside published by J. H. Johnson, Philadelphia, n.d., ca. 1858–1876, in the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection of the Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University. Punctuation has been modified. “Nary red” is short for “nary a red cent.” 107. Henry Childs Merwin, The Life of Bret Harte with Some Account of the California Pioneers (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 60– 61. 108. From Belden, Ballads and Songs, 366 – 67. Received in 1916 from T. C. Wright of Tuscumbia, Miller County, as written down by his father. Handwritten on the back of the manuscript is a statement how Lock, the professed author, was shot and killed in a fight. 109. Ibid.

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS

387

110. Ibid., 421–22. Secured by Miss Hamilton in 1913 from Earl Dille of Kirksville, who said his sister had learned it 33 years before. The original eight-line stanzas have been rewritten as quatrains. 111. According to an article, “Authentic List,” in the Brookfield Gazette, March 10, 1881. 112. From Comic and Sentimental Songs, Sung by Robert Jones. Also a Short Sketch of His Life (Lost River, IN: printed by the author, 1887), 4 –5. The 12-line stanzas have been rewritten in octets. 113. From Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 2:107–8. Sung by Mr. Clyde Weems, Cardin, Oklahoma, July 10, 1927. Weems learned the song at Mount Vernon, Missouri, in 1915. For references to other collected versions of this and the other four Meeks murder ballads, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 205– 6 and 269 [F 28, F 29, F 30, dF 49, dF 50]. 114. Historical information from Randolph, Ozark Folksongs; Belden, Ballads and Songs, 404 –5; and Belden, “A Study in Contemporary Balladry,” The Mid-West Quarterly 1 (October 1913–July 1914): 162–72. 115. From Belden, Ballads and Songs, 413–14. Recovered from Ada Belle Cowden’s manuscript ballad book, compiled about 1909 in Boon County, Missouri. 116. From Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, 2:114 –16. Contributed by Mr. B. F. Carney, Crane, Missouri, June 20, 1932. Randolph notes that “Mr. Carney wishes it made clear that he does not approve of the song, which he describes as ‘doggerel.’ ” 117. Ibid. 118. As recorded by Wilmer Watts and the Lonely Eagles in New York on October 29, 1929, and issued on Paramount 3210, 78 rpm; reissued on Times Ain’t Like They Used to Be: Early American Rural Music, vol. 1, Yazoo CD 2028. 119. John Russell David, chapter 3 of “Tragedy in Ragtime: Black Folktales from St. Louis,” PhD diss., St. Louis University, 1976. 120. Mississippi John Hurt, The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt, Vanguard LP VSD 79248. 121. David, “Tragedy,” chap. 4. 122. Mississippi John Hurt, Rounder CD 1100. 123. For more historical details and references, see David,”Tragedy,” chap. 5. 124. From Belden, Ballads and Songs, 420–21. The text was sent to Belden in 1909 by George Williams, as sung by John Mayfield of Mayfield, Bollinger County, Missouri. 125. Ibid. 126. Since Belden’s publication, the ballad was collected twice by Max Hunter: from Mrs. Haden Robinson in 1960 in Arkansas and from Laura Arthur in 1972 in Missouri.

NOT FOUND (CFIIV)

5 Great Lakes

Eight of the states border on one or more of the Great Lakes. New York is the only state bordering Lake Ontario; both it and Pennsylvania (or at least a very small portion of its perimeter) border Lake Erie. The remaining six are the subject of this chapter; five of those and part of Minnesota, the sixth, were once called the Northwest Territory. This area was ceded by Britain to the United States as part of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the formal conclusion of the War for Independence. Four states to the east—Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Connecticut—claimed that most of this territory belonged to them by virtue of earlier charters, but by 1786, most of these claims had been abandoned and the land ceded to the federal government. The means of governing this vast territory was not decided upon until the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The ordinance provided for the formation of three to five states, forbade slavery in the territory, and set at 60,000 the number of free inhabitants required for statehood. In October 1787 Major General Arthur St. Clair was appointed the first territorial governor. In July 1800, the western part of the territory was constituted into the District of Indiana (including Illinois); in March 1803, the state of Ohio was created; in January 1805, Michigan Territory was created; in February 1809, the Illinois Territory was organized; and in April 1836, part of Michigan Territory was reorganized into the Territory of Wisconsin.1 In due course, statehood followed: Ohio first, then Indiana in 1816, Illinois in 1818, Michigan in 1837, Wisconsin in 1848, and Minnesota in 1858. The opening of the Northwest Territory allowed for expansion from the eastern states, which were already feeling population pressures. In general, migration tended to be directly to the west. Accordingly, the northern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were settled mainly by New Englanders, whose westward movement was greatly facilitated by the opening of the Erie Canal. Southern Ohio drew frontier farmers from Virginia and

390

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Kentucky, just across the Ohio River. Southern Indiana and Illinois were settled from south to north, the Ohio River serving as the waterway bringing pioneers from Kentucky, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Tennessee. This difference in settlement patterns resulted in the musical traditions of the northern parts of the three states (Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) being very different from those of the southern parts. Movement into Michigan began in 1796, after U.S. troops took possession of Detroit from the British. Settlement of Michigan started after the War of 1812 and steadily increased. Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was found to hold great reserves of copper and iron, the mining of which spurred immigration in the 1840s. The virgin forests of Michigan and Wisconsin attracted loggers and lumbering companies, whose immoderate harvesting had effectively depleted the once profuse hardwood forests of the Northeast.2

OHIO After statehood was granted, Ohio’s early decades were spent in battles with the Indians, and then, during the War of 1812, with the British—both on the bordering Lake Erie and also at various fortifications on land. The conclusion of the war made immigration safe once again, and by 1850 the entire state had been settled. Initially, the major occupation was farming, and as it became apparent that the marketing of Ohio’s bountiful crops required a better system that the available roads, the state took to encouraging the construction of several canals, inspired by the commercial success of the Erie Canal. The Ohio and Erie Canal opened in 1832, connecting Portsmouth, on the Ohio River, with Cleveland, on Lake Erie. The Miami and Erie Canal opened between Cincinnati and Dayton in 1830 and was extended to Toledo in 1845. The state’s name comes from the Algonquian (or Iroquoian?) “beautiful river”—the Ohio River itself flows nearly 1,000 miles from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, where it empties into the Mississippi River.3 A Song, Called Crawford’s Defeat by the Indians on the Fourth Day of June, 1782 Come all ye good people wherever you be, Pray draw near awhile, and listen to me; A story I’ll tell you that happen’d of late, Concerning brave CRAWFORD’S most cruel defeat. A bold-hearted company, as we do hear, Equip’d themselves, being all volunteers; Their number was four hundred eighty and nine, To take the Sandusky towns was their design. In seventeen hundred eighty and two, The twenty-sixth of May, as I tell unto you; They cross’d the Ohio, as we understand, Where brave Colonel Crawford he gave the command. With courage undaunted away they did steer, Through the Indian’s country without dread or fear; Where Nicholson Slover and Jonathan Zeans Conducted them over the Sandusky plains.

GREAT LAKES

There was brave Colonel Crawford, an officer bold, The fourth day of June did the Indians behold; On the plains of Sandusky, at three the same day, Both armies did meet there in battle array. The Indians on horseback, GIRTEE gave them command, On the side of the plains they boldly did stand; Our men like brave heroes upon them did fire, Until backwards the Indians were forced to retire. Our Rifles did rattle and bullets did fly, Until some of our men on the ground they did lie; Some being wounded, to the others they said, “Fight on brother-soldiers and be not dismay’d.” There was brave Colonel Williamson, as I understand, He wanted two hundred men at his command; If the same had been granted, I make no great doubt, He soon would have put the proud Indians to rout. This brave commander like a hero so bold, Behaved himself like David of old; When with the Philistines as he did war, He returned home without ever a scar. Like a hero of old there was brave Major Light, Who encourag’d his men for to stand and to fight; With courage and conduct his men did command, Like a Grecian that hero in battle did stand. There was brave Major Brinton, the fourth in command, In the front of the battle he boldly did stand; With courage and conduct his part did maintain, Though the bullets like hail in great showers they came. Oh! as this brave hero was giving command, The Rifles did rattle on every hand; He received a ball, but his life did not yield, He return’d with the wounded men out of the field. There was brave Bigs and Ogle received each a ball, On the Plains of Sandusky was their lot to fall; Oh! not them alone, but several men Had the honour of dying on the Sandusky plain. There was brave Captain Mun like a hero of old, Likewise Captain Rase, another as bold, Receiv’d each a ball, but did not expire, But into the camps they were forc’d to retire. There was brave Captain Hogland I will not go past, He fought it out bravely while the battle did last; But on his return till a fire did go, What came of him after we never could know. Our officers all so bravely did fight, And likewise our men two days until night;

391

392

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Until a reinforcement of Indians there came, Which made us to leave the Sandusky plain. “Now,” says our commander, “since we have lost ground, With superior number they do us surround; We’ll gather the wounded men, and let us save All that’s able to go, the rest we must leave.” There was brave Ensign Majaster another as brave, He fought many battles his country to save; On the plains of Sandusky received a wound, Not being able to go he was left on the ground. There was brave Colonel Crawford upon his retreat, Likewise Major Harrison, and brave Doctor Knight, With Slover their pilot and several men Was unfortunately taken on the Sandusky plain. Now they have taken these men of renown, And has drag’d them away to the Sandusky town; Where in their council condemn’d for to be, Burn’d at the stake by most cruel Girtee. Like young Diabolians they this act did pursue, And Girtee the head of this infernal crew; This insinuator was a stander by, While they in the fire their bodies did fry. Their Scalps off their heads while alive they did tear, Their bodies with irons red hot they did sear; They bravely expir’d without ever a groan, That might melt a heart that was harder than stone. After our brave heroes were burnt at the stake, Brave Knight and brave Slover they made their escape; With kind Heaven’s assistance they brought us the news, So none need the truth of these tidings refuse. So from East unto West let it be understood, Let every one rise to revenge Crawford’s blood; And likewise the blood of those men of renown, That were taken and burnt at the Sandusky towns.4

There is much factual history in this broadside ballad, though toward the end, the author seems unable to resist some gruesome hyperbole. As the title indicates, the events recalled took place in June 1782, when a volunteer militia, commanded by Colonel William Crawford, set out to destroy hostile Indian villages at Sandusky (now Upper Sandusky, Ohio). They were defeated by a combined force of British (commanded by renegade Simon Girty), Delaware Indians (led by their chief, Captain Pipe), and the unmentioned Butler’s Rangers. Crawford was captured as his forces retreated and was burnt at the stake; a guide, John Slover (mentioned in the fourth stanza—but confused with another guide, Thomas Nicholson), and the army’s surgeon, Dr. John Knight, mentioned in stanza 19, were captured but escaped and returned home safely; their subsequent published narratives were the source of much that was later written about the episode. The final stanzas attribute responsibility for the burning of the Americans to Girtee (i.e., Girty), but the

GREAT LAKES

393

eyewitness accounts blame the Delawares for this; Girty was indeed present and merely encouraged the Indians. The “irons red hot” were actually small lighted hickory poles (a difference without distinction). Several of the brave Americans mentioned are incorrectly identified. In order, they are Thomas Nicholson, John Slover, and Jonathan Zane (stanza 4); Major Daniel Leet (stanza 10); Major James Brinton, fifth in command (stanza 11); Captain John Biggs and Private Thomas Ogle (stanza 13); Captains James Munn and Ezekiel Rose (stanza 14); Captain John Hoagland (stanza 15); and Ensign McMasters (stanza 18). Although the skirmish took place seven months after Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown (October 19, 1781), the war did not formally end until the final Treaty of Paris was signed in September 1783. The treaty called for the removal of all British troops from American territory, but in truth, many years passed before that obligation was fulfilled. The author and date of publication are unknown. The text is taken from the only known surviving broadside, in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society, which includes as well as “Crawford’s Defeat” a text of the following ballad, “Sinclair’s Defeat,” which took place in 1791. It is evident, then, that the broadside itself postdates that year, but the ballad could have been written earlier, at a time that cannot be ascertained.5 Sinclair’s Defeat November the fourth, in the year of ninety-one, We had a sore engagement, near to fort Jefferson; Sinclair was our commander, which may remembered be, For there we left nine hundred men, in the Western Territory. At Bunker’s Hill and Quebec, where many a hero fell Likewise at Long Island, ’tis I the truth can tell. But such a dreadful carnage, never did I see, As happen’d on the plains, near the River St. Marie. Our militia were attacked, just as the day did break, And soon were overpowered, and forced to retreat. They killed major Ouldham, Levin, and Briggs likewise, While horrid yells of savages, resounded thro’ the skies. Major Butler was wounded the very second fire; His manly bosom swelled with rage, when forced to retire. Like one distracted he appeared, when thus exclaimed he, “Ye hounds of hell shall all be slain, but what reveng’d I’ll be.” We had not long been broke, when general Butler fell; He cries, “my boys, I’m wounded, pray take me off the field, My God,” says he, “what shall we do, we’re wounded ev’ry man; Go, charge, you valiant heroes, and beat them if you can.” He leaned his back against a tree, and there resign’d his breath, And like a valiant soldier, sunk in the arms of death; When blessed angels did await, his spirit to convey, And unto the celestial fields, he quickly bent his way. We charged again, we took our ground, which did our hearts elate. There we did not tarry long, they soon made us retreat; They killed major Ferguson, which caused his men to cry; “Stand to your guns,” says valiant Ford, “we’ll fight until we die.”

394

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Our cannon balls exhausted, our artillery men all slain, Our musketrymen and riflemen, their fire did sustain; Three hours more we fought like men, and they were forced to yield, While three hundred bloody warriors lay stretched upon the field. Says colonel Gibson to his men, “my boys, be not dismayed, I’m sure that true Virginians were never yet afraid; Ten thousand deaths I’d rather die, than they should gain the field,” With that he got a fatal shot, which caused him to yield. Says major Clark, “my heroes, I can no longer stand. We will strive to form in order, and retreat the best we can.” The word “retreat” being passed all round, they raised a hue and cry, And helter skelter through the woods, like lost sheep we did fly. We left the wounded on the field, O heavens, what a shock! Some of their thighs were shattered, some of their limbs were broke; With scalping knives and tomahawks, soon eased them of their breath, With fiery flames of torment, soon tortured them to death. Now, to mention of our brave officers, ’tis what I wish to do, No sons of Mars e’er fought more brave, or with such courage true; To captain Bradford I belonged, in his artillery, Who fell that day amongst the slain—what a gallant man was he!6

This overly detailed account of a dreadful military encounter in what was then the Indian Territory is almost painful to read. The eponymous hero of the ballad was General Arthur St. Clair, later Ohio’s first territorial governor. Persistent troubles with Indians in the western part of the region prompted him to assemble a force of 2,900 men in Cincinnati and establish some military posts to curb the Indians’ hostilities. St. Clair marched his men north to the Indian villages on the Maumee River. Along the way, he established two forts, Fort Jefferson and Fort Hamilton. In less than a fortnight his expedition met disaster. A large number of his soldiers deserted, and a regiment was sent in pursuit. Weakened thereby by division and desertion, he approached the native villages on November 3, 1791. In this vicinity, on the banks of the Wabash River near the present Ohio-Indiana border, they were attacked by Indians and overwhelmed; more than 600 men were slaughtered. President Washington, who had warned St. Clair to be wary of a “surprise,” exploded in wrath when he heard the bad news. “Knowing (what some of his successors have forgotten) that it pays to be candid with the American people, the President communicated the devastating facts to Congress.”7 The text was printed in a songster of 1836. One text has been recovered from oral tradition—considerably truncated and imperfectly remembered.8 Frank Cowan, who considered this “possibly the most celebrated of the popular songs of Southwestern Pennsylvania,” believed it had been written by Major Eli Lewis (d. 1807), publisher of the first newspaper of Harrisburg and father of a Pennsylvania supreme court judge, Ellis Lewis.9 [Pleasant Ohio] When rambling o’er these mountains And rocks, where ivies grow Thick as the hairs upon your head, ’Mongst which you cannot go;

GREAT LAKES

395

Great storms of snow, cold winds that blow, We scarce can undergo; Says I, my boys, we’ll leave this place For the pleasant Ohio. Our precious friends that stay behind, We’re sorry now to leave; But if they’ll stay and break their shins, For them we’ll never grieve; Adieu, my friends! come on, my dears, This journey we’ll forego, And settle Licking creek In yonder Ohio.10

In 1804, 114 businessmen formed the Scioto Company at Granville, Massachusetts, with the aim of establishing a settlement in Ohio. (The Scioto is a tributary to the Ohio River.) “The project met with great favor and much enthusiasm was elicited; in illustration of which, a song was composed and sung to the tune of ‘Pleasant Ohio,’ by the young people in the house and at labor in the field. We annex two stanzas, which are more curious than poetical.”11 Historian Howe assembled two thick, richly detailed volumes of Ohio history. Howe was interested in local songs and folklore, and often enlivened his narratives with fragments of texts he acquired in the course of his on-the-spot investigations.12 The Battle of Lake Erie Ye tars of Columbia, give ear to my story, Who fought with brave Perry, where cannons did roar; Your valour has gain’d you an immortal glory, A fame that shall last till time is no more. Columbian tars are the true sons of Mars, They rake fore and aft when they fight on the deep; On the bed of lake Erie, commanded by Perry, They caus’d many Britons to take their last sleep. The tenth of September, let us all remember, So long as the globe on her axis rolls round; Our tars and marines on Lake Erie was seen, To make the proud flag of Great Britain come down. The van of our fleet the British to meet, Commanded by Perry, the Lawrence bore down; The guns they did roar with such terrific power, That savages trembled at the dreadful sound. The Lawrence sustain’d a most dreadful fire, She fought three to one, for two glasses or more; While Perry, undaunted, did firmly stand by her, The proud foe on her, heavy broad-sides did pour. Her masts being shatter’d her rigging all tatter’d, Her booms and her yards being all shot away; And few left on deck, to manage the wreck, Our hero on board her no longer could stay. In this situation, the pride of our nation, Sure Heaven had guarded unhurt all the while;

396

MERIC N FOLK SONGS

Although printer Leonard Deming used an appropriate woodcut for his broadside, “Perry’s Victory,” published ca. 1829–1831, it appears badly worn, suggesting it may have been recycled from an older print. From the Library of Congress.

GREAT LAKES

While many a hero, maintaining his station, Fell close by his side, and was thrown on the pile. But mark you, and wonder, when elements thunder When death with destruction are stalking all round; His flag he did carry on board the Niagara, Such valour on record was never yet found. There is one gallant act of our noble commander, While writing my song, I must notice with pride; While launch’d in the boat, that carried a standard, A ball whistled through her, just by her side. Says Perry, “the rascals intend for to drown us But push on my brave boys, you need never fear!” And with his own coat, he plug’d up the boat, And through fire and sulphur away he did steer. The famed Niagara, now proud of her Perry, Display’d all her banners in gallant array; And twenty-five guns on her deck she did carry, Which soon put an end to this bloody affray. The rear of our fleet was brought up complete, The signal was given to break through the line; While starboard and larboard, and from every quarter, The lamps of Columbia did gloriously shine. The bold British Lion, roar’d out his last thunder, When Perry attacked him close in the rear; Columbia’s Eagle soon made him crouch under, And roar out for quarter, as soon you shall hear. Oh, had you been there, I now do declare, Such a sight as you never had seen before; Six red bloody flags that no longer could wag, All lay at the feet of our brave Commodore. Brave Elliot, whose valour must now be recorded, On board the Niagara so well play’d his part; His gallant assistance to Perry afforded, We’ll place him the second on Lake Erie’s chart. In the midst of the battle, when guns they did rattle, The Lawrence a wreck, and the men most all slain; Away he did steer, and brought up the rear, And by this manoeuvre the victory was gain’d. Oh, had you but seen those noble commanders, Embracing each other when the conflict was o’er; And viewing those invincible standards, That never had yielded to any before. Says Perry, “brave Elliot come give me your hand, sir, This day we have gain’d an immortal renown; So long as Columbia, Lake Erie commands, sir, Let brave Captain Elliot with laurels be crowned.” Great Britain may boast of her conquering heroes, Her Rodneys, her Nelsons, and all the whole crew; But none in their glory have told such a story,

397

398

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Nor boasted such feats as Columbians do. The whole British fleet was captured complete, Not one single vessel from us got away; And prisoners some hundreds, Columbians wondered, To see them all anchor’d and moor’d in our bay. May Heaven still smile on the shades of our heroes, Who fought in that conflict, their country to save; And check the proud spirit of those murdering heroes travees,13 That wish to divide us, and make us all slaves. Columbians sing, and make the woods ring, We’ll toast those brave heroes by sea and by land; While Britains drink Cherry, Columbians, Perry,14 We’ll toast him about with full glasses in hand.15

The Battle of Lake Erie, fought in and around Put-in-Bay, Ohio, near the western extremity of the lake, on September 10, 1813, was a decisive naval engagement of the War of 1812. The battle culminated a series of moves by the United States designed to challenge British supremacy in the Great Lakes region. The area had fallen under control of British forces through their occupation of Detroit a year earlier and their subsequent construction of a strong fleet of warships. In March 1813, the American naval officer Commander Oliver Hazard Perry (1789–1819) and a force of men arrived at Erie, Pennsylvania, under orders to construct an American fleet capable of meeting the British. The fleet, completed early in September, consisted of nine vessels with a total armament of 54 guns and crews totaling some 500 men. The initial encounter with the six-vessel British fleet, commanded by Commodore Robert H. Barclay, occurred about noon. The British concentrated their fire on the USS Lawrence, Perry’s flagship. As a result of some tactical errors, the Lawrence was badly damaged by the British fire, and more than 100 men were killed or wounded. Perry transferred his flag to the USS Niagara shortly after 2:30 P.M., leaving the disabled Lawrence under the command of a lieutenant. Less than an hour later, after continued action, Barclay’s flagship, HMS Detroit, and three other British vessels surrendered. The remaining two took flight but were overtaken and captured. An hour later, Perry sent his memorable dispatch to General William Henry Harrison, U.S. commander of the Army of the Northwest (as the Great Lakes region was then known): “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” American casualties numbered 123 killed and wounded; British losses totaled 135. Within three weeks after their defeat, the British were forced to evacuate Detroit. The U.S. Army eventually won control of almost the entire Great Lakes region.16 Within days of the stunning victory, American balladists began to turn out verses commemorating the great event. Several different songs were published on broadsides; the one cited here, sometimes titled “Perry’s Victory,” was the most widely quoted and often reprinted, and the only one still to be found in oral tradition a century later. Boys of Ohio Step forth, ye sons of freedom, Who strangers are to fear; Repair unto your quarters, And enter volunteers;

GREAT LAKES

399

Where you will be advanced Above all worldly store, Whilst we stand under arms, Amid a loyal corps. We are the boys of Ohio. If our officers command us, We’ll cheerfully obey; If the British and Indians stand us, We’ll show them Yankee play; We’ll rout them from their trenches With our bold musketeers, And we’ll boldly let them know We’re the gallant volunteers. We’re the boys of Ohio. And when that we have conquered, As homewards we do come, Triumphant colours flying, With a loud fife and a drum, Our sweethearts, wives, and children Will meet us with three cheers, Crying, huzza, huzza, huzza, There’s the gallant volunteers, There’s the boys of Ohio. Here’s a health unto our President, The Mayor and the corps, Our officers and privates, We’ll toast them o’er and o’er; Here’s a health in good brown whiskey, The best liquor for the king, And when that we return, boys, In claret we will swim. We’re the boys of Ohio.17

No tune has survived for this once popular song, printed in numerous songsters of the 1840s and possibly earlier. It would thus perhaps seem hasty to dismiss its esthetic merits; for indeed, the text as such has little to recommend it. Its time or place of origin are unknown. Ohio became a state in 1803, so it certainly is later than that (prior to then, the name was applied to the river and the river’s valley, but not the territory as such). Yet it is strange that the mayor and not the governor is among the many toasted in the last stanza; stranger yet that the king is remembered with some fondness as well. The references to British and Indian adversaries in the second stanza suggest that the song arose during, or soon after, the War of 1812: it was Perry’s victory over the British fleet on Lake Erie that helped clear the Ohio region of the last threat from Indians and their British suppliers. Mackafee’s Confession Draw near, young men, and hear from me My sad and dreadful history, And may you ne’er forgetful be Of all I this day tell to thee.

400

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Before I had reached my fifth year, My mother and my father dear Were both laid in the silent grave By Him whom to them being gave. No more a mother’s voice I heard, No more a father’s love I shared, No more was I a parents’ joy, Only a poor helpless orphan boy. But Providence, the orphan’s friend, A kind relief did quickly send, And snatched from want and poverty Poor little orphaned Mackafee. Beneath a humble, friendly roof, From want and danger far aloof, Nine years was I most kindly reared, And uncle’s best affection shared. But I was thoughtless, young and gay, Would from good counsel turn away, My dear, kind uncle oft would chide, But I seemed never satisfied. At length there came a fatal day When from my home I ran away And ’mong my other acts in life I took unto myself a wife. Oh, she was kind and good to me As any woman need to be, And still alive would be, no doubt Had I not met Miss Hetty Stout. ’Twas on a pleasant Summer day When Hetty stole my heart away, My love for her controlled my will, And prompted me my wife to kill. The act was done one peaceful night, Quiet reigned and the stars shone bright, My wife reclining on the bed, When I approached and to her said: For love, here’s medicine I’ve brought For you which this day I have bought, With confidence, it will cure you Of those bad fits, pray, take it, do. She gave to me a tender look, Then straightway she the poison took; And with her babe upon the bed Down to her last long sleep she laid. But fearing that she was not dead, My hands upon her throat I laid;

GREAT LAKES

401

A deep impression I did make, And then her soul its flight did take. ’Twas then my heart was filled with woe, And I cried out, “where shall I go? How can I leave this mournful place? The world again, how can I face?” Her body lies beneath the sod, Her soul I trust is with her God, And soon into eternity My guilty soul will also be. I’d freely give up all my store, Had I ten thousand pounds or more, If I again could bring to life My dear, my darling, murdered wife. Young men, learn this, be warned by me, And shun all evil company, Walk in the path of righteousness, And God your lives will surely bless. But now the morn is drawing nigh, When from this earth my soul shall fly, To meet Jehovah at His bar, And hear my final sentence there.18

John McAfee was found guilty of the murder of his wife and was hanged near Dayton, Ohio, on March 28, 1825. The unidentified ballad writer plays with the nature versus nurture conflict: young John was orphaned at an early age, thus deserving of our pity, and preparing us to excuse whatever misdeeds he committed. But no—a kindly uncle steps in, offering John the best of upbringings. In fine, as John descends from bad grammar (second stanza) to infidelity to uxoricide, he has only himself to blame for his wickedness. The ballad was widely collected throughout the South and Midwest in the early twentieth century—which is rather surprising, considering its antiquity. Evidently there’s no denying the durability of a good murdered-girl ballad. John Funston John Funston fair, handsome, light hair and blue eyes, Who sought his own ruin by seeking a prize; He shot William Courtnal, a boy of great renown On the road leading from Freeport unto Coshocton town. He shot him and robbed him of money and goods, And made his way home through a thicket of woods. Squire Morgan then took him and bound him in irons strong For to lay there in jail till his trial should come on. On the eighth of November they took him straight way To New Philadelphia in prison to lay. On the twentieth of December, his trial did come on, And he was brought up by the sheriff to confess what he had done; He confessed to his God for the crime he had done;

402

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

He said he was a murderer and his race it was run. They took him to the gallows on a cold and stormy day, The shroud that hung around him was awful for to see. And when he got there he wept most bitterly, To think that this wide world he never more could see. The doctors all stood around him his pulses for to feel, A thinking on that night his dead body they would steal; It was forbidden in law and considered not right To steal the dead body of John Funston by night. His two little brothers brought a carriage on that day To haul the dead body of John Funston away; And when they got there they wept most bitterly, To think upon the gallows their dead brother they must see.19

John Funston was a young farmer living near Newcomerstown. William Cartmell was a post boy who resided in Cochocton and carried the mail between that town and Freeport. On September 9, 1825, while making his return trip, Cartmell was shot by someone concealed in the woods and died. William Johnston, who had been traveling with Cartmell, had paused to take a drink from a nearby spring when he heard a shot. As he stood there, Funston approached him; they parted after some conversation. Johnston was initially accused but said he could recognize the murderer if all the young men in the county would be brought before him. He identified Funston on the basis of a scar on his arm. A trial was held, and Funston was found guilty and sentenced to hang on December 30. During the night he tried to take his own life by hanging himself, but failed. He confessed fully, saying it was for the money (he had robbed Cartmell of $10) that he did it.20 The detail about the doctors lusting for the cadaver is quite an unusual detail—too much so to have been fabricated, it seems. Story of Gustave Ohr My name is Gustave Ohr, the same I’ll never deny, Which leaves my aged parents in sorrow for to cry; It’s little did they ever think, while in my youthful bloom, They brought me to America to meet my fatal doom. In bad houses of liquor I used to take delight, And consequently my associates, they used me there invite; It was on a certain day, as you shall quickly see, I was enticed into Mann’s company by a bottle of whisky. It was in the town of Alliance, as we were traveling, Mann picked up an iron, commonly called a coupling pin; As we got into Webb’s sugar camp, we all laid down to rest, When Mann steps up to me and says, “Our chances are now the best.” He says, “Now let us stun him, and take his things away, And we will go to New York city and spend fourth of July day.” To Beloit, then, we quickly fled, thinking to escape, But the hand of Providence was against us, indeed we were too late. Then we were taken prisoners, and brought unto our doom, To die upon the scaffold, all in our youthful bloom;

GREAT LAKES

403

Our trial came on quickly, condemned we were to die, A death upon the scaffold, all on the gallows high. I am thankful to the Sheriff for his kindness to me, Likewise my noble lawyer who tried to set me free; And also to my clergymen who brought my mind to bear, That there is a good and holy judge way up in heavenly sphere.21 Story of George Mann My name is George Mann, this name I shall never deny, Which leaves my aged father in sorrow for to cry; It’s little did he ever think while in my youthful bloom, He brought me to Kansas to meet my fatal doom. It was Gustave Ohr and that old man, while laying in a mossy bed, When Ohr quickly jumped upon him and struck him in the head; He struck him with a coupling-pin, which killed him dead at heart, Which caused his dear and loving wife from her husband to depart. It is the only one, for he has murdered him, John Whatmaugh is the last one that he shall ever murder; He murdered him with a coupling-pin, then he quickly turned around, And tore the clothing from him, and dragged him to the ground. He said, “Now, I have murdered him, now let us fly away, For if they find it out it will be an unlucky day for me.” Then to Beloit we quickly fled, thinking to escape, But the hand of God was against us—indeed we were too late. The day of my execution it will be heart rending to see, My father, come from Kansas, to take a last farewell of me; He flew into my arms and most bitterly did he cry, Saying, “My dear, beloved son, this day you are doomed to die.” Now my life is ended, I from this world must part, For of my bad misfortune I am sorry to my heart; Let each young wild and vicious youth a warning take by me: Be led by your parents and shun bad company.22

Gustave Ohr and George Mann were executed in Canton, Ohio, for the murder of John Whatmaugh, whom they beat and robbed in October 1879. They were tried and found guilty on December 16. Mary O. Eddy received photographs of the two criminals from Mrs. Lydia Lormer of Dalton, Ohio; on the backs of the photos were written the above verses, both with the notation, “written in Canton jail while under death sentence.” Tradition had it that the criminals themselves wrote these last goodnight ballads. Both were sung to the same tune, more commonly associated with the ballad about Charles Guiteau’s assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881.23 Both songs, and the Guiteau ballad as well, are derivatives of “The Lamentation of James Rodgers,” about a New York murder in 1857 (see chapter 2). The opening stanzas of the Ohr and Mann ballads are almost identical with the Charles Guiteau and James Rodgers songs. The two compositions make an interesting pairing—in effect, two different perspectives on the same events. Each one blames the other as the instigator and principal actor, yet it is not inconceivable that they had the same author. Ohr’s expression of gratitude to the officials who served him through his trial is not unknown in traditional ballads of this type. There are enough errors to assure

404

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

us that these texts had already passed through some cycles of oral tradition by the time they were written down. The Ohio Prison Fire Locked in the cells of a prison, A prison much too small; Convicts jammed and crowded, Within that cold grey wall. Four thousand men were living, As only rats should dwell; Iron bars all around them, Living a life of hell. All kinds of men thrown together, Some that were bad from the start; Others who got into trouble, Men really good at heart. Some of them only waiting, For death to bring the end; Others who longed for freedom, To start their lives again. Then came a night of disaster, When all the world held its breath; Fire broke out in the prison, Bringing destruction and death. Iron doors were locked on the convicts, Guards found the keys too late; Three hundred lives were taken Three hundred souls met their fate. Burned in the minds of the rescued, That scene will never die; Men praying God to release them, Men giving up to die. Men who forgot they were convicts, Struggled with all their might; And in the hell of that prison, Heroes were found that night. Three hundred lives have been taken, And someone would have to pay; For we know someone has blundered, When men must die this way. Each one was God’s own creation, Each with a heart and soul; And God don’t want even convicts To die like rats in a hole.24 335 Convicts Die in Ohio Prison Fire; Troops Subdue 2,000 Free in the Yard; Three Other Fires Set in Escape Plot25

GREAT LAKES

405

The ballad makes a remarkable contrast with the newspaper headline. The former paints a picture of a tragedy, lives senselessly lost, administrative blunders, hopefully retributive justice. The newspaper banner suggests the pandemonium of freed prisoners running rampant, setting more fires. The 1929 Handbook of American Prisons and Reformatories listed the Columbus, Ohio, institution as one of the worst run prisons in the nation: overcrowding, low pay for guards, and uniform treatment of all felons were among the flawed conditions noted. When, at 5:50 P.M. on April 21, 1930, the prison fire alarm was sounded, arson was immediately suspected, and prisoners were not removed from danger. Even when the gravity of the situation became apparent, some guards still refused to free prisoners. One guard opened prison cells until he was overcome by smoke and then gave his keys to a convict, charging him to continue opening doors. Some guards were unable to locate the proper keys. Some prisoners found sledgehammers and smashed down bars to free others. Some whose cells could not be opened pled with guards to shoot them rather than let them burn to death. By 8:00 P.M. the fire was under control—until another blaze erupted, apparently caused by arson. In fact, there was a belief from the outset that the initial blaze was deliberately set—a suspicion confirmed nearly a year later by the confession of two convicts, who asserted the fire was in response to the convicts being forced to work on a construction project. It was remarkable that while thousands of prisoners milled about unsecured in the prison yards, only one illegally left the premises. Most of the convicts worked to help others (though there were some whose conduct was not nearly so exemplary). Three ballads were written about the blaze by some of the most prolific event songwriters of the 1920s: Carson J. Robison, Bob Miller, and John McGhee. The first two were written and recorded within three days of the fire.26 A fourth ballad was also in circulation.27

MICHIGAN Some 10 centuries or so after Asian American ancestors found their way to the Great Lakes region, the Europeans, in their characteristic fashion, claimed discovery of the region. The first European to reach present-day Michigan was the French explorer Étienne Brûlé, searching for a waterway to the Pacific Ocean. His 1618 voyage was followed by other Frenchmen—missionaries, traders, and explorers—providing grounds for the French to proclaim over all of the interior of North America in 1671. But a proclamation could not prevent gradual encroachment by the British, starting in the early eighteenth century, and concluding with the entire region falling under British control as a result of the French and Indian War (1754 –1763). British dominance lasted only a couple of decades, ending with the successful conclusion (for the Americans) of the Revolutionary War. Michigan’s population grew slowly until after 1825, when the Erie Canal in New York opened, offering much easier transportation to Michigan from the population centers of New England and New York than did the roads. Michigan Territory’s boundaries were in a state of flux from the early 1800s until statehood, including, in 1834, the present states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and part of the Dakotas. On January 26, 1837, Michigan became the 26th state. Soon after, the lumber industry developed—first, in the white pine, and later, in the hardwood, forests of northern Michigan—and the state became a leading wood producer until about 1910. Sawmilling towns grew up along the Great Lakes at river mouths, where the streams provided access to the lumber of the interior. After the boom faded, many oncethriving mill towns became ghost towns.

406

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Copper and iron ore deposits discovered in the Upper Peninsula led to the creation of a mining industry. Copper prospectors flocked to the Keweenaw Peninsula beginning in 1843, while mining and smelting companies formed to exploit iron ore discovered near Negaunee in 1844. From 1835 to 1860, many immigrants arrived in Michigan, especially British, Germans, Irish, Dutch, Cornish, and Finns. The large Irish population was basically urban, although Irish farmers were found in southern Michigan and, by 1860, in the Upper Peninsula. Dutch influences are still observable in western counties around Holland, where Dutch settlers pioneered successfully in 1847. Finns and the Cornish have been important in the economic and cultural life of the Upper Peninsula. Early Polish immigrants settled in rural areas until the 1890s, when large numbers of Poles concentrated in Detroit. The city’s present-day population includes many people of Polish ancestry. More recently, Hispanics, Asians, and immigrants from the Middle East have contributed to Michigan’s ethnic mix. A thriving defense plant industry during World War II and the blossoming automobile industry in the postwar decades provided impetus for large migrations from the American Southeast—both white and black. The latter, in turn, provided the talent to nurture a music industry of worldwide importance.28 Michigan-i-a Come all ye Yankee farmer boys who wish to change your lot, Who’ve spunk enough to travel beyond your native spot, And leave behind the village where Pa and Ma do stay, Come follow me and settle in Michigan-i-a— Refrain: Yea, yea, yea, in Michigan-i-a. I’ve heard of your Penobscot, way down in parts of Maine, Where timber grows in plenty, but darn the bit of grain; And I have heard of Quaddy and your Piscataqua, But these can’t hold a candle to Michigan-i-a. Refrain. Then there’s old Vermont, well, what d’ye think of that? To be sure, the gals are handsome, and the cattle very fat; But who among the mountains, ’mid clouds and snow, would stay; When he can buy a prairie in Michigan-i-a? Refrain. Then there’s your Massachusetts, once good enough, be sure, But now she’s always laying a tax upon manure, She costs you pecks of trouble, which the de’il a peck can pay, While all is free and easy in Michigan-i-a. Refrain. There is the land of Blue Laws, where deacons cut your hair, For fear your locks and tenets will not exactly square, Where beer that works on Sunday a penalty must pay, While all is Scripture measure in Michigan-i-a. Refrain. Then there’s the state of New York, where some are very rich; Themselves and a few others have dug a mighty ditch, To render it more easy for us to find the way, And sail upon the waters to Michigan-i-a. Refrain. Then there’s your bold Ohio, I’ve often heard them tell, Above the other places, she surely wears the bell;

GREAT LAKES

407

But when you come to view her, I will be bound you’ll say She falls quite far below our Michigan-i-a—Refrain. Then there is Indiana, and Illinois too, Besides the grand Missouri which rises to our view, All these are fine indeed, and stand in nice array, But they must all knock under to Michigan-i-a—Refrain. Upon the Clinton River, just through the country back, You’ll find, in shire of Oakland, the town of Pontiac, Which, springing up a sudden, scared wolves and bears away, That used to roam about there, in Michigan-i-a, Refrain. And if you follow downwards, why, Rochester is there, And further still, Mt. Clemens looks out upon St. Clair, Besides some other places within Macombia, That promise population to Michigan-i-a—Refrain. If you had rather go to a place called Washtenaw, You’ll find the Huron lands the best you ever say; The ships sail to Ann Arbor right through La Plaisance Bay, And touch at Ypsilanti in Michigan-i-a—Refrain. Or if you keep a going a great deal further on, I guess you’ll reach St. Joe, where everybody’s gone; There everything, like Jack’s bean, grows monstrous fast, they say, And beats the rest all hollow in Michigan-i-a, Refrain. Then come, ye Yankee farmers, who’ve mettle hearts like me, And elbow-grease in plenty, to bow the forest tree, Come, take a quarter section, and I’ll be bound you’ll say, This country takes the rag off, this Michigan-i-a—Refrain.29

Historian Silas Farmer, who printed this text in 1884, gave no source but said the song was “largely influential in promoting emigration” from New England and New York. It probably dates from the 1830s or 1840s, the period when immigration to Michigan from the Northeast was just gathering steam (an anachronous idiom); the reference to New York’s “ditch”—the Erie Canal—would put it some time after 1825. Don’t Come to Michigan Come all young men, and you attend And listen to the counsel of a friend. If you ever seek another land Don’t ever come to Michigan. We have big swamps covered with brakes, They lie awake, do all they can And they’re alive with rattlesnakes To bite the folks of Michigan. We have fine girls, I own ’tis true, But, alas, poor things, what can they do? For if they want an honest man He can’t be found in Michigan. We have sawmills all o’er the land; They saw the lumber with a band

408

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

They’ll take your leg or take your hand And leave you crippled in Michigan. Our lumber camps are all so nice; They’re filled, the bunks, with bugs and lice. You’ll scratch and dig them with your hands, But you still have them in Michigan. Our roads are built of corduroy, And if you travel very far You sweat and swear and curse and damn— That’s how you travel in Michigan. There’s the doctor, and he’ll tell Great stories of his calomel, Of the great doses that you must take; ’Twill cure your fever there’s no mistake. And then before you’re out of bed The doctor’ll come, poke in his head, “Some twenty dollars you must pay, And I want my money this very day.” And there’s the merchants I ‘most forgot, The biggest rascals in all the lot, Who lie and cheat, do all they can To keep you poor in Michigan. And now my story I’ve told to you, And if you’d find that it is true Just pack your turkey as fast as you can And come to live in Michigan.30

Possibly “Michigan-i-a” was too successful in luring new settlers, so some disconcerted Michiganders penned this counterpropaganda piece to stem the tide of immigration. Judging by the final stanza, it seems to be written with tongue firmly in cheek. Band saws, though invented earlier, did not become widespread in the United States until after the Civil War. The reference to their use in Michigan mills suggests a date within a few decades before or after the Civil War. Another of E. C. Beck’s informants had a text of the song pasted in a scrapbook and dated 1849, which is a reasonable date for the song’s origin. Michigan-I-O It was early in the season, in the fall of sixty-three, A preacher of the gospel, why, he stepped up to me. He says, “My jolly good fellow, how would you like to go And spend a winter lumbering in Michigan-I-O?” I boldly stepped up to him, and thus to him did say, “As for my going to Michigan, it depends upon the pay. If you will pay good wages, my passage to and fro, Why, I will go along with you to Michigan-I-O.” Yes, he would pay good wages and pay our passage out, Providing we’d sign papers that we would stay the route. “But if you do get homesick and swear that home you’ll go, Why, I’ll not pay your passage out to Michigan-I-O.”

GREAT LAKES

409

Now, with this kind of flattering he enlisted quite a train, Full twenty-five or thirty, both young and able men. We had a pleasant voyage the route we had to go; He landed us in Saginaw in Michigan-I-O. It was there our joys were ended, and our sorrows did begin By paying dear attention as they came rolling in. He led us through the country; the road we did not know; ’Twas on the Rifle River in Michigan-I-O. The way that he used us there it was beyond the art of man. To give you a fair description now I’ll do the best I can: Our board the dogs would laugh at; our bed was on the snow. Thank God there is no worse hell than Michigan-I-O. Our hearts was cased in iron, and our souls were bound in steel; The hardships of that winter could not force us to yield; By paying dear attention, he finds his match I know Amongst us boys from Kennedy in Michigan-I-O. O now the winter is over it’s homeward we are bound, And in this cursed country no more we shall be found. We’ll go home to our wives and sweethearts, tell others they must not go To that God-forsaken country called Michigan-I-O.31

“Michigan-I-O” is one of several songs, probably genetically related, that describe difficult working conditions in particular occupations. The singer unfurls a litany of complaints with his job situation and his employer and vows never to return to the same hellhole again. Without unions or protective legislation, the abused worker has little choice but to bite his lip and not return. Other songs in this collection of the ilk are “State of Arkansas” and “Buffalo Skinners” (Texas). You Pretty Girls of Michigan You pretty girls of Michigan, give ear to what I write, Of sailing on the stormy Lakes, in which we take delight; In sailing on the stormy Lakes, which we poor seamen do, While Irishmen and the landlubbers are staying at home with you. They’re always with some pretty girls a-telling them fine tales— Of the hardships and the hard day’s work they’ve had in their cornfields; And when it’s eight o’clock at night it’s into bed they crawl, While we, like jovial hearts of oak, stand many a bitter squall. You pretty girls of Michigan if you did only know, The hardships and the dangers we seamen undergo; You would have more regard for us than oft you’ve had before; You’d shun to meet those landlubbers that lounge about the shore. For oft at twelve o’clock at night when the wind begins to blow: “Heave out, heave out, now lively lads, roll out from down below!” It’s now on deck stands every man, his life and ship to guard; “Aloft! Aloft!” the captain cries, “send down the tops’l yard!” And when the seas are mountain high and toss our vessel ’round, And all about does danger lurk, the vessel may go down!

410

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now every man is on the deck, all ready to lend a hand, To shorten sail to weather the gale until we reach the land. We sail the Lakes from spring to fall from Duluth to Buffalo, While landlubbers are home with you or about their fields they go; We sail the Lakes and money make for the girls that we adore, And when our cash is getting low, we ship again for more!32

This song conjures up images of old salts (preferably Hibernian) gesticulating with their tankards of ale while they regale the lasses with assertions of their bravery in the face of unimaginable hardships at sea. How better to win the admiration (and perhaps more) of the wide-eyed fairer sex? There are some other songs (“You Pretty Boys of Liverpool” and “Pretty Girls of Liverpool” recorded by Helen Creighton in Nova Scotia) to which this piece may be related. Lost on Lake Michigan (The Beaver Island Boys) Come all brother sailors, I hope you’ll draw nigh, For to hear of your shipmates, it will cause you to cry; It’s of noble Johnny Gallagher, who sailed to and fro, He was lost on Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow. “Oh Johnny, my dear son, in the dead of the night, I awoke from a dream which gave me a fright; And to Traverse City I forbid you to go, To cross o’er Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow.” “Oh Mother, dear Mother, those dreams are not true, I will shortly return and prove it to you; And the Lord will protect us, let it blow high or low, When we cross o’er Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow.” “Oh Nancy, lovely Nancy, don’t stop me, my dear, I’ll surely return, come dry up your tears; At home in our cottage full bumpers will flow When I’ve crossed o’er Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow.” It was in October of seventy-three, They left Beaver Harbor out to a calm sea; And to Traverse City, their destination to go, They crossed o’er Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow. They left Traverse City at nine the next day, And down to Elk Rapids they then bore away; They took in their stores and to sea they did go, They were crossing Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow. At ten that same night a light they did spy: “That’s Beaver Island, we are drawing nigh!” They carried all sail and the Lookout did go, They were crossing Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow. Says Johnny, “My boys, there’s land on our lee, That’s Beaver Island, but there’s a high sea!” With the wind from the nor’east, oh boys, it does blow! There’s a squall on Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow.

GREAT LAKES

411

Johnny looked at his craft and then to his crew, Each man’s at his station, they’re brave hearts and true; “Stand by your fore halyards, let your main halyards go.” There’s a squall on Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow. Now the Lookout is running before a hard gale, Her rudder unships and overboard went her sail! The billows are foaming like fountains of snow, She sinks in Lake Michigan where the stormy winds blow.33

Beaver Islander Dan Malloy wrote two ballads about the October 1873 disaster when the 24-foot sailboat Lookout, which had set sail from Beaver Island to Traverse City to get supplies, encountered a severe storm on its return. The boat washed up on the island, but without its four sailors. The islanders were holding a wake for their four lost comrades, only to see one of the men come sailing home: he had decided not to return with the Lookout because of the impending storm. Minnie Quay ’Twas in the town of Forester, Along the sandy shore, The voice of one poor Minnie Quay We’ll never hear no more. Her soul is sweetly resting For the Judgment Day to come, When all shall render up accounts, And the Judge pronounce our doom. This fair maid was only sixteen, She was scarcely in her bloom, When her parents they got angry And wished her in her tomb. They said they wished that she was dead, For some young man one day Went and told an untruthful story About poor Minnie Quay. One day her parents went away And left her all alone, Alone with her little brother, Until they should return. Little did they think when they’d return They’d find their daughter dead, Gone to a land that is far fairer, Where no more tears are shed. ’Twas on the twenty-sixth of April Her parents went away, Down by the side of Lake Huron This fair one she did stray, A-pondering on the dreadful scene Which quickly must pass by,

412

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

For she had now determined In a watery grave to lie. She waved her hand to Forester As if to say good-by; Then quickly in Lake Huron Her body it did lie. Before anyone could render help, Could lend a helping hand, Her spirit it was borne away Unto the Promised Land. Now sweetly she is resting In a cold and silent grave. If her parents had not condemned her, This fair one might have been saved. But again her friends will meet her If by the Savior they are led To a land that is far better, Where no farewell tears are shed.34

Forester, Michigan, a small vacation community just north of Port Sanilac, on the eastern Michigan coast, has a ghost: Along a street in Forester is an abandoned tavern with the name “Quay” and the year of “1852” lettered above the door. This house once belonged to James Quay and his wife, Mary Ann, who had come to Forester from New England. Their eldest daughter Minnie was nearly fifteen-years-old when she died in April of 1876. It is this young woman whose ghost is still said to walk the shore near Forester.35

Back in 1876, Forester was a bustling fishing and lumbering town, with sailors and lumberjacks coming and going constantly. Young Minnie Quay fell in love with one of those sailors, but for one reason or another, her parents and the community looked askance upon the young man, and she was forbidden to see him. In the spring, word reached the village that the ship on which her lover was working had gone down in a storm. Minnie, heartbroken, threw herself off Forester’s pier into Lake Huron’s chilly waters and perished. She was buried in the Forester Cemetery on the north end of town.36 Michigan folk song collector E. C. Beck obtained three copies of the song from singers in Tawas City, Whittemore, and Port Sanilac in the 1930s; this is the Port Sanilac version. Harry Bahel (Bail) Come all kind friends and parents, come brothers, sisters, all; A story I will tell to you that will make your blood run cold; Concerning a poor, unfortunate lad that was known both far and near. His parents reared him tenderly, not many miles from here. In the township of Arcadia in the county of Lapeer, There stood a little shingle mill; it had run about a year. That’s where this fatal deed was done that caused many to weep and wail; That’s where this young man lost his life—his name was Harry Bahel.

GREAT LAKES

413

On the twenty-ninth of April in eighteen seventy-nine, He went to work as usual; no fear on his mind. Till the lowering of the feed bar threw the carriage into gear, And flung poor Harry against the saw and cut him most severe. It sawed him round the shoulder blade and halfway down the back; It threw him out upon the floor as the carriage it came back. He started for the shanty, but his strength was failing fast; Said he, “My boys, I’m wounded bad, and I fear this is my last.” They sent for his dear brothers, likewise his sisters too; The doctor came and dressed the wound, but, alas, it was too true. When his cruel wounds were dressed, he unto them did say, “I know there is no help for me; I soon shall pass away.” No father had poor Harry to weep beside his bed; No kind and loving mother to soothe his aching head. He lingered for a day and night till death did ease his pain; Hushed are his words forever—he’ll never speak again. They dressed him for his coffin; they fitted him for his grave. His brothers and his sisters mourned the loss of a brother brave; They took him to the churchyard where they laid him down to rest; His body lies a-moldering there, and his spirit is with the blest.37

Harry Bahel died in a shingle-mill accident in Lapeer County in 1879 at the age of 19. The ballad recounts the sad story accurately, and several singers of the region thought it had been written by Harry’s brother. In addition to the preceding text, Beck also reproduced the inscription on Bahel’s tombstone.38 The Death of Harry Bradford Come all ye true-born lumbering boys, both fellows young and old, A story I will tell to you that’ll make your blood run cold; Concerning a poor unfortunate lad who was known both far and near, He was killed on the deck at Essex Mill, as you will quickly hear. He walked out in the morning with little fear or doubt, That before the whistle blew at noon his life would be crushed out; His father was the foreman here of this brave lumbering crew, And he never dreamed that his son so dear would meet his fatal doom. ’Twas on the twenty-ninth of January in nineteen hundred two, Little did we think a life’d be lost in our brave lumbering crew; Little did we think in the morning that before the close of day, Our noble friend would be doomed to go to his cold and silent grave. It is only three months ago since his little sister died. Poor Harry was killed in this rollway; he’ll be buried by her side. On the thirty-first of January young Harry was laid to rest; His body was laid in the silent tomb, his spirit is with the blest. And now I’ll try to explain to you the last words that he said. They chained the log and they set their hooks as they stood side by side. He spoke up to his partner, saying, “I’ll bet you a cigar That this is the highest rollway that stands in this big yard.”

414

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

“I’ll bet you once,” said his partner George, “there’s another just as high.” “All right, we’ll shake and make a bet,” young Harry he did cry. He gave a waving signal to the lad that pulled the chain; The team was quickly on the move, and he never spoke again. The log came rolling up the skids, dropped over on the deck. Every man was leaning on his hook, not a man of them did speak; While the team was trying to jump the log, they scarcely made the raise; The log dropped back and jarred the face, which sent him to his grave. While the logs were rolling towards him, he tried to climb the tiers; To the very top of this highest deck young Harry tried to steer; While trying to climb a large log, another one caught his hand, Which carried him back down in the jam as you will understand. The logs came pounding over him like thunder from the skies. The boys they stood and gasped for breath when they saw that he must die. “Poor Harry’s killed,” Smith Rogers cried, “Come quick, bring the team around; These logs must all be cleared away; his body must be found.” The chain was placed around the logs, they were quickly pulled away; So the boys could see down in the jam where the mangled body lay; His ribs were broke, his back was broke, his legs were broke also, And his brains they lay beneath the deck in the cold and bloody snow. His father was on the road to camp when the dreadful deed was done. As soon as he reached the shanty, he heard news of his son; One of our crew spoke up and said, “Our rollway has given way, And an accident has happened—I have something bad to say. “Come down by the shanty—” and he slowly walked away. As they were walking down the road this young man to him did say, “Do you know that, Mr. Bradford, your Harry, he is killed?” “Oh, no! I can’t believe it, and I know I never will.” And by the time they’d reached the jam where the mangled body lay, He walked up there within three rods and then slowly turned away. He walked back and forth with head bowed down with not a word to say, While the boys were working fast to take his dead body away. The dreadful news was carried to his kind old mother dear; No one knows how she must have felt when the sad news reached her ear. Little no one knows what dreadful pain has touched that mother’s heart, When the truth at last it came to pass that from him she must part. I’ll bid farewell to our noble friend that we will see no more; God bless his loving parents whose hearts will suffer sore; God bless his loving sister who’ll mourn so silently; And now we’ll say farewell, dear friend; he’s gone to eternity.39

Few ballads of the grim deaths of lumbermen dwelt with such pathos on the impact the tragedy had on the parents. Yet the scenes described in this ballad must have been relived time and again by other families. E. C. Beck, who collected the only known versions of this ballad, all in Michigan, was told that it had been written by W. J. Taylor about an accident that occurred at Phelps’s camp, north of Torch Lake; the Bradfords lived at Central Lake.

GREAT LAKES

415

A rollway is “an inclined way on the river ice or bank down which logs being unloaded from sleighs were rolled and piled up.”40 Down by the Wild Mustard River We were camped on the Wild Mustard River, Down by the Old Hendrick Dam; One morning as we rose from our blankets, We saw on the rocks a bad jam. When the water comes rustling and rolling, Our pikes and peaveys we’d apply, Not thinking that one of our number That day had so horribly to die. On round stuff there was none any better On the stream than our friend, Johnny Stile; He rode it more often than any, And he always was reckless and wild. But today his luck went against him, And his foot it got caught in the jam; And you know how that creek runs a-howling When we flood from the reservoir dam. But we were all there in a moment, Just as soon as we heard his first shout; For we knew that the waters were dangerous; They roll in but they never roll out. We worked for an hour and a quarter Till our time it had come to a spare; We had got a big hold worked right through her When like lightning she hauled out of there. When at length we reached the dead water, We worked till the sweat down us poured; We pulled his dead body from in under, But it looked like our Johnny no more. Every bone in his body was broken, His flesh hung in shreds and in strings; We buried him down by the river Where the lark and the whippoorwill sings.41

The events behind this ballad—if indeed it has a specific referent—have not been traced (nor has anyone been able to locate with certainty the “Wild Mustard River”), but since all the versions that have been recorded come from Michigan, it seems safe to declare it a Michigan song. Veterans’ Song We are veteran union boys, We uphold the Constitution; We’ll help the boys to win this strike By these great resolutions.

416

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Chorus: Down with Capitalism first, Break that Wall Street power; Give the working class a chance, And victory is ours. We fought in eighteen-sixty-one, To free the world from slavery; From capitalism that was strong, And won our first great victory. We fought in nineteen-sixteen then, For Wall Street’s many millions; But since the Armistice was signed, They’ve run it up to billions. And now we have to fight again, But this time for our Freedom— From being General Motors slaves We have to join the Union.42

In the General Motors autoworkers’ sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, between December 1936 and February 1937, union leaders made a particular point of promoting and spreading songs to raise the strikers’ spirits. Workers were striking for the right to collective bargaining, and songs not only boosted morale, but helped to pass the idle hours in union halls and on picket lines. General Motors, determined to maintain open shops, had set up employee associations in order to “render the militant outside union superfluous.” The strike resulted in one of the first successful attempts at unionization in the auto industry.43 Although the urbanized automobile unions lacked the strong musical traditions that workers in the southeastern mining and textile industries had, they were adept at borrowing old pop songs, songs of the IWW (International Workers of the World), and union songs from other industries as models for their newly composed lyrics. The preceding song was set to the tune of “Yankee Doodle,” and its lyrics evoked the unassailable (in the North, at least) patriotic memories of the Civil War and First World War. This must have proven a safer tactic than building on left-wing traditions that could expose them to the charge of communist or socialist influence. Streets of Hamtramck As I walked out in the streets of Hamtramck, As I walked out in Hamtramck one day; I spied an old worker all wrinkled and weary, All wrinkled and weary with a head that was grey. “I see by your outfit that you are a worker,” This old fellow cried as I boldly stepped by; “Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story, For I’m too old to work and I’m too young to die. “Once to the factory I used to go daily, Once in the factory I worked for my pay; Twenty long years for the same corporation, Now I’m too old to work and I’m starving today.

GREAT LAKES

417

“For when I passed sixty the line was too speedy, I couldn’t keep up at my usual rate; The boss was hard-hearted and that’s when we parted, The company threw me right out of the gate. “Now who’s going to hire a man who’s past sixty, Who will believe that he’s willing to try? Who’s going to feed him and keep the roof o’er him, When he’s too old to work and he’s too young to die? “Now listen young fellow and learn from this story, So you won’t meet my fate as the years pass on by: Fight for those pensions so you can retire, When you’re too old to work and you’re too young to die.”44

Michigan’s axmen made swift work of the virgin pine forests and then turned their attention to the hardwood growths. When, at the end of the nineteenth century, these were exhausted, the lumbering industry died out. But Henry Ford and his fellow industrialists came to Michigan’s economic rescue, and within a few decades, the state had become the center of the automobile manufacturing industry. Factory workers were spared the dangers of log jams and sawmills, but they found other aspects of their workplace to put to music. The preceding song was written for the Dodge pension strike of 1949; the author was Miss Kuppy Scott, Dodge Local 3, and the song was sung in concerts and recorded by Bill Friedland, who had been an autoworker and a staff member of the United Auto Workers’ union in Detroit. Miss Scott used a widely known ballad for her model, one that has spawned numerous parodies: “The Cowboy’s Lament,” or “Streets of Laredo” (see the discussion of Texas, in chapter 7, for more details, and the discussion of California, chapter 9, for another labor union parody). In a parody written for San Francisco’s longshoremen’s strike of 1934, the issue was the survival of the union itself; by 1949, the place of the labor union was more secure, and the strike (and song) focused on another economic issue: job security for older workers facing layoffs because of redundancy or age. The song is set in Hamtramck, a city within the city of Detroit, whose population, largely of Polish extraction, was primarily occupied in the auto industry. The end of the twentieth century saw attitudes toward labor unions sour as tales of internal corruption became common, but a century earlier, the unions were responsible for safer working conditions, shorter hours, more benefits, and better pay than workers of the preceding generations could have ever dreamed of.

INDIANA City names such as Lagrange, La Porte, Terre Haute, Versailles, and Vincennes betray the nationality of Indiana’s first European explorers. The earliest French settlement was at Vincennes in ca. 1727; in 1763 all French lands were ceded to England at the conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War, and then, in 1783, to the United States by the Treaty of Paris. Indiana land was part of the Northwest Territory until 1800, when the Indiana Territory (including present-day Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and parts of Michigan and Minnesota) was carved out of it. The Michigan Territory was split off in 1805, and then the Illinois Territory in 1809. Indiana acquired its modern boundaries when it became the 19th state in 1816. Indiana is known as the Hoosier State, an appellation the origins of which are shrouded in uncertainty. It has been traced to a British Cumberland dialect word, hoozer, said of

418

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

anything large, but the claim is very weak. In the South Midland of the United States, it has been used to mean a crude countryman, but that use is no earlier than its first occurrence (1826) referring to an Indiana native. Dans les Chantiers Nous Hivernerons

Voyagers

Voici l’hiver arrivé Les reivieres sont gelées C’est le temps d’aller au bois, Manger du lard et des pois.

Lo! the winter now has come, And the rivers frozen o’er, It is time to go to hunt, Eating pork and beans galore.

Chorus: Dans les chantiers Dans les nous hivernerons! chantiers nous hivernerons!

Chorus: To camp we’ll go till winter’s gone, To camp we’ll go till winter’s gone.

Pauv’ voyageur, que t’as d’la misère! Souvent tu couches par terre, A la pluie, au mauvais temps, A la rigueur de tous les temps!

O, woodsman poor, great’s your distress, Often do you sleep on earth, In the rain and winter’s stress, Wanting comforts of the hearth.

Quand tu arriv’s à Vincennes, Souvent tu as bien d’la dévein’, Tu vas trouver ton bourgeois, Qu’est la assis à son comptoi’!

When to old Vincennes you cross, You’ll be feeling tired and sore, Then you’ll go to find your boss, Counting money in his store.

Je voudrais être payé Pour le temps que j’ai donné; Quand le bourgeois est en banqu’route Il te renvoie manger des croûtes.

I would rather now be paid, For the time that I gave you; When the boss a bankrupt’s made, Only crusts will be my due.

Quand tu retourn’s chez ton père, Aussi pour revoir ta mère, Le bonhomme est à la porte, La bonne femm’ fait la gargotte.

When to father’s back you ply, There to see your mother too, There the good old man you’ll spy, Mother’ll make you a lentil stew.

Monsieur Dubois est bon bourgeois, Mais il n’nous donn’ pas grand’ monnaie. On travaill’ bien tout l’hiver, Au printemps on se trouv’ clair.

Monsieur Dubois is our boss, But he gives us no great pay; Have to work through winter frost, And in springtime hide away.

“Bonjour donc, mon cher enfant! Nous apport’s-tu bien d’l’argent?” “Que l’diable emport’ les chantiers! Jamais d’ma vie j’n’y r’tourn’rai.”

“Ah, hello, my darling child! Do you bring us lots of jack?” “Deuce then take the camp so wild! Ne’er again shall I go back.”45

Established in the early 1700s as a French trading post and named in 1736 for FrançoisMarie Bissot, sieur de Vincennes, its commandant, Vincennes remained in French hands (except for brief British occupation) until it was taken by the Americans in 1778–1779. French descendants remained the majority until the 1860s, when large numbers of German immigrants settled in and soon gained numerical ascendancy. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Franco Americans constituted only a small minority, reduced to a mere handful of septuagenarians by the 1930s, when folk songs such as this were collected. This is a Vincennes version of a song that probably originated in French Canada with the Voyageurs (fur traders) at the end of the eighteenth century. M. Dubois, mentioned in

GREAT LAKES

419

the penultimate stanza, was a prosperous trader and merchant who lived on the banks of the Wabash at that time. The song has much the same character as “Michigan-I-O,” “The Arkansas Traveler” (chapter 4), and “Buffalo Skinners,” (chapter 7). In all of them, the narrator describes his dreadful work experiences and has few kind words for his greedy employer. Fuller and Warren Ye sons of Columbia, your attention I do crave While a sorrowful ditty I do tell That happened here of late in this Indiana state Of a hero there’s none doth excel. Like Samson, he courted and made choice of the fair, Intending to make her his wife; But she, like Delilah, his heart she did ensnare, And it cost him both his honor and his life. A gold ring he gave her in token of his love, And on it was the image of a dove; And they mutually agreed to be married with speed, And they promised by the powers above. But this fickle-minded maid she vowed again to wed To young Warren, a liver in that place, Which was a fatal blow, for it proved his overthrow And added to her shame and disgrace. For when Fuller came to hear he was deprived of his dear Whom he’d vowed by the powers to wed, With his heart full of woe, unto Warren he did go, And smiling, unto him this he said: “Young man, you have injured me to gratify your cause By reporting I have left a prudent wife; Now acknowledge you have wronged me or I will break the laws; O Warren, I’ll deprive you of your life.” Then Warren he replied, “Your request must be denied, For my heart to your darling is bound; And further I can say this is our wedding day In spite of all the heroes in town.” Then Fuller, by the passion of love and anger bound (Alas, it caused many to cry!), For at one fatal shot he killed Warren on the spot, And smiling said, “I’m willing now to die.” Then Fuller was condemned by the honorable court Of Lawrenceburg, in Dearborn to die That ignominious death, to be hanged above the earth Like Haman, on the gallows so high. When the moment drew nigh that brave Fuller was to die, With a smile he bid the audience adieu; Like an angel he did stand, for he was a handsome man; On his bosom wore a ribbon of blue. But the smiling God of Love looked with anger from above, And the rope flew asunder like the sand;

420

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Two doctors for their prey did the murder, we may say, For they hung him by the main strength of hand. His body it was buried and the doctors lost the prize, And the maiden was deprived of a groom; His spirit is exalted above the starry skies; She is silently lamenting her sad doom. Now to you who have good wives who are loyal and kind, Pray crown them with honor and with love; For it is my weak opinion that they are hard to find; ’Tis a treasure from the powers above. From all the ancient history that I can understand, And we’re bound by the Scriptures to believe, Bad women are essentially the downfall of man As Adam was beguiled by Eve. It is not a railing spirit nor wicked desire, Nor solemnity is not my design; Look in Genesis and Judges, and Samuel, Kings, and Job, And the proof of this doctrine you’ll find. For marriage is a lottery, and few that draw the prize That is pleasing to the heart and the eye, And they that never marry may well be called wise; So, gentlemen, excuse me; goodbye!46

Amasa Fuller had been engaged to the young woman identified only as “Minnie” in some of the texts, who was residing with her uncle in Lawrenceburgh; they were to be married on January 10, 1820. Then, in the middle of the December preceding, Fuller, living in Brookville, received a letter handwritten by Palmer Warren and signed by the lady, in which she returned her engagement ring and stated she wished to terminate the engagement. Fuller purchased a pair of pistols and accosted Warren several times; finally, on January 10, in the latter’s office, he presented Warren with a paper renouncing all claim to the woman and demanded that Warren sign it. Warren declined, and Fuller offered him one of the pistols to defend himself. Warren refused, and Fuller shot him in the breast. When Warren’s colleague burst into the room and saw Warren’s dying body on the floor, he exclaimed, “Good heavens, Fuller, is it possible you have done this?” To which Fuller replied, “I am a man, and have acted the part of a man! I have been ridding the earth of a vile reptile! I glory in the deed!” Fuller was arrested and tried in early March; after a deliberation of two hours, the jury found Fuller guilty, and he was sentenced to be hanged. According to some reports, public sentiment was in his favor, and a petition for pardon was presented to the governor, but it was denied. However, some of the contemporary newspaper accounts speak very favorably of Warren, describing him as well liked in the community.47 Kate Milner Rabb, columnist for the Indianapolis Star, carried on correspondence with readers on the subject of old Indiana songs. “Fuller and Warren,” also known as “Ye Sons of Columbia,” was one of the pieces concerning which she gathered information as well as texts. Her findings indicated that a song was written soon after the events it described by Moses Whitecotton, a Scotsman who reputedly wrote many songs and poems, most of which his descendants lost in a fire. However, she doubted that the piece credited to Whitecotton was the same as the traditional ballad given here.48 Our (possibly Whitecotton’s) Bible-thumping text says little about Warren but seems favorably disposed toward Fuller—except for the puzzling reference to Haman, villain of

GREAT LAKES

421

the book of Esther, who shared nothing with Fuller’s story save for the means of execution. His comparison of Fuller with Samson helps to clothe the former in the mantle of a hero, noble and just, but of uncontrollable anger when wronged. Most of the author’s venom is reserved for the woman, whom he casts as the responsible wicked party, calling up all the (supposedly) evil women of the Bible (Delilah in Judges; Eve in Genesis; Bathsheba in Samuel; Job’s wife in Job; Jezebel in Kings) as proof positive of the moral failings of Woman in general. It’s hard to believe that Whitecotton wouldn’t mention the woman by her proper name; either it was forgotten in the texts that have been preserved or, possibly, he was working mainly from newspaper accounts, which didn’t name her either. There is nothing in the accounts cited that mentions the malfunction of the hangman’s rope; whether this was Whitecotton’s invention (unlikely) or a macabre detail not recorded is not known. Sam Bass Sam Bass was born in Indiana, it was his native home. And at the age of seventeen young Sam began to roam; He first came out to Texas, a cowboy for to be— A kinder hearted feller you seldom ever see. Sam used to deal in race stock, once owned the Denton mare, He matched her in scrub races and took her to the fair; Sam used to coin the money and spent it just as free, He always drank good whiskey wherever he might be. Sam left the Collins ranch in the merry month of May With a herd of Texas cattle the Black Hills for to see; Sold out in Custer City and then got on a spree, A harder set of cowboys you hardly ever see. On their way back to Texas they robbed the U. P. train, They then split up in couples and started out and then; Joe Collins and his partner were overtaken soon, With all their hard earned money they had to meet their doom. Sam made it back to Texas all right side up with care, Rode into the town of Denton with all his friends to share; Sam’s life was short in Texas—three robberies did he do, He robbed all the passengers and all the express cars too. Sam had four companions, four bold and daring lads, They were Richardson and Jackson, Joe Collins and Old Dad; Four more bold and daring cowboys the rangers never knew, They whipped the Texas Rangers and ran the boys in blue. Sam had another companion called Arkansas for short, Was shot by a Texas Ranger by the name of Thomas Floyd; Old Tom’s a big six footer and thinks he’s mighty fly, But I can tell you his racket, he’s a dead beat on the sly. Jim Murphy was arrested and then released on bail, He jumped his bond in Tyler, then took the train for Terrel; But old Mayor Jones had posted Jim and it was all a stall, It was only a plan to capture Sam, before the coming fall.

422

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Sam met his fate at Round Rock, July the twenty first, They pierced poor Sam with rifle balls and emptied out his purse; Poor Sam he is a corpse and six foot under clay, And Jackson’s in the bushes a tryin’ to get away. Jim had borrowed Sam’s good gold and didn’t want to pay, The only shot he saw was to give poor Sam away; He sold out Sam and Barnes and left their friends to mourn; Oh what a scorching Jim will get when Gabriel blows his horn. So he sold out Sam and Barnes and left his friends to mourn, Oh what a scorching Jim will get when Gabriel blows his horn; Perhaps he’s got to heaven, there’s none of us can say— But if I’m right in my surmise he’s gone the other way.49

Sam Bass (1851–1878) was born near Mitchell, Indiana, and moved to Texas in about 1870. That relieved the state of Indiana of a great potential worry since from 1875 to 1878, Bass pursued a lucrative career of stage coach and train robbery. Bass’s move to Texas was not immediately followed by his turning to crime; for his first five years in the Lone Star State he was successively a cowboy, a horse handler, and a handyman for the sheriff. In about 1874 Bass developed an interest in horse racing; he and the sheriff’s younger brother bought a well-reputed animal that won a number of races for them. She is the Denton mare of the second stanza. Horse racing began to occupy so much of Bass’s time that the sheriff dismissed him; traveling from event to event led to more time spent drinking and gambling, the funding of which eventually led to his falling into a downward spiral of crime. Sam and a saloon keeper named Joel Collins worked out a horse-racing scam that earned them quite a bit of lucre until they were exposed; then they turned to driving cattle herds to northern markets. In Ogallala, Nebraska, they were caught up in gold fever. In the Black Hills town of Deadwood they gambled away the money they owed the Texas owners of the herd they brought north, and they formed a gang to rob stage coaches. That wasn’t sufficiently rewarding, so they planned a train robbery. In September 1877 the gang held up a Union Pacific train at Big Springs, Nebraska, netting $65,000. Bass, pursued by law officers, organized a new gang in Denton County, Texas, and robbed several trains in 1878. One of his followers, Jim Murphy, was persuaded by Ranger Major John B. Jones to became an informer for the Texas Rangers, and he tipped them off to Sam’s whereabouts. Bass was shot to death in an ambush during an attempted bank robbery on July 20, 1878. All in all, the details in the long-winded ballad are close to accurate, and the ballad, author unknown, must have been written soon after the events it describes.50 Cowboy song collector (and writer) Jack Thorp believed that John Denton of Gainesville, Texas, wrote it in 1879. It was one of the best-known western songs in the 1880s. An early text was published in 1890 by Henry J. Wehman; he had received it from “Nelson Forsyth (Showman), Sion, Walker Co., Texas.” It has McClintock’s first five and last stanzas. Probably Wehman had to truncate the text to fit his publications. Forsyth was Wehman’s source for a number of cowboy songs and ballads.51 Although Bass’s birth was the only momentous event in his life that occurred in Indiana, Indianans have long claimed “Sam Bass” as an Indiana song. The Hanging of Sam Archer Ye people who delight in sin, I’ll tell you what has lately been;

GREAT LAKES

423

Come sympathize with our poor souls For this young man who died in Shoals. It is so hard for us to say, He was executed here today; It was a gloomy sight to see, Alas, too much for poor me. We see him on the trap door, So brave he views the crowd o’er; The officer with his gray hairs In his eyes were standing tears. O see the sheriff pull down the cap And jerk the lever of the trap; In Heaven I trust we’ll meet Where he’ll be loosed both hands and feet. For the murder of Bunch he was arraigned, In Shoals dungeon bound and chained; Upon this he had to rely Until the ninth day of July. “Oh, Mother, Mother,” he did cry, “You’re to blame because I die; I was trained when I was young For which this day I’m to be hung. “My brother Mart was shot and gone; My father was hung and so was John. I have one brother yet at home; Have mercy, God, upon that one.” His little brother in wild despair He wrung his hands and tore his hair; His little spirit seemed a wreck, His quivering lip and burning cheek. Mourning friends with tearful eyes, To you all this may surprise; We fear the gallows now awaits For more of his associates. Come now, young men, be warned by me To shun all evil company; Upon your knees for mercy cry Before, like Archer, bound to die.52

The family that gangs together hangs together. The Archer gang, in Martin County, Indiana, were a notorious clutch of outlaws led by Tom Archer, his brother Martin (“Big Mart”), and two of Tom’s sons, John and Sam. Other Archers were involved as well as a dozen or so nonrelatives who were permitted to participate in the revelry. In 1882, one Samuel A. Bunch, his hired man Samuel Marley, and “Little Mart” Archer, a nephew of Big Mart, formed a partnership to steal and sell logs from rafts being floated down the river. One day, a quarrel broke out among the men, essentially concerning whether Archer

424

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

was being cheated by the other two. A few days later, Little Mart was ambushed and killed by Marley. Relatives set out to question Bunch concerning the whereabouts of Marley, who had disappeared and was suspected. Efforts to get Bunch to talk were fruitless, and, abandoning the tiresome effort, the gang shot him and, a few days later, burned the body and buried the bones. Bunch’s disappearance remained a mystery for four years, until circumstances around another Archer gang crime brought them to light. Three of the Archers were arrested and jailed. Then, in the early morning of March 9, 1886, a party of some 100 citizens forced open the doors of the Shoals jail, tied up the sheriff, removed the three Archers, and hanged them all. Three days later, Sam Archer was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to hang on July 9, 1886.53 The author of the ballad is not known, but he or she was obviously very familiar with the events and shows considerable sympathy for Sam Archer—despite the fact that his guilt was certain. The author has borrowed lines from older traditional ballads. For example, the early-nineteenth-century broadside ballad “The Lamentable Death of Polly” begins Young people who delight in sin, I’ll tell you what has lately been . . .54

Folklorist Paul Brewster collected three versions of the ballad in the 1940s in Indiana; it has not been heard from since. The Ballad of Pearl Bryan and Her Sad Death in the Kentucky Hills at Fort Thomas It was one winter evening, The sorrowful tale was told; Scott Jackson said to Walling, “Let’s take Pearl for a stroll”; Oh, soon the cab was ordered, To go out for a stroll, And if you will only listen The half has never been told. Pearl went to Cincinnati, She’d never been there before; She said to Sweetheart Jackson, “I’ll never see Mama no more.” She said to Sweetheart Jackson, “Why do you want to take my life? You know I’ve always loved you, And would have been your wife.” Little did Pearl think When she left her home that day, That the little grip she carried Would hide her head away. There’s room for your name in my album, There’s room for your love in my heart; There’s room for us both in Heaven Where true lovers never part.

GREAT LAKES

425

Oh, then some bloodhounds were ordered, They found no trail, they said; “Here lies a woman’s body, But we can’t find no head.” They telephoned for miles around, At last an answer came; It was from Pearl Bryan’s sister: It must be Pearl that’s slain. In came Pearl Bryan’s sister, Falling on her knees; A-pleading to Scott Jackson, For sister’s head—oh, please! But Jackson was so stubborn, A naughty word he said: “When you meet Pearl in Heaven You’ll find her missing head.” In came Walling’s mother, A-pleading for her son, A-saying to the jury, “It’s the first crime they ever done; Oh, send him not to prison, ’Twould break my poor old heart; My son’s my darling one, How from him can I part?” The jury soon decided, And from their seat they sprung; For the crime the boys committed They both now must be hung; On January the thirty-first, This awful crime was done; Scott Jackson and Alonzo Walling, Together they were hung. Oh, boys and girls, take warning, Before it is too late; The worst crime ever committed In old Kentucky state.55

When an event takes place that moves folksingers and writers to compose a ballad or song about it, the choices are to take an older song and adapt it to the new circumstances or, alternatively, to begin afresh and write a completely new piece. A grisly murder near Greencastle, Indiana, inspired both. In February 1896, 23-year-old Pearl Bryan was murdered by her lover, dental student Scott Jackson, and Jackson’s roommate, Alonzo Walling. Unfortunate Pearl had become pregnant; the two men attempted an abortion, failed, dispatched Pearl, decapitated her (to prevent identification), and abandoned her headless corpse in a farmer’s field not far from Fort Thomas, just over the Kentucky state line. Pearl’s head was never found—a bizarre detail that was preserved in many of the ballads as well as in local lore: in the Cincinnati area, three-quarters of a century later, dressmakers’ (headless) dummies were still called “Pearl Bryans.” At least half a dozen ballads were written about the event, which gradually shifted stanzas and borrowed from one another. One ballad

426

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

was based on an older, widespread murdered-girl ballad, “The Jealous Lover,” and simply inserted the names of Bryan and Jackson into an existing text without any attempt to tailor it to the unusual circumstances of the actual event. The other ballads are more interesting from an historical point of view because of the details that they preserve. One example, which circulated on a broadside, is given here. Apart from historically accurate details, this text is striking because of the apparently irrelevant inclusion of a standard bit of “friendship verse” normally found in autograph albums. The insertion of this quatrain makes sense if the ballad is viewed as the ballad writer’s farewell to poor Pearl, the writing of which stirred old memories of exchanging parting words in albums or high school annuals. On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away Round my Indiana homestead wave the cornfields, In the distance loom the woodlands clear and cool; Often times my thoughts revert to scenes of childhood, Where I first received my lessons, nature’s school. But one thing there is missing in the picture, Without her face it seems so incomplete; I long to see my mother in the doorway As she stood there years ago her boy to greet! Chorus: Oh, the moonlight’s fair tonight along the Wabash, From the fields there comes the breath of new mown hay; Thro’ the sycamores the candle lights are gleaming, On the banks of the Wabash, far away. Many years have passed since I strolled by the river, Arm in arm with sweet-heart Mary by my side. It was there I tried to tell her that I loved her, It was there I begged of her to be my bride. Long years have passed since I strolled thro’ the churchyard, She’s sleeping there, my angel, Mary dear. I loved her but she thought I didn’t mean it, Still I’d give my future were she only here.56

Indiana’s state song, officially adopted on April 30, 1913, was composed and written by Paul Dresser (1837–1906). The idea for the song came one Sunday afternoon in 1896, when Dresser and his brother, the novelist Theodore Dreiser, were strolling together, and Dreiser suggested his brother write a song about a state or river, noting the success of the songs “My Old Kentucky Home,” “Dixie,” and “Old Folks at Home.” The two had grown up in Terre Haute, Indiana; why not a song about the Wabash River, on whose banks the two had spent many happy childhood hours? Dresser (he had earlier anglicized his German family name) liked the idea, and that evening, seated at his organ, spent most of the night writing the words and music of “On the Banks of the Wabash.” One can still see why it became such a favorite: in a poem that is a model of simplicity and clarity, Dresser captured the idyllic mood of his rustic childhood and the heartbreaking tragedy of his lost love without skipping a beat. It was the kind of song that an audience in the 1890s loved, and Dresser gave them some of the best. Dresser wrote many very successful song hits during his career, but his great generosity (and some unfortunate business decisions) contributed to his dying in poverty in 1906.57

GREAT LAKES

427

His life was dramatized in the 1942 motion picture My Gal Sal, based on the biography My Brother Paul, by Theodore Dreiser. [Belle Gunness] Belle Gunness lived in In-di-an; She always, always had a man; Ten at least went in her door— And were never, never seen no more. Now, all these man were Norska folk, Who came to Belle from Minn-e-sote; They liked their coffee, and their gin, They got it—plus a mickey finn. And now with cleaver poised so sure Belle neatly cut their jug-u-lur; She put them in a bath of lime, And left them there for quite some time. There’s red upon the Hoosier moon, For Belle was strong and full of doom; And think of all them Norska men Who’ll never see St. Paul again.58

Belle Gunness—the “Widow Sorensen” she was called when she first appeared in La Porte, Indiana, in 1901—acquired a number of sobriquets after her escapades became known, including “Belle the Hoosier Monster,” the “Queen of the Abattoir,” and the “Female Bluebeard.” If these seem somewhat hyperbolic, the reader is directed to the fascinating chronicle by journalist Stewart Holbrook, who reprinted the preceding fragment. Belle came to La Porte with two children, $8,000 from life insurance on her departed husband, and $5,000 from the sale of the Sorensen home in Illinois. With this largess she purchased a 48-acre farm just outside of La Porte. Shy and retiring, short and burly, she proved to be an accomplished farmer. In April 1902 she married Pater Gunness, who alas died after seven months when—allegedly—a sausage grinder fell from a shelf and struck him in the head. Belle’s young daughter was later heard to remark to a town youngster, “Mama brained Papa with an ax. Don’t tell a soul.” That account seems more in keeping with what happened later. After she was widowed a second time, Belle took to advertising in matrimonial journals for a prospective husband. In the next several years, three or four respondents to her ads came to visit, liked what they saw, entered matrimony, and then disappeared—never to be seen again. Then, one night in 1908, the Gunness farmhouse went up in flames. When investigators probed the remains, they found four bodies in the house: three children and the headless corpse of a woman. Strange findings in the next week or so—accusations of arson, murder, and the like—induced the sheriff to search the premises further. Excavations in the yard eventually produced 10 more bodies. Among them were Belle’s known children and a succession of vanished husbands. The headless body was identified initially as Belle’s, but neighbors and acquaintances averred that, based on its dimensions, it couldn’t possibly have been her. If it wasn’t her, she has never been located since.59 For a modern poet’s interpretation of Belle’s saga, see Suzanne Owens’s poem “My Heart Beats in Wild Rapture for You: Come Prepared to Stay Forever.”60

428

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Naptown Blues Nobody knows old Naptown, baby like I do, do. (2) If you will stop and listen, I will tell you a thing or two, two. When you get lonesome and want to have some fun, fun (2) You just grab a train and try old Naptown some, some. When you get to Naptown, the blues won’t last very long, long (2) Because they have their pleasure and they sure do carry on, on. I would rather be in Naptown than any place I know, I know. (2) I can get me a ticket and stop by the Walter show, show. I’m goin’ back to Naptown, baby don’t you want to go, go (2) Because there ain’t nobody knows old Naptown like I know, know.61

Blues singer, composer, and pianist Leroy Carr (1905–1935) was in a position to know “Naptown” as well as anyone else: though born in Nashville, Tennessee, he moved to Indianapolis with his family in 1912 and lived the rest of his short life there. In the late 1920s, Carr (together with his frequent accompanist Scrapper Blackwell) almost completely changed the style of blues music, creating a smooth, urbane sound that replaced the rougher-hewn styles that previously prevailed. “Naptown” as slang for Indianapolis is first found on Carr’s recording and then other blues records of the 1920s and 1930s: it was also used by blues singers to refer to Annapolis (Maryland).

WISCONSIN Wisconsin’s European American population grew in fits. Great swells of immigrants in the early 1800s provoked unavoidable friction with the native tribes, and it became the federal policy during President Jackson’s administration (1829–1837) to uproot entire tribes and force them to relocate west of the Mississippi River. Not all Indians consented to abide by this land usurpation, and violent conflicts followed. Only after the cessation of all hostilities did immigration resume, mostly from New York and the Mid-Atlantic, taking advantage of the new Erie Canal. Later in the 1830s, immigration from Europe contributed heavily to population growth. By 1850, more than one-third of the state’s 305,000 inhabitants were foreign-born; by 1860 the foreign-born outnumbered the native-born, dropping to 31 percent by 1880. Throughout these decades, immigration from Germany, in the wake of the revolutions of the 1840s, led Europe’s contribution to Wisconsin’s growth: by 1880 German-born persons constituted 14 percent of the state’s population. [Wisconsin] Emigrant’s Song Since things are so hard I must tell you, sweetheart That I must leave off with my plow and cart, Away to Wisconsin a journey I’ll go To double my fortune as other folks do. While here I must labor each day in the field, And the winter consumes what the summer doth yield. Dear husband, I’ve noticed with a sorrowful heart That you have neglected your plow and your cart,

GREAT LAKES

429

Your hogs, sheep and cattle at random do run And your best Sunday jacket goes every day on. Now stick to your farm and you’ll suffer no loss, For a stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss. Dear wife, let’s be going and don’t let us wait, I long to be going, I long to be great You will be some rich lady, and who knows, but I Will be some great governor before that I die. While here I must labor each day in the field, And the winter consumes what the summer doth yield. Oh husband, remember the land will be dear, And you’ll have to labor for many a year. Your hogs, sheep and cattle will all be to buy And you’ll scarcely get settled before you will die. So stick to your farm and you’ll suffer no loss, For a stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss. Oh wife, let’s be going and don’t let us stand, I will purchase a farm that is all cleared by hand, Where the hogs, sheep and cattle are not very dear, And we’ll feast on fat buffalo half of the year. While here I must labor each day in the field, And the winter consumes what the summer doth yield. Dear husband, remember that land of delight Is surrounded by Indians by day and by night; They will plunder your house and burn it to the ground While your wife and your children lie murdered around. So stick to your farm and you’ll suffer no loss, For a stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss. Dear wife, you’ve convinced me, I’ll argue no more, For I’ve never once thought of the Indians before; My children I love them, although they are small, And you, my dear wife, I love better than all, So I’ll stick to my farm and I’ll suffer no loss, For a stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.62

This American song has been widely collected, often titled “The Rolling Stone,” and the husband longs to be off—not to Wisconsin, but to California, to muck about in auriferous streams. In several versions, such as this, though, he longs to go “out west” to Wisconsin— which could have been somewhat earlier than the gold rush era texts. The singer of this version, Carrie B. Grover, was a Canadian-born woman transplanted to Maine who had a prodigious repertoire of folk songs and ballads. Her brother learned the song in Massachusetts in the 1880s. Although the good Dr. Ben Franklin is credited with the common form of the proverb, “A rolling stone gathers no moss” (1782), the essence of the idea appeared in 1721: “And a Rock which never Rolls, in a few Ages may be over run with such a Moss, as the Prophet cloths the Rock of Tyrus with.”63

430

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Folk song scholar Norman Cazden noted that this song was printed in a Baltimore songbook of 1805, The Mock-Bird, and was a recomposition based on a London music hall duet published in 1734, where the opening exchange is as follows: He. Since Times are so bad, I must tell thee, Sweet-heart, I’m thinking to leave off my Plough and my Cart, And to the fair City a Journey I’ll go; To better my Fortune, as other Folks do; Since some have from Ditches, and coarse leathern Breeches, Been rais’d to be Rulers, and wallow’d in Riches. Prithee, come, come, come come from thy Wheel; For, if the Gypsies don’t lye, I shall be a Governor too, e’er I die. She. Ah! Collin! by all thy late Doings I find, With Sorrow and Trouble, the Pride of thy Mind; Our Sheep they at random disorderly run, And now Sunday’s Jacket goes ev’ry Day on: Ah! what dost thou, what dost thou, what dost thou mean?64

In one interesting text from Wisconsin, the husband concludes, “Oh, wife, you’ve convinced me, we’ll argue no more, For I’ve never once thought of your dying before; And my children, I love them, although they are small, But my cattle I value most precious of all.”65

In view of his order of valuations on wife, children, and cattle, one wonders why she doesn’t just let him go. The Maid of Prairie du Chien Farewell, my friends, I will bid you adieu, My heart’s full of sorrow for this leaving you; There’s nothing doth my footsteps detain, But the beautiful maid of Prairie du Chien. (2) I paid my addresses unto her one day. I was merely a-jesting to see what she’d say. She kindly received me and not with disdain, The beautiful maid of Prairie du Chien. (2) I proffered her marriage, believing her true; She made no denial, but sadly withdrew; She’s rejected my offer again and again, The beautiful maid of Prairie du Chien. (2) When lovers get scarce, which will soon be the case, Perhaps she’ll think she’s once seen my face; She shall never have the chance to deny me again, This beautiful maid of Prairie du Chien. (2)

GREAT LAKES

431

I wish I could wander to some distant shore, Where wild battles conflict, and the cannon doth roar; But were I a slave bound into my chain, I’d still love the maid of Prairie du Chien. (2)66

Folklorist Henry M. Belden, who published this unique text, suspected that it was a song of the fur traders or, later, of lumbermen. Prairie du Chien, since 1818 the seat of Crawford County, is at the junction of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers in southwest Wisconsin and was long a rendezvous for explorers, missionaries, and traders. The French and British each maintained a trading post (1673) and fort (1685) at the site before U.S. acquisition in 1783, making it the state’s second oldest European American settlement. The city was named for an Indian chief, Alim (“dog,” or chien).67 The Little Brown Bulls Not a thing in the woods had McClusky to fear As he swung his gored stock o’er the big spotted steers; They were young, sound and quick, girding eight foot and three, Said McClusky the Scotsman, “They’re the laddies for me.” Oh, it’s next come Bull Gordon, the skidding was full, As he hollered “Wau-hush!” to his little brown bulls; They were (young), short legged and shaggy, girding six foot and nine, “Too light,” said McClusky, “to handle our pine, “For it’s three to the thousand our contract does call, Our skidding ’tis good and our timber ’tis tall.” Said McClusky to Gordon, “To make the day full, I will skid two to one of your little brown bulls!” “Oh, no,” said Bull Gordon, “that you never can do, Though your big spotted steers are the pets of the crew; But mind you, my laddie, you’ll have your hands full When you skid one more log than my little brown bulls!” Oh, the day was appointed, and soon it grew nigh, For twenty-five dollars their fortunes to try; Both eager and anxious, the morning ’twas found, The scalers and judges appeared on the ground. That morning said Gordon with blood in his eye, “Today I will conquer McClusky or die.” Said Sandy to Gordon, “We’ll take off their skins, We’ll dig the a grave, and we’ll tumble them in.” ’Twas first come Bull Gordon with the little brown bulls, With a pipe in his mouth and a cud in his jaw; But little did I think when I saw them come down, That a hundred and forty they’d easily yank ’round. With a whoop and a yell came McClusky in view, With the big spotted steers, the pets of the crew; Saying, “Chew your cuds slowly, boys, keep your mouths full, For you easily can conquer those little brown bulls.”

432

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Oh, the sun had gone down, the foreman did say, “Turn in, boys, turn in, you’ve enough for today; For well we have called each man for his team, Very well do we know which team holds down the beam.” After supper was o’er, McClusky appeared, With a belt ready made for his big spotted steers; To make it he’d tore up his best mackinaw— He was bound to conduct it according to law. Oh, the scaler speaks up, said he, “Hold on a while— Your big spotted steers are behind just a mile; You’ve skidded one hundred and ten and no more, While Gordon has beat you by ten and a score.” Oh, the boys they all hollered and McClusky did swear, As he tore out in handfulls his long yaller hair; Said McClusky to Gordon, “My dollars you’ll pull, And the belt you shall have for your little brown bulls!” So here’s to Bull Gordon and big Sandy John, For the biggest day’s work on the Wolf River ever was done; So fill up your bumpers, boys, fill them plumb full, And we’ll drink to the health of the little brown bulls.68

Occupational ballads, poems, and tales from various traditions involve competitions between rival workers. The conveyance of large logs down to the rivers for further transport was easiest accomplished over ice and frozen snow; therefore logging in New England and, later, the Great Lakes region tended to be a winter activity. In the spring the men sought work in other occupations—farming, perhaps, or on shipboard. The source of this tale of friendly competition is not known, but it was believed to have originated in Mart Douglas’s camp in northeastern Wisconsin in 1872 or 1873 and reportedly grew out of an actual incident. The Banks of the Little Eau Pleine One evening last June as I rambled The green woods and valleys among, The mosquito’s notes were melodious, And so was the whip-poor-will’s song. The frogs in the marshes were croaking, The tree-toads were whistlin’ for rain, The partridges ’round me were drumming On the banks of the Little Eau Pleine. The sun in the west was declining And tinging the tree-tops with red; My wandering feet bore me onward, I not caring whither they led. I happened to see a young school-ma’am, She mourned in a sorrowful strain; She mourned for a jolly young raftsman On the banks of the Little Eau Pleine.

GREAT LAKES

Saying, “Alas, my dear Johnnie has left me. I’m afraid I shall see him no more; He’s down on the lower Wisconsin— He’s pulling a fifty-foot oar. He went off on a fleet with Ross Gamble, And has left me in sorrow and pain; And ’tis over two months since he started From the banks of the Little Eau Pleine.” I stepped up beside this young school-ma’am, And thus unto her I did say: “Why is it you’re mourning so sadly, While all nature is smiling and gay?” She said, “It is for a young raftsman, For whom I so sadly complain. He has left me alone here to wander On the banks of the Little Eau Pleine.” “Will you please tell me what kind of clothing Your jolly young raftsman did wear? For I also belong to the River, And perhaps I have seen him somewhere. If to me you will plainly describe him, And tell me your young raftsman’s name, Perhaps I can tell you the reason He’s not back on the Little Eau Pleine.” “His pants were made out of two meal-sacks, With a patch a foot square on each knee; His shirt and his jacket were dyed with The bark of a butternut tree. He wore a large open-faced ticker With almost a yard of steel chain, When he went away with Ross Gamble From the banks of the Little Eau Pleine. “He wore a red sash ’round his middle, With an end hanging down at each side; His shoes number ten were of cowhide, With heels about four inches wide. His name it was Honest John Murphy, And on it there n’er was a stain; And he was as jolly a raftsman As was e’er found on the Little Eau Pleine. “He was stout and broad-shouldered and manly, His height was about six feet one; His hair was inclined to be sandy, And his whiskers as red as the sun; His age was somewhere about thirty, He neither was foolish nor vain; He loved the bold Wisconsin River Was the reason he left the Eau Pleine.”

433

434

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

“If John Murphy’s the name of your raftsman, I used to know him very well. But sad is the tale I must tell you: Your Johnny was drowned in the Dells. They buried him ’neath a scrub Norway; You well never behold him again; No stone marks the spot where your raftsman Sleeps far from the Little Eau Pleine.” When the school-ma’am heard this information, She fainted and fell as if dead; I scooped up a hat-full of water And poured it on top of her head. She opened her eyes and looked wildly, As if she was nearly insane. And I was afraid she would perish On the banks of the Little Eau Pleine. “My curses attend you, Wisconsin! May your rapids and falls cease to roar; May every tow-head and sand-bar Be as dry as a log school-house floor. May the willows upon all your island Lie down like a field of ripe grain, For taking my jolly young raftsman Away from the Little Eau Pleine. “My curses light on you, Ross Gamble, For taking my Johnny away; I hope that the ague will seize you And shake you down into the clay. May your lumber go down to the bottom, And never rise to the surface again; You had no business taking John Murphy Away from the Little Eau Pleine. “Now I will desert my vocation, I won’t teach district school anymore. I will go to some place where I’ll never Hear the squeak of the fifty-foot oar. I will go to some far foreign country, To England, to France, or to Spain; But I’ll never forget Johnny Murphy, Nor the banks of the Little Eau Pleine.”69

William Allen wrote this long ballad about loggers on Wisconsin’s Little Eau Pleine River probably in the 1870s. It was completely fictitious—except for Ross Gamble, who was a well-known pilot on the Wisconsin River at the time. Allen, who signed himself “Shan. T. Boy,” wrote many songs and poems about loggers and their life, several of which entered oral tradition. Allen borrowed from older British broadside ballads the device of the narrator overhearing the musings of a lady and then responding to her query about her loved one by

GREAT LAKES

435

telling her he knew her sweetheart well, and some dread fate had befallen him. In most of these ballads, the narrator then reveals himself to be her sweetheart in disguise, but not in this story. The Little Eau Pleine River is about 35 miles long; it runs southeast through central Wisconsin and empties into the Wisconsin River. The Cranberry Song You ask me to sing, so I’ll sing you a song; I’ll tell how, in the marshes, they all get along, Bohemians and Irish and Yankees and Dutch. It’s down in the shanties you’ll find the whole clutch. Did you ever go to the cranberry bogs? There some of the houses are hewed out of logs. The walls are of boards; they’re sawed out of pine That grow in this country called cranberry mine. It’s now then to Mather their tickets to buy, And to all their people they’ll bid them goodbye. For fun and for frolic they plan to resign For three or four weeks in the cranberry kline. The hay is all cut and the wheat is all stacked, Cranberries are ripe so their clothes they will pack; And away to the marshes, away they will go And dance to the music of fiddle and bow. All day in the marshes their rakes they will pull, And feel the most gayest when boxes are full; In the evening they’ll dance ’til they’re all tired out, And wish the cranberries would never play out.70

Wisconsin had, in addition to its share of seafaring, mining, and lumbering, another industry that was highly localized: cranberrying. When the two glacial lakes of Oshkosh and Wisconsin in the central part of the state retreated, they left behind expansive lakebed swamps and bogs that became fertile ground for growing and marketing cranberries. One song survives from this industry, where once Poles, Bohemians, and Irishmen, among others, gathered to harvest the berries and spend their evenings in convivial music and dance. This song was attributed to Barney Reynolds of Mather, in Juneau County, the heart of cranberry country. The Milwaukee Fire ’Twas the gray of early morning when the dreadful cry of fire Rang out upon the cold and piercing air; Just that little word alone is all that it would require To spread dismay and panic everywhere. Milwaukee was excited, as it never was before, On learning that the fire bells all around Were ringing to eternity a hundred souls or more, And the Newhall House was burning to the ground.

Another broadside from the busy presses of New York’s Henry J. Wehman, probably in 1883. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

GREAT LAKES

437

The firemen worked like demons, and did all in their power To save a life or try to soothe a pain; It made the strongest heart sick, for in less than half an hour All was hushed and further efforts were in vain. Chorus: Oh, hear the fire bells ringing at the morning’s early dawn, Hear the voices as they gave that dreadful cry; Oh, hear the wail of terror ’mid the fierce and burning flame, Heaven protect them, for they’re waiting there to die. When the dread alarm was sounded through the oft condemned hotel, They rushed in mad confusion every way; The smoke was suffocating and blinding them as well; The fire-king could not be held at bay. At every window men and women would wildly beseech For help in anguish and despair; What must have been their feelings where the ladders could not reach? And they felt death’s grasp around then everywhere. Up in the highest window stood a servant girl alone, The crowd beneath all gazed with bated breath; They turned away their faces, there were many a stifled groan, When she jumped to meet perhaps as hard a death. Chorus. In one place you could see a man, whose wife stood by his side; They say this man was a millionaire; To save them from their dreadful fate they left no means untried, Gold or treasure had no value there. A boy stood at the window, and his mother stood below, She saw him, and the danger drawing near; With upraised hands to pray for him she knelt down in the snow, And the stoutest man could not restrain a tear. She madly rushed towards the fire and wildly tore her hair, “Take me, oh, God, but spare my pride, my joy!” She saw the flames surround him, and then in dark despair, Said, “God have mercy on my only boy.” Chorus. They tell us now that this hotel has been on fire before, And not considered safe for several years, And still the men that owned it let it run on as before, And they are not to blame it now appears. Incendiarism this time has been the cause, they say, But who the fiend was they cannot tell; So the people in Milwaukee will not rest by night or day Till the matter is investigated well; Still this will be no benefit to those who’ve passed away, In this Milwaukee’s greatest funeral pyre; And peace be to their ashes is the best that we can say, For the victims to his great and dreadful fire. Chorus.71

Milwaukee’s six-storey Newhall House hotel burst into flames and burned on the night of January 10, 1883; close to 100 guests and staff perished. The conflagration started in an elevator shaft and spread quickly through the old wooden structure. The hotel had endured several fires in the previous years and had been declared a “tinderbox” by the local fire

438

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

department. A heroic volunteer fireman by the name of Herman Strauss positioned a ladder across an alley from a neighboring building to the fifth floor of the Newhall House, enabling 10 servant girls, who were sleeping on that floor, to escape to safety.72 The song was written soon after and published in various broadsides and songsters. Fond du Lac Jail In the morning you receive a dry loaf of bread That’s hard as a stone and heavy as lead. It’s thrown from the ceiling down into your cell, Like coming from Heaven popped down into Hell. Chorus: Oh, there’s hard times in Fond du Lac jail, There’s hard times, I say. Your bed it is made of old rotten rugs, Get up in the morning all covered with bugs. And the bugs they will swear that unless you get bail You’re bound to go lousy in Fond du Lac jail. Chorus.73

One common song type is a catalog of complaints about all the things wrong with the local jail. The characters in these songs and ballads are usually not hardened criminals, but merely those unfortunates who were caught for some lesser offense such as drunkenness, disturbing the peace, or petty larceny. That way, the listener can sympathize in good conscience with their complaints. “Fond du Lac Jail” is a Wisconsin contribution to this genre that has not been collected elsewhere. The town so remembered is at the southern end of Lake Winnebago, about 35 miles west of Lake Michigan.

ILLINOIS The persistent policy of ethnic cleansing of the early 1800s opened Illinois, as it did in neighboring Wisconsin (see preceding discussion), to waves of European American immigrants. One of their principal achievements was the establishment of the city of Chicago, incorporated in 1837 when it had scarcely 5,000 inhabitants. But for much of the 1840s, the state’s most populous city was Nauvoo, established by the Mormons in 1839. Mormon population growth was accompanied by increasing political power, until in 1844, the Mormon leader, Joseph Smith, declared his candidacy for the U.S. presidency. The Mormons incurred a good deal of animosity for several reasons—particularly their practice of polygamy—and soon hostilities broke out, within the Mormon community as well as between Mormons and non-Mormons. In 1844, Smith and his brother were killed by a mob. Two years later, the Mormons, now led by Brigham Young, abandoned Nauvoo and trekked west to establish a new home in Utah.74 Allen Bayne They’re taking me to the gallows, mother—they mean to hang me high; They’re going to gather round me there, and watch me till I die; All earthly joy has vanished now, and gone each mortal hope— They’ll draw a cap across my eyes, and round my neck a rope; The crazy mob will shout and groan—the priest will read a prayer, The drop will fall beneath my feet and leave me in the air.

GREAT LAKES

They think I murdered Allen Bayne; for so the Judge has said, And they’ll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang me till I’m dead! The grass that grows in yonder meadow, the lambs that skip and play, The pebbled brook behind the orchard, that laughs upon its way, The flowers that bloom in the dear old garden, the birds that sing and fly, Are clear and pure of human blood, and, mother, so am I! By father’s grave on yonder hill—his name without a stain— I ne’er had malice in my heart, or murdered Allen Bayne! But twelve good men have found me guilty, for so the Judge has said, And they’ll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang me till I’m dead! The air is fresh and bracing, mother; the sun shines bright and high; It is a pleasant day to live—a gloomy one to die! It is a bright and glorious day the joys of earth to grasp— It is a sad and wretched one to strangle, choke, and gasp! But let them damp my lofty spirit, or cow me if they can! They send me like a rogue to death—I’ll meet it like a man; For I never murdered Allen Bayne! but so the Judge has said, And they’ll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang me till I’m dead! Poor little sister ‘Bell will weep, and kiss me as I lie; But kiss her twice and thrice for me, and tell her not to cry; Tell her to weave a bright, gay garland, and crown me as of yore, Then plant a lily upon my grave, and think of me no more. And tell that maiden whose love I sought, that I was faithful yet; But I must lie in a felon’s grave, and she had best forget. My memory is stained forever; for so the Judge has said, And they’ll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang me till I’m dead! Lay me not down by my father’s side; for once, I mind, he said No child that stained his spotless name should share his mortal bed. Old friends would look beyond his grave, to my dishonored one, And hide the virtues of the sire behind the recreant son. And I can fancy, if there my corpse its fettered limbs should lay, His frowning skull and crumbling bones would shrink from me away; But I swear to God I’m innocent, and never blood have shed! And they’ll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang me till I’m dead! Lay me in my coffin, mother, as you’ve sometimes seen me rest: One of my arms beneath my head, the other on my breast. Place my Bible upon my heart—nay, mother, do not weep— And kiss me as in happier days you kissed me when asleep. And for the rest—for form or rite—but little do I reck; But cover up that curséd stain—the black mark on my neck! And pray to God for his great mercy on my devoted head; For they’ll hang me to the gallows, mother—hang me till I’m dead! But hark! I hear a mighty murmur among the jostling crowd! A cry!—a shout!—a roar of voices!—it echoes long and loud! There dashes a horseman with foaming steed and tightly-gathered rein! He sits erect!—he waves his hand!—good Heaven! ’tis Allen Bayne! The lost is found, the dead alive, my safety is achieved! For he waves his hand again, and shouts, “The prisoner is reprieved!” Now, mother, praise the God you love, and raise your drooping head; For the murderous gallows, black and grim, is cheated of its dead!75

439

440

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

What a remarkable story! And true—well, partly true. Folklorist David McIntosh, who collected a version of this song in Illinois in 1935, received a letter from a woman some years later that gave him the following account: In early 1866, the remains of a human body were found about two miles southeast of Benton on top of a fallen tree, and were supposed to be the remains of Mr. McMahan. A coroner’s inquest was held, and upon the verdict of the jury, Williams was arrested. Later he was tried before Judge A.D. Duff. . . . The evidence was that the last seen of McMahan, he was in the company of Williams, and that he had several hundred dollars in his possession. A pocket knife found with the remains was identified as one belonging to McMahan. The hair of the victim was red, and so was McMahan’s, and certain teeth of the dead man were removed, corresponding with the lost teeth of McMahan. The People, through their attorney, were making a strong case on circumstantial evidence. On the second day of the trial, when the evidence was nearly closed and the guilt of the prisoner fully established in the minds of those who had heard the evidence, the closing scene of the tragedy was enacted. Just at this critical moment, the supposed murdered man, McMahan, deliberately, and to the great astonishment of all, walked into the courtroom. He was immediately identified by a number of his former acquaintances and also by the witness on whose testimony the case was being made against the prisoner. This, of course, put an end to all further proceedings against the prisoner, and he was set free. Reuben Drummond, who knew of these parties, and knew of the prosecution of Mr. Williams, happened to be at the depot at DuQuoin and saw McMahan among the passengers on the Illinois Central train. He boarded the train and prevailed upon McMahan to get off the train at Tamaroa and come to Benton to save the man who was being prosecuted for his murder.76

So the true part of the ballad (accepting the letter as reliable) is that an innocent man was nearly executed for a crime in which he had no part; the author of the song has taken the liberty of transferring the breathtaking revelation of the accused man from the courtroom, where it actually occurred, to the gallows—a much more dramatic venue. This relocation allows the so-called criminal the opportunity for the traditional last goodnight, wherein he bids farewell to family and loved ones, prepares to meet his God, and either confesses his sins or affirms his innocence. A few similar ballads have been encountered throughout this collection; this one is unique in its style and language, borrowing little from the usual lines of traditional criminal’s last goodnight ballads. The text given was written by Will Carleton (1845–1912), a popular poet of the late 1800s, whose folksy style and rural subjects endeared him to his public. This is not the only one of his compositions to find its way into oral tradition. Carleton left another mark on folk tradition: his dialect poem, “The Negro Funeral,” was adapted verbatim (as a recitation) by Hank Williams in his persona of Luke the Drifter, which he used for many of his religious songs. The crucial question, though, is whether Carleton was familiar with the McMahan story and based his poem on it. The various deviations from historical fact—for example, the name change of McMahan to Alan Bayne—may have been deliberate on his part or may reflect that he learned the story from hearsay. Either explanation could account for the change in venue. This does leave us, embarrassingly, with an historical ballad whose principal historical details are incorrect. What of this Mr. Williams? Did he have a sister Belle and a deceased father? Besides this version from Illinois, the ballad has been collected in Arkansas, New York, and even Australia.77

This broadside is undated, but New York Publisher James Wrigley was active in the 1860s. The original sheet had hand-tinted borders. The Library Company of Philadelphia.

442

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Plains of Illinois Come, all you good old farmers that on your plow depend, Come listen to a story, come listen unto a friend; Leave your fields of childhood, you enterprising boys, Come travel west and settle on the plains of Illinois. Illinois, it is as fine countree as ever has been seen; If old Adam had traveled over that, perhaps he would say the same: “All in the garden of Eden, when I was but a boy, There was nothing I could compare with the plains of Illinois.” Perhaps you have a few acres that near your friends adjoin; Your family is growing large, for them you must provide; Come, leave your fields of childhood, you enterprising boys, Travel west and settle on the plains of Illinois.78

Several songs in this state-by-state survey are what are sometimes called “booster songs”—songs written to talk up the virtues of a state and lure prospective settlers with promises of fertile lands, abundant water, and upstanding neighbors. The veracity of such claims is usually independent of the actual condition of the state under discussion; sometimes, in fact, there seems to be an inverse correlation. The first stanza of this song bears a nonaccidental resemblance to the opening lines of “Banks of the Ohio,” a song published in the 1840s, if not earlier: Come all you young men, who have mind for to range, Into the Western country, your station for to change; For seeking some new pleasure we’ll altogether go, And we’ll settle on the banks of the pleasant Ohio.79

Illinois being settled at about the same time, “The Plains of Illinois” could also have originated in the 1840s. A broadside song published probably in the early 1860s, “State of Illinois” is a nine-stanza version of the same song, and possibly the original, though the differences between the two texts are considerable. In this song, as well as in a few that follow, it appears that the name “Illinois” was occasionally pronounced so as to rhyme with boys, rather than with boy. Down in Southern Illinois You may sing of old Kentucky Or your Indiana home, You may boast of old Missouri Or the many lands you roam, But to me no land is dearer When I dream of girls and boys Than in the country of my childhood Down in Southern Illinois. You may call it “Darkest Egypt,” You may call us green as grass, Say we live on mush and bacon, Johnny cakes and apple “sass,” But I tell you all your talking

GREAT LAKES

443

Don’t begin to equal joys That I feel when in the country Down in Southern Illinois. You may tell me of the grandeur Of big cities, oh so fine, You may say their life is better Than this country life of mine, But I dream of hogs and cattle, Country sights and lots of noise, And I guess I’d rather say, Sir, Down in Southern Illinois.80

The section of Illinois that lies south of a line drawn between Vincennes, Indiana, just east of the Illinois-Indiana border, and East St. Louis, just inside the western border formed by the Mississippi River, is locally called (Little) “Egypt.” According to tradition, the people of the prairie land to the north accorded it this name in the early days, when a drought forced them to drive south for corn. With Bibles in hand, they referred to these expeditions as “going down to Egypt.” Three towns in the region are named for old-world Egyptian cities: Cairo, Karnak, and Thebes. This hilly region is actually a part of the Ozark Mountains, and so it is also called the “Illinois Ozarks.” Down in Old Franklin County It was down in Franklin County, Where they never have the blues, Where the Captain kills the Colonel, And the Colonel kills the booze. Where the horses they are pretty, And the women they are too, Where they kill men just for pastime When there’s nothing else to do. Where you step out in the morning Just to give your health a chance, And you come home in the evening With some buck-shot in your pants. Where the owls won’t hoot at nighttime And the birds refuse to sing, For it’s Hell down in the boneyard Where they shoot them on the wing.81

Franklin County is situated directly in the center of the Illinois Ozarks, and this tribute certainly paints a different picture of the region from the preceding song. The language of the opening stanza makes it sound like all these lines are a prelude to some event that took place, but we never find out what. Jackson County Jail Come all ye roving gamblers, And won’t you be aware?

444

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

It’s how you go to see them girls A-standing on the square. In Murphysboro city, Be careful how you sail, Or you’ll find yourself all locked up In the Jackson County jail. I had an only partner, Jim Lincoln was his name, And when he got in trouble, ’Twas me he always blamed. The first thing was to quarrel, To fight he’d never fail, And now he’s got me locked up In the Jackson County jail. They took me before the honorable judge A dishonest judge was he, They tried me for murder, My disposition was. They tried me for murder, No one would go my bail, And now they’ve got me locked up In the Jackson County jail. They took me to the jailhouse, My room was number four, They fed me on “corn dodger,” But I often wanted more. Their beds were of the finest, To sleep I often failed, You may bet the feathers were hard, boys, In the Jackson County jail. Last night as I lay sleeping, I had a pleasant dream, I dreamed I was down on “Muddy,” Down by that crooked stream, With my sweetheart beside me, All ready to go my bail, But I woke up broken hearted In the Jackson County jail. So now my song is ended, A few words to you I’ll say, You’d better stop your drinking, And throwing your money away. You’d better stop your gambling, And throwing your money about, For when you get in the old jailhouse You bet it’s hard to get out.82

Earlier in this chapter, we encountered two other jail songs: “Fond du Lac Jail” and “Ramsey County Jail.” Here’s another specimen of similar nature. Each of these local jail

GREAT LAKES

445

songs shares lines with one another but also makes its own original contribution to the genre. The Minnesota song “Ramsey County Jail” was collected from a septuagenarian— like the singer of “Jackson County Jail”—who learned the song in the 1870s or 1880s, which sounds like the right age for several of the songs of this type. This one, though, sounds closer to its composer, inasmuch as it retains a number of details that seem specific to a particular person’s experiences.83 Belleville Convent Fire Kind friends give attention to what I relate, And ever remember those poor children’s fate In full health and vigor, they retired for the night, Not thinking of fire that soon raged with its might. The rooms and the hallways were clouded with smoke, When the dear little children, from slumbers awoke. They rushed to the windows, ’twould make brave hearts sigh, To see those white faces, at the window so high. Chorus: No one to help them, no one to blame, No one to save them, in their sad distress, It was in Belleville City, sad grief did abound, On the night that the convent was burned to the ground. Near thirty dear souls from the earth took their flight, In that ill-fated convent on that fatal night, And fathers and mothers are now left to mourn, Their children, who had better never been born. A girl at the window stood, three stories high, “Oh save me! dear mother” in vain she did cry. Just then, an explosion, we grieve to relate, And all in that convent, had met their sad fate. Let us mention this pure soul who went with the rest, To that sweet land above to be there ever blest, The brave holy mother from the rooms would not go, Although twice before she had been down below, A brave heroine, she stood true to her post, When she saw that the children would surely be lost, She rushed up the stairway with pitiful cry, While praying to God with her children to die. When the dread cry “Fire” was heard loud in the air, Fond fathers and mothers, were seen ev’ry where, Alas, when the firemen arrived, ’twas too late, For all those poor children, had met their sad fate. We know they have gone to a far better shore, Where the death dealing fire fiend can reach them no more. Let us hope we will meet them all, up there again, Where there’s no more sorrow, no anguish, or pain.84

This awkwardly written ballad commemorating a fire in the coal-mining community of Belleville was published in 1885, words by John Fletcher.85 Wehman also published the text on a broadside at about the same time. The fire broke out on the night of January 5,

446

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

1884, at the Institute of the Immaculate Conception and resulted in 26 deaths: 22 students between the ages of 11 and 20, and four sisters. The fire originated in the basement from one of the three hot air furnaces used to heat the building.86 A version collected by David S. McIntosh from one of his students in 1947 is textually the same, but for a few minor discrepancies.87 The Price of Freedom “At midnight preceding the morning of his execution, Albert R. Parsons’ voice rang out clear and proud through the corridors of the jail as he sang in distinct tones the beautiful ballad, ‘Annie Laurie.’ ” The following was prompted by reading the above item in the daily papers. The night is dark about me; I hear the midnight bell; Before another midnight It will ring my funeral knell, (2) Oh! the hours are speeding by When to buy the toilers’ freedom I shall pay the price and die. To-night my babes are crouching By their weeping mother’s side, For this country’s sake the father Leaves his children and his bride, (2) When men for succor cry, Then to buy the toilers’ freedom I shall pay the price and die. Pent in a dismal dungeon, Forbidden to be free, A slave in chains and prison, O, what were life to me? (2) Speak out, my heart, reply, That to buy the toilers’ freedom I will pay the price and die. What greater love hath mortal For one whom he holds dear, Than for his sake to gladly Meet death without a fear! (2) Yes, such a love have I, And to buy the toilers’ freedom I pay the price and die. The night will soon be over; For me ’twill be the last; And the night of wrong, my country, From thee shall soon have passed, (2) I see the star on high, So to buy the toilers’ freedom I will pay the price and die. Weep not above my ashes, This is no hour for tears,

GREAT LAKES

447

Let every man stand ready When he the bugle hears, (2) Let every man reply: We to buy the toilers’ freedom Will pay the price and die.88

On May 4, 1886, a protest meeting was convened in Chicago’s Haymarket Square by the Social Revolutionaries to condemn police brutality against workers at the McCormick Harvester factory, who were striking for an eight-hour day and a $2 daily wage. When police ordered the generally peaceful assembly to disperse, someone threw a bomb, killing one policeman at once and wounding five others, who died soon after; some 50 others were injured. Eight men were charged and tried: George Engle, Samuel J. Fielden, Adolph Fischer, Louis Lingg, Oscar Neebe, Albert R. Parsons, Eugene Schwab, and August Spies, all of whom were anarchist activists. None was accused of having thrown the bomb, but merely with having encouraged that act by virtue of their other political activities. They were found guilty after a trial that some have considered a travesty of justice; seven were sentenced to be hanged and the eighth, Neebe, to 15 years’ imprisonment. However, Governor Oglesby commuted the sentences of Fielden and Schwab to life imprisonment, and Linng committed suicide in prison. On November 11, 1887, the remaining four were executed, singing the French anthem, the “Marseillaise,” en route to the gallows. In 1893, Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld signed pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab after having concluded that all eight defendants had been innocent. The site of the riot was designated a Chicago landmark in 1992.89 The Bridge Was Burned at Chatsworth From City, Town, and Hamlet, they came a happy throng, To view the great Niagara, with joy they sped along, The maiden and her lover, the husband and the wife, The merry prattling children, so full of joyous life. With hand upon the lever, and eye along the track, The engineer is standing while shades of night are black; They pass the town of Chatsworth, and rush into the gloom; Ah! could some power have stopped them, e’er they had reached their doom. For see! the smoldering embers, that lie along that ridge, Ah God in pity save them, it is the railroad bridge; Too late to turn the lever, too late to stop the train, Too late to soothe the sorrow, too late to ease the pain. A mighty crash of timbers, a sound of hissing steam, The groans and cries of anguish, a woman’s stifled scream; The dead and dying mingled, with broken beams and bars, An awful human carnage, a dreadful wreck of cars. All honor to the heroes, who flame and fury fought, All thro’ that night of horror a glory dearly bought; As over land and water, this thrilling message crossed, “The bridge was burned at Chatsworth, a hundred lives are lost.” Chorus: But oh! how much of sorrow, and oh! how much of pain, Awaited those who journeyed on that fated railway train.90

448

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Such an austere sheet music cover was unusual by 1887, when the accident occurred. Nevertheless, the song was widely popular and long remembered. Author’s collection.

One of the worst train wrecks in American history occurred on the Toledo, Peoria, and Western Railroad in the evening of August 10, 1887, near Chatsworth, Illinois. Just outside of town, a 15-foot rail trestle had caught fire. By midnight the bridge was consumed in flames—just as an excursion train carrying some 800 passengers reached the crossing. The engineer espied the fire as he approached but was unable to stop his train in time. The first engine made it across the weakened structure, but the second engine did not, tumbling into the ditch as the trestle splintered beneath it. Eleven passenger cars left the track, piling into one another. Eighty-one passengers were killed and 372 others were injured. There were harsh words for the rail officials, who, it was felt, should have had a smaller pilot engine traveling ahead of the train to ascertain passability. It is possible that the fire broke out as a

GREAT LAKES

449

result of the negligence of workers who had been burning weeds along the track earlier in the day. The accident resulted in the bankruptcy of the T P & W Railroad.91 Popular songwriter Thomas P. Westendorf (a strange coincidence of initials) wrote and composed a tribute to the disaster that remained widely sung for many years. The Mount Vernon Cyclone The gentle breeze blew soft o’er Mount Vernon’s quiet homes; The Sunday schools had closed for the day, When all at once there burst that awful, dread cyclone, Five hundred homes completely swept away. Chorus: “Hear, Brother, hear,” the call came so near, For help for Mt. Vernon in woe, Great is their blight, so help them tonight And God will reward you, you know. The cry of “Fire!” was raised to increase that awful day, The coming night was drear to those alive; Many hearts were sad and souls were filled with gloom ’Til help from far and near did swift arrive.92

Generations of American children have grown up thinking that cyclones did nothing worse than airlift young heroines and their canine companions to imaginary fantasy worlds—perhaps flattening a witch or two in the process. But in Kansas, whence Dorothy hailed, and states in the region bounded roughly by the Dakotas, Texas, Florida, and Michigan (the part of the country called “Tornado Alley”), cyclones (more generally called tornadoes) are a constant and potentially life-threatening danger, especially during the spring months. Illinois lies in this belt, with an annual average of between 21 and 30 twisters. On February 20, 1888, at about 4:25 P.M., the fair town of Mt. Vernon was practically wiped off the surface of the earth by a tornado that killed possibly 50 residents, injured 300 more, and destroyed 387 homes. Fires that erupted as a result of broken gas lines and other disturbances augmented the widespread damage.93 Mt. Vernon, one of nearly a dozen cities in the United States named for George Washington’s home and burial place, was settled in 1819 and incorporated in 1872. Shawneetown Flood In the town of Shawneetown, When the evening shades came down, On a quiet Sabbath evening, cold and gray, While the people walked the streets, Some in dear communion sat Within their peaceful homes at the close of the day. All at once the bells were ringing, With a wild and awful ring, As the fearful flood broke over one and all, Oh! that faithful levee broke, Pale the lips of those who spoke While that roaring, crashing, awful flood came in.

450

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

There were heroes in that day, Franklin Robinson, they all say, In his little boat brought many safe ashore; While they struggled with the waves, He rode on their lives to save, Working bravely till that awful flood was o’er. Father Bikeman saw it coming, Like a giant mountain high, And he knew what awful danger in its pathway lie. Oh! he did his duty well, As he boldly rang the bell, Warning all within the danger line to fly. On it came with mighty force, Spoiling all within its course. Wrecking homes and snatching loved ones from their friends. There they found a watery grave, Beneath the cold and silent wave, To be covered over by the drifting sand. There are broken hearts and homes, There are sorrows, there are groans, Where was trouble, now is anguish and despair. Where was once all smile and light, Now is darkness, now is night. Where was once happy city, wreck appeared. Tongue nor pen can never describe, The hope, the anguish and despair, Of the poor survivors of that awful flood; They can never forget the day Shawneetown was washed away, Till they’re laid beneath the cold and silent sod. Let us rally by the scores, To the valleys, hills, and plains, Give our sympathy and money to their aid; For calamity might fall, On our loved ones, homes, and all, To be separated never to meet again.94

Shawneetown, settled in the early 1800s just 10 miles south of where the Wabash River joins the Ohio, was repeatedly devastated by floods. At about 5:00 P.M. on the evening of April 3, 1898, the north levee gave way. There were no great concerns, as the citizens, not anticipating the volume of water released, thought they would be safe in the second storeys of their dwellings, and made no attempt to escape to safety—which they could have done had they left promptly. When the waters struck, 25 persons were drowned and 200 homes were lost. Telephone and telegraph wires were downed, so there was no way to alert the outside world that aid was sorely needed. After some consultation, five men volunteered to travel to Junction City that night, and, if necessary, to Ridgway, to appeal for relief. When they reached Junction City, they were stopped by a mile-wide swath of deep water. Eventually, a train from Ridgway arrived at

GREAT LAKES

451

the water’s opposite edge. With a boat, the Shawneetown delegation was ferried across and brought to Ridgway, where a series of messages were sent to Governor Tanner and others. The governor soon issued a proclamation declaring that “owing to the condition of the public treasury, I am powerless to relieve [the disaster] without the voluntary aid of the charitably disposed.” On Tuesday evening, representatives of the governor and various charitable organizations arrived with a boatload of tents and rations.95 After the waters had receded, construction commenced to raise the levy to the “impenetrable” height of 60 feet. Nevertheless, the region suffered more serious flooding in 1913 and again in 1937. After the latter “act of God,” state officials undertook to have the buildings of the city moved four miles to the west. Many residents refused to relocate, however, and in 1956 the remaining portions of the original town were incorporated as Old Shawneetown. Both the singer from whom the preceding text was obtained and the collector believed the song concerned the flood of 1913. However, the song was published in 1898, words and music by Mr. G. B. Fields, titled “Flood of Shawneetown, or Broken Hearts and Homes,” and was written to commemorate the flood that struck on Sunday afternoon, April 3, 1898.96 The Pullman Strike Near the city of Chicago, where riot holds full sway, The workingmen of Pullman are battling for fair play; But the Boss he would not listen to the workingmen’s appeal, And scorned their mute advances, no sympathy did feel. The railroad men refused to move even a single car, Till suddenly from Washington they heard the White House Czar Proclaim them all law breakers, and then in mournful tone To their countrymen they sent their cry with sad and dismal moan: Chorus: Remember we are workmen, and we want honest pay, And, gentlemen, remember, we work hard day by day; Let Pullman remember, too, no matter where he roams, We built up his capital, and we’re pleading for our homes! The troops are ordered from the East and from the Western shore, The firebrands of anarchy are brought to every door; Honest workmen repudiate the work of thugs and tramps, And think it is an outrage to be reckoned with those scamps. Arbitration was what they asked, but the Boss he quick refused. “Your fight is with the railroads,” was the answer they perused; But Pullman will regret the day he gave this harsh reply, And workingmen throughout the land will heed our pleading cry: Chorus.97

In the 1890s the rail workers who serviced the Pullman passenger cars worked for the Pullman Palace Car Company, rather than the individual railroad companies. In 1893 they formed a new union, the American Railway Union (ARU), with labor leader Eugene V. Debs as president. In the spring of 1894 the ARU went on strike to protest the reduction of wages and to end the abuses to which they were subjected in the so-called model town of Pullman, Illinois—where wage cuts were not matched by the high rents they paid for the company-owned houses. By July the strike had spread to other unions, with more than 150,000 men on strike. The strike was eventually broken by use of strikebreakers,

452

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

federal injunctions, imprisonment of strike leaders (Debs spent six months in prison), and strikebreaking activities of federal troops sent by President Grover Cleveland (over the objections of Governor John Peter Altgeld).98 Publisher William Delaney included many pro-labor songs in his songsters around the turn of the century; several were credited to “Willie Wildwave,” a Delaney nom de plume. The Maud Wreck Christmas had come, and the morning was dark, The moon had hidden her face; When Al Bowen, the engineer, Went cheerily to his place. Al had a smile, kind word for all, A courteous man was he; His winning ways made many friends, As many will agree. Before Al made this fatal trip, He cheerfully did proclaim, “Good-bye, Mother, if I never come back, I’ll always be the same.” The Southern had no braver man, No better engineer; But on that night Al seemed to have A little lingering fear. “I hate to make this run tonight; My headlight is no good. I fear some evil will take place; I feel as if it would. “But there’s no use to wish to stay, No extra man have we; I do my duty, come what may— What is to be will be.” Al took his seat within the cab, MacNeely by his side; “Now keep your seat, old boy,” he said, “We’ll have a flying ride.” “I’m thirty minutes late, friend Mac, Buchanan will be there; He’s siding now at this station Maud— I see his headlight glare. “Give her more coal,” he said to Hull, “We must make up this time.” To his surprise, he saw a light Come streaming down the line. “It’s Number One! Great God!” he cried, “She’s coming around the neck! Jump, Mac! Jump! I’ll stay with her, You’ll find me ’neath the wreck!”

GREAT LAKES

453

These iron steeds met with an awful rush, And burst like a shell; The stream of fire and scalding steam Made it an awful hell. On Christmas morn, the searchers came, And found their bodies there. Their souls had taken their flights to heaven Where death can never stare. They never knew the cause of it, A signal wrong was given; We know their noble souls rest In far away peaceful heaven.99

Now it seems like an absurd way to run a railroad, but into the early twentieth century, trains in both directions ran on the same line of track. A recipe for disaster? Certainly. A way to save construction costs? Certainly to that, too. Since two trains going in opposite directions over the same track will inevitably meet somewhere, a procedure was required to enable this. Telegraph operators sent messages to the respective engineers to meet at a certain station, where there was a side track long enough for one train to pull off the main line and allow the other to pass. Early on Christmas morning of 1904, the Southern Railroad’s eastbound train Number 1 to Louisville and westbound Number 2 to St. Louis were scheduled to pass each other at their regular meeting point at Bellmont, Illinois. Because a railroad signal operator showed an incorrect signal, the engineer of the eastbound train, Buchanan, thought that he had a clear track. As both trains rounded a curve near Maud, a few miles away, they collided head-on. Seven people were killed, and eight more were injured. Buchanan was able to escape with only minor injuries, but the engineer of the westbound train, Al Bowen, died in the crash. The song includes all the elements of the classic tragic ballad: a well-loved hero, a premonition of death, a description of the tragic consequences, and a concluding moralizing homily.100 The Hanging of Charles Birger I’ll tell you of a bandit out in a western state, Who never learned his lesson until it was too late; This man was bold and fearless, the leader of his gang, But boldness did not save him when the law said he must hang. This bandit’s name was Birger, he lived at Shady Rest, And people learned to fear him throughout the Middle West; ’Twas out in old West City, Joe Adams was shot down, And then the cry of justice, these murderers must be found. Then Thomasson was captured and turned state’s evidence, And Birger was found guilty for he had no defense; He asked for a re-hearin’ but this he was denied, And in the county jailhouse to take his life he tried. On the nineteenth day of April in nineteen twenty-eight, A-way out west in Benton, Charles Birger met his fate;

454

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Another life was ended, the final chapter done, Another man who gambled in the game that can’t be won. The Ten Commandments show us the strait and narrow way, And if we do not heed them, some time we’ll have to pay; We all must face the master, our final trial to stand, And there we’ll learn the meaning of houses built on sand.101

The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1919, prohibited the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors, and the Volstead Act established the mechanism of enforcement starting in January 1920. One consequence of this legislation was the burgeoning industry in providing illicitly what could not be obtained legally. Needless to say, in many parts of the country, the occupation, legal or not, could be highly profitable. Charles Birger and his gang waged war against Shelton’s gang over control of the bootlegging business in Williamson County, southern Illinois. On December 12, 1926, Birger murdered West City’s mayor, Joe Adams, and was hanged on April 19, 1928. It was the last public hanging execution in Illinois. Illegally made and sold liquor was called “bootleg” starting in the late nineteenth century; originally, the term referred to any form of contraband that could be concealed in one’s boot. In the twenty-first century, the term is more likely to be applied to illegally manufactured or sold recordings. El-A-Noy ’Way down upon the Wabash, Sich land was never known If Adam had passed over it, The soil he’d surely own; He’d think it was the garden He’d played in when a boy, And straight pronounce it Eden, In the State of Elanoy. Chorus: Then move your fam’ly westward, Good health you will enjoy, And rise to wealth and honor In the State of Elanoy. ’Twas here the Queen of Sheba came, With Solomon of old, With an ass-load of spices, Pomegranates and fine gold; And when she saw this lovely land, Her heart was filled with joy, Straightway she said, “I’d like to be A Queen in Elanoy.” She’s bounded by the Wabash, The Ohio and the Lakes, She’s crawfish in the swampy lands, The milk-sick and the shakes; But these are slight diversions

GREAT LAKES

455

And take not from the joy Of living in this garden land, The State of Elanoy. Away up in the northward, Right on the border line, A great commercial city, Chicago, you will find. Her men are all like Abelard, Her women like Eloise: All honest virtuous people, For they live in Elanoy.102

Poems about Chicago and his native state figured large in the written works of the great twentieth-century Illinois-born poet and writer Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Sandburg was also a folk song aficionado and often concluded his public poetry readings by singing a few folk songs (in his very idiosyncratic style) to his own guitar accompaniment. In 1927 he published one of the first major folk song collections intended for public enjoyment (rather than as a scholarly documentation of a tradition). He included this song about Illinois (with the curious phonetic spelling), and it has been reprinted many times since. Sandburg learned the song from Chicago lawyer John D. Black, who used to hear his father sing it when he was growing up near the Ohio River. Sandburg noted that “Shawnee Ferry was a crossing point for many who had come by the Ohio river route or on Wilderness Road through Cumberland Gap, headed for Illinois.” The author was not known, but the urbane allusions point to a writer with some literary pretentions. A likely inspiration for the song is “The Plains of Illinois”/“State of Illinois,” discussed earlier. Particularly arresting is the reference to the twelfth-century Europeans Peter Abelard and his pupil-lover-wife Heloise—protagonists of one of history’s great tragic love stories. Abelard and Heloise had many remarkable traits, but they were not the best exemplars to call upon to represent “honest, virtuous people.” The only excuse for their invocation must be that “Elanoy” was originally spelled correctly, which would at least confer the benefit of an eye rhyme between “Illinois” and “Heloise”—though not a very good one at that. Harco Mine Tragedy It happened in December, in nineteen forty-one, Christmas was just over, the children all had fun; It seemed that all was well in little Harco town, But disaster rode the cage that night when all the men went down. It happened in the morning, shortly after three, Mr. Dietz came crawling out crying, “Don’t help me! There’s been a bad explosion, men are trapped in there; I was lucky to escape; they’ve got to get some air.” After checking up they found there were eight men gone, Rescue teams went down to get them and the fight was on; The fight against the flame and the deadly gas, They said, “We won’t give up until they are safe at last.” Sorrow settled on the town, anguish filled each heart, It was so hard to stand and wait; each person did his part;

456

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Food to the rescue men was sent by weeping women there, Who prayed: “Oh, God, please make it soon that they get them air.” At last we hope abandoned that they were still alive, At noon they brought to the top the bodies of five; By ten o’clock that night they’d found the other three, God help the poor bereaved ones in this great tragedy.103

The coal mine explosion at number 47 mine at Harco, Illinois, occurred on December 28, 1941. Within the next few months, this ballad was written by a resident of Harco.

MINNESOTA During the 1860s, while much of the nation was engrossed with the Civil War, Minnesota’s primary military adventure was a war with the Dakota tribe. A negotiated treaty in 1851 left the tribe full of resentment, which was greatly exacerbated when promised deliveries of food and payments failed to arrive. In 1862, contingents attacked some white settlements, including Fort Ridgley and New Ulm. Before the season of the Prince of Peace could be welcomed, 38 Dakota had been hanged and some 500 settlers (and an unknown number of Dakota) were killed in battles that nearly destroyed New Ulm. With the so-called red menace removed, economic growth was rapid and extensive, agriculture and logging being the two principal pursuits until the end of the nineteenth century. In 1884, iron was discovered in the Vermilion Range, and within a half dozen years, Minnesota became the nation’s leading iron-producing state. By the 1960s the iron ore had been fairly well exhausted. Minnesota attracted a considerable number of immigrants from abroad: by 1880, more than 34 percent of the state’s population was foreign-born. The largest contribution came from Scandinavia (13.8%), followed by 8.5 percent from German states. Finnish immigrants were numerically much fewer but made a significant contribution to Minnesota’s musical melting pot, especially in the northwestern part of the state, where they congregated. Successful lumber milling and wheat growing (in Minnesota and also neighboring states) led to a successful flour milling industry and also a railroad network, but not all was a model of cooperative endeavor. Growing conflicts between the wheat farmers on one side and the banks, railroads, mills, and manufacturers on the other led, in 1867, to the establishment of the National Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry—better known as the Grange, whereby the farmers tried to reclaim some political leverage. Though by no means a Minnesota exclusive, the movement was very strong in the state and succeeded in effecting many legislative reforms.104 Cole Younger I’m one of a band of highwaymen, Cole Younger is my name, My crimes and depredations have brought my friends to shame; The robbing of the Northfield bank, the same I can’t deny, For now I am a prisoner, in the Stillwater jail I lie. ’Tis of a bold, high robbery, a story I will tell, Of a California miner who unto us fell; We robbed him of his money and bid him go his way, For which I will be sorry until my dying day.

GREAT LAKES

457

And then we started homeward, when brother Bob did say, “Now, Cole, we’ll buy fast horses and on them ride away; We’ll ride to avenge our father’s death and try to win the prize, We’ll fight those antiguerrillas until the day we die.” And then we rode towards Texas, that good old Lone Star State But on Nebraska’s prairies the James boys we did meet; With knives and guns and pistols we all sat down to play, A-drinking of good whiskey to pass the time away. A Union Pacific railway train was the next we did surprise, And the crimes done by our bloody hands bring tears into my eyes; The engineer and the fireman killed, conductor escaped alive, And now their bones lie mouldering beneath Nebraska’s skies. Then we saddled horses, northwestward we did go, To the God-forsaken country called Minnesote-o; I had my eye on the Northfield bank when brother Bob did say, “Now, Cole, if you undertake the job, you will surely curse the day.” But I stationed out my pickets and up to the bank did go, And there upon the counter I struck my fatal blow; “Just hand us over your money and make no further delay, We are the famous Younger boys, we spare no time to pray.”105

On September 7, 1876, the Younger brothers—Cole (1844 –1916), Bob, and Jim—and five accomplices rode into Northfield, Minnesota, to lighten the First National Bank’s burden of safeguarding so much cash. Cashier Joseph Lee Haywood was shot for refusing to open the safe to the desperadoes. Citizens outside the bank got word of what was happening, and in a few moments the town streets were full of men shooting at the robbers. Three outlaws were killed; the Youngers were wounded and later apprehended tried. They were sentenced to life imprisonment on November 18 and taken to the Minnesota penitentiary at Stillwater. Bob Younger died there. Cole and Jim were paroled in 1901, thanks largely to 20 years of tireless effort by W. C. Bronaugh, a Civil War veteran whose life Cole had saved in 1862. Bronaugh’s efforts were fruitful because Cole, from the moment he and his brothers pled guilty at their trial, comported himself as a model prisoner and soon won the confidence, and even admiration, of prison authorities and others with whom he came in contact. The ballad was probably composed and circulated in the late 1870s; some Ozark singers recalled having learned it in the 1880s. The stanza placing Cole still in prison in Stillwater makes it unlikely that it was composed any later than 1900. The text is stuffed with historical inaccuracies. Cole probably did not murder the teller; most accounts credit one of the James brothers, Jesse or Frank, with that offense. There was no Union Pacific robbery that matches up with the ballad’s telling; nor is there any trace about the robbery of a California miner in the Younger biographies. The band of outlaws took the train to Minnesota and bought horses there; they did not ride horses all the way northwestward to “Minnesote-o.”106 Each September since 1948, Northfield celebrates the annual Defeat Jesse James Days, in which the town commemorates those brave denizens who stood up to the James-Younger gang. Events include a graveside memorial in tribute to teller Haywood, a reenactment of the robbery (in the actual bank building itself), a parade, an award banquet, and coronation of the queen. The event has become one of the largest celebrations in the state of Minnesota.107

458

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Paul Bunyan’s Manistee Paul Bunyan, the lumberman, came from St. Paul. He owned a big ox that was eleven feet tall. He mowed down the trees as the farmers mow hay, And the crew was at work before break of day. Chorus: Down, down, hi-derry-down. I lived in Bay City; no work in sight; My board bill was due, and I had to take flight. My clothes they were torn; I was known as “the scamp.” It was poverty drove me to Paul Bunyan’s camp. I got to Paul Bunyan’s that very same day, Climbed up his barn and lay down in the hay. With some Peerless tobacco I did my pipe tamp, And I smoked away trouble at Paul Bunyan’s camp. When I got to the camp I asked for a job. Paul Bunyan he met me with a wink and a nod. My two eyes were black, and I looked like a tramp, But he says, “You’re right welcome to Paul Bunyan’s camp.” They called me next morning before three o’clock, “Get up, you old bum, and pull on your socks. When you work for Paul Bunyan you don’t sleep a day; And you feed his big ox or you don’t get your pay.” I went to the cookshack, ’twas forty rods long; We all commenced eating at the sound of the gong. We drank black coffee, at the breast of a sow, The pancakes were turned with a big sidehill plow. With a ham strapped to each foot a big black coon Greased that griddle from morning till noon; We had to eat pancakes twice every day, And at nine in the evening we rolled in the hay. I went to a skidway the logs to roll down, With a big Highland Hoosier that they called John Brown. He was big and was strong and was known as a champ, Was that hog-headed Hoosier at Paul Bunyan’s camp. The trees were all cut and lay on the ground, We need a river to run the logs down; Paul’s ox was a big one, of tons he weighed three, And he plowed a deep ditch for the Big Manistee. Paul Bunyan quit logging when his muley ox died, He had a big tent made out of its hide; With the ox yoke for a pillow he smokes his big pipe, And he dreams of the river he made in one night.108

Like Kipling’s “just so” stories, which account in a fabulous fashion for the leopard’s spots, the elephant’s trunk, the rhino’s baggy skin, and other curious bodily parts, this fable explains how the Manistee River came to be. Many other locales in the Great Lakes and

GREAT LAKES

459

Northwest cherish legends explaining how certain rivers, valleys, or mountains were the result of some gargantuan activity of the giant Bunyan and his ox, Blue Babe. The origin of Paul Bunyan himself is shrouded in sawdust and oral tradition. He first appeared in print in stories published by James MacGillivray in 1910,109 but oral tales from lumbermen in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and the Northwest circulated considerably earlier. In the next two decades, Paul Bunyan was written up for a larger audience, so that now he takes his place alongside Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Mike Fink, Joe Magarac, and John Henry as workingmen of extraordinary skill (and sometimes dimensions) and sources of pride and inspiration to their respective occupations and proletarian ideals to the (young) public at large. Paul was first introduced to a general audience by W. B. Laughead, a Minnesota advertising man, in a series of pamphlets (1914 –1944) used to publicize the products of the Red River Lumber Company. These influenced Esther Shephard and Ida Virginia Turney, who wrote of the mythic hero in Paul Bunyan (1924) and Paul Bunyan Comes West (1928), respectively. James Stevens, also a lumber publicist, mixed tradition and invention in his version of the story, Paul Bunyan (1925). Along the way, the Bunyan stories took on the character of lying contests—who could tell the biggest whopper about the good-natured Paul. Manistee is (1) a city, (2) a county in northwestern Michigan, (3) a lake, (4) a river, and (5) a national forest. The city was originally a lumber camp, built on the river site that the Chippewa Indians called Manistee (“spirit of the woods”). Once a bustling enterprise, the camp was largely destroyed by fire in 1871. After timber supplies were exhausted from overzealous logging, Manistee developed as a health resort and as a leading producer of salt (based on local deposits). Calling this song a Minnesota song on the grounds that “Paul Bunyan . . . came from St. Paul” is slender justification indeed, but if it is a lie, so is everything else about Bunyan. The chorus suggests that an Irish American hand is involved in the song’s making. The Capture of William Wood by the Blackfoot Indians

Much of the land settled by European Americans in Minnesota was acquired by treaties with the Dakota Indians. By the middle of the nineteenth century the native Americans had accumulated a host of grievances out of resentment of their treatment at the hands of fur traders and government agencies, and tempers slowly rose to the boiling point. In the late 1850s and early 1860s, several brutal raids were carried out on settlements in Iowa and Minnesota, the culmination of which was an attack on New Ulm, in southern Minnesota, in 1862, during which hundreds of settlers were taken prisoner, and perhaps even more were massacred. Library catalogs associate this painstakingly detailed broadside account of a painfully gruesome episode with the Spirit Lake Massacre in Iowa on March 8–9, 1857, a tragedy in which 14 Sioux Indians, led by Inkpaduta, attacked a settlement in northwest Iowa a few miles south of the Minnesota border and murdered some three dozen settlers. On March 26, Inkpaduta and his gang descended on the Minnesota town of Springfield, a few miles north of the border. There they attacked the trading post of the Wood brothers, William, George, and Charles, and killed the first two of them. Replenishing their arms and ammunition from the store, they proceeded to attack other cabins in the site. Determined settlers eventually succeeded in driving them off. Springfield was later renamed Jackson and made county seat of the newly established Jackson County. The broadside ballad was written by Abner Warren Harmon (1812–1901), a Civil War commander from Virginia who published more than two dozen other ballads in broadside

This broadside from around the 1870s was reprinted in 1960 by the Friends of the Yale Collection of Western Americana. The author of the text is apparent, but the event to which it referred is still uncertain. Author’s collection.

GREAT LAKES

461

form in the 1860s and 1870s. The song is set to the tune of George Root’s “Just before the Battle, Mother,” published in 1863, so it probably dates from the years immediately after the Civil War. Since Wood was killed, the ballad’s story of his abduction must have been entirely fictional. Stories of kidnappings by Native Americans were popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Harmon probably added his own imaginative account to the collection. The implication of Blackfoot Indians is incorrect: the Blackfoot were quite separate from the Sioux. However, there were references in the nineteenth century (and in the twenty-first, for that matter) that claimed the Blackfoot as a subdivision of the Sioux. Whether the song is associated, as cataloguers have done, with Iowa’s Spirit Lake or with Minnesota’s Springfield is rather moot. Historically speaking, the two events were connected by a thread of unhappy dealings with the Sioux Indians (the same chief, Inkpaduta, was a driving force in both); the question of placement in a section of Minnesota songs, rather than Iowa ones, seems inconsequential when one ponders the magnitude of the iniquities involved.110 Yli Kymmenen Vuotta Korpiinissa Oli Jo Asuttu

10 Years We Have Already Lived Here in Corbin

Kymmenen vuotta Korpiniissa oli jo asuttu eikä täällä kauppapuotia viel oo näkynyt, Vain Kovaniemi se elelee siellä se kello-Peslevi Hän tuumaili että tuostahan se oli reformi

Ten years we’ve lived in Corbin But not a store we’ve seen, Just Kovaniemi’s living there, That time-card tracking thief. He thinks he’ll be able to reform us that way [?]

Vaik on long way to Ewlettiin, mistä jauhosäkin saa. It’s a long way to Ewlettiin kun ei ole kauppapuotia Good-bye jo kirkollitkii velverron rakentais Kotmannin kolikin roppia Kauppapuotis myydän kai.

But it’s a long way to Eveleth, Where you can buy a sack of flour; It’s a long way to Eveleth, Since there isn’t any store. Good-bye to the church league, We’re going to build a chapel [store?] Gottoman’s colic syrup will maybe be sold at that store.

Ja liikkeen hoitelijaksi ne laittoi Rookerin joka nimeltään oli Mäkinen ja aika täkyri Ne tavaraa nyt ostelivat tuolta juutalaisilta.

And as manager they choose a crook, His name’s Mäkinen and he’s a schnook They were buying all their stuff from that shyster, And he felt he could hike the price as much as he pleased.

Ja se arveli että hintaa niille korottaa vain saa. Vaik on long way to Ewlettiin mistä ryysyareetun saa. It’s a long way to Ewlettiin, kun ei ole kauppapuotia Good-bye jo kirkollikkii velverron rakentais koliikin roppia kauppapuotis myydään kai. Elwettissä sulkatalkona Kyllä niistä Korpiinissa taalan aina saan

But it’s a long way to Eveleth, Where you can get a rag crate; It’s a long way to Eveleth, ’Cause there isn’t any store. Goodbye to the church league, maybe we’ll build a place Colic syrup may be sold there. In Eveleth we’re at a feather bee [to raise money for the store], Sure you can always get a buck for one of those in Corbin;

462

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Uusia siellä lasilla ompi näytteillä vaikka puolet hintoja kohottaa ei joudat tyvitä?

New eyeglasses are on display there, Though even at half the price they wouldn’t be a good deal.

Vaik on long way to Ewlettiin mistä ryysyareetun sais Vaik on long way to Ewlettiin kun ei ole kauppapuotia Good-bye jo kirkollikkii velverron rakentais rakentais. Kotmannin koliikin roppia kauppapuotis myydään kai.

Though it’s a long way to Eveleth Were you can get a rag crate, Though it’s a long way to Eveleth ’Cause there isn’t any store Goodbye to the church league, maybe they’ll build a place And Gottman’s Colic Syrup will be sold there.

. . . kun metsätyöt niin pirusti runnailee niin Mäkinen se kierosilmässä hintoja määräilee. Puolentoista taalan paidasta se pyysi kahta ja varttia. Vielä vakuutti, meillä oo tuota juutalaisten tavaraa.

While we’re slaving over lumber work That cock-eyed Mäkinen is fixing the prices. A dollar and a half shirt he wants to sell for two and a quarter, And still he assures us it’s no cheapskate goods.

Vaik’ on long way to Ewlettiin mistä ryysyareetun sais It’s a long way to Ewlettiin kun ei ole kauppapuotia Good-bye jo kirpollikkii velverron rakentais.

Though it’s a long way to Eveleth, Where you can get a rag crate, Though it’s a long way to Eveleth ’Cause there isn’t any store; Goodbye to the church league, maybe they’ll build a place And Gottman’s Colic Syrup will be sold there.111

Kotmannin koliikin roppia kauppapuotis myydään kai.

Eveleth is in the Mesabi Range in northeastern Minnesota. It was settled in 1892 and named for Edwin Eveleth, a Michigan lumberman who visited the site in 1885. Following the discovery of iron ore by David T. Adams in 1892, the city’s population increased rapidly, nearly tripling in two decades. Eveleth’s taconite (an iron-bearing, flintlike rock) mines produced much of the nation’s iron ore. Corbin was “a small townsite located adjacent to [the mining town of ] Mountain Iron. . . . It wasn’t a mining company location, but was platted as a small, speculative venture by the Corbin Improvement Company in 1907. Many of the houses were moved in the late 1960s or 1970s when open pit mining operations consumed the site.”112 Many of Minnesota’s immigrant Finns worked in the iron mines, and this song was composed by one of the few of them who lived in the small mining town of Corbin. It appears to be set to the tune (and format) of the popular Irish World War I song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” which would date it to within a few years of 1920. Ole from Norway Ay yus come down from Minnesota, Ay ban in this part ’bout three year. Ven ay got off the boat dock, Oh, how the people they cheer. They say, “Here come Ole from Norway, He ban on a visit op there;

GREAT LAKES

463

His sister she live in Dakota, And his father has got the light hair.” Chorus: And they call me Ole and Ole, But Ole it not ban my name, Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole yus the same. They say ay’m a Norsk op from Norway, Som Lever po Lutfisk osk Sil. They say ay’m a rat And ay better go back To Norway. Ay got one fine yob in the river Chasing the trees down the stream, Vit a big pole in one hand, Oh, vasn’t it grand? Ven the trees make a bend down river Ay give a big whoop and a yell; My feet go co-splosh in the water, And ay tank ay ban gone to Hell.113

Making fun of immigrants who can barely speak English is a cruel but too-common pastime—especially when those newcomers are hardworking and threaten to take away jobs from the natives. To what extent this song is simply a parody rather than actually based on a Norwegian American text is difficult to say; the one line of Norwegian suggests there is at least some legitimate basis in the Norse community—as does the pained puzzlement in the singer’s query why everyone calls him “Ole.” The song has been reported from Nebraska and Wyoming, but odds are it originated in one of the lumber camps of the Great Lakes states—Wisconsin, Michigan, or Minnesota. Immigration from Norway to Minnesota in the last half of the nineteenth century was considerable. Already by 1860, the Norwegian-born population was exceeded only by the Germans and the Irish; by 1880 the 62,500 Norwegians were the second most numerous foreign element in the state, closely followed by 39,200 Swedes. The Fatal Ride Minneapolis was excited, for many miles around, A terrible crime committed a mile or so from town. ’Twas on a cold and winter eve, the moon had passed away, The road was dark and lonely, when found dead where she lay. When for pleasure she went riding, little did she know her fate, That took place on that lonely road, by the way near Calhoun Lake; She was shot while in the buggy, and beaten, ’tis hard to speak, Until her life has vanished, then cast into the street. Oh, how could he have done that deed, so terrible to do? Or how could he have killed a girl with a heart so kind and true? It was a cold and bloody deed, it was a terrible sin, To take the life of one so true as she had been to him. Chorus: Then tell the tale of a criminal, Kit was his promised bride;

464

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Another fate to answer, Another fatal ride.114

The unfortunate young woman identified only as “Kit” in this ballad was Catherine “Kitty” M. Ging, an up-and-coming young dressmaker of Minneapolis, whose bruised and bullet-ridden body was found on Excelsior Road about four miles from downtown on the evening of December 3, 1894. The coroner judged the body to have been a stylishly dressed woman close to 30 years of age; underclothing bore the laundry mark “Ging,” which soon led police to identify the corpse. Kitty Ging was 29; she had come from Auburn, New York, to Minneapolis, where she opened her dressmaking shop and was a very successful businesswoman. Kitty had a so-called boyfriend, Harry Hayward, of whom she was quite fond and whom she trusted implicitly—to the extent of lending him great sums of money to invest on her behalf. At his suggestion, she had also taken out a $5,000 life insurance policy, naming him as beneficiary. Hayward’s very elaborate (and, he thought, infallible) plans were detailed in the murder trial. It was learned that Hayward, whose attraction to Ging was abetted by Mammon, rather than Cupid, had been plotting her murder for some five months and had blackmailed Claus A. Blixt into helping him to carry out the deed. Blixt was an engineer, happily married and none too bright, who lived, as did Ging, in the Ozark Flats Apartments, which were owned by Hayward’s father. Harry had told Kitty to rent a horse and buggy at the local livery so they could go for a lakeside drive. Unbeknownst to Kitty, he also made a date with another young woman to accompany him to the Grand Opera House that evening. He met Ging and her buggy; they rode out by the lake; he shot her at a meeting place prearranged with Blixt. Hayward exited the buggy and walked back to town and to his date (and alibi), and Blixt was to get into the buggy, drive farther out of town, throw the body out, and leave the buggy. The horse (as was customary in those days) could easily find its own way back to the livery stable. Hayward was readily convicted after Blixt confessed his part, and Harry’s brother told police that Harry had been trying for weeks to get him to take part in the nefarious deed. Hayward was hanged on the morning of December 11, 1895, just over a year after the murder.115 The Ozark Flats building, an old brownstone on the corner of 13th and Hennepin, now houses a coffee shop on its ground floor, on the wall of which the Minnesota Historical Society has placed a notice memorializing the site as the former residence of one of Minneapolis’s most famous murder victims.116 Ramsey County Jail Last night as I lay sleeping, I had a pleasant dream; I thought I was in Minnesota, Down by a quiet stream. With a charming gal beside me, The lights would never fail; And I awoke to find myself, be God, In the Ramsey County Jail. Then combine, ye hump and biddy, From Tepperty town I steer;

GREAT LAKES

465

Like every honest fellow, I like my lager beer. Like every jolly young fellow, I take my whiskey clear; I’ve a rambling rake of a father, And the son of a gamboleer. They took me to the prison, They locked me twenty and four; They gave me all that I could eat, But I always wanted more. The beds were of the finest, And sleeping never failed; For the feathers they did tickle me so, In the Ramsey County Jail.117

The song includes echoes of “I’m a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech” (“and the son of a gambolier”), a popular song hit of 1903. There is no Tepperty (or Tipperty) in the United States, though there is one in Scotland—which may be completely irrelevant in this case. The song is another member of a group of closely related jail songs, two of which, “Fond du Lac Jail” and then “Jackson County Jail,” were quoted earlier. Crow Wing Drive Says White Pine Tom to Arkansaw, “There’s one more drive that I’d like to strike.” Says Arkansaw, “What can it be?” “It’s the Crow Wing River for the old Pine Tree.” Says Arkansaw, “Now if that’s the case, I can put you in the race; Come with me in the mornin’ an’ we’ll begin, For I’ve a job a-pushin’ for Long Jim Quinn.” In the mornin’ we boarded the M. & I., Our friends in Bemidji we bid good-bye; Humpy Russell took us down the line And landed us in Brainerd right on time. There was White Pine Tom and young Lazzard, And Mikey Stewart and his two big pards; Billy Domine and the Weston Boys, And there was others from Bemidji that could make some noise.118

Franz Rickaby, who collected this and other folk songs among the Great Lakes lumbering communities, provided the essential information to figure out what this very local song was about. The Crow Wing drive refers to logging activity on the Crow Wing River in central Minnesota; it joined the Mississippi near the town of Brainerd. The “old Pine Tree” was the Pine Tree Lumber Company, and the M & I was the Minnesota and International, a short railroad line that ran between the towns of Brainerd and Bemidji. “Humpy Russell” was the oldest engineer on the M & I at the time. The song was composed by the “White Pine Tom” mentioned in it. Since the song was set to the tune of “Casey Jones,” it would probably date from the early 1910s or later.

466

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

NOTES 1. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 CD-ROM, s.v. “Northwest Territory.” 2. Stephen A. Flanders, Atlas of American Migration (New York: Facts on File, 1998), 81–83. 3. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 CD-ROM, s.v. “Ohio.” 4. From an anonymous undated broadside, publisher not identified; quoted verbatim; punctuation has been modified. Another text is given in Frank Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania in Song and Story. With Notes and Illustrations. With an Appendix: The Battle Ballads and Other Poems of Southwestern Pennsylvania (Greensburg, PA: printed by the author, 1878), 354 –56; in this version, in the fifth stanza, the date is given as the fifth day of June. Cowan was of the opinion that the ballad was written by Dr. John Knight himself. Cowan also quotes another brief piece, “Simon Girty.” 5. See Parker B. Brown, “ ‘Crawford’s Defeat’: A Ballad,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 64 (October 1981): 311–28. For a collected text, see Mary O. Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1964[1939]), 260– 62. Brown provides references to other texts. There is a pamphlet, Crawford’s Defeat: A Tale of the Frontier in 1812 (Ft. Wayne, 1954), reprinted from the Indiana State Gazette, November 19, 1829, that concerns a completely different historical event. 6. From The United States Songster, a Choice Selection of about One Hundred and Seventy of the Most Popular Songs, Including Nearly All the Songs Contained in the American Songster (Cincinnati, OH: U. P. James, 1836), 123–25. A quite different text of 13 stanzas was printed by Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (n.p.: C. J. Krehbiel, 1904), 2:231–32. Frank Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania, 361–77, prints two variants and another ballad about the incident. Anne Grimes recorded a version on Ohio State Ballads, Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5217/Cass 05217. 7. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 334. 8. See Mary O. Eddy, “On the Eighth Day of November,” Ballads and Songs from Ohio, 161–63. 9. Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania, 361– 62. 10. From Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio, 2:76. The song was also printed, with minor differences, by Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania, 402. Anne Grimes recorded a version on Ohio State Ballads. 11. Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio. 12. Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio. 13. Other broadsides read “Neroes” or “bravoes.” 14. Other texts read “Sherry” for “Perry.” 15. From a broadside published by L. Deming, Boston. It can be seen on the Library of Congress Web site (http://memory.loc.gov rbc/amss/as1/as110890/001q/gif ). Larboard (sixth stanza) is the old term for “portside.” 16. See Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Lake Erie, Battle of ”; see also http://www.brigniagara.org. 17. From The Forget Me Not Songster (New York: Nafis and Cornish, n.d.), 22–23. 18. From Henry J. Wehman’s Song Book, no. 24 (October 1889), 18. For references to collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), 197–98 [F 13]. 19. Sent to Robert W. Gordon by Vernon Patterson, October 1923, from the recollection of his father, who heard the song in his youth (letter no. 350). 20. Notes from Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio, 268– 69. Ms. Eddy obtained and published two other texts of the ballad. 21. Ibid., 275–76. The eight-line stanzas have been rewritten as quatrains and the punctuation modified accordingly. 22. Ibid., 276 –77. The eight-line stanzas have been rewritten as quatrains and the punctuation modified accordingly. 23. The ballad about Guiteau is discussed further in Norm Cohen, Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), p. xxvi.

GREAT LAKES

467

24. Recorded by Carson J. Robison ca. April 24, 1930, in New York and issued on Columbia 15548-D, 78 rpm. Another recording, titled “The Prison Fire,” sung by Frank Luther, has been reissued on Bud and Joe Billings: Singing Pals from Kansas, Cattle CCD 207. 25. New York Times, April 22, 1930, p. 1. 26. For more details, see Donald Lee Nelson, “The Ohio Prison Fire,” JEMF Quarterly 9 (1973): 42– 45. 27. “The Ohio Prison Disaster,” E. C. Beck Collection, Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, Michigan Miscellany (3), p. 45; collected from Sadie Jones of Eifort, Ohio, and believed to have been composed by hillbilly musician Warren Caplinger. 28. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 CD-ROM, s.v. “Michigan.” 29. From Silas Farmer, History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan (Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1969), 335–36. For a traditional text, see Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1967), 5– 6, taken from a song notebook in possession of Mrs. William Warner, Orleans, originally belonging to her maternal grandfather, George W. Gernsey, who wrote down many song texts between about 1841 and the 1860s. 30. From Earl Clifton Beck, Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1941), 16 –17 (reprinted with permission of Jane Beck Smith); from Mrs. C. A. Welch of Mt. Pleasant. Corduroy roads were built by placing logs side by side across the swamps. A “turkey” was a knapsack—“backpack,” we’d call it today. 31. Gardner and Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan, 261– 62. From the singing of Mr. Frank Madison, Grattan Center, 1935. 32. From Ivan H. Walton and Joe Grimm, Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2002), 102–3; from Pat Banner of St. Clair, Michigan, and Captain A. E. Baker of Dunkirk, New York, in 1933. Landlubber (first stanza) is not a corruption of land lover, but was an old English sailor’s term of contempt for nonsailors, possibly derived from an older word, lubber, meaning a clumsy lout. 33. From Walton and Grimm, Windjammers, 173–74; from the dictation of John Mallow, 1932. Written by Dan Malloy. See Laws, Native American Balladry, 169, for reference to another collected version [D 17]. For a recent recording, see Neil Woodward, Michigan-I-A (Black Dog Records CD BD0009CD). 34. Beck, Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks, 214 –15 (reprinted with permission of Jane Beck Smith). Collected by Mrs. Claud Riley from Mrs. William Barnes of Port Sanilac. 35. Copyright 1998 by Troy Taylor. For more historical information, see http://www.prairie ghosts.com/minnie.html. 36. From http://www.prairieghosts.com/minnie html. 37. From Beck, Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks, 169, reprinted in Beck, They Knew Paul Bunyan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), 142–44 (reprinted with permission of Jane Beck Smith). From the singing of Mrs. Grace Bahel Pregitzer of Onaway. For references to other versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 153 [C13]. 38. Beck, Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks. 39. Ibid., 137; reprinted in Beck, They Knew Paul Bunyan, 130–33 (reprinted with permission of Jane Beck Smith). From the singing of Edward Sayer of Cadillac. 40. Beck, They Knew Paul Bunyan, 149 (reprinted with permission of Jane Beck Smith). 41. Ibid., 145– 46, from the singing of Frederick Larke of Rogers City (reprinted with permission of Jane Beck Smith). For a recent recording, see Woodward, Michigan-I-A (Black Dog Records CD BD0009CD). 42. Quoted by Timothy P. Lynch, Strike Songs of the Depression (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 100–1; punctuation and capitalization modified. 43. Lynch, Strike Songs. 44. Printed by Archie Green, “Streets of Hamtramink,” Western Folklore 19 (January 1960): 58– 60. The song was recorded not long ago by Neil Woodward, Michigan-I-A (Black Dog Records CD BD0009CD).

468

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

45. From Folk Songs of Old Vincennes (Chicago: H. T. Fitzsimons, 1946), 66 – 67; English translation by Frederic Burget. 46. From Paul G. Brewster, Ballads and Songs of Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Publications, 1940), 366 – 67. Contributed by Mrs. Kate Milner Rabb, special writer for the Indianapolis Star; she obtained it in 1925 from a correspondent in Lebanon, Indiana. For references to other collected texts, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 199 [F 16]. A recording, by Anna Underhill, can be heard on Fine Times At Our House, Folkways LP FS 3809. 47. Historical details are given by Phillips Barry, Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1934): 8:12–13, (1935): 9:16 –17. 48. Brewster, Ballads and Songs of Indiana; also Henry M. Belden, Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (Columbia: University of Missouri, 1940), 302. 49. Recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928, reissued on Songs of the Cowboys, RCA LPV 522. 50. For more historical details, photos of the principals, and references, see Jim Bob Tinsley, He Was Singn’ This Song: A Collection of Forty-eight Traditional Songs of the American Cowboy, with Words, Music, Pictures, and Stories (Orlando: University Presses of Florida, 1981), 176 –78. 51. Henry J. Wehman’s Songbook, no. 28 (October 1890), 9. Wehman also published it alone on a broadside (no. 1177) at about the same time. 52. From Paul G. Brewster, “ ‘The Hanging of Sam Archer,’ an Indiana Ballad,” Hoosier Folklore 5 (December 1946): 125–35. The text was sent to him in 1946 by Mrs. Ethel Hitchcock, Indian Springs, Martin County. 53. Details from Brewster, “Hanging of Sam Archer.” 54. Laws, Native American Ballads 232 [H6]. 55. “The Ballad of Pearl Bryan and Her Sad Death in the Kentucky Hills at Fort Thomas,” printed in the Louisville Courier-Journal, June 29, 1953, from a broadside sent to a columnist from Mrs. Verna Jeffers, Whitley City, Kentucky. Reprinted in Anne Cohen, Poor Pearl, Poor Girl!: The Murdered-Girl Stereotype in Ballad and Newspaper (Austin: University of Texas Press for the American Folklore Society, 1973), 65– 67. 56. From the sheet music; for collected versions, see Hubert G. Shearin and Josiah H. Combs, A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs (Pineville, KY: Twin Commonwealth, 2005[1911]), 29; Michael Cassius Dean, Flying Cloud (Norwood, PA: Norwood, 1973[1922]), 117; Max Hunter Collection 1284 (MFH 891), Springfield-Greene County Library, Missouri. There were also several hillbilly recordings in the 1920s and 1930s. 57. From James J. Geller, Famous Songs and Their Stories (New York: Macaulay, 1931), 166 – 67. 58. From Stewart Holbrook, Murder Out Yonder: An Informal Study of Certain Classic Crimes in Back-Wood America (New York: Macmillan, 1941), 143– 44. Sung to the tune of “Love, O Careless Love.” 59. See Holbrook, “Belle of Indiana,” in Murder Out Yonder, 126 – 44, for more gruesome details. 60. Suzanne Owens, The Daughters of Discordia (Rochester, NY: BOA Editions, 2000), 71–72. 61. As composed and recorded by Leroy Carr and Scrapper Blackwell, June 17, 1920, in Chicago, issued on Vocalion 1400, 78 rpm; reissued on Naptown Blues, Yazoo LP L-1036. Nonsense scat verses not shown. 62. From Carrie B. Grover, A Heritage of Songs (Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1973), 79– 80. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 144 [B 25], and Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs, ed. and abr. Norm Cohen (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 186 –87. For a modern recorded version, hear Matthew Sabatella, Ballad of America, vol. 1, Over a Wide and Fruitful Land (Sabatella, 2004). 63. John Wise, A Word of Comfort to a Melancholy Country (Boston, 1721), 19. “Tyrus” is the Biblical city of Tyre. 64. Norman Cazden, The Abelard Folk Song Book (New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1958), 121. The London publication is The Vocal Miscellany: A Collection of above Four Hundred Celebrated Songs (1734), 1:100. The song, numbered 115, is titled “Go, Go, You Vile Sot.”

GREAT LAKES

469

65. From Harry B. Peters, Folk Songs out of Wisconsin (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1977), 43. Found among the Fidelia Van Antwerp Papers in the Archives-Manuscripts Division of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. 66. From Belden, Ballads and Songs, 201, where it is noted, “Sent in 1903 by Miss Williams, with the notation: ‘Sung by an old man in Clinton County. He says it was a popular neighborhood song when he was a boy.’ ” 67. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Prairie du Chien.” 68. As sung by Robert Walker of Crandon, Wisconsin, in 1937, and transcribed by Sidney Robertson Cowell in the brochure notes to Wolf River Songs, Smithsonian Folkways LP FP 4001. The album includes a recording of the song by Walker made in 1954. Cowell provided glosses on some of the terms: gored stick = “goad” or “prod”; skidding was full = “plenty of work skidding logs”; three to the thousand means trees big enough so that three made 1,000 feet of lumber—rare after the 1870s in Wisconsin; hold down the beam—that is, of the scales—as though a single set of scales might hold all the logs skidded by a team in a day; “a belt was ready made . . . according to law” refers to the practice of, in the prize ring, the winner being given a fancy belt; “dollars yu’ll pull” means “pull down a prize.” To skid 110 or 140 logs in a day was considerable, but not impossible. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 154 [C 16]. Another recording, by Charles Bowlen of Black River Falls in 1941, can be heard on Folk Music from Wisconsin, Rounder CD 1521-2, reissued from Folk Music from Wisconsin, Library of Congress LP AFS L55. 69. Collected by Franz Rickaby from the author, Mr. William N. “Billy” Allen, in the 1900s and published in Rickaby, Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1926), 25–26. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 147– 48 [C 2]. 70. Sung by Mrs. Frances Perry of Black River Falls, Wisconsin, for Helene Stratman-Thomas in the 1940s; printed in Peters, Folk Songs out of Wisconsin, 45. Her version can be heard on Folk Music from Wisconsin. 71. Combined from texts in Wehman’s Collection of Songs, no. 23 [1889], 26, and a Wehman broadside, no. 639, the latter titled “Newhall House Fire”; words and music by J. W. Kelly. For references to collected texts, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 219 [G 15]. A recorded version by Robert Walker can be heard on Folk Music from Wisconsin. 72. For more information, see http://www.wisconsinhistory.org. 73. Sung by Charles Robinson, age 76, Marion, Wisconsin, in 1941, for Helene Stratman-Thomas. Printed in Peters, Folk Songs out of Wisconsin, 184. It has five more verses, not printed. 74. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Smith, Joseph” and “Illinois.” 75. “Death-Doomed,” by Will Carleton, Farm Ballads (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1873), 139– 40. 76. From David S. McIntosh, Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), 8, from a letter to McIntosh from Lena Moore, Benton, Illinois, April 24, 1951. 77. Ted Ashlaw on Adirondack Woods Singer, Philo LP 1022; Almeda Riddle on More Ballads and Hymns from the Ozarks, Rounder 0083; also in the John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection, Lyon College, 2300 Highland Road, Batesville, AR, and in Roger D. Abrahams, ed., A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle’s Book of Ballads (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970, 100–3; Raymond Sanders, Max Hunter Collection 1058 (MFH 237), Springfield-Greene County Library, Missouri; Max Hunter Collection 1017 (MFH 237); John Meredith and Hugh Anderson, Folksongs of Australia and the Men and Women Who Sang Them (Kensington, NSW, Australia: New South Wales University Press, 1985), 1:243– 45. 78. From Norman Cazden, Herbert Haufrecht, and Norman Studer, Folk Songs of the Catskills (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), 333, from the singing of George Edwards. 79. Forget Me Not Songster, 174 –75. 80. From David S. McIntosh, Folk Songs and Singing Games, 28–29. Collected from Evelyn Smith, New Burnside, Illinois, October 20, 1932.

470

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

81. Ibid., 29. Collected from Beulah M. Douglas of Benton, Illinois, on April 3, 1951. 82. From McIntosh, Folk Songs and Singing Games, 24–25; obtained from Mamie Hertz, Anna, Illinois, on October 20, 1947. No tune was given, but the author sang it to the tune of “Texas Rangers.” 83. Other related jail songs include “A Moonshiner’s Dream,” set in the Fulton County Jail, Georgia, and “A Prisoner’s Dream,” localized to Hamilton County, Michigan. For references to these and other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 75–79, 184 [E 17: “Logan County Jail”], and Gutherie T. Meade Jr., with Dick Spottswood and Douglas S. Meade, Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music (Chapel Hill: The Southern Folklife Collection, The University of North Carolina, 2002), 35–36. 84. From sheet music, published by Henry J. Wehman (1885); words and music credited to John Fletcher and Ned Straight, respectively. A copy can be seen in the American Sheet Music collection at the Library of Congress, American Memory (http://memory.loc.gov). Wehman also published the text on a broadside (no. 665) at about the same time. 85. If this is the same John Fletcher who wrote the spirited hit of the 1850s, “When I Saw Sweet Nellie Home”/“Aunt Dinah’s Quilting Party,” his skills had sadly deteriorated by 1885. 86. For more historical details, see Ann Scaling Tucker, “Convent Fire of 1884 Revisited,” St. Clair County Genealogical Society Quarterly 23 (2000): 193–98. 87. See Garry Harrison and Jo Burgess, eds., Dear Old Illinois: Traditional Music of Downstate Illinois (Bloomington, IN: Pick Away Press, 2007), 20. 88. From Philip S. Foner, American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 229; reprinted from the Labor Enquirer, December 17, 1887, and Workmen’s Advocate, December 24, 1887, where it is said to be sung to the air “Annie Laurie.” 89. Foner, American Labor Songs, 227–28; see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_Riot. 90. From the sheet music “The Bridge Was Burned at Chatsworth,” words and music by T. P. Westendorf, published by the John Church Company, Chicago and New York (1887). See Laws, Native American Balladry, 271, for references to collected versions [G 30]; see also Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 272. 91. Historical information from http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/bitstream/2142/83/2/Chatsworth+ Train+Wreck,+188.pdf. See also Helen Louise Plaster Stoutemyer, The Train That Never Arrived: A Saga of the Niagara Excursion Train That Wrecked between Chatsworth and Piper City, August 10, 1887 (Fairbury, IL: Blade, 1970), and Cary Clive Burford, The Chatsworth Wreck: A Saga of Excursion Train Travel in the American Midwest in the 1880s (Fairbury, IL: Blade, 1949). 92. From Harrison and Burgess, Dear Old Illinois, 139. Sung by L. L. Jones of Effingham, recorded on May 2, 1953, by David S. McIntosh. “Blight” in the chorus should perhaps be “plight.” 93. News reports from the Decatur Daily Republican of February 20 are available at http://www. rootsweb.com/u126~iljeffer/articles/1888_tornado.html. 94. From Charles Neely, Tales and Songs of Southern Illinois (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1938), 264 – 66; obtained from Miss Millie Barnard of Shawneetown. A recorded version by the Gordons can be heard on Folksongs of Illinois #3, Illinois Humanities Council. 95. Historical information from “1898 Flood Report,” by the Executive Relief Committee, at http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilgalla2/1898floodreport html. 96. McIntosh, Folk Songs and Singing Games, 13. 97. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 7 (January 1895), 17. Words by Willie Wildwave; air: “The Widow’s Plea for Her Son.” Copyright 1894 by William W. Delaney. 98. Foner, American Labor Songs, 245– 46. 99. From Lelah Allison, “The Maud Wreck,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 5 (1941): 37–38. For other collected versions, see McIntosh, Folk Songs and Singing Games, 14 –16, and Almeda Riddle, A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle’s Book of Ballads, ed. Roger D. Abrahams (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970), 80–82. McIntosh recorded a version sung by Mr. Dies Burton in 1952; it can be heard online (http://www.museum.siu.edu/music/exhibitsongs html). For a modern recording, hear “The Maud Wreck” by Bucky Halter and the Complete Unknowns, Welcome to Labor Land, Revolting Records CD RR 2002-6.

GREAT LAKES

471

100. More information on the song can be found on the Web site of the Illinois Humanities Council (http://www.prairie.org). 101. As recorded by Vernon Dalhart on April 26, 1928, and issued on Banner 7126, 78 rpm, and associated labels. For collected texts, see Neely, Tales and Songs of Southern Illinois, 266; also Olive Woolley Burt, American Murder Ballads and Their Stories (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 214. A recent recording by Janet Bean is available on Folksongs of Illinois #1, Illinois Humanities Council CD IHC07-01. 102. From Carl Sandburg, The American Songbag (New York: Harcort, Brace, 1927), 162– 63. Pete Seeger recorded the song on American Favorite Ballads, vol. 3, Smithsonian Folkways CD SFW 40152. Sandburg himself felt that the last stanza was “probably a later addition thrown in by some joker who felt challenged by the preceding verses” (p. 162). Milk sickness was a disease affecting livestock that ate of certain plants, transmitted to persons who ate the flesh or dairy products of such cattle. Shakes was a fever or ague. Wrote R. G. Thwaites in 1897, in his Afloat on Ohio, “We are now in the heart of the ‘shake’ country,” Mitford M. Mathews, A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 1506. A recording by Win Stracke can be heard on the CD Folksongs of Illinois #3 (Illinois Humanities Council; originally released on Songs of Old Town, Flair Records LP S-912. 103. From Harrison and Burgess, Dear Old Illinois, 76 –77. Written by Mary Dooley, of Harco, who sent a manuscript copy to David S. McIntosh on April 22, 1942. 104. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Minnesota.” 105. As sung by Marc Williams, recorded November 1930 in Dallas, Texas, and issued on Brunswick 544, 78 rpm. 106. For more details, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 117–21. 107. For more information, see http://www.djjd.org. 108. From Beck, They Knew Paul Bunyan, 73–75. From the singing of W. J. Taylor of Bay City. In another Michigan version, the river is the Muskegon; in an Ontario version, it’s the St. Lawrence, and in the Southwest, he formed the Grand Canyon. 109. James MacGillivray, “The Round River Drive,” News-Tribune (Detroit), July 24, 1910. 110. I am grateful to Ms. Alison Purgiel of the Minnesota Historical Society for providing information regarding these events and the ballad. See also http://www.jacksonmn.com/historical.htm; http://www.state.ia.us/government/dca/shsi/sites/gardner_cabin/background_history htm; and http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_Lake_Massacre. 111. Sung by Kusti Simila, recorded by Alan Lomax in September 1938 in Fulton, Michigan, for the Library of Congress LC AFS 2392 B1. Transcribed by Susanna Linne; translated by Tom DuBois. I’m grateful to Jim Leary for bringing this to my attention. 112. Letter from cultural geographer Arnold Alanen to Jim Leary (June 29, 2005); provided by Jim Leary. 113. From Beck, Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks, 30–31; obtained from John Frederickson of Frankfort, Michigan. 114. From Holbrook, Murder out Yonder, 232, as sung by Mrs. May Jones of Mankato, Minnesota. The song has not turned up elsewhere. 115. Ibid., 69–93. For more details, see Oscar F. G. Day, The Ging Murder and the Great Hayward Trial (Minneapolis, MN, 1895). 116. My thanks to my cousin and longtime Minneapolis resident Joseph Novich for pointing this out to me. 117. From Peters, Folk Songs out of Wisconsin, collected from Lester A. Coffee of Harvard, Illinois, in 1946. 118. From Rickaby, Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy, 99–100. Sung by Mr. Ed Springstad of Bemidji, Minnesota.

6 Midwest Plains

The states that constitute the loosely defined Midwest Plains—most of the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa, all became part of the United States as a result of President Jefferson’s French shopping spree in 1803. The acquisition of the Louisiana Territory nearly doubled the area of the United States at a bargain price of just under three cents an acre. ( Even in today’s dollars, his bill was equivalent to only about $1.50 an acre.) Importantly, it provided needed room for expansion, inasmuch as available land in the states east of the Mississippi was rapidly filling up. Apart from the states just mentioned, another half dozen states were carved out (at least in part) from that Napoleonic legacy. Americans following New York newspaperman Horace Greeley’s dictum to “Go West, young man” (while wily Greeley stayed back east with the young women) tended to take the shortest path west.1 Kansas got more Missourians than the Dakotas, and conversely, the Dakotas got more Minnesotans. For the first half of the nineteenth century, trappers and fur traders were the principal European Americans in the region. Initially, some efforts were made to ensure that the native peoples retained lands that were historically theirs; then the greedy spirit of lebensraum (“living room”), code named at the time “Manifest Destiny,” presided over endless treaties drawn up requiring the Indians to relinquish successively more and more land. In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which created separate Kansas and Nebraska territories (and provided for slavery to be allowed or forbidden by popular vote). The Dakota Territory was created in 1861, including the present states of North and South Dakota and large parts of Wyoming and Montana as well. Montana was made a separate territory in 1864, and the Wyoming Territory was carved out in 1868. The discovery of gold in the Black Hills in the early 1870s aggravated already uneasy relations between the whites and the Native Americans since federal treaties had established the Black Hills as

MIDWEST PLAINS

473

Indian lands. Population quadrupled between 1878 and 1887, leading to pressure to divide the territory in half, and in 1889, North and South Dakota were separately admitted to the Union.

IOWA The area that includes the modern state of Iowa was included in the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, and echoes of the French presence still resonate in place names such as Des Moines, Dubuque, and Le Mars. Following the purchase of eastern Iowa from the Sauk and Fox Indians in the 1830s, U.S. settlers rapidly scuttled in to cultivate the land. The territory of Iowa was formally established in 1838, and eight years later, Iowa was admitted to the Union as part of a compromise between the slaveholding South and the free North. By 1860, there were nearly 675,000 people in the state, and with the construction of railroads the frontier was pushed farther westward. Partly owing to railroad development, the population of Iowa more than tripled during the 1850s, leading to intermittent hostilities involving the Indians. The Spirit Lake Massacre in 1857 marked the final desperate outburst of Indian hostility in the state. The years immediately prior to the Civil War were Iowa’s frontier days, however, with lawlessness, vigilantes, and lynchings accompanying the unsteady beginnings of a settled society.2 The Ballad of Hardin Town I’ll tell you a tale of Ioway, That only the old folks know; About a crime in Hardin town One hundred years ago. The Indians roamed our forests then, The wily Fox and Sac, And lived in peace and harmony Upon the Neutral Tract. And there the white men built the town Right smack against the border; In all the West and wickedest With neither law nor order And there they built two grand saloons Called Sodom and Gomorrah, That lived up to their evil names And caused a world of sorrow. One night an old chief asked to see Their owner Graham Thorne, And said, “My daughter cries all day ’Twixt shame and sorrow torn. “And now I would see Taffy Jones, Who also owns this place, That I might closely question him About my child’s disgrace.” A shot came through the window pane, A shot came through the door,

474

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And in the lamplight all could see The chief die on the floor. Then silently his son strode in, His eyes were wild and wide, “Confess who killed my father, sirs, Shall vengeance be denied?” He fired then a single shot, But it was done most vilely. Alas! He missed both Jones and Thorne And killed poor Patrick Riley! They did not know who killed the chief, But he had murdered Pat; They threw him into prison, Yes! He got ten days for that! Gone are those wild and olden times, Gone is the old frontier; Gone are the white men and the red That I have told of here. The railroad soon spelled Hardin’s doom, It died with none to mourn; Where Sodom and Gomorrah stood March silent fields of corn.3

The ballad tells of an Indian chief who believes saloon keeper Graham Thorne, in Hardin town, Clayton County, to have betrayed his daughter. Seeking justice, he finds instead death at the hand of an unknown gunshooter. His son, in blind fury, retaliates by killing the nearest available saloon patron and is dispatched to prison for the crime. Most of the details are true: the Indian was arrested and tried at the first court trial in Clayton County; he was defended by Samuel Murdock, who later rose to prominence as a district judge and legislator. These events took place in 1847. Some poetic license has been taken in the crucial matter of the chief ’s abused daughter: that seems not to have happened. There have been four cities named Hardin at various times in Iowa; the one in Clayton County, like Sodom and Gomorrah, no longer exists ( but probably for different reasons). It was about three miles west of the town of Monona. The ballad is very skillfully written—suspiciously so for a folk composition. For that matter, there is little evidence that it was ever sung. County Song Our home is in Iowa westward toward the setting sun, Just between two mighty rivers where the flowing waters run; It has towns, it has cities, it has many noble streams, It has ninety-nine counties. Will you join and sing their names? Lyons, Osceola, Dickinson, where the Spirit Lake we see; Howard, Winneshiek, and Allamakee so fine Makes eleven northern counties on the Minnesota line. Clayton, Dubuque, Jackson, Clinton, together with Scott and Muscatine, Lee, Louisa, and Des Moines on the Eastern line are seen.

MIDWEST PLAINS

475

Van Buren, Davis, Appanoose, Decatur, Ringgold, Wayne, We spy Taylor, Page, and Freemont on the Missouri border line. Pottawattami, Harrison, Mills, Union, Woodbury, Plymouth, Sioux are all the counties that around the border of our state we view. Next we point you to O’Brien, Palo Alto, and Clay, Hancock, Cerro Gordo, Floyd; now we see Chickasaw, I pray. Fayette, Bremer, Butler, Franklin next upon the map we see. Wright, and Humboldt, Pocahontas, Buena Vista, Cherokee, Ida, Sac, Calhoun, Webster, Hamilton, a name so rare. Next is Hardin, Grundy, Black Hawk, and Buchanan, Delaware, Jones, Linn, Benton, Tama, Marshall, Story, Carroll, Crawford, Boone. Let us not your patience weary for we’ll have them all too soon. Greene, Cedar, Johnson, Iowa, Poweshiek, by the presidential fame, Guthrie, Audubon, Shelby, Cass and Madison, Adair, Warren, Marion, and Mahaska and Keokuk, too, is there, and Henry. Jefferson, Wapello, Monroe, Washington is missed, Lucas, Clarke, Union, Adams, and Montgomery fill the list.4

While Iowa’s young adults amused themselves in play parties, enterprising schoolteachers sat up nights trying to fashion songs and poems to help their young charges learn the alphabet, the multiplication tables, the capitals of the states, or the names of the counties. Drummed into resistant but impressionable young heads, these ditties are remembered far longer than the children would like to admit. Unfortunately, lacking the ingenuity of a William S. Gilbert or a Stephen Sondheim, few of these bits of melodic pedagogy interested folk song collectors enough to be included in published collections. One exception was Iowa’s “County Song.” It was learned in the 1880s, but I’m afraid we’ll have to make the singer stay after school and wipe blackboards, because the lesson was not learned fully: nine counties ( Dallas, Emmet, Jasper, Kossuth, Mitchell, Monoma, Polk, Winnebago, and Worth) are missing, and one ( Union) appears twice. There are some other irregularities, suggesting some lines have been misremembered: what does “by the presidential fame” between Poweshiek and Guthrie mean? Surely that should refer to one of the 10 counties named for presidents; also the phrase “Washington is missed” is hard to understand. The song must have been composed after 1871, at which time the 99th county (Osceola) was added. My Name Is Edward Broderick My name is Edward Broderick, I was born in Illinois, My parents came to Iowa when I was but a boy; I remember well the happy days, the joy that filled my mind, As I viewed the fields and flowers gay, but now, alas! I’m blind. A boiler maker I’m by trade, I live in east Des Moines; .... I worked four years in MacDonald’s shop; not only for myself, But for my parents, they were poor, and needed all my help. I earned my bread it tasted sweet, and I was full of life. I little knew my sunny days would all be changed to night But God, He knows what is best, we’ll know it by and by— A . . . , a hot iron chip struck me in my right eye.

476

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

It grieved me much to lose its sight, it caused me weeks of pain, I prayed to God I’d one bright eye; I went to work again; Two months had scarcely passed and gone, when working in my speed, A hot iron splint hit my left eye and I was blind indeed. My mother wept from day to day, she does not seem the same, She said, “Dear son, what will you do; you ne’er can see again.” Said I, “Dear mother, do not weep, God our laws has made; There’s a home for poor blind boys like me; I’ll go and learn a trade.” Three years I spent in Vinton, in that dear asylum home, I learned the trade of making brooms, but money I have none; If some kind friends will pity me and give me a little help, I’ll buy some stock and start a shop and I’ll support myself. And I’ll know the Lord, He will reward more than a thousand fold, I hope He’ll leave with you bright eyes that can’t be bought with gold; I hope someday we’ll meet again, by our father’s glorious plan, Where the poor are rich, and blind can see up in that heavenly land.5

It was not uncommon for blind or otherwise disadvantaged individuals to make up songs about their sad condition, have them printed up on inexpensive broadsides and hawking them on village streets for a few precious pennies apiece. Such songs tend to be very personal and usually rather maudlin, and are unlikely to survive in oral tradition, though perhaps stanzas may be recycled by later folksingers. The source of this text was not given in the collection whence it was obtained; it may have been from Broderick himself. Vinton is the location of the Iowa Braille and Sight Saving School, the state’s second oldest educational institution, founded in 1852. The school’s most famous student by some accounts was Mary Amelia Ingalls, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s older sister. Ain’t God Good to Iowa? Ain’t God good to Iowa? Folks, a feller never knows Just how near he is to Eden, Till some time he up and goes, Seekin’ fairer, greener pastures, Than he has right here at home, Where the sun shines on the clover, And the honey’s in the comb; Where the [ripples?] on the river Sort o’ chuckle as they flow, Ain’t God good to Iowa, Ain’t he fellows? Ain’t he though? Ain’t God good to Iowa? Other spots may look as fair, But they lack that soothin’ somethin’, In the hawkeye sky and air. They don’t have that snug-up feeling That a mother gives a child, They don’t soothe your soul and body

MIDWEST PLAINS

477

With their breezes soft and mild. They don’t know the joys of heaven Have their birthplace here below; Ain’t God good to Iowa? Ain’t he, fellows? Ain’t he though? 6

Edwin Ford Piper was born in Nebraska and taught English at the University of Iowa. As a boy, he heard and was drawn to folk songs sung by hired man, cowboys, tramps, itinerant street musicians, and others. Starting around 1897, he began to copy down songs and ballads that he had learned from local singers. His plans for publishing his collection never reached fruition. Some of the songs he found (like the two preceding ones) have never appeared elsewhere. Unfortunately, his documentation often left something to be desired. Probably both songs came to him in the early 1900s.

NORTH DAKOTA Until the late 1840s, white settlement in the area of present-day North Dakota was largely limited to the areas along the Missouri River. In the 1840s, several events (the admission of Iowa to the Union in 1846, the discovery of gold in California in 1848, and the organization of the Minnesota Territory in 1849) led would-be settlers to believe that what is now North Dakota would eventually become a territory of the United States, a conviction that seemed to encourage settlement. In 1861, President Buchanan signed the act establishing the Dakota Territory, which included all of present-day North and South Dakota as well as large portions of Wyoming and Montana. In 1868 the creation of the Wyoming Territory established the western boundary of the Dakotas. The southern boundary was fixed in 1882. The boundary between the northern and southern Dakotas was fixed by election in 1887, and on November 2, 1889, North Dakota and South Dakota became the 39th and 40th states of the Union.7 In the 1870s and 1880s the railroads, seeking to create a community of dependent users for the new rail lines pushing out across the western frontier, advertised in the eastern United States and also in Europe, hoping to lure settlers with the promise of cheap lands (which the federal government had granted them in exchange for building rail lines). As a result, the last decades of the century saw great boatloads of immigrants from Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe: Norwegians, Swedes, ethnic Germans from Russia, Ukrainians, and Czechs. In 1880, almost 39 percent of the Dakota Territory population was foreign-born, with Scandinavians holding the lead. Dakota Land We’ve reached the land of desert sweet, Where nothing grows for man to eat; The wind it blows with feverish heat, Across the plains so hard to beat. Chorus: Oh! Dakota land, sweet Dakota land, As on thy fiery soil I stand, I look across the plains And wonder why it never rains Till Gabriel blows his trumpet sound And says the rain’s just gone around.

478

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

We have no wheat, we have no oats, We have no corn to feed our shoats; Our chickens are so very poor, They beg for crumbs outside the door. Our horses are of bronco race, Starvation stares them in the face; We do not live, we only stay, We are too poor to get away.8

Reference to “Dakota land,” rather than North or South Dakota, places this song in the era before the Dakota Territory was divided in twain, which means prior to 1887. It therefore could be placed with equal justification in the following section on South Dakota songs; however, it has been awarded to North Dakota because, as far as folk songs are concerned, a little charity will do North Dakota some good. This cynical catalogue of the hardships of life on the plains is also traditional in Nebraska, where it is titled, not surprisingly, “Nebraska Land.” See the section of Nebraska songs for a dust-covered example. The Swede from North Dakota I bin a Swade from Nort’ Dakota, Work on farmstead ’bout two yare; Tank I go to Minnesota, Go to Minneapolis to see great fair. I buy me a suit, I buy me a bottle, Dress me up way out of sight; Yump on the tail of a Yim Hill wagon— Yesus Chreest, I feel for fight! I go down to Seven Corners Where Salvation Army play. One dem vomans come to me; This is what dat voman say. She say, “Will you work for Yesus?” I say, “How much Yesus pay?” She say, “Yesus don’t pay nothing.” I say, “I won’t work today.”9

While this song focuses on Swedes as the deviant population element, through the early 1800s, Norwegian immigrants offered a considerably larger target. By 1880 the Norwegian-born population of the Dakota Territory constituted 9.9 percent of the total; Swedes were far behind, with only 2.3 percent. A confluence of events adumbrated in the song identifies its origin as around 1890: first is the tune used, “Reuben and Rachel” (sometimes mistitled “Reuben, Reuben, I’ve Been Thinking”), a popular—and widely parodied—hit of 1870; then there’s the establishment of the American branch of the Salvation Army in 1880; the Minneapolis Industrial Exposition in 1886; and finally, the rise to power of railroad magnate James J. Hill. In 1878 Hill and associates purchased the Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad. After taking possession of a number of smaller lines, in 1890 he consolidated his railway holdings into one corporate entity, the Great Northern Railway Company. While easterners will associate “Seven

MIDWEST PLAINS

479

Corners” with Fairfax County, Virginia, in the Midwest, it refers to an inner-city location in Minneapolis, where seven streets run together. A version collected in Leclaire, Iowa (an old river town at the head of the rapids above Davenport), omits the Salvation Army verses and has instead the following: Den I find me vun girl Tillie, Den I begin to laugh an’ sing; Den I say, “Come on, Swede fellers, Ay skal pay for whole dam’ ting.” Ay bane vaked up in da mornin’ By a man dey call da bull; He skall say, “Come Ole, I want you, ’Cause you bane so terrible full.”10

The song was also collected in Michigan.11 [William Ross and Thomas Walsh] It’s a sad and cruel tragedy I am going to relate, Happened near Willow City in the North Dakota state; There lived a good and kind old man alone upon his farm, Not even a little child can say he ever did them harm. But a cowardly assassin butchered him and left him in his gore, And there John Cudnie found him lying dead upon the floor. But our officers were wide awake, they all did use their wits, And the villan [sic] soon was captured by Sheriff Billy Pitts. The jury came into the court, twelve men were in the gang, It was then and there decided little Willie he must hang. So on next Friday morning these words Judge Cowan said, That Willie Ross must hang by the neck till he was dead. People called him Little Willie and his other name is Ross, Was convicted of this awful crime though defended by Ben Goss. So now your trial is over, you’re a poor unlucky chap, With a rope around your neck, and you’ll wear a nice black cap. So, Sheriff Thomas Gardner, you do your work right well, And William Ross will play in luck if he doesn’t land in hell. So on next Friday morning will be the end of murderer Ross, He had friends, though ’twas not Jesus, but Charlie Brown and Bennie Goss. Oh, for killing Thomas Walsh it was my great mistake, And I’ll get hemp rope for breakfast, dead sure that is no fake. So now, I’ll say goodby, bid you all by me take warning, If you do, you won’t hang by your neck on a cold and frosty morning.12

Olive Woolley Burt, who had an almost morbid passion for ballads about murder and published a wonderful collection, found that this piece was composed by Thomas Cave: Willie Ross was an expert on horses, a life-long horse trader and handler. He was also an accomplished horse thief. So, when he went to the Willow City [Bottineau County] area to steal a fine band

480

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

of horses from Thomas Walsh, an elderly farmer, on 5 July 1902, he made off with the horses after shooting the sleeping Walsh to death through a screen door. Local authorities focused on Ross from the beginning and under questioning he soon admitted his guilt. Brought to trial at Bottineau in August, he was convicted and sentenced to hang on 5 December 1903. Events leading up to the execution at Bottineau were moving smoothly until the day before when Ross suddenly confessed to involvement in a second murder. In November 1901, Ross related, he and a young Minot man, Carl Hanson were working on a ranch near Delta ( present-day Blaisdell) when they met Napoleon LeMay, camped overnight with several horses which they admired. When LeMay refused to trade the animals, Hanson ended the matter by simply shooting him in the back. The body was concealed in a nearby dry well. This sensation was enough to stay Ross’ execution for long enough to investigate. Hanson was located near Williston and though he denied complicity Ross’ testimony was sufficient to obtain his conviction for murder. Ross’ execution was rescheduled for early on 6 March, on an enclosed gallows set up alongside the Bottineau County courthouse. In his last days Ross converted to Catholicism and went to his death without a murmur.13

SOUTH DAKOTA French explorers left a leaden plate attesting to their presence at Fort Pierre in 1742– 1743, and the Dakota Territory, as a portion of the Louisiana Territory, passed from French ownership to Spanish and back to French before the celebrated purchase through President Jefferson’s farsighted investment. Permanent settlements at Vermillion (shades of the French—in color, no less) and Yankton began in 1859. The Dakota Territory was carved out of the Louisiana in 1861; that parcel was subdivided into two sections in 1887 and two states in 1889. The Dreary Black Hills Now friends if you’ll listen to a horrible tale, It’s getting quite dreary and its getting quite stale; I gave up my trade selling Ayers’ Patent Pills; To go and hunt gold in the dreary Black Hills. Chorus: Stay away, I say, stay away if you can, Far from that city they call Cheyenne; Where the blue waters roll and Comanche Bill Will take off your scalp, boys, in those dreary Black Hills. Now, friends, if you’ll listen to a story untold, Don’t go to the Black Hills a-digging for gold; For the railroad speculators their pockets will fill, While taking you a round trip to the dreary Black Hills. I went to the Black Hills, no gold could I find, I thought of the free land I’d left far behind; Through rain, snow, and hail, boys, froze up to the gills, They call me the orphan of the dreary Black Hills. The round house at Cheyenne is filled every night, With loafers and beggars of every kind of sight; On their backs there’s no clothes, boys, in their pockets no bills, And they’ll take off your scalp in those dreary Black Hills. Chorus.14

Bell and Co. of San Francisco was a major publisher of broadsides and other cheap print in the decades after the Civil War. This broadside is from the 1870s. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

482

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Black Hills of western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming were a sacred hunting ground of the Western Sioux Indians, whose rights to the region had been guaranteed in 1868 by the Second Treaty of Fort Laramie. But precious metals trump treaties, and when a U.S. military expedition under George A. Custer discovered gold in the Black Hills in 1874, thousands of gold seekers invaded the area the following year, trampling under booted feet the six-year-old treaty. Indian resistance to this swarm led to the Black Hills War (1876), the climax of which was the Battle of the Little Bighorn (discussed in the section on Montana songs, chapter 8). Despite Indian victory, the federal government managed to strong-arm the Sioux into relinquishing their treaty rights to the Black Hills in 1877, by which time the Homestake Mine had become the largest gold producer in the United States. Once depleted of big game and precious metals, the Black Hills again became simply the bleak, barren, and desolate territory they had always been (no offense, Dakotans). “The Dreary Black Hills” captures all the irresistible charm and beauty of the region. Besides the old mining town of Deadwood and the Mount Rushmore National Monument, the Black Hills’ tourist attractions include Jewel Cave National Monument, Wind Cave National Park, and Custer State Park, all in South Dakota. The “patent pills” of the third line refers to the once very popular line of James Cook Ayer (and later, his brother Frederick) who, starting business in 1843 with a small pharmacy in Lowell, Massachusetts, had by the 1870s built up a thriving line of patented medicines, including “Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral,” “Ayer’s Cathartic Pills,” “Ayer’s Compound Extract Sarsaparilla,” “Ayer’s Hair Vigor,” and “Ayer’s Ague Cure.” Whatever else they may have been good for, these products were good for earning Ayer a substantial fortune by the time he died in 1878 at the age of 60.15 This song made its first (and only) broadside appearance in the 1870s (not before 1876, when the gold rush began), published in San Francisco. Not much is known about the alleged composer, Dick Brown. It appears he arrived in the Black Hills in 1875, a proficient banjo player, singer, and actor. Some writers assume that he was the widely known “Deadwood Dick,” a notorious stage robber of the 1870s.16 Little Old Sod Shanty I am looking rather seedy now, I’m holding down my claim, While the victuals are not always cooked the best; And the mice they play around as I lay me down to sleep In my little old sod shanty on the claim. Chorus: Oh, the hinges are of leather and the windows have no glass, And the roof it lets the howling blizzard in, And I hear the hungry coyotes as they sneak thro’ the grass, By my little old sod shanty on the claim. Yet I rather like the novelty of living in this way, Though my bill of fare is always rather tame, But I’m happy as a clam on the land of Uncle Sam, In my little old sod shanty on the claim. When I left my Eastern home, so happy and so gay, To try and mine myself to wealth and fame, I little thought I’d come down to burning twisted hay In my little old sod shanty on the claim.

MIDWEST PLAINS

483

My clothes are getting rusty, I’m looking like a fright, And everything is scattered here and there; I wish that some of Barnum’s men could get their eyes on me, In my little old sod shanty on the claim. Oh, if some kindly-hearted Miss would pity on me take, And would come and aid me in my labors here, The angels how they’d bless her if this her home she’d make, In my little old sod shanty on the claim. And if heaven should smile upon us and drive away all care, Would cheer our hearts with pride and fame, Then I’d never feel regret for the years that I have passed In my little old sod shanty on the claim.17

“Little Old Cabin in the Lane” (1871) was one of several poems and songs written by Will S. Hayes on the arcadian theme of the old rural homestead, and like many good songs and poems, it inspired a woodpile of parodies. One of the earliest was “The Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” words by Grace Carlton and arranged by J. C. Chamberlain, published in 1875. Both its words and melody are different—but only slightly—from Hays’s song. The similarities were sufficient for the two songs to become commingled in oral tradition: the surviving title is usually “Little Old Log Cabin in the Lane,” and the words are closer to Hays’s, but the melody is more similar to Chamberlain’s. Originating at about the same time was the first of many railroad songs, titled “Little Red Caboose behind the Train,” closely modeled after an amalgam of the two “cabin” songs. “Little Old Sod Shanty (on My Claim),” the parody of concern here, was published at least as early as September 1884 in a Kansas newspaper, The Clark County Clipper (Ashland).18 If we can accept at face value the statements of correspondents to the Dakota Farmer in 1909, “Little Old Sod Shanty” dates to 1882, if not earlier. In the December 15 issue, one reader recalled the song from the Dakota Territory, where it was called the “Garfield Boys’ Song,” referring to a post office in the Golden Valley. Another writer submitted a text that she claimed her father, O. E. Murray, had written in 1882, titled “The Little Old Sod Shanty.” Though the text of this composition differs from the more familiar version, it is worth quoting a few verses here for comparison: You may sing about the little old log cabin in the lane, Or of little German homes across the sea; But my little old sod shanty that I build upon my claim, Has become the dearest spot on earth to me. I built it in my poverty upon my prairie claim, And after toil it gave me sweetest rest; Safely sheltered from the blizzards and all the storms that came, In my little old sod shanty in the west. Chorus: It makes a pleasant memory that I shall not forget, Of all our eastern homes it suits me best; And often now I wish that I were living in it yet, In my little old sod shanty in the west.

“Little German Home across the Sea” was a popular piece of 1877.

484

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Another letter, published in the November 1 issue, included a poem, “Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim,” on the back of a photograph of a sod shanty taken in the 1880s in the Dakota Territory by the then well-known photographer Bald Headed Ball.19 The “little old sod shanty” itself was the inspiration for parodies: another Kansas newspaper published “Reply to ‘The Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim’ ” in 1885; then came “Answer to the Little Old Sod Shanty on the Claim”; and other parodies followed.20 Competing claims of authorship cannot be dismissed on the grounds that all but one must be fallacious. A popular song can inspire several independent parodies. All one can say for certain, then, is that the first of the “little old sod shanty” songs can be no earlier than 1877 and no later than 1884. We shall have to content ourselves with this uncertainty for now. Wandering Willie Oh have you seen our wand’ring Willie In his journey through your state? He wears a gripsack on his shoulders And he walks with a waddling gait. Chorus: Yes walks with a waddling gait, Oh walks with a waddling gait; His grips well filled with solid cash As he walks with a waddling gait. He reached his hand into the treasury and cleaned up ev’ry cent, Then giving a wink to the boys he knew away our Willie went; Chorus: Away our Willie went, Away our Willie went, With his waddling gait and well filed grip, Away our Willie went. The boys, he hoped would touch him light, For very well he knew; He’s passed it ’round in elegant shape, To pull the party through. Chorus: Yes, pull the party through, Oh, pull the party through, He had hung out late, with this waddling gate, To pull the party through. Then tearfully they took Willie’s hand, As he passed from the door; Said Hath to Kip and Tom to Coe, Not lost, but gone before. Chorus: Yes, only gone before, Oh merely gone before, With his waddling gait, we’ll share his fate, Not lost, but gone before.21

This song refers to William W. Taylor, state treasurer of South Dakota in 1891–1895 and also president of the First National Bank of Redfield, South Dakota, the bank in which

MIDWEST PLAINS

485

were deposited some $370,000 of state assets. On January 10, 1895, the bank failed. By law, Taylor should have turned over the bank’s assets to his successor, but only some $15,000 could be accounted for. Taylor had fled to New York, whence he had telegraphed that he could not get back to South Dakota for some time. Rumors were that Taylor had not taken the money with him but had lent it to friends whom he wanted to assist during the financial panic. The money was never recovered.22 The song was set to the tune of Henry Clay Work’s “Kingdom Coming” (“ Year of Jubilo,” 1861). Just before the Drawing , Sweetheart Just before the drawing sweetheart, I am waiting for a claim; Way out here in Dewey County, Way out here upon the plain. As I gaze upon the prairie, And this promised land I view; Just before the drawing sweetheart, I am thinking most of you. Way out here in Dewey County, Way out here upon the plain, Way out here upon my homestead, Where they say it never rains. Just before the drawing sweetheart, Many they are coming here; They have left their homes and fam’lies, They have left their sweethearts dear. They are coming for the drawing, They are waiting for a claim, Where they’ll take their own dear loved ones, And no more will ever roam. Now my darling watch the paper, And if you should see my name, You will know we have a homestead, You will know we have a claim. Then my sweetheart you get ready, Then to Pierre you may come; We’ll go in a prairie schooner, To our Dewey County home. Way out here in Dewey County, Where they say it never rains, You will find no boys a waiting, Just to prove up on our claim.23

The original Homestead Act signed into law by President Lincoln in 1862 provided that anyone (ex-Confederates excepted) could, for payment of about $18, file a claim to not more than 160 acres of land in the surveyed public domain. After having either resided upon or cultivated the land for the next five years, and if by then a citizen, that person could then obtain title after some additional fees. In later years, the law was modified—ex-Confederates were allowed, the land had to be both cultivated and resided upon, and so forth. Meeting

486

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

these requirements was not simple, and by 1890, only one in three homesteaders managed to justify deeds to their farms. The first claim in Dakota Territory was filed in 1872, and in a decade or so, most of the good land was taken. A second boom took place from 1902 to 1915 as a result of the breaking up of Indian reservation land into 160-acre farm parcels. This song paints a picture of the woman remaining in the state capital of Pierre, watching for notice in the newspaper that her sweetheart had obtained a claim out in north central South Dakota. The reference to a drawing suggests that by 1909 (or whenever the song was written), there were far more applicants than available parcels, and some sort of lottery took place. The song was set to the tune of George F. Root’s Civil War hit, “Just before the Battle, Mother.” Anna Sweeney On the wild Dakota Prairie where the sun is ever bright, Lived a fair and youthful maiden, merry voice and footsteps light; Many friends were gathered around her, many lovers claimed her hand, But the one that Anna favored dwelled within a distant land. When in haste there comes a letter, soon he’d come and claim his bride, To take her from the wild Dakotas to his home in joy and pride; Soon the bridal robe was ready, and the time was drawing near, When the heart of Anna Sweeney must be torn from friends so dear. “Do not leave me,” said her father, “for my locks are turning grey, And my heart would break without you; one more summer with me stay.” Thus he pleaded night and morning, she at last the promise gave, For she knew her aged father fast was hastening to the grave. On the morn of April second, long to be remembered day, Anna’s father left their dwelling for the village miles away; Little dreamed he of the sorrow that was lurking in his path, Saw he not the fiery fiend rushing on in quenchless wrath. Anna in their humble dwelling saw the hungry flames draw nigh, From the stall she loose[d] the cattle, then for safety tried to fly; One more moment she would of reached it, but the hungry flames drew nigh, Clasp her only for a moment, leaves her lifeless and are gone. Oh! that day of bitter sorrow, oh! that day of fear and fright, Who so happy in the morning lay in ashes long ere night; In the village Anna’s father chats with friends in joy and mirth, Telling them of Anna’s promise and his daughter’s priceless word [worth?]. When in haste there comes a message, told with quick and startled breath, Of the quick and dire destruction, and of Anna’s painful death; See the old man reel and stagger, see his look of deep despair, Pity him, the aged father, with his locks of silvery hair. “It will kill him,” said the neighbors, for he has lost his joy and pride, It was true—ere summer ended he was laid by Anna’s side; I have told this as I heard it, from the friends who knew them best; Truth is stranger still than fiction, life is sad, but sweet is rest.24

Irish immigrants began setting in the Dakota region in the 1850s, and their numbers increased through the remainder of the century. Though never so numerous as the

MIDWEST PLAINS

487

Scandinavians or Germans, they contributed significantly to the life and culture of the Dakota Territory. In 1881, the Sweeneys were recent homesteaders near Okobojo, Dakota Territory. One day in April, a prairie fire struck the plains. On her father’s farm, Anna Sweeney tried to save the family’s livestock but was caught up in the fire and burned to death. This ballad recounting her tragedy was set to the hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”25

NEBRASKA In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which created the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory out of parcels of the land that had been acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. The act opened up lands to white settlement that previously had been set aside for Native Americans. It was also of national political significance because it stipulated that residents of each territory could decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery—in effect repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery north of latitude 36º 30'. Settlement in the territories was encouraged by passage, in 1862, of the Homestead Act, which allowed families to take ownership of 160-acre parcels of public domain land if they resided on the land for five years. The law did much to promote settlement of the West and continued to be important until 1935, helping many families to weather the Great Depression. Land so acquired could not be taken over by creditors in payment of debts previously contracted. The further development of Nebraska was greatly aided by President Lincoln’s enactment of the Pacific Railroad Act in 1862, which awarded the Union Pacific Railroad rights to large swathes of land in Nebraska and other western territories. The railroad then sold this land to settlers at very low rates (though often retaining mineral rights) in order to entice settlement out west, without which their rail lines, would not have much business. Advertisements extolling the virtues of cheap and abundant land in the West were posted throughout the eastern states and, interestingly, in Europe. The success of their advertising campaign was evident in Nebraska’s population composition in 1880: 6.9 percent were German-born, 3.7 percent were Scandinavian ( Norway, Sweden, and Denmark), and another 2 percent were from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic). Kansas, surprisingly, attracted the largest number of Russian immigrants of any state or territory. In 1867 Nebraska became the 37th state of the Union. Life in the new Nebraska and Kansas territories was difficult for new settlers. The land was stubbornly uncooperative with farmers and settlers, droughts and grasshoppers were periodic uninvited house guests, and hostilities involving Native Americans continued well into the 1880s. Railroads were exploitive monopolies, gouging farmers with unconscionable freight rates in the absence of competitive carriers. They sold land and became mortgage holders, and, like banks, were more than ready to foreclose on farmers whose hardships kept them from being able to meet financial commitments. The Sioux Indians I’ll sing you a song—it may be a sad one— Of our trials and our trouble and how they begun; We left our dear kindred, our friends and our home, And we crossed the wide districts and mountains to roam.

488

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

We crossed the Missouri and joined the large train, Which carried us over mountains, through valleys and plain; And often of an evening a-huntin’ we’d go, To shoot the fleet antelope and the wild buffalo. We heard of Sioux Indians all out on the plains, A-killing poor drivers and burning their trains, A-killing poor drivers with arrows and bows; When captured by Indians no mercy they’d show. We traveled three weeks till we came to the Platte, A-pitching our tents at the head of the flat; We spread down our blankets on a green shady ground, Where the mules and the horses were grazing around. While we’re taking our refreshments, we heard a loud yell, The ‘hoop of Sioux Indians come up from the drill [i.e., dale]; We sprang to our rifles with a flash in each eye, And says our brave leader, “Boys, we’ll fight till we die.” They made a bold dash and they come near our train, The arrows fell around us like showers of rain; But with our long rifles we fed ’em hot lead, Till a many a brave warrior around us lie dead. We shot the bold chief at the head of his band, He died like a warrior with a bow in his hand; And when they saw the brave chief lie dead in his gore, They ‘hooped and they yelled and we saw them no more. In our little band there were just twenty-four, And of the Sioux Indians five hundred or more; We fought them with courage, we spoke not a word, The whoop of Sioux Indians was all could be heard. We hooked up our horses, we started our train, Three more bloody battles, this trip on the plain; And in our last battle three of the brave boys fell, We left them to rest in the green, shady drill [i.e., dell].26

Though no states or towns are named in this account of attack and bloodshed, the description of joining a wagon train, crossing the Missouri River, and then camping along the Platte River, is consistent with it having taken place in Nebraska. Two important wagon trails, the Oregon and the Bozeman, both traversed Nebraska through the valley of the Platte. Although almost all of eastern Nebraska had been ceded to whites by 1854, the Sioux and the Cheyenne remained owners of western parts. In the early 1860s, Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud fought to keep the U.S. Army from opening the Bozeman Trail, which crossed an important Oglala hunting ground in Nebraska and South Dakota. For two years, starting in 1866, Red Cloud and a band of Sioux and Cheyenne besieged forts that had been erected to protect travelers along the trail. After long negotiations, in 1869, Red Cloud and the U.S. government signed the Treaty of Fort Laramie, under which the United States agreed to abandon the Bozeman Trail.27 These events define a plausible set of circumstances for the events of the ballad—if they are indeed factual. The likely decade for the attack would be the 1860s. There are,

MIDWEST PLAINS

489

however, no appearances of the song in print before the 1919 edition of John A. Lomax’s Cowboy Songs. Alliance Song The farmers are gathering from near and from far, The Alliance is sounding the call for the war. The battle is raging, it will be fearful and long, We’ll gird on our armor and be marching along. The battle is raging, it will be fearful and long, Men are before us that would lead us astray, But let us not follow or turn from the way; The password our strength, be this ever our song, We’ll join the Alliance and go marching along. We’ve ’listed for life and will camp on the field; With faith in the Alliance we never will yield. United we stand, both trusty and strong, We will pull together and be marching along. Through hardships and trials our gold we must bring, For here we contend against monopolies’ ring; But one thing is certain, we cannot go wrong, If we pull all together while marching along. Chorus: Marching along, we are marching along, Stand by each other while marching along. The battle is raging, ’twill be fearful and strong, Then pull all together while marching along.28

Beset by many difficulties, farmers began in the late nineteenth century to form Farmers’ Alliances—national organizations established to advance their social, educational, financial, and political interests. The alliances reflected frustration at the decline in the standard of farm living, a result of steadily lowering prices of farm products. Their protest targets included banks, for refusal to reduce interest rates (a great financial burden to farmers, who often met expenses by borrowing against future crop income); railroads, for discriminatory freight rates; and in some areas, local law officials, for laxity in prosecuting cattle thieves. At their peak, in the 1880s and 1890s, the alliances sponsored lecturers and periodicals to spread information on agricultural issues; distributed literature; established local cooperative stores, grain elevators, and cotton gins as well as large-scale cooperative marketing of crops; purchased equipment directly from manufacturers; and organized cooperative fire, hail, and life insurance. By 1890 they had enough strength to form a national independent political party.29 The Hayseed I once was a tool of oppression, And as green as a sucker could be; And monopolies banded together To beat a poor hayseed like me. The railroads and old party bosses Together did sweetly agree; And they thought there would be little trouble In working a hayseed like me.

490

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

But now I’ve roused up a little And their greed and corruption I see, And the ticket we vote next November Will be made up of hayseeds like me.30 Throughout Nebraska, from 1885 to 1905, crusading farmers gathered at hundreds of political rallies, barbecues, and picnics to hear orators from among their own people, many of whom had never spoken to a crowd before, discuss the pressing questions of the day. To reach these meetings it was necessary for many farmers to drive in clumsy lumber wagons for long distances. Seemingly endless parades of farm wagons were arranged in order to impress the spectators. Sixteen hundred teams paraded into Hastings alone for one meeting. In order to add excitement to these parades, and create diversion between speeches at the rallies, songs were sung. Glee Clubs were organized. The Cat Creek Glee Club of Custer County, became so popular that it was sung at the National Populist Convention held in Omaha in 1892. For the most part, however, the farmers and their sympathizers did their own singing. They especially liked parodies of familiar verse or ballads, arranged so that they could easily be sung to old familiar tunes such as “Nellie Gray,” or “Sweet Memorie[s].”31

This wonderful poke in the eye of the corpulent capitalist bosses works very well to the tune of “Rosin the Beau,” an early-nineteenth-century tune that became a favorite vehicle for parodies for well over a century. The Kincaider’s Song You ask what place I like the best, The sand hills, oh the old sand hills; The place Kincaiders make their home And prairie chickens freely roam. Chorus: In all Nebraska’s wide domain ’Tis the place we long to see again; The sand hills are the very best, She is queen of all the rest. The corn we raise is our delight, The melons, too, are out of sight, Potatoes grown are extra fine And can’t be beat in any clime. The peaceful cows in pastures dream And furnish us with golden cream, So I shall keep my Kincaid home And never far away shall roam. Chorus: Then let us all with hearts sincere Thank him for what has brought us here, And for the homestead law he made, This noble Moses P. Kincaid.32

Ms. Pound reported that this song, popular in the Nebraska sandhill region, was sung at picnics, reunions, and other gatherings to the tune of “My Maryland.” Moses P. Kincaid was a Republican congressman for the Sixth Nebraska Congressional District in 1903– 1919 who introduced what became the Kincaid Homestead Law in 1904, enlarging the size of the homestead from 160 to 640 acres.

MIDWEST PLAINS

491

Dear Prairie Home There’s a dear old homestead on Nebraska’s fertile plain Where I toiled my manhood’s strength away; All that labor now is lost to me, but it is Shylock’s gain, For that dear old home he claims today. Chorus: Ah, my dear prairie home! Nevermore in years to come Can I call what I made by toil my own; The railroads and banks combined, the lawyers paid to find Out a way to rob me of my home. When first I took that prairie home, my heart was light and gay, And I sang as I turned the prairie sod; My hair that then was thick and brown, today is thin and white, And I’ve lost all faith in man and God. Chorus. It was many years ago that I first saw through this scheme, And I struggled from their meshes to get free; But my neighbors all around me then were in a party dream, And they voted to rob my home from me. Chorus. Now their homes are gone as well as mine, and they’re awake at last, And they now see the great injustice done; While some few their homes may save, yet the greater part, alas! Must be homeless for all time to come. Chorus. We must now the robbers pay for a chance to till the soil, And when God calls us over the great range; All Heaven will be owned, I suppose, by men who never toil, So I doubt if we notice the exchange. Chorus.33

Nebraska soil proved more fertile ground for songs than for crops, so later generations are the beneficiaries of such poetic bounty, while the poor farm folk who wielded pen and paper so successfully struggled to do half as well with plough and pruning shears. Nebraska Land We’re in a land of drouth and heat, Where nothing grows for man to eat; The winds that blow with burning heat, O’er all this land is hard to beat. Chorus: O Nebraska land, sweet Nebraska land, As on its burning soil I stand, And look away across the plains I wonder why it never rains, But Gabriel calls with trumpet sound And says the rain has passed around. The farmers go into their corn, And there they stand and look around; They look and then they are so shocked, To find the shoot has missed the stalk. We have no wheat, we have no oats, We have no corn to feed our shoats;

492

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Our chickens are too poor to eat, And pigs go squealing through the streets. Our horses are the broncho race— Starvation stares them in the face; We do not live—we only stay, And are too poor to get away.34

Leopold Vincent included this text in his collection of Farmers’ Alliance songs of the 1890s and credited it to John A. Dean, but whether Dean wrote the first of many different state variants or simply adapted an older song to Nebraska is not known at present. Nebraska Blues I like you, baby, baby, I like you true (2) But I’m headin’ for Nebraska, there’s nothin’ up there you can do. Here in Chicago, snow is coverin’ the ground (2) And I’m tryin’ to help you, and you keep on a-runnin’ around. You won’t help yourself, all you do is keep me down, Won’t help yourself, all you do is keep me down; But I got another daddy, that’s why I’m Nebraska bound. I’m tired bein’ dogged, tired bein’ hound around. Tired bein’ dogged, tired bein’ hound around; But there ain’t no way on earth that you can keep a good girl down. I got a daddy in Nebraska, the best man I ever had, Got a daddy in Nebraska, best man I ever had; Well, I love him so, I love him better than I love my dad.35

The nouns “Nebraska” and “blues” together make a truly unexpected lyric coupling. Nebraska may not be the “whitest” state in the Union, but the African American population there in the mid-twentieth century was less than one-fifth the national average; the statistics just aren’t favorable for a blues song about Nebraska. Nor was there anything particular in blues chanteuse Victoria Spivey’s background that made Nebraska a place of personal significance: she was born in Texas, and most of her early career was spent around Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, and New York. Perhaps Spivey’s song should be understood to mean that her relations with her present man in Chicago are so bad, even the unlikely refuge of Nebraska would be an improvement. At any rate, it does seem to put in a modestly good word on behalf of Nebraska, so it earns a place in that state’s diminutive collection of folk songs.

KANSAS All but the southwest corner of Kansas was acquired as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. The new land was explored in the next two decades by Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark, then general Zebulon Pike, and then major Stephen H. Long. The first army fort was established at Leavenworth in 1827, around which the first white settlement took root. In the 1830s, Congress made pieces of eastern Kansas part of the newly created Indian Territory, where tribes of the east were being relocated. In 1854,

MIDWEST PLAINS

493

the Kansas-Nebraska Act established separate Kansas and Nebraska territories; the Kansas Territory extended west into what is now Colorado. Gradually, the Native Americans were forced to cede their lands back to the United States and relocate to present-day Oklahoma. Statehood followed in 1861, at which time the western portion was excluded, later to become part of Colorado. Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence Come all loyal people I pray lend an ear, Of Quantrill the robber you quickly shall hear; With his gang of robbers he marched double-quick time, To plunder and burn Lawrence, just over the line. First Chorus: With his shouting and scouting and raising a yell, Just like some demons from where I can’t tell; They were intoxicated with brandy and wine, When they came to burn Lawrence, just over the line. This happened in August, eighteen sixty-three, And it was a sad sight you all must agree, To see the dead and dying lying scattered around, The torch was applyed [sic], and it burnt the whole town. There was two hundred murdered by this Rebel band— Ne’er before was such slaughter in all of our land, And by the Bushwhackers—the Missouri guerrillas, Led by the ruffian, Captain Quantrill. First Chorus. When they came to Lawrence, I forgot to say, Jim Lane was up about the break of day; He saw them coming and took a great flight— Jumped into a corn field and was soon out of sight. Now when they were gone, Jim Lane soon came out To see who was murdered just there about; He rallied the living to double quick time, And followed old Quantrill back over the line. Second Chorus: Come on says Jim Lane to the boys in the rear, While we have the old flag we have nothing to fear; We swear to defend it, and by it we’ll stand, ’Till all of those Robbers are drove from our land. Come all of your soldiers and don’t be afraid, Just think of the widows by this Rebel raid; All loyal free men together combined, Go put down old Quantrill just over the line. Second Chorus. We’ll chase them and hunt them and won’t stop a day, ’Till all those Bushwhackers are out of the way; We’ll prime up our rifles and take a true aim; If we should kill Quantrill we’ll not be to blame. Second Chorus. We run them to Grand River—they thought it was cute, Then they scattered out to retard our pursuit; But we were close upon them, and up to their time, But I think there are forty that won’t cross the line. Second Chorus.

494

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now my song it is ended when I sing you this verse, Perhaps you’ve heard better, and perhaps you have heard worse. If there is any one here that don’t like my rhyme, They can go and hunt Quantrill over the line. Frist Chorus.36

Not many proud parents would have named their babies “Quantrill” in post–Civil War Kansas. Though he got off to a good start as a schoolteacher in his native Ohio, William Clarke Quantrill (1837–1865) moved to Kansas in 1857 and tried farming but by 1860 had turned to more rewarding pursuits such as horse stealing, theft, and murder. When the Civil War began, he served with the Confederate Army for a while but then formed his own band of guerrilla raiders, terrorizing towns and farms that displayed pro-Union sympathies. The Union Army declared the miscreants to be outlaws, but the Confederate Army awarded Quantrill the rank of Captain. On August 21, 1863, his band of some 450 men attacked the town of Lawrenceburg, Kansas, killing, pillaging, and burning the terrified citizens and their homes. Quantrill had urged them to “kill every man big enough to carry a gun,” and in about four hours, they had dispatched some 150. A grim firsthand account by a survivor was published in 1963.37 Two months later, disguised in federal uniforms, Quantrill’s band surprised a detachment of Union soldiers at Baxter Springs, Kansas, and slaughtered nearly 100 men. Young Quantrill was cut down in his prime during a raid in Kentucky in May 1865. There was, doubtless, rejoicing in Kansas. Along the Kansas Line A soldier from Missouri, in early manhood’s prime, Lay with the dead and dying in a Mississippi clime; ’Twas on the field of Corinth his life was ebbing fast, His comrades, faint and weary, in crowds were hurrying past. A comrade stopped beside him, and raised his drooping head, And then, in faltering accents, the wounded soldier said: “Farewell, my darling comrade, a long and last adieu, Though shortly you may follow me, I’ll ne’er return to you. With me this war is over, my marching at an end, And still a dying message by you I feign [sic] would send— Oh, bear it to those kindred, those distant friends of mine, For I have both friends and kindred along the Kansas line. I have an aged mother—you know that mother well— Oh, bear to her these tidings how I in battle fell; Tell her that I remember, in anguish, her advice, To stay at home in quiet, and not join the rebel Price. And had I then but heeded the good advice she gave, I need not now be hastening to fill a rebel’s grave; But I heeded other counsel, and left that home of mine— That home of peace and comfort along the Kansas line. You know my brothers also; tell them the mournful tale— And when in death I’m sleeping they will my fate bewail; They know the things that drove me away from that home, And the phantom light that lured me through Dixie’s land to roam.

MIDWEST PLAINS

495

Tell those wealthy neighbors, who preached secession loud, And counseled me and others to swell the rebel crowd, That though they now are loyal, their own dear lives to save, ’Twas them that sent me surely to fill a rebel’s grave. Although I have forgiven them, I’d have them not forget That but for them I might have been at home with mother yet; And although I lie far distant, this mangled form of mine Will haunt their dreaming slumbers along the Kansas line.”38

Here we have yet another parody of Lady Caroline Norton’s “Bingen on the Rhine,” a poem recounting the last words of a dying Legionnaire. The setting for this Civil War ballad is the battle at Corinth, Mississippi, on October 3–4, 1862, where Union forces commanded by General Rosecrans defeated Confederates under General Van Dorn. Not many Civil War songs paint such a gloomy assessment of the rebel cause by a dying Confederate soldier. Adding to the soldier’s so-so-called unpatriotic complaint are his bitter aspersions toward the Southern elite, who shouted for secession but hastily changed their tone when defeat was imminent. This text was sent to New York song publisher Henry J. Wehman by a Denver man, but its author is not known. This text is considerably longer than most others that have been collected. The “rebel Price” was Confederate general Sterling Price, who, in October 1864, was defeated at the battle of Westport in present-day Kansas City, Missouri. Presumably, the “Kansas line” refers to the border between Kansas and Missouri. In Kansas I lived away out west in Kansas (2) I lived away out west, Where the folks are heaven blessed, And the place that I love best is Kansas. The sunflowers they grow tall in Kansas (2) The sunflowers they grow tall, And they pick ’em in the fall, And the chickens eat ’em all in Kansas. The old grasshoppers hop in Kansas (2) The old grasshoppers hop, Till you think they’ll never stop, And they eat up all the crops in Kansas. The chiggers bite like heck in Kansas (2) The chiggers bite like heck, On your shins or on your neck, And they make of you a wreck in Kansas. The girls are fat as pigs in Kansas (2) The girls are fat as pigs, Oh they live on herbs and twigs, And they wear such funny rigs in Kansas. The old maids they smoke pipes in Kansas (2) The old maids they smoke pipes,

496

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

With their beaus they never fight, And they stay out most all night in Kansas. The prairie dogs build towns in Kansas (2) The prairie dogs build towns, With the owls and snakes all around, And they all live underground in Kansas. You can hear the cyclones roar in Kansas (2) You can hear the cyclones roar, As they whiz right by your door, Till you pray there’ll be no more in Kansas. Some day I’m goin’ to Kansas (2) Some day I’m goin’ back, To that little old sod shack, With banjo on my back to Kansas, to Kansas, my Kansas.39 Potatoes They Grow Small (in Kansas) Potatoes they grow small in Kansas (2) Potatoes they grow small and they dig them in the fall, And they eat them tops and all in Kansas. The girls grow tall in Kansas (2) The girls grow tall and they marry in the fall, And they part not at all in Kansas. Don’t you want to roam to Kansas? (2) Don’t you want to roam and get yourself a home, And be contented with the doom in Kansas? They chew tobacco thin in Kansas (2) They chew tobacco thin and spit it on their chins And lick it in ag’in, in Kansas.40

The verse form of this widespread song type is very old and has been borrowed for dozens of songs. An early one was “Captain Kidd”; much more recent was “Mademoiselle from Armentiers,” from the World War I era. Then, in 1844, appeared “The Wonderful Song of ‘Over There,’ ” published by J. F. Atwill, but without authorial attribution. Its opening stanza is the inspiration for these two Kansas variants: Oh! Potatoes they grow small, over there! (2) Oh! Potatoes they grow small ’cause they plant ’em in the fall, And then eats ’em tops and all, over there!41 Western Home Oh! give me a home where the Buffalo roam, Where the Deer and the Antelope play; Where never is heard a discouraging word, And the sky is not clouded all day.

MIDWEST PLAINS

497

Chorus: A home! A home! Where the Deer and the Antelope play, Where never is heard a discouraging word, And the sky is not clouded all day. Oh! give me land where the bright diamond sand, Throws its light from the glittering streams; Where glideth along the graceful white swan, Like the maid in her heavenly dreams. Oh! give me a gale of the Solomon vale, Where the life streams with buoyancy flow; Or the banks of the Beaver, where seldom if ever, Any poisonous herbage doth grow. How often at night, when the heavens were bright, With the light of the twinkling stars; Have I stood here amazed, and asked as I gazed, If their glory exceed that of ours. I love the wild flowers in this bright land of ours; I love the wild curlew’s shrill scream; The bluffs and white rocks, and antelope flocks, That grace on the mountains so green. The air is so pure and the breezes so free, The zephyrs so balmy and light; That I would not exchange my home here to range, Forever in azures so bright.42

After several years of currency in the western states (which then included Kansas), “Western Home” might have sunk into oblivion had not John A. Lomax heard it in a San Antonio saloon in 1908, recorded it, and subsequently published it in his first book, Cowboy Songs (1910) —retitling it “Home on the Range.” The disputed claims of authorship, beginning in 1934 (in 1932, newly elected president Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed it his favorite song), resulted in extensive forensic investigations, all of which were meticulously documented in a study by Kirke Mechem in 1949.43 Mechem determined that the lyrics had been penned by Dr. Brewster Higley VI (1823– 1911), a physician, the number of whose wives equaled that of his eponymous ancestors. Born in Ohio, Higley moved to Smith County, Kansas, in 1871, in which state he remained until 1886. Between wives, Higley led a solitary life, often in a one-room dugout on the banks of the Beaver River, where he had an intimate relationship with alcoholic beverages. He wrote a number of poems that survive; “Western Home” was published in the Kirwin Chief (Kansas) on March 21, 1874. Within two years, the poem was being imitated (or plagiarized) in other publications: “My Home in the West” was published over the name of Mrs. Emma Race in the February 3, 1876, issue of the Stockton News, though it is reportedly the same (but for two words) as Higley’s text. Higley’s poem was set to music by Daniel E. Kelley (1843–1905), a musician, sportsman, and businessman who moved to Kansas in 1872. In 1947 the state legislature made the song Kansas’s official state song.44 Later versions of the song include verses decrying mistreatment of Native Americans: The red man was pressed from his home in the west, And no more he’ll ever return;

498

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

To the banks of the Red River where seldom, if ever, His flickering campfires burn.45

While they resonate with the battle cry of justice, they were not among Higley’s original words. The Kansas Emigrant’s Song We cross the prairies as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West as they the East The homestead of the free. Chorus: The homestead of the free, my boys, The homestead of the free; To make the West as they the East The homestead of the free. We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom’s Southern line, And plant beside the cotton tree, The rugged Northern pine! We’re flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our mother land Is on us as we go. We go to plant our common schools On distant prairie swells; And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of its bells. Upbearing like the ark of old, The bible is our van; We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of men. No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun. We’ll sweep the prairies as of old, Our fathers swept the sea; And make the West as they the East The homestead of the free.46

The front-page banner headline of the Kirwin Chief for February 26, 1876, proclaimed, “Westward the March of Empire Takes Its Way” and surrounded an enticing engraving of “Homestead Scene in the Kirwin Land District” with at least five songs or poems, including this one, elsewhere attributed to the renowned poet John Greenleaf Whittier. (The discreetly veiled abolitionist sentiments would be in keeping with his authorship.) Announced the right-hand column,

MIDWEST PLAINS

499

There are more than usual indications of a heavy immigration next spring to this country. Hard times at the east and poor crops, have made the people uneasy, and their eyes are turned again to the fertile and productive west. Kansas offers an inviting field for immigration. It is brim full of produce. The settler lives cheaply until he raises his own crops. Land is cheap here. Our state offers to the seeker of a good home and cheap lands, the best of climates, the richest of soils, churches, railroads, and all the equipments and adornments of an advanced civilization already provided.

This so-called news item rings out like a modern-day advertisement: “Get yours now while supplies last!” Unfortunately, not every Kansas immigrant found such salubrious conditions as this proclamation promised. Following is one more song commending the new land, after which we offer the podium to some of the newcomers who sang to a distinctly different tune in the next few decades. Kansas Land I’ve reached the land of corn and wheat, Of pumpkin pies and potatoes sweet, I bought my land from Uncle Sam, And now I’m happy as a clam. Chorus: Oh, Kansas Land! Sweet Kansas Land! As on the highest hill I stand, I look the pleasant landscape o’er; For acres broad I’ll sigh no more, ’Til Gabriel’s trump in loud command, Says I must leave my Kansas Land. My chickens they are Plymouth Rock, My horses, Clydesdale Norman stock; My cattle, Durham, very fine, And Poland China are my swine. When first I came to get my start, The neighbors they were far apart; But now there’s one on every claim, And sometimes three all want the same. At first the grass was brown and sear, With drouth and grasshoppers each year; But now there’s so much rain and snow, The cowboy is compelled to go.47

A widely popular gospel hymn of the nineteenth century was “Beulah Land,” a text written by Edgar Page Stites in 1875 (also published under the title “I’ve Reached the Land of Corn and Wine”), and set to music by John R. Sweney in the following year. Stites’s opening stanza and chorus are as follows: I’ve reached the land of corn and wine, And all its riches freely mine; Here shines undimmed one blissful day, For all my nights have passed away. Oh Beulah Land, Sweet Beulah Land, As on the highest mount I stand,

500

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

I look away across the sea Where mansions are prepared for me, And view the shining glory shore, My Heav’n, my home forever more.48

Before the end of the nineteenth century, flocks of folk poets had turned “Beulah Land” into secular parodies appropriate to their own states. William Koch notes that at least 11 states have spawned their own variants, a few of which are scattered throughout this volume. Not all of them (not even all the Kansas versions) are this sanguine: compare the Nebraska text given in the preceding section; also, compare the following: The Kansas Fool We have the land to raise the wheat, And everything that’s good to eat; And when we had no bonds or debt, We were a jolly, happy set. Chorus: Oh! Kansas fool! poor Kansas fool! The banker makes of you a tool; I look across the fertile plain, Big crops—made so by gentle rain; But twelve cent corn gives me alarm, And makes me want to sell my farm. With abundant crops raised everywhere, ’Tis a mystery, I do declare; Why farmers all should fume and fret, And why we are so deep in debt. At first we made some money here, With drouth [sic] and grashoppers [sic] each year; But now the interest that we pay Soon takes our money all away. The bankers followed us out west, And did in mortgages invest; They looked ahead and shrewdly planned, And soon they’ll have our Kansas land.49

This song from a 1891 songster is much more militant than many of the farmers’ complaints. When songs rail about the dust and drought and barrenness, there is an underlying resignation that the only remedy for such difficulties is departure; but when the arrows of complaint are aimed at the banks, then there is a political agenda at hand. The first item on the agenda of the time was to put into office candidates for the new third parties—grange, farmers’ alliance, and socialist. The Lane County Bachelor Frank Baker’s my name and a bachelor I am, I’m keeping old batch on an elegant plan. You’ll find me out west in the county of Lane, I’m starving to death on a government claim.

MIDWEST PLAINS

My house it is built of the natural soil, The walls are erected according to Hoyle. The roof has no pitch but is level and plain, And I always get wet when it happens to rain. Chorus: Hurrah for Lane County, the land of the free, The home of the grasshopper, bed bug and flea. I’ll sing loud its praises and tell of its fame, While starving to death on a government claim. My clothes they are ragged, my language is rough, My bread is case-hardened both solid and tough. The dough is scattered all over the room, And the floor it gets scared at the sight of a broom. My dishes are scattered all over the bed, They are covered with sorghum and Government bread. Still I have a good time and live at my ease On common sop-sorghum, old bacon and grease. Chorus: Then come to Lane County, here is a home for you all, Where the winds never cease and the rains never fall, And the sun never sets but will always remain, Till it burns you all up on a Government claim, Till it burns you all up on a Government claim. How happy I feel when I crawl into bed, And a rattlesnake rattles a tune at my head. And the gay little centipede, void of all fear, Crawls over my neck and down into my ear. And the little bed bugs so cheerful and bright, They keep me a-laughing two-thirds of the night. And the gay little flea with sharp tacks in his toes, Plays “Why don’t you catch me” all over my nose. Chorus: Hurrah for Lane County, hurrah for the west, Where farmers and laborers are ever at rest. For there’s nothing to do but to sweetly remain, And starve like a man on a Government claim. How happy am I on my government claim, For I’ve nothing to lose nor I’ve nothing to gain. I’ve nothing to eat and I’ve nothing to wear, And nothing from nothing is honest and fair. Oh, it is here I am solid and here I will stay, For my money is all gone and I can’t get away. There is nothing that makes a man hard and profane, Like starving to death on a Government claim. Chorus: Hurrah for Lane County, where blizzards arise, Where the winds never cease and the flea never dies. Come join in the chorus and sing of its fame, You poor hungry hoboes that’s starved on the claim. No, don’t get discouraged, you poor hungry men, For we are all here as free as a pig in a pen. Just stick to your homestead and battle the fleas, And look to your Maker to send you a breeze.

501

502

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now all you claim holders I hope you will stay, And chew your hardtack till you are toothless and grey. But as for myself I’ll no longer remain, And starve like a dog on a Government claim.50

“Government claim” refers to the settlements that were made courtesy of the Homestead Acts. Free parcels were made available on condition that the recipients settled on or cultivated the land. If this song is characteristic, many came to regard the so-called gift as not worth very much. The song can be dated fairly well to between 1886, the year Lane County was formed, and 1889, when a text was sent to the editor of the North Topeka Mail for publication, but it was never used. The variant text is located in Ford rather than Lane County, which destroys the assonance of the second couplet, so it must be derivative, rather than a source. It ends with the quatrain, farewell to ford co farewell to the west ile travel bac east to the girl I love best ile stop in mosoura and get me a wife and live on corn dodgers the rest of my life.51 The Kansas Farmer’s Lament Come, listen to a granger, you soft-headed ranger, And a very sad story you’re welcome to hear; I left a good farm, and, meaning no harm, I emigrated my family to this Kansas frontier. Chorus: No corn nor tomatoes, no cabbage, potatoes, But soup boiled from boot-tops I saved last year; Cowpunchers riding, ‘crost where I’m residing, Go, take me away from this Kansas frontier. ’Crost crops they’ll drive cattle, then turn to fight a battle, Their rein in their hand, their guns by their side; With quirt they’ll make gestures, and mimic winchesters, Then, quirting and rowling, on through they ride. From my bunch, they’ll cut cows, and run over plows, Crippling a chicken or killing a hog; ’Way off in the dark, there is heard a bar, When crack goes a pistol and down goes a dog. My only objection to the through-herded Texan, He drinks up my water and beds on my farm; When I tell him to leave, he rolls up his sleeves, And says, “Go on, you old nester, we’ll do you no harm.” When I go to town, first a blacksmith be found, From a narrow-gauged wagon, my wheels are all sprung; The town folks are mocking, the way my wife’s walking, Her apron strings flying, her shoes all unstrung. I’ll pick up my knapsack, and strap on my wife’s back, And on to the railroad count ties far away; My wife and I trudging, our children on budging, When we get to Boston, you bet we will stay.52

MIDWEST PLAINS

503

With wry wit and grit the singer catalogs the hardships of life on the Kansas plains, one prime feature of which was the range wars between the farmers and the ranchers, presented to modern audiences so successfully in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s song “The Farmer and the Cowman,” from the musical “Oklahoma!” The heart of the conflict erupted from fencing: cattlemen and sheepherders wanted unfettered open range for their sheep and cattle to graze, but farmers needed to fence in their fields for protection from marauding vegetarians—sheep and cows included. Out of such simple disagreements great conflicts were engendered. Comin’ Back to Kansas They are comin’ back to Kansas, They are crossin’ on the bridge, You can see their mover wagons, On the top of every ridge. On the highways and the turnpikes, You can see their wagons come; For they’re comin’ back to Kansas, And they’re comin’ on the run. Who’s a-comin’ back to Kansas? Why, the migratory crowd, That left the state some months ago, With curses long and loud, And they swore by the eternal, They would never more return To this Kansas land infernal, Where the hot winds blast and burn. Where the rivers run in riot, When you want it to be dry; Where the sun so fiercely scorches, When you want a cloudy sky. So they loaded up the children, And they whistled for the dog; Tied a cow behind the wagon, To the butcher sold the hog. Hitched the ponies to the schooner, Turned her prow toward the east; Left this beastly state of Kansas, For a land of fat and feast. Did they find it? No, they didn’t, Though they roamed the country o’er; From the lakes up in the northland, To the far off ocean shore. And they found that other sections Had their tales of woe to sing; So they’re humpin’ now for Kansas, At the breakin’ forth of Spring.53

504

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Those starry-eyed fools who thought they would have it easier somewhere back east or up North found out they were mistaken; the old homestead proves better after all, it seems. Just how many crestfallen returners shambled back to the smirks of the I-told-you-sos isn’t known, but someone had a good laugh at their expense. Immigration Song Come, all ye sons of labor who wish to change your lot, Who’ve spunk enough to travel beyond your native cot; Come, leave the crowded cities here work is overdone, And come with us to settle in western Kansas towns. The soil is rich and loamy, from three to ten feet deep, The subsoil is cement and clay that will the moisture keep; ’Tis the bed of an inland sea, drained off a long time ago, And rich for grain and fruit and vines, where ever you may go. What more, ye sons of labor, than these can you desire: Good health, good soil, good neighbors, a climate all admire? Two railroads now have we, free land is now all gone, So come with us and settle in peerless Lane County.54

What could sound more appealing than this laudatory description of Kansas’s fertile plains? Is there something not being told here? For a possible answer to that question, compare some of the preceding songs, which present less salutary perspectives. The final stanza seems to have become confused somewhere: the rhyme scheme would be preserved if the order of the two clauses of the penultimate line were reversed. Leavenworth Blues I was in Leavenworth, boys, and my baby sent me there (2) Just because I didn’t want away, in most all day. That’s one no-good place, boys, don’t want to go again. (2) Give me the Leavenworth blues, he saw the trouble I was in. Somebody stole my gal [pal?] while I was in jail. (2) He didn’t come to see me, didn’t go my bail. Four o’clock in the mornin’, hear the warden call. (2) Blues running all night long in Leavenworth wall.55

In 1827 Colonel Henry H. Leavenworth established a fort in the Kansas Territory to protect travelers on the Santa Fe and Oregon trails and generously donated his name to the new facility. So generous was he that when the adjoining town was organized and laid out in 1854, he again lent his name, and then to the county, and once more to the maximumsecurity federal penitentiary, founded at the fort in 1875, initially as a military prison. Leavenworth now also is home to a military disciplinary barracks, a state prison, and a privately owned and operated facility. In common parlance, then, Leavenworth equals prison, whether one means specifically the Kansas “big top” (as it is nicknamed) or any generic prison. Nevertheless, Leavenworth prison being such a renowned institution, it is only right that it be remembered in this collection with a musical tribute.

MIDWEST PLAINS

505

NOTES 1. Though Horace Greeley is usually credited with originating this famous exhortation, it first appeared in 1852 in an editorial in the Terre Haute Express by newspaperman John B. L. Soule, who wrote, “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.” 2. Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Iowa.” 3. From Kathleen M. Hempel, “Ballad of Hardin Town,” Annals of Iowa 31 (July 1951): 62–63. 4. Contributed by Marie Schlapkohl, Dysart, Iowa, as sung by her father in the 1880s, and published in Earl J. Stout, Folklore from Iowa ( New York: G. E. Stechert for the American Folk-Lore Society, 1936), 127–28. 5. From a manuscript in the Edwin Ford Piper Collection, University of Iowa; no date or identification. The punctuation has been modified. The text was published in Harry Oster, A Garland of Iowa Songs ( Iowa City: Meadow Press, 1977). 6. From a manuscript in the Edwin Ford Piper collection. The writer of the text added at the bottom of the sheet, “This is really poetry and not a ballad although it was sung by a drifter who worked a while at the Quality Cafeteria.” 7. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “ North Dakota.” 8. From Louise Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska and the Central West: A Syllabus ( Lincoln: Nebraska Academy of Sciences, n.d., ca. 1915), 28. A shoat is a young pig that has already been weaned. 9. From George Milburn, Hobo’s Hornbook ( New York: Ives Washburn, 1930), 139. 10. From the Edwin Ford Piper collection. 11. E. C. Beck, Lore of the Lumber Camps (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1948), 182. 12. From Olive Woolley Burt, American Murder Ballads and Their Stories ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 82–83. Burt received it from Margaret Rose, librarian of the North Dakota State Historical Society. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. www.oup.com. 13. From http://www.court.state nd.us/court/news/executend htm. 14. From Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska, 22–23. For references to other collected versions, see H. M. Belden, Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (Columbia: University of Missouri Studies, 1940), 349, and David Kemp, “ ‘The Dreary Black Hills’: A 19th Century Western Mining Ballad,” JEMF Quarterly 14 (Winter 1978): 181–86. 15. From http://www.antiquebottles.com/companies html; and North Otago Times [ New Zealand], August 16, 1877, p. 4. 16. Jack Kreitzer and Susan Braunstein, eds., A Living Tradition: South Dakota Songwriters Songbook (Sioux Falls, SD: George B. German Music Archives, 1983), 1:4–5; see also Kemp, “The Dreary Black Hills.” 17. From Wehman’s Song Book, no. 24 (October 1889), 19. 18. The 1884 text has been reprinted by Richard E. Lingenfelter, Richard A. Dwyer, and David Cohen, Songs of the American West (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 464, and Austin E. Fife and Alta S. Fife, Cowboy and Western Songs (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1969), 67; however, the two texts have a couple of minor discrepancies. 19. These Dakota Farmer clippings are preserved among the John Lomax papers at the library of the Texas Historical Society at the University of Texas at Austin. 20. Some of these have been reprinted by Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 466–69. 21. From Kreitzer and Braunstein, A Living Tradition, 11; reprinted from the Marshall County Sentinel, February 28, 1895. 22. New York Times, January 10, 1895, p. 1. 23. From Kreitzer and Braunstein, A Living Tradition, 10, reprinted from the Pierre Weekly Free Press, October 1909.

506

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

24. From David Kemp, The Irish in Dakota, 2nd printing (Sioux Falls, SD: Mariah Press, 1995), 120–22. Punctuation has been modified, and the eight-line stanzas have been rewritten as quatrains. My thanks to the author for bringing this ballad to my attention. 25. Ibid., 120. 26. From the singing of Alex Moore, recorded in Austin, Texas, in 1940, by John A. and Bess Lomax; issued on Anglo-American Ballads, Library of Congress LP AFS L1; reissued on AngloAmerican Ballads, vol. 1, Rounder CD 1511. For references to other collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), 138 [ B 11]. 27. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Nebraska.” 28. Words by C. E. Vaughan. Reprinted in Nebraska Folklore Pamphlets, No. 18: Nebraska Farmers’ Alliance Songs of the 1890’s (Lincoln: Federal Writers’ Project in Nebraska, 1938), 2, from Farmers’ Alliance, October 4, 1890. 29. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Farmers’ Alliances.” 30. Reprinted in Nebraska Folklore Pamphlets, 1, from an unidentified issue of Farmers’ Alliance; also reprinted in Workers of the Writers’ Program, WPA in the State of Nebraska, Nebraska Folklore (Book Three) ( Lincoln: Woodruff, 1941), 19. The notes say it is to be sung to the tune of “Save a Poor Sinner Like Me,” which in turn was taken from “Rosin the Beau.” 31. Workers of the Writers’ Program, Nebraska Folklore, 19–20; reprinted (with minor changes) from Nebraska Folklore Pamphlets, 1–2. 32. Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska, 31–32. In Pound’s text, Kincaid’s name is misspelled “Kinkaid.” The song also appeared in Edwin Ford Piper’s collection of Iowa songs and in Carl Sandburg, The American Songbag (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927). 33. From Nebraska Folklore Pamphlets, No. 16, 13–14. Taken from the Farmers’ Alliance, September 27, 1890. Words credited to Mrs. J. T. Kellie, who wrote numerous songs for the Farmers’ Alliance in the 1890s. The tune is that of “Darling Nellie Gray.” Roger Welsch sings the song on Sweet Nebraska Land, Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5337. 34. From Leopold Vincent, comp., The Alliance and Labor Songster ( Indianapolis, IN: Vincent Bros., 1891), 41. For a collected version, see Nebraska Folklore Pamphlets, No. 16, 7–8, collected by L. C. Wimberly from Cyrus Korben of Chase County, Nebraska, in the late 1890s. Korben sang it to the tune of “Maryland, My Maryland,” but it is also sung to the hymn “Beulah Land.” The archives of the Pacific Northwest Farm Quad hold a copy sent by Mrs. Don Braunan of Selah, Washington. She claimed that a friend of her husband had written the song in 1894, but this is not possible. 35. Recorded by Victoria Spivey in Chicago on March 20, 1931; issued on Vocalion 1606, 78 rpm; reissued on Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, vol. 3, 1929–1936, Document DOCD 5318; transcription by R. R. Macleod, Document Blues-9 (Edinburgh: PAT, 2002), 33. 36. Originally published in the Council Grove Press (Kansas), February 8, 1864; reprinted in Thomas D. Isern and Mark D. Weeks, “ ‘Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence’: From Disaster Song to Outlaw Ballad,” Mid-America Folklore 14 (Fall 1986): 1–14. For references to other versions, see Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 314–15. 37. Burton J. Williams, “Erastus D. Ladd’s Description of the Lawrence Massacre,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 29 (Summer 1963): 113–21. 38. From Wehman’s Collection of Songs, no. 28 (October 1890), 18; noted as sung by J. C. Helms of Denver, Colorado. In the third line of the ninth stanza, other versions have “no hand with mine unites.” For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 126 [A 16]. 39. As recorded by Chubby Parker on October 21, 1930, in Richmond, Indiana, and issued on Supertone 9723, 78 rpm. 40. From Belden, Ballads and Songs, 428–29. The first two verses were obtained in 1906 from George Williams, Bollinger County, the last two from F. P. Batdorf in 1934, whose mother learned it in about 1890 in Pettis County. 41. See S. Foster Damon, Series of Old American Songs (Providence, RI: Brown University Library, 1936), no. 42.

MIDWEST PLAINS

507

42. From the Kirwin Chief (Kansas), February 26, 1876, p. 1, reprinted in turn from the issue of March 21, 1874. See Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, for references to other versions. The words adopted as official by the state legislature, and averred to be Higley’s original text, differ in a number of instances from this early printing. 43. Kirke Mechem, “ ‘Home on the Range,’ ” Kansas Historical Quarterly 17 ( November 1949): 313–39; reprinted in Heritage of Kansas 2 (1958): 11–39, with an introduction by editor Neil Byer, “That a State Might Sing.” 44. Mechem’s study was preceded by a briefer note in 1936 by cowboy singer turned song historian John White; Lomax himself wrote up his own involvement with the song in 1945–1946. See John I. White, “Trailing a Ballad,” Frontier Times, April 1936, pp. 314–16, and John A. Lomax, “Half Million Dollar Song: Origin of ‘Home on the Range,’ ” Southwest Review 31 (1945–1946): 1–8. 45. From Powder River Jack and Kitty Lee, Songs of the Range: Cowboy Wails of Cattle Trails (Chicago: Chart Music, 1937), 19. 46. From the Kirwin Chief (Kansas), February 26, 1876, p. 1; air: “Auld Lang Syne.” A gonfalon is a banner. A broadside, no publisher given, with almost the identical text, attributed the text to John G. Whittier; the tune was given as “Auld Lang Syne.” The broadside may be viewed online at the New York Public Library. 47. Published by William E. Koch in “ ‘Beulah Land’: A Song for the Plains,” Kansas Quarterly 13 (Spring 1981): 127–50. This text was recorded from Grace Philbrook of Salina in 1959. 48. See http://www.cyberhymnal.org for words, music, and history. 49. From Vincent, Alliance and Labor Songster, 29. 50. “The Lane County Bachelor,” given to Forsyth Library, Ft. Hays, Kansas State College, by Mr. and Mrs. Ed Kepner, Dighton, Kansas, in April 1933. Published in Henry H. Malone, “Folksongs and Ballads,” in Kansas Folklore, ed. S. J. Sackett and William E. Koch ( Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 148–49. Sung to the tune of “Irish Washerwoman.” 51. Published in Myra Hull, “Cowboy Ballads,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 8 ( February 1939): 35–60. The spelling and punctuation is given as in the original; this is so extreme it almost seems deliberately illiterate. 52. From Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 470–71; reprinted from Dighton Journal ( Kansas), January 28, 1892. The six-line stanzas have been rewritten as quatrains. 53. Collected by Joan O’Bryant from Mrs. Clara Ballard, Butler County, Kansas, 1958. Mrs. Ballard learned the song as a girl. Printed in Joan O’Bryant, “Folksongs and Ballads, Part II,” in Sackett and Koch, Kansas Folklore, 180–81. 54. From Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 448; reprinted from the Lane County Farmer ( Dighton, Kansas), February 20, 1891. Sung to the tune of “Charles Guiteau”; however, the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” would work equally well. 55. As recorded by Bertha “Chippie” Hill in Chicago on June 14, 1926; issued on OKeh 8367, 78 rpm; reissued on Complete Recorded Works 1925–1929 in Chronological Order, Document DOCD 5330. Transcription by Macleod, Document Blues-9, 206.

7 Southwest

The four states considered in this chapter are Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Oklahoma’s prestatehood history is very different from the other three. After passing back and forth between French and Spanish hands, Oklahoma became part of the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Joined with lands that had for a while been set aside as Indian Territory, Oklahoma was welcomed into the Union as the 46th state on November 16, 1907, by President Theodore Roosevelt. Long after Oklahoma became part of the United States by purchase, the lands that now constitute Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona were still part of Mexico, which was itself owned by Spain until the independent Republic of Mexico was established in 1823. Texas successfully gained independence from Mexico in 1836 and was granted statehood 10 years later. Most of the lands of Arizona and New Mexico were ceded to the United States by Mexico at the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848. Both were granted statehood in 1912.

OKLAHOMA The land of present-day Oklahoma was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. Following the War of 1812, the U.S. government decided to relocate southeastern Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River to open up new land for white settlers. Treaties were negotiated with Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, Seminole, and Cherokee tribes, according to which the native peoples promised to forswear their traditional lands in exchange for annual distributions of food or money and land in what is now Oklahoma. In 1834 Congress created the Indian Territory out of lands that included not only presentday Oklahoma, but much of present-day Kansas and Nebraska as well. All white settlers were required to withdraw.

SOUTHWEST

509

Within the Indian Territory, the treaties assured the tribal authority of the Native American nations. The forced removal of the eastern peoples to Indian Territory commenced soon after. Tens of thousands of native people were driven (many in irons) along the Trail of Tears into what is now Oklahoma; among some groups, as many as two-fifths died along the way. By 1880, more than 60 tribes had joined the local ones in the newly declared Indian Territory. By the 1880s, most of the arable land west of the Mississippi had been settled by whites, and land-covetous settlers, railroads, homesteader associations, and other business interests pressed for opening the Indian Territory to white settlement. Some didn’t wait for the laws to change: the land proved too attractive to Anglo Americans. Organized bands, called “boomers,” moved in, despite federal law. U.S. Army patrols repeatedly expelled illegal settlers, but law officials were unable to keep up with the inflow, and finally, continued pressure forced Congress to open some 2 million acres of western Indian Territory. In early 1889 the U.S. Congress finally yielded to demands and opened 2 million acres (the “unassigned lands”) in central Indian Territory. Because the number of home seekers far exceeded the number of available land parcels, the government decreed that settlers would compete in a land grab. The time was set at noon on April 22, 1889, when would-be settlers lined up on the borders of the unassigned lands. At the shot of a starting pistol, the race for claims began, and by evening, nearly every homestead and town lot in the settlement zone had been taken. Overzealous settlers, called “sooners,” tried to sneak into the lands ahead of time. Some were ejected, but others avoided discovery. The scene was vividly depicted in the musical “Oklahoma!” The new area, called the Oklahoma Territory, was gradually augmented through further land runs until it included about half of the former Indian domain. Oklahoma Territory nearly became a state without the Indian Territory several times prior to 1907, but Congress finally decided that the area of both the Oklahoma Territory and the Indian Territory should be admitted as a single state. Congress also decided that Indian Territory, as a political entity with land held in common by the tribe, had to be eliminated and individual Native Americans transformed into U.S. citizens before the Oklahoma Territory could become a state. In 1906 Congress passed the Oklahoma Enabling Act, which authorized a convention to meet at Guthrie to write a state constitution. The remaining Indian Territory was dissolved by assignment of lands to the various tribes, and the Indians joined in approving the constitution of the proposed state in 1907. Oklahoma became the 46th state on November 16, 1907.1 Orphan Child I hear Jesus’ sorrowful voice He talks to those who are without parents Those who have been left behind. King, take them home with You. Take them by the hand, hold on to them forever. Take the children up to heaven. They will live in heaven and be beautiful.2

Originally from the Great Lakes region, the Cherokee Indians endured centuries of conflict with both European Americans and other native tribes before settling, more or less peacefully, in Georgia and the Carolinas. After 1800, they began to adopt the culture of the Anglo Americans to a remarkable degree. They learned the farming methods of the white pioneers; they developed a syllabary (a writing system in which each symbol represents

510

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

a syllable), they translated the Bible into their own language, and they established a Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, in 1828—the first on the continent. Unfortunately, the Cherokee made a strategic mistake in settling on Georgia lands that proved to be rich in gold deposits, and whites began to agitate for their removal. In 1835 the Treaty of New Echota was signed (by only one-tenth of the tribe), ceding all lands east of the Mississippi to the United States for $5 million. The Cherokee majority protested, taking their case before the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld their position that the state of Georgia had no right to their lands. But the state ignored the decision, and President Jackson refused to enforce it. Consequently, in 1838–1839, thousands of Cherokee were herded together under the supervision of General Winfield Scott and forcibly marched west to present-day Oklahoma. In 116 days, over 4,000 Cherokee perished on account of the brutal ordeal. According to Cherokee tradition, this song was written at that time, begging those who survived to care for the orphaned children. In the last half century, more than a hundred songwriters have written their own versions of the events surrounding the Trail of Tears. For a Seminole text on the same subject, see the section on Florida songs (chapter 4).3 The Old Chisholm Trail Now, come along boys, and listen to my tale, And I’ll tell you of my troubles on the Chisholm Trail, Refrain: Come a ti yi yippi yippi-yi yippy-yay, Come a ti yi yippi yippi-yay. I started up the trail October twenty-third, Left old Texas with the 2-U herd, Refrain. Oh, a ten dollar horse and a forty dollar saddle, I’m a-gonna punchin’ them longhorn cattle, Refrain. Woke up one mornin’ on the Chisholm trail, With a rope in my hand and a cow by the tail, Refrain. Old Ben Bolt was a mighty good boss, But he’d go to see the girls on a sawback hoss, Refrain. Well I’m up in the mornin’ before daylight, An’ before I sleep the moon shines bright, Refrain. It’s cloudy in the west and a lookin’ like rain, My darned old slicker’s in the wagon again, Refrain. Well I crippled my hoss, I don’t know how, Ropin’ at the horns of a Two-U cow, Refrain. No chaps, no slicker and its pourin’ down rain, And I’ll swear by gosh I’ll never night herd again, Refrain. Last night on guard and the leader broke the ranks, Hit my horse down the shoulders and I spurred him in the flanks, Refrain. With my foot in the stirrup and my hand on the horn, I’m the best dern cowboy ever was born, Refrain. I’m on my best horse and I’m goin on a run, I’m the quickest shootin’ cowboy that ever pulled a gun, Refrain. Well we rounded them up and we put ’em on the cars, And that was the last of the old two bars, Refrain.

SOUTHWEST

511

Then I went to the boss for to draw my roll, He had it figured nine dollars in the hole, Refrain. So I sold old Bolly and I sold my saddle, And I bid farewell to the long horned cattle, Refrain.4

Whoa, pardner—that thar’s a Texas song! Well, maybe so, but most of the trail lay in Oklahoma, so here it is. Texas cattlemen in the 1860s faced a daunting challenge. They raised their longhorns for profit, not for fun. Their customers were at the remote ends of the continent. Railroads were hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away. The only solution seemed to be to march the thousands of pounds of assorted steaks on the hoof to the nearest rail terminus. The oldest—and farthest east—of the trails north from Texas was the Shawnee Trail, first used in 1846 to march cattle all the way to Ohio. After the close of the Civil War, drives terminated at towns in southwestern Missouri (Sedalia) or southeastern Kansas: the Shawnee stopped at Baxter City, just across the Kansas border from Oklahoma (then the Indian Territory). As the rails snaked westward, it made good horse-sense to establish new paths to towns due north of Texas and therefore considerably closer. In 1867 a cattle-shipping depot on the Kansas Pacific Railroad was established in Abilene, a small town on the new Union Pacific Railroad line, by Joseph G. McCoy, an Illinois livestock dealer. That year, Texas cattlemen began driving their herds to Abilene along a route part of which had been used a few years earlier by Jesse Chisholm, a half-Cherokee half-Scots trader who had established a trading post at present-day Wichita. Chisholm had used a trail already well traveled by Native Americans and pounded down even before them by migrating buffalo herds. (The determining factor for everyone was the contour of the natural terrain. Years later, the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe laid a track along almost the same route and for the same reasons.) Between 1867 and 1871, about 1.5 million head of cattle were driven north along the trail to Abilene, which had become the closest departure point for shipment to eastern markets. In the late 1860s the trail extended from San Antonio to Abilene. The trail’s importance declined after 1871, when Ellsworth, farther west on the Kansas Pacific Railroad, became the preferred railhead, in turn succeeded in 1876 by Dodge City. Chisholm’s trail increased in importance in the 1880s, when the Santa Fe Railroad built a line to Caldwell, Kansas. The long cattle drives gradually declined as the railroads built branch lines in the late nineteenth century. The trail extended from the Texas-Oklahoma border, where it was joined by numerous smaller feeder trails across different parts of Texas, and north through two-thirds of Kansas to Abilene—a distance of some 400 miles.5 The origins of the song “The Old Chisholm Trail” are obscured by decades of dust and cattle droppings across that long and well-used thoroughfare. Every version has different stanzas, and legend has it that cattle drivers made up new stanzas by the scores on each tedious drive. Many versions could not be permitted in polite company—but then again, neither could many cowboys.6 The song was first herded into print in John A. Lomax’s first published song collection.7 Red River Valley From this valley they say you are going We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile;

512

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

For they say you are taking the sunshine That brightens our pathway a while. Come and sit by my side if you love me, Do not hasten to bid me adieu; But remember the Red River Valley, And the one who has loved you so true. For a long time I’ve waited, my darling, For the words that you never would say; But at last all my fond hopes have vanished, For they say you are going away. Won’t you think of the valley you’re leaving? Oh how lonely, how sad it will be; Oh think of the fond heart you’re breaking, And the grief you are causing me to see. From this valley they say you are going, When you go may your darling go, too; Would you leave her behind, unprotected, When she loves no other one but you? I have promised you, darling, that never Will a word from my lips cause you pain; And my life—it will be yours forever, If you only will love me again. Must the past with its joys all be blighted By the future of sorrow and pain; And the vows that were spoken be slighted, Don’t you think you can love me again? As you go to your home by the ocean, May you never forget those sweet hours; That we spent in the Red River Valley, And the love we exchanged mid the flowers. Oh, there never could be such a longing In the heart of a pure maiden’s breast; Than dwells in the heart you are breaking, As I wait in my home in the west. And the dark maiden’s prayer for her lover To the Spirit that rules o’er the world; May his pathway be ever in sunshine, Is the prayer of the Red River girl.8

There is some argument over to which river this song refers. As it happens, there are two Red rivers in the United States. Probably most people think of Texas when they contemplate the Red River. This river, headwatered in southwestern Oklahoma by the junction of the North Fork and the Prairie Dog Town Fork (which flows from Texas), flows east, forming the Oklahoma-Texas border, then south through Arkansas and southeast through Louisiana, to the Mississippi River. It is 1,220 miles long, and it drains an area of about 91,400 square miles.

SOUTHWEST

513

Its namesake is the Red River of the North, 545 miles long and flowing through north central United States and south central Canada. It is formed by the confluence of the Otter Tail and Bois de Sioux rivers in southeastern North Dakota. The river forms the North Dakota–Minnesota boundary, and then enters Manitoba, where it empties into Lake Winnipeg. The river valley’s fertile soil produces large yields of spring wheat, flax, barley, potatoes, and sugar beets. The region was settled in 1812 by Scottish and Irish immigrants.9 As for the song itself: to paraphrase Winston Churchill, it is a river wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.10 Song historians and collectors, starting with Carl Sandburg, used to assume that the song was borrowed from a pop hit of the gay nineties: James J. Kerrigan’s “The Bright Mohawk Valley,” published in 1896, both the words and melody of which deviate but slightly from the now common version. It would not have been the first song to memorialize the Mohawk River; in 1860 “G. S.” published “Our Mabel,” with first line reading, “Down in the Mohawk valley where the river flows.” But in 1964 Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke published the results of her own investigations, which revealed that many Canadians claimed to have known and /or sung “Red River Valley” as much as a decade before 1896. Some asserted a much earlier origin—that it was associated with the Red River Rebellion in Canada in 1869—and a few placed it yet further back, to the 1830s. Taken together, these recollections, all recorded decades after the facts, offer no incontrovertible proof but very strong collective circumstantial evidence that the song was certainly known in Canada by the 1870s, regardless where it originated.11 What of its early history in the United States? Correspondents of early folk song collector Robert W. Gordon, who, in the 1920s, conducted the song column “Old Songs Men Have Sung” in Adventure Magazine, provided recollections suggesting that the song was sung in the Midwest ( Iowa, Missouri ) in the 1860s. The earliest verifiable publication was in a songster published by Henry Wehman in 1889 under the title “A Lady in Love.”12 Wehman provided no information about the song’s ownership or origin. Wehman did not pirate songs issued by other publishers, and his treatment of this song indicates there was good evidence in 1889 that it was already in public domain. Muddying waters further (so to speak), in North Carolina and Virginia a number of singers in the 1920s sang it as “The Bright Sherman Valley”—a locale that has evaded compilers of atlases and gazetteers. The conclusion is that we don’t know for certain where the song originated, to which Red River it first referred, or when it was composed, but it was known in both the United States and Canada in the late 1800s. (The question of the tune’s source is another conundrum that well deserves separate investigation.) Through most of the twentieth century it has been associated strongly with the American Southwest, and so its location in this chapter. Whether to credit it to Texas or Oklahoma is moot, since the Red River forms the border between the two states and is as much a part of one as the other. Oklahoma Oh, the mistletoe grows in the tree tops And the birds sing that sweet melody, Oklahoma, the state of them Indians, And we’ll praise her wherever we go. As we travel them beautiful highways, Just around over here and there, Oklahoma, the state of my childhood, And we’ll praise it wherever we go.

514

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Chorus: I’ll declare we love it, we’re crazy about it, Oklahoma we love you, you know, And we’ll never forget your good people, And we’ll praise it wherever we go.13

In the early twentieth century, thousands of homesteaders settled on the Great Plains of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado and fell into farming practices that gradually eroded the soil and set the stage for severe soil depletion when the region experienced a succession of serious droughts in the 1930s. Many Oklahomans headed west to California for the promise of greener pastures and opportunities for a livelihood. (Their story was poignantly told in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.) Many settled in migrant workers’ camps established in central California by the Farm Security Administration. In 1940 and 1941, armed with recording equipment provided by the Library of Congress’s Archive of American Folk Song, Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin of the City College of New York took a trip to California to collect folk songs and document the lives of these displaced Oklahomans, called, disrespectfully, if not pejoratively, “Okies.” One of them sang for them this booster song, the origin of which is unknown, recalling his home state in better days. Mistletoe was adopted as the Oklahoma’s floral emblem in 1893, before statehood; Oklahoma is said to grow the nation’s best. In about 1937, one of Oklahoma’s best known poet–songwriters penned the song that was made, more than six decades later, the state’s official folk song.14 Woody Guthrie wrote “Oklahoma Hills” one afternoon and performed it that night on his radio program in Los Angeles on KFVD with his cousin Maxine Crissman, known on air as “Lefty Lou.” He first published the lyrics in a mimeographed song folio that he advertised over the radio and sold to interested listeners.15 In the songbook in which it was published, Guthrie added the comment: Well, sir, here’s one that was born over in Glendale, on the back porch, at 213 Magnolia. I went outside to tune a banjo, and a little boy came over to watch me and help me, and as I looked at him, redheaded and all, I just naturally got to thinkin’ about when I was his size, back in Okemah, Oklahoma. I ain’t no hand to wish I was back in the past, ’cause I figger that’s a pure-dee waste of time, but I like to remember the good parts of the past, and let the bad parts fade out of memory.16

In 1945 his cousin Jack Guthrie (1915–1948), who was enjoying a career as a moderately successful country western singer, revised the lyrics and recorded the song for Capitol Records. Initially, Woody was not acknowledged as the song’s author, an oversight that was later corrected. The song enjoyed great popularity thereafter, until finally, in 2001, the song was adopted by the Oklahoma Legislature as the official folk song of Oklahoma.17

TEXAS When the Republic of Mexico was established in 1823, Texas was part of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas. Three years earlier, American Moses Austin, and then his son Stephen F. Austin, had sought and received permission from the Mexican government to bring American settlers to the region. By the 1830s, most of the residents of Texas were immigrants from the southern United States. These new residents of Texas soon found themselves in disagreement with the Mexican government, which had abolished slavery in 1829 and, in 1830, had passed a law that prohibited further immigration from the United States.

SOUTHWEST

515

In 1835, political turmoil in Mexico encouraged the Texans to rebel against Mexican authority in quest of independence. President Santa Anna, hoping to avoid the fragmentation of the nation, led his army to San Antonio, Texas, in early 1836, where his troops defeated a small group of Texans at the Alamo, a Franciscan mission that had been converted into a fort. Santa Anna’s order to execute more than 280 Texan prisoners at Goliad ended any hope of political compromise. At the battle of San Jacinto, Santa Anna’s forces were defeated by troops under the command of Texan leader Sam Houston. In May 1836 Santa Anna signed the Treaty of Velasco and urged the Mexican government to accept the independence of Texas. Although Mexico refused to acknowledge Texas’s claim of independence, it made no serious effort to regain territorial control. Meanwhile, Texans elected Houston to be the first president of the Republic of Texas. The short-lived republic was annexed by the United States less than a decade later, becoming the 28th state of the Union in 1845. Remember the Alamo When on the wide spread battle plain, The horseman’s hand can scarce restrain, His pampered steed that spurns the rein, Remember the Alamo. When sounds the thrilling bugle blast, And “charge” from rank to rank is past, Then, as your sabre-strokes fall fast, Remember the Alamo. Heed not the Spanish battle yell, Let every stroke he give them tell And let them fall as Crockett fell, Remember the Alamo. For every wound and every thrust, On pris’ners dealt by hands accurst, A Mexican shall bite the dust, Remember the Alamo. The cannon’s peal shall ring their knell, Each volley sound, a passing bell, Each cheer, Columbia’s vengeance tell, Remember the Alamo. For it, disdaining flight, they stand, And try the issue hand to hand, Wo [sic] to each Mexican brigand! Remember the Alamo. Then boot and saddle! draw the sword: Unfurl your banner bright and broad, And as ye smite the murderous horde, Remember the Alamo.18

On February 23, 1836, Mexican general Antonio López de Santa Anna led an army of more than 2,000 soldiers to the outskirts of San Antonio, which had been captured by

516

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Texan insurgents in the previous December. Colonel William Barrett Travis withdrew his beleaguered outfit of 155 men to the Alamo. Also inside the fort were some 15 civilians, including a few Mexican families who lived there. Santa Anna deployed his troops around the structure and, when his artillery arrived, launched an intense assault. The Texans, reinforced by 32 additional men who had arrived on March 1, withstood the attack until March 6, when the Mexicans succeeded in breaching the mission walls. The defenders of the garrison, including the legendary American frontiersmen Davy Crockett and James Bowie, perished in the savage hand-to-hand struggle that followed; only the civilians survived. The Texans had fought valiantly, and the Mexicans lost 600 men. At the battle of San Jacinto on April 21 of that year, the Texans attacked the Mexican Army with the battle cry, “Remember the Alamo!”—which became an aural icon for rallying the American public for decades afterward. The Yellow Rose of Texas There’s a yellow rose in Texas, I’m goin’ there to see, No other fella knows her, nobody else but me, She cried so when I left her, it like to broke her heart, And if we ever meet again we never more will part. Chorus: She’s the sweetest rose of color this fellow ever knew, Her eyes are bright as diamonds, they sparkle like the dew; You may talk of all [about?] your dearest maids and sing of Rosalie, But the Yellow Rose of Texas beats the belles of Tennessee. Where the Rio Grande is flowing, the stars are shining bright, We walked along the river on a quiet summer night; She says, “If you remember, we parted long ago,” I promised to come back again and not to leave her so. Chorus. I’m a-goin’ back to find her, for my heart is full of woe, We’ll sing a song together we sang so long ago; I’ll pick the banjo gaily, and sing the songs of yore, And the Yellow Rose of Texas will be mine forever more. Chorus.19

“The Yellow Rose of Texas” has enjoyed several rounds of popularity, including a stirring march version by Mitch Miller in 1955 and a silly parody by Stan Freeberg later that same year. But there may be more to this song than meets the eye—at least, it has acquired an interesting legendary history, the truth of which is still undecided. The song was first published with an 1858 date of copyright (the author was identified only as “J. K.”) and has been said to refer to Emily West, a mulatto who helped Texas general Sam Houston defeat the Mexican general Santa Anna at the battle of San Jacinto. While West’s role in history is undisputed, and she deserves more recognition than she has been given, her role in the song is less certain. There is no text that makes specific mention of her, Houston, Santa Anna, or the Mexican War—though the female is identified in early texts as a “darky.” In the preceding text, from a 1933 recording by cowboy singer Gene Autry, the singer has replaced the word “darky” by the word “fellow,” in an effort to remove any offensive terminology. That the hero and heroine are African American is still apparent from the phrase “she’s the sweetest rose of color” and the reference to playing the banjo, which was almost exclusively an African American instrument in the 1830s.

The first page of the first sheet music edition (1858) of “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” From the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

518

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Texas Ranger Come all you Texas Rangers, wherever you may be, I’ll tell you of some troubles that happened unto me; My name it’s nothing extra, so it I will not tell; And here’s to all you rangers, I’m sure I wish you well. ’Twas at the age of sixteen, I joined the jolly band, We marched from San Antonio down to the Rio Grande; Our captain he informed us, perhaps he thought it right: “Before we reach the station, you’ll surely have to fight.” And when the bugle sounded, our captain gave command, “To arms, to arms,” he shouted, “and by your horses stand!” I saw the smoke ascending, it seemed to reach the sky; The first thought that came to me, my time has come to die. I saw the Indians coming, I heard them give the yell, My feelings at that moment, no tongue can ever tell; I saw the glittering lances, their arrows round me flew, And all my strength it left me, and all my courage, too. We fought full nine long hours, before the strife was o’er, The like of dead and wounded, I never saw before; And when the sun was rising, the Indians they had fled, We loaded up our rifles and counted up our dead. And all of us were wounded, our noble captain slain, The sun was shining sadly across the bloody plain; And sixteen as brave rangers as ever roamed the West, Were buried by their comrades, with arrows in their breast. ’Twas then I thought of mother, who once to me did say, “To you they are all strangers, with me you’d better stay.” I thought that she was childish, the best she did not know, My mind was fixed on ranging and I was bound to go. Perhaps you have a mother, likewise a sister too, And maybe you’ve a sweetheart to weep and mourn for you; If that’s your situation, although you’d like to roam, From me just take a lesson, you’d better stay at home. I have seen the fruits of rambling, I know its hardships well, I’ve crossed the Rocky Mountains, rode down the streets of hell; I’ve been down the southwest where wild Apaches roam, And I can tell you, Pardner, you’d better stay at home. And now my song is ended, I guess I’ve sung enough, The life of any ranger, I am sure, is very tough; And here’s to all you ladies, I am sure I wish you well, I’m bound to go a-ranging, so ladies, fare you well.20

In 1823, in order to protect frontier families from unfriendly Comanches, Apaches, and other tribes, colonial leader Stephen F. Austin hired a force of 10 mounted riflemen, or rangers. In 1835, colonial Texas representatives created a Corps of Rangers to protect the frontier from hostile Indians. Their pay was officially set at $1.25 a day, and they were to

Publisher Henry J. Wehman was sent this text by a Texas showman, but the author is unknown. The broadside was published some time in the period 1888–1897. From the Kenneth S. Goldstein collection, Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University.

520

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

elect their own officers. They were also required to furnish their own arms, mounts, and equipment. The corps was commanded by R. M. “Three-Legged” Williamson (so nicknamed because he had a wooden leg to support a crippled limb) and led by captains William Arrington, Issac Burleson, and John J. Tumlinson. They were officially organized into the Texas Rangers and comprised three companies of 100 men. After the Civil War, their numbers grew, and they played an increasingly important role in preserving law and order and fighting Indians, lawless Mexicans, horse thieves, and western desperadoes as needed. The name Texas Rangers was not officially used until 1874, but the term must have been in common use before then. In 1935 they were merged with the State Highway Patrol.21 The ballad is an enthralling tale of the terrors of a young would-be hero commonly set to a beautiful Irish melody. Does it refer to an historic event? It seems unlikely. Histories recount several important early battles with Comanches, but none that matches the details given in the ballad: a nine-hour ordeal that left 16 Rangers dead.22 The first skirmishes were in the late 1830s: on October 13, 1837, at the headwaters of the Trinity River; on February 25, 1839, at Spring Creek; and in October 1840 at the Red Fork of the Colorado. A major battle between Rangers and Comanche Indians took place on August 12, 1840, at Plum Creek, Texas, when some 200 Rangers pursued a band of Comanches who had been raiding settlers. Scores of Indians perished; the Rangers lost one man and suffered seven casualties. The next memorable encounter was at Walker Creek on June 8, 1844. Jack Hays’s 14 rangers held off an attack by 70 Comanches for over an hour, leaving 23 Indians dead on the field, one Ranger dead, and four more wounded. A battle at Antelope Hill on May 12, 1858, ended with 76 Comanches and two Rangers dead; three more Rangers were wounded. On October 1, 1858, Texas Ranges attacked a camp of Comanches suspected of having attacked settlers; in 30 minutes they left more than 50 Indians dead and lost five of their own. So it was with other battles at the time. For the most part, though, through the 1840s, the Texas Rangers were more preoccupied with fighting Mexicans than Indians. The Rangers had the advantage of Samuel Colt’s new five-shot repeating pistols, with which, when they carried a spare loaded cylinder, they could discharge 10 shots in 40 seconds. With months of riding and shooting practice, they were all able to put two perfect shots in two targets 40 yards apart while at full gallop. The Comanches fought mostly with lances and arrows and, occasionally, with primitive muskets. One ballad text actually refers to Plum Creek. The two stanzas describing the battle follow: We fought them full one hour, before the fight was o’er, And the like of dead Indians I never saw before. And six brave fellows as ever came out West, We buried up at Plum Creek, their souls in peace to rest.23

Since no other texts mention Plum Creek, it seems likely that this reference was a later modification to an earlier ballad. This suggests that the ballad was actually written in the 1830s.24 Buffalo Skinners Come all you buffalo hunters and listen to my song, You needn’t get uneasy, for it isn’t very long; It’s concerning some buffalo hunters who all agreed to go And spend a summer working, among the buffalo.

SOUTHWEST

521

’Twas in the spring of seventy three, that I came to Jacksborough, There I met Bailey Griego, who asked how I’d like to go; And spend the summer west of Pease River hunting On the range of the buffalo. Now being out of employment, boys, to Griego I named the day, When I could join his outfit if suited with the pay; I agreed if he’d pay good wages and transportation too, To go and spend the summer among the buffalo. “Of course I’ll pay good wages and transportation too, But if you should grow homesick and return to Jacksborough Before the hunting’s over I want you now to know That I’ll not pay you back wages from the range of the buffalo.” Through promises and flattery he enlisted quite a train, Some ten or twelve in number, all able bodied men; Our journey it was pleasant, on the road we had to go Until we crossed Pease River among the buffalo. ’Twas here our pleasure ended, our troubles had begun, The very first beast I tried to skin, oh how I cut my thumb! When skinning off those buffalo hides for our lives we had little show As the Indians tried to pick us off on the range of the buffalo. Salt meat and Buffalo hump to eat and hard old sourdough bread, Strong coffee and alkali water to drink; add a raw-hide for a bed; The way the mosquitoes chewed on us you bet it wasn’t slow, Lord grant there’s no place on earth like the range of the buffalo. When the summer at last ended, old Griego began to say, “My boys, you’ve been extravagant, so I’m in debt today”; But among the buffalo hunters bankrupt law didn’t go, So we left old Griego’s bones to bleach among the buffalo. Now we’re back across Pease River, and homeward we are bound, In that forsaken country may I never more be found; If you see anyone bound out there, pray warn them not to go To that forsaken country, the land of the buffalo.25

This ballad is an adaptation of a lumberjack ballad, “Canaday-I-O,” believed to have been composed by a Maine lumberman, Ephraim Braley, in about 1853. Braley’s first two and last stanzas follow: Come all ye jolly lumbermen, and listen to my song, But do not get discouraged, the length it is not long; Concerning of some lumbermen, who did agree to go To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada-I-O. It happened late one season in the fall of fifty-three, A preacher of the gospel one morning came to me; Said he, “My jolly fellow, how would you like to go To spend one pleasant winter up in Canada-I-O?” ....

522

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

But now our lumbering is over and we are returning home, To greet our wives and sweethearts and never more to roam; To greet our friends and neighbors; we’ll tell them not to go, To that forsaken G—D—place called Canada-I-O.26

The date in the first stanza of “Buffalo Skinners” is historically accurate: in that year, professional buffalo hunters from Dodge City first entered the northern part of the Texas Panhandle, not very far from Jacksboro. Based on other textual relationships, it appears likely that a Maine woodsman went out west to seek employment in the 1870s and adapted the down east song, written some two decades earlier but already widespread in oral tradition in New England, to events that he encountered out west.27 This text is from Jack Thorp’s 1908 Songs of the Cowboys—the first published book of cowboy songs. Some years later, John A. Lomax collected a version and included it in his own book of cowboy songs; it became one of his favorite cowboy ballads, and he often sang it in the course of his lectures. In Lomax’s version the employer is named “Crego,” and most versions follow him (they may have been derived from his text). Thorp’s “Griego” is interesting because it’s the Spanish word for “Greek” and was a general term for any foreigner; it may be the origin of the Mexican term gringo. It may be that Thorp’s bossman was named “Bailey” and the “Griego” was an epithet. Originally called Mesquiteville but given its present name in 1858, Jacksboro is 75 or so miles northwest of Ft. Worth. Thorp consistently spelled it more stylishly as “Jacksborough.” Unlike some other ballads and songs that romanticized life on the frontier—whether in the northeastern woods or the western plains—“Buffalo Skinners” and its musical relatives share a cynical and bitter view of the hardships of employment, made worse in both instances by the dishonest enticements of the men who signed them up. In the loggers’ ballad we are simply told that those con men “found their match, I know”; in “Buffalo Skinners,” Griego/Crego’s fate is far worse and is, in the ethics of the time and place, justified. In the 1870s, perhaps later, several cowboy adaptations were written based on “Buffalo Skinners”: “The Hills of Mexico,” set in New Mexico (see the section on New Mexico songs), and “The Crooked Trail to Holbrook,” set in Arizona (see the section on Arizona songs), being the best known. Streets of Laredo As I walked out in the streets of Laredo, As I walked out in Laredo one day; I spied a poor cowboy wrapped up in white linen, Wrapped up in white linen as cold as the clay. “Oh, beat the drums slowly, and play the fife lowly, Play the dead march as you carry me along; Take me to the green valley, there lay the sod o’er me, For I’m a young cowboy, and I know I’ve done wrong. “Let sixteen gamblers come handle my coffin, Let sixteen cowboys come sing me a song; Take me to the green valley, there lay the sod o’er me, For I’m a poor cowboy, and I know I’ve done wrong. “It was once in the saddle I used to go dashing, It was once in the saddle I used to go gay;

SOUTHWEST

523

First to the dram house, and then to the card house, Got shot in the breast, and I’m dying today. “Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin, Get six pretty maidens to bear up my pall; Put bunches of roses all over my coffin, Put roses to deaden the sods as they fall. “Oh, bury me beside my knife and my six-shooter, My spurs on my heel, my rifle by my side, And over my coffin put a bottle of brandy, That’s the cowboy’s drink, and carry me along.” We beat the drums slowly, and played the fife lowly, And bitterly wept as we bore him along, For we all loved our comrade so brave, young, and handsome, We all loved our comrade, although he’d done wrong.28

“Streets of Laredo” was written in 1876 by Francis Henry Maynard, a cowhand, trader, and buffalo hunter, under the title “The Cowboy’s Lament,” using as a model a nineteenthcentury Anglo American broadside ballad, “The Dying Girl’s Lament.” That ballad, in turn, was based on an Anglo Irish ballad written perhaps in the late eighteenth century, “The Unfortunate Rake,” which told the sad fate of a soldier who had contracted a fatal venereal disease ( probably syphilis) and with his dying words gave instructions for his own military funeral—replete with fifes and drums and musket salutes. Maynard simply adapted the older ballad by inserting the appropriate trappings for a western cowboy, rather than a British musketeer, terminating his moral decline with a gunfight rather than a social disease. The original purpose of the roses scattered over the body was to mask the odor of decomposition. This version lacks the usual stanza that follows the introductory first stanza and explains the context: “I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy,” These words he did say as I boldly stepped by; “Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story, I was shot in the breast and I know I must die.”29 Hell in Texas The Devil, in hell we’re told was chained, And a thousand years he there remained; He neither complained nor did he groan, But determined to start a hell of his own, Where he could torment the souls of men Without being chained in a prison pen; So he asked the Lord if he had on hand Anything left when he made this land. The Lord said, “Yes, I had plenty on hand, But I left it down on the Rio Grande; The fact is, old boy, the stuff is so poor I don’t think you could use it in hell anymore.”

524

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

One of folk song collector Robert W. Gordon’s correspondents sent him a copy of this leaflet that he picked up in a San Antonio saloon in 1897. From the Archive of Folk Culture, Library of Congress.

But the Devil went down to look at the truck, And said if he took it as a gift he was stuck; For after examining it carefully and well, He concluded the place was too dry for a hell. So in order to get it off His hand, The Lord promised the Devil to water the land; For he had some water, or rather some dregs, A regular cathartic that smelled like bad eggs. Hence the trade was closed and the deed was given, And the Lord went back to his home in Heaven. And the Devil said to himself, “I have all that is needed To make a good hell,” and hence he succeeded. He began by putting thorns all over the trees, And mixed up the sand with millions of fleas; And scattered tarantulas along the roads, Put thorns on cactus and horns on the toads. He lengthened the horns of the Texas steers, And put an addition to the rabbit’s ears; He put a little devil in the bronco steed, And poisoned the feet of the centipede. The rattlesnake bites you, the scorpion stings, The mosquito delights you with buzzing wings; The sand-burs prevail, and so do the ants, And those who sit down need half-soles on their pants. The Devil then said that throughout the land He’d arrange to keep up the Devil’s own brand, And all would be Mavericks unless they bore Marks or scratches, of bites and thorns by the score.

SOUTHWEST

525

The heat in the summer is a hundred and ten, Too hot for the Devil and too hot for men; The wild boar roams through the black chaparral— ’Tis a hell of a place that he has for a hell.30

For nearly a decade, folklorist Robert W. Gordon fruitfully used his column “Old Songs Men Have Sung” in Adventure Magazine to collect songs from correspondents all over the country (and not only men). In 1927, E. E. Peabody sent him a little brochure that he had picked up at Albert’s Buckhorn Saloon in San Antonio in around 1897. Albert Friedrich, the proprietor, was mainly concerned with the multipronged deer heads he used to decorate his establishment, but included in his brochure were two ballads by the same anonymous author. In 1908, collector John A. Lomax happened upon the same saloon and spotted the stack of sheets, including the text in his first book of cowboy songs. Jack Thorp, who published the song in the 1921 edition of his own cowboy songbook, noted that it was first titled “The Birth of New Mexico.”31 However, it has been associated with Texas ever since Lomax published it. Though neither state is specifically mentioned in the text, the reference to “Texas steers” gives Texas the dubious advantage. This humorous etiological story purporting to explain the reason for Texas’s inhospitable geography recalls an old joke involving an east Texan and a west Texan discussing the relative merits of their respective parts of the state. The east Texan disparages the dreadful conditions of west Texas; the west Texan replies in defense, “Why, all west Texas needs to be a paradise on earth is a little water and some good people.” To which the east Texan replies, scornfully, “Why, shucks, that’s all hell needs!” My Heart’s Tonight in Texas In the distant State of Texas, by the silv’ry Rio Grande, A couple stroll’d, one evening, two sweethearts hand in hand; ’Twas the ranchman’s pretty daughter and the lad she loved so dear, On the morrow they must part for many a year. To Europe she was going, to become a lady grand, Where, her father hoped, some Earl or Count she’d wed; So she went away next morning, but her heart was true to Jack: One day a letter came, and thus he read: Chorus: “My heart’s tonight in Texas, tho’ I’m far across the sea; For the band is playing ‘Dixie!’ and it’s there I long to be; Dad says some Earl I’ll marry, but you shall have my hand; For my heart’s, tonight, in Texas, by the silv’ry Rio Grande.” At the stately ball, in England, stood the Texas lass one night; The scene was one of splendor, the lights were dazzling bright; And an Earl knelt there before her, asking her to take his hand, But her thoughts were by the silv’ry Rio Grande. “I can’t say, Yes!” she answer’d, “For I promised, long ago, That an honest Yankee lad I’d someday wed; So I cannot take your title, for I’d rather have my Jack, ’Twas only yesterday I wrote and said: Chorus.32

Why is this cattle man sending his pretty daughter off to England to marry nobility? Is he in financial straits? Has he a gambling habit that forces him to mortgage his ranch and possessions? Has the Englishman already paid off this Texan’s heavy debts on the promise

526

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

of the daughter’s hand? What aren’t we being told? Besides, can’t that earl, on his knees with nose to the ground, smell the steer manure on her shoes? Gregorio Cortéz En el condado del Carmen Miren lo que ha sucedido, Murio el sherife mayor Quedando Román herído

In the country of the Carmen Look what has happened; The sheriff mayor died Leaving Roman wounded.

Otro día por la mañana Cuando la gente llegó Unos a los otros dicen No saben quien lo mató

The following morning When the people arrived Some said to the others They don’t know who killed him.

Se anduvieron informando Come tres horas después, Supieron que el malhechor Era Gregorio Cortéz

They were investigating And about three hours later They found out that the malefactor Was Gregorio Cortéz.

Insortaron a Cortéz Por toditito el estado Vivo o muerto que se aprehenda Porque a varios ha matado.

Cortéz was wanted Throughout the state, Alive or dead may he be apprehended For he has killed several.

Decia Gregorio Cortéz Con su pistola in la mano, —No siento haberlo matado Al que siento es a mi hermano.

Said Gregorio Cortéz With his pistol in his hand, “I’m not sorry for having killed him, It is for my brother that I feel sorry.”

Decia Gregorio Cortéz Con su alma muy encendida, —No siento haberlo matado La defensa es permitida.

Said Gregorio Cortéz With his soul aflame, “I’m not sorry for having killed him, Self defense is permitted.”

Venían los americanos Que por el viento volaban, Porque se iban a ganar Tres mil pesos que les daban.

The Americans came They flew like the wind, Because they were going to win The three thousand pesos reward.

Seguió con rumbo a Gonzáles, Varios sherifes lo vieron, No lo quisieron sequir Porque le tuvieron miedo.

They continued toward Gonzáles, Several sheriffs saw him; They did not want to continue, Because they were afraid of him.

Venían los perros jaunes Venían sobre la huella Pero alcanzar a Cortéz Era alcanzar a una estrella

Came the hound dogs, They came on his trail; But to reach Cortéz Was like reaching for a star.

Decía Gregorio Cortéz —Pa’ qué se valen de planes, Sino pueden agarrarme Ni con esos perros jaunes.

Said Gregorio Cortéz, “What’s the use of plans, If you can’t catch me, Even with those hound dogs.”

Decían los amerianos —Si lo vemos que le haremos Si le entramos por derecho Muy poquitos volveremos.

The Americans said, “If we see him what shall we do to him, If we face him head on, Very few of us will return.”

SOUTHWEST

527

En el redondel del rancho Lo alcanzaron a rodear, Poquitos más de trescientos Y allí les brincó el corral

In the ranch corral They managed to surround him; A little more than three hundred men And there he gave them the slip.

Allá por el Encinal A según por lo que dicen Se agarraron a balazos Y les mató otro sherife

There around Encinal From all that they say, They had a shoot-out And he killed another sheriff.

Decía Gregorio Cortéz Con su pistola in la mano, —No corran rinches cobardes Con un solo mexicano.

Gregorio Cortéz said, With his pistol in his hand, “Don’t run, you cowardly Rangers, From one lone Mexican.”

Giró con rumbo a Laredo Sin ninguna timidez, —!Síganme rinches cobardes, Yo soy Gregorio Cortéz!

He turned toward Laredo Without a single fear; “Follow me, you cowardly Rangers, I am Gregorio Cortéz.”

Gregorio le dice a Juan En el rancho del Ciprés, —Platícame que hay de nuevo, Yo soy Gregorio Cortéz.

Gregorio says to Juan At the ranch of the Cypress, “Tell me what’s new, I am Gregorio Cortéz.”

Gregorio le dice a Juan —Muy pronto lo vas a ver, Anda hablale a los sherifes Que me vengan a aprehender.

Gregorio says to Juan “Very soon you will see, Go and talk to the sheriffs, That they should come and arrest me.”

Cuando llegan los sherifes Gregorio se presentó —Por la buana si me llevan Porque de otro modo no.

When the sheriffs arrive Gregorio presented himself, “You’ll take me if I wish it, Because there is no other way.”

Ya agarraron a Cortéz Ya terminó la cuestión, La pobre de su familia La lleva en el corazón.

Now they caught Cortéz, Now the case is closed; His poor family He carries in his heart.

Ya con esto me despido Con la sombra de un Ciprés, Aqui se acaba cantando La tragedia de Cortéz.

Now with this I take my leave, In the shade of a cypress, Here we finish singing The tragedy of Cortéz.33

Probably few songs resonate more deeply with the Tex-Mex communities than the corrido about Gregorio Cortéz. The corrido is the Hispanic American equivalent of the ballad, a narrative of some local event that captures public interest and is set to music and verse. Most are sung in three-quarters time. The beginnings of the corrido are obscure, but it probably emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century. Corridos are still written and sung by popular singers and bands in the border communities along the MexicanAmerican interface. Gregorio Cortéz was born in 1875 on a Mexican ranch not far from the Texas border. Twelve years later, his family moved to Manor, Texas, where he and his older brother Romaldo worked as farmhands and vaqueros for local farmers and ranchers.

528

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

On June 12, 1901, Sheriff Morris came to the Cortéz ranch seeking a horse thief who was apparently Mexican. With him was his deputy, Boone Choate, who acted as interpreter, although his understanding of Spanish was tragically deficient. It had happened that shortly before, Cortéz had acquired a horse from one Andres Villarreal in exchange for one of his mares. Morris had learned only that Cortéz had recently obtained a new mare. Through the interpreter, Morris asked if Cortéz had recently traded a horse to Villareal; Cortéz replied no ( because he had traded a mare; probably Choate was unaware that the Spanish language distinguishes between mare and horse). Morris thought Cortéz was deliberately lying and said he was going to arrest him. In the linguistic confusion that followed, Morris drew his gun and shot Romaldo and took aim at Gregorio, but missed. Gregorio returned fire, mortally wounding Morris. Choate fled immediately and returned to town with the aim of gathering a posse. Anticipating what would happen, Gregorio fled on foot north, covering some 80 miles to the house of a friend, Martin Robledo, near Ottine. The local sheriff, Robert M. Glover, learned of Gregorio’s whereabouts, and soon a posse surrounded Robledo’s house; a gunfight ensued, in which Henry Schnabel, one of the members of the posse, was killed by a drunken deputy. Cortéz escaped and headed south. He stopped first at another friend’s house, where he borrowed a pistol and a mare. He continued south, covering several hundred miles in the next two days, until the exhausted mare collapsed and died. Cortéz found another mare and continued for three more days, covering another 300 miles. He was pursued by hundreds of men, dogs, and horses, eluding posse after posse. Finally, on June 22, 1902, he was caught exhausted and off guard in the sheep camp of Abran de la Garza. Cortéz was taken to San Antonio and imprisoned there to await trial. In the next few years he was tried repeatedly. First, he was tried in San Antonio for the murder of Schnabel, and acquitted. Then he was tried in Pleasanton for horse theft and found guilty, but the conviction was later reversed. Next he was tried in Corpus Christi for the murder of Sheriff Morris; he was found innocent. Finally, he was tried in Columbus for the murder of Sheriff Glover and was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. He entered the Huntsville Penitentiary on January 1, 1905; eight years later, he was pardoned by the governor. After obtaining his freedom, Cortéz joined the army in the Mexican Revolution, during which he was wounded. He died soon after, at the age of 41. For nearly a century thereafter, Cortéz was the most sung and talked about border hero among the Hispanic Americans. To those communities, Cortéz represented the brave member of an oppressed race who bested the dominant culture—the Hispanic David to the American Goliath. Like Jesse James, he was able to elude his pursuers because he received succor from friends everywhere—though unlike James, he seems to have been innocent of nearly all the charges laid against him (and was probably a good deal smarter). The author of this corrido about Cortéz is not known, but the text given here was transcribed from the first commercial recording of the song.34 Midnight Special Chorus: You let the Midnight Special shine the light on me; Let the Midnight Special shine the ever-livin’ lights on me. When you get up in the mornin’, when the ding-dong ring You’ll make it to the table, see the same old thing; Ain’t nothin’ on the table but the pots and the pans, Say anything about it, have trouble with the man.

SOUTHWEST

529

Chorus: Let the Midnight Special shine the light on me, Let the Midnight Special shine the ever-lovin’ lights on me. Yonder come our little Nora, how do you know? I know her by the apron and the dress she wear; Umbrella on the shoulder, piece of paper in her hand, Lookin’ for some sergeant to release her man. You get up in the mornin’, when the ding-dong ring You make it to the table, see the same old thing; If you say anything about it, have trouble with the man. Chorus: Let the Midnight Special shine her light on me, Let the Midnight Special shine the ever-lovin’ lights on me. [Repeat second stanza] Chorus.35

Every night near midnight, the Golden Gate Limited pulled out of Houston’s Southern Pacific depot for San Antonio, El Paso, and points west. Thirty miles beyond Houston, the train, nicknamed the Midnight Special, passed the Texas state prison at Sugarland, its headlight shining through the barred windows of the prison cells. To the inmates, the train’s sound effects screamed of freedom beyond the bars, and they sung about it wistfully. The earliest traces of the song are from the early 1920s, though some elements (e.g., the stanza about the bell ringing and the dreary food choices) were collected as early as 1911. When the great African American folksinger Huddie Ledbetter recorded the song, he added some stanzas dealing with a 1923 jailbreak and enumerated some then well-known Houston lawmen: Bason an’ Brock will arrest you, Payton an’ Boone will take you down; Oh, the judge will sentence you, Penitentiary bound.36

Ledbetter, known better as Leadbelly, recorded extensively between the year the Lomaxes discovered him in Texas in 1934 and his death from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 1949. From Leadbelly’s performances and several recordings, the song passed into the repertoires of many folk song revival singers in the 1950s and 1960s, in both the United States and Great Britain. The text given here, sung by Mississippi bluesman Sam Collins, was the first by an African American singer. Deep Elem Blues Now when you go down to Deep Elem Just to have a little fun, You’d better have your fifteen dollars When the policeman come. Chorus: Oh, sweet mama, daddy’s got them Deep Elem Blues; Oh, sweet mama, daddy’s got the Deep Elem Blues. Now when you go down to Deep Elem, Put your money in your shoe; ’Cause the women in Deep Elem Got them Deep Elem blues.

530

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Once I had a sweetheart, She meant the world to me; She took a trip to Deep Elem; Now she ain’t what she used to be. Once I knew a preacher, He preached the Bible through and through; He took a trip to Deep Elem, Now his preachin’ days are through. Now when you go down in Deep Elem, Put your money in your socks; Or the women in Deep Elem Well, they’ll put you on the rocks.37

“Deep El(e)m” refers to Dallas’s old red-light district on Elm Street. The song “Deep Elem Blues” owes its popularity originally to the Attlesey Brothers, who grew up in Hopkins County, Texas. They recorded “Deep Elm Blues” in 1933 for RCA Victor under the pseudonym of Lone Star Cowboys. That version was not very influential. Later, they changed their last name and became the Shelton Brothers, and as such recorded the song for the Decca label as “Deep Elem Blues” in 1935, followed by “Deep Elem Blues, No. 2” and then “Deep Elem Blues, No. 3.” The song is a recomposition of the older “Georgia Black Bottom,” recorded by the Georgia Crackers in 1927. “Black Bottom” referred to the black district (i.e., African American) of many cities, in particular, Nashville. It was also a dance (popular among African Americans) in the 1920s. There are other blues songs referring to “black bottom.” Joe Evans recorded “Down in Black Bottom” (1931), which opens, You go down black bottom, Put your money down in your shoe, Because the black bottom women down there Ain’t going to do nothing but take it away from you.38

and Black Bottom McPhail, in 1932, recorded the same title, beginning, Now down in black bottom That is so they say, They drink good moonshine And stay drunk all day.39 Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker A couple have just paid the price For living in fool’s paradise; Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker Have finally paid for their sins. Clyde started in life as a cheat, A liar and mean petty thief, And all of his debts he beat, In God he would take no belief. A prison farm down in Texas Was where he was kept for a time;

SOUTHWEST

531

With five other men he broke out And started a new life of crime. Clyde Barrow split up with his pals ’Cause Hamilton wanted his gal; He taught her to smoke big cigars And nicknamed her Suicide Sal. They rode all around unmolested But they had no hope they would best it; In Louisian’ they killed her and her man That’s worse fate than being arrested. The moral of Bonnie and Barrow Is stick to the old strait [sic] and narrow. When bullets fly thick they sure kill you quick; They mess up your bones and your marrow.40

Clyde Barrow, born in Rowena, Texas, in 1910, and Bonnie Parker, born in Telico, Texas, in 1909, were a notorious pair of robbers whose flamboyant encounters with the law were the stuff that sold newspapers in the 1930s. As the song notes, Parker was known for her cigar smoking. Barrow’s criminal career began when he was only 15 years old in Houston. He met Parker in January 1930, and their first crime together was an auto theft in December 1932. Their crime spree lasted 21 months and resulted in 12 deaths. Often working with confederates (in a touching display of family loyalty, two stalwarts were Barrow’s brother Buck and Buck’s wife, Blanche), the duo robbed gas stations, restaurants, and small-town banks (never taking more than $1,500) in Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Missouri. During 1933 Barrow and Parker engaged in several shoot-outs with police. In November 1933 they eluded an attempted capture by Dallas police near Grand Prairie. In January 1934, in Waldo, Texas, they facilitated the escape of five jail prisoners, during which two guards were killed. In April, they murdered two police officers in Grapevine, Texas, and five days later killed a police constable in Miami, Oklahoma, and kidnapped a police chief. Frank Hamer, a former Texas Ranger, pursued them across nine states before he was able to set up an ambush outside Arcadia, Louisiana, on May 23, 1934, with the aid of five other law officers. Parker and Barrow were shot down as they attempted to drive right through it.41 Their story was the basis for the very successful 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde.

ARIZONA Most of Arizona was ceded to the United States as part of New Mexico in 1848; the southernmost region was purchased separately from Mexico in 1853 (the Gadsden Purchase). In 1883, construction gangs completed the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway across northern Arizona, thereby linking St. Louis, Missouri, with California; that same year, the Southern Pacific Railroad completed a line from New Orleans, Louisiana, to Los Angeles by way of Tucson and Yuma. Copper, Arizona’s most important product for a century, was first mined in Arizona at Ajo in 1854. Other important mines opened in 1876 in the Clifton-Morenci district in eastern Arizona and then in Globe and Jerome, both in central Arizona. The richest

532

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

copper discovery was made in 1877 in Bisbee, in southeastern Arizona near the Mexican border. The state still mines more than half of the copper produced in the United States. In 1858 the Butterfield Overland Mail inaugurated service through the Arizona desert on the long haul between St. Louis and San Francisco, and military posts were set up along the route to safeguard the stagecoaches from ambushes by Apache intent on protecting their traditional hunting lands. Small silver-mining camps began to spring up along the Colorado and Hassayampa rivers and south of the Gila River. In February 1863, President Abraham Lincoln approved the creation of the territory of Arizona. The capital moved back and forth between Tucson, Prescott, and finally, in 1889, Phoenix. As early as 1877, Arizonans began to press for statehood, but various obstacles (including differences of political opinion) conspired to prevent this from happening until 1912, when on February 14, Arizona became the last of the contiguous 48 states. Freighting from Wilcox to Globe Come all you jolly freighters that ever hit the road, That ever hauled a load of coke from Wilcox to Globe; That’s the way I’ve made my living for ten long years or more, Hauling coke for Leverman and Myers, no wonder I am poor. Chorus: So, it’s home, dearest, home, home you ought to be, Over on the Gila in the white man’s counteree; Where the poplar and the ash and mesquite will ever be, Growing green along the river, there’s a home for you and me. Barb wire and bacon is all that they would pay, You get a check on Leverman to get your grain and hay; You ask them for five dollars, old Myers’d scratch his pate, And the clerks in their white collars say, “Get down and pull your freight.” Perhaps you’d like to know, boys, what we have to eat— A little bit of bread and a dirty piece of meat; A little bit of coffee, and sugar’s on the sly, So it’s go it if you like it, boys—root, hog, or die.42

Before the truckers, there were the railroads, and before the railroads, there were the wagon freighters. This seldom-recovered song is one of the few about that period when big wagons like the Conestogas were the principal means of freight transport. The two Arizona towns named are about 100 miles apart. Globe began life as a scruffy mining community in the early 1870s following a silver bonanza in what was part of an Indian reservation. An enormous globular chunk of near-pure silver, with surface markings that some spectators averred resembled the continents of the earth, was found just inside the reservation and gave the town-to-be its name. In 1875 the Globe Mining District was removed from reservation lands and established as a separate entity. The town site, Globe City, was laid out in 1876 and, in 1881, was made the seat of the new Gila County. Willcox was originally named Maley, but its name was changed in 1889. It was an important railhead and shipping center for many years. Barbed wire was introduced to the United States in 1867 and became widespread in 1874 after Joseph Glidden obtained a patent and opened a small barb wire (as he called his product) factory in DeKalb. These dates place the origins of this song in the 1890s.

SOUTHWEST

533

The song has elements of two earlier songs: “Root Hog or Die” concerned a prospector heading west to California in the 1850s; “Home, Dearie, Home” is an English broadside ballad about a sailor returning home from sea. The chorus of one text reads, Home, dearie, home, and its home that I must be, Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea, Oh, the oak and the ash and the bonnie elm tree, They are growing green in my ain countrie.43 The Crooked Trail to Holbrook Come all you jolly cowboys who follow the bronco steer, I’ll sing to you a verse or two your spirits for to cheer; I’ll tell you all about a trip, a trip that I did undergo, On that crooked trail to Holbrook, in Arizoni-o. On February seventeenth, our herd it started out, It would have made you shudder just to hear them bawl and shout; As wild as any buffalo that ever roamed the Platte, Those dogies we was drivin’, and every one was fat. We crossed the Mescal Mountains, God, how that wind did blow, A blizzard was ragin’ and the pass was deep in snow; But the boys just kept ’em headed and the dragman pushed ’em slow, On that crooked trail to Holbrook, in Arizoni-o. It’s along by Sombserva we slowly punched along, While each and every cowboy would sing a hearty song; Just to cheer up his comrades as onward we did go, On the crooked trail to Holbrook, in Arizoni-o. One night we had a stompede, and Christ, how them cattle run! We made it to our horses, but boys it was no fun; Through prickly pear and catclaw brush quickly we did go, On the crooked trail to Holbrook, in Arizoni-o. At last we got to Holbrook, a little gale did blow, It blew up sand and pebble stones and it didn’t blow them slow; We had to drink the water from that muddy little stream And swallow a peck of gravel when we tried to eat a bean. But it’s now the herd are shipped and hopeward we are bound, With a lot of tired horses as ever could be found; We’re headed back to Tucson and the ones we love so dear, Here’s luck to every cowboy who follows the bronco steer.44

This classic tale of the hardships of cowboy life in the early West, when cowmen took their lives—as well as those of their steeds and steers—in their hands to bring the cattle to a railroad terminus for shipping to market, has not turned up often outside of Arizona, where it evidently originated. Slim Critchlow learned his version from a sheepherder in Idaho in 1927. Holbrook was the name given Horsehead Crossing, on the Little Colorado River, in 1881, when the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad was extended into Arizona. It was named for H. R. Holbrook, the first engineer of the A & P (later part of the Santa Fe). It became

534

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

a convenient railhead for cattle shipments west to California. The trail ran due north to Holbrook from the Gila River, passing by the Mescal Mountains in Gila County, central Arizona. The trail passes by Sombrero Peak (“Sombserva” sounds more like a scribal error than a mishearing) on the way. Other versions of the ballad also mention the Mongollen Mountains and Gilson Flats as well as Mescal, and sometimes have the trip terminating in Globe City instead of Tucson. The song is from the 1880s or soon after and did not appear in the earliest editions of the first cowboy song collections of Thorp or Lomax. Old Arizona Again Oh, it’s old Arizona again. It’s old Arizona again; It’s a place where we all have been, We have all been there before, And we’re going back once more, Back to old Arizona again. Oh, it’s old Arizona again. It’s old Arizona again; With its greasers and bad, bad men, They don’t know the Boston dip, But they shoot you from the hip Down in old Arizona again. Oh, it’s old Arizona again. It’s old Arizona again; It’s a place where we all have been, With its scenery and fresh air, They will be your bill of fare Down in old Arizona again. Oh, it’s old Arizona again. It’s old Arizona again; It’s a place where we all have been, With the bears and rocky ground, And the rattlers running round, Round in old Arizona again. Oh, it’s old Arizona again. It’s old Arizona again; It’s a place where we all have been, And if you get away, They will bring you back to stay, Down in old Arizona again.45

Edward Dolph identified this as a song of the old Fourth Cavalry, when it spent much of its time on duty in Arizona. The Fourth Cavalry Regiment was activated in 1855 as the First Regiment, but after a reorganization in 1861, it became the Fourth. The Fourth was ordered to Arizona in 1884 to combat the Apache Indians. After the capture of Apache chief Geronimo in 1890, the unit was transferred to Fort Walla Walla, Washington. The song evidently dates from that six-year period.

SOUTHWEST

The Sierry Petes, or Tying Knots in the Devil’s Tail Away up high in the Sierry Petes, Where the yeller pines grows tall, Ole Sandy Bob an’ Buster Jig Had a rodeer camp last fall. Oh, they taken their hosses and runnin’ irons And mabbe a dawg or two, An’ they ’lowed they’d brand all the long-yered calves That come within their view. And any old dogie that flapped long yeres An’ didn’t bush up by day Got his long yeres whittled an’ his old hide scortched In a most artistic way. Now one fine day, ole Sandy Bob, He throwed his seago down, “I’m sick of he smell of burnin’ hair And I ’lows I’m a-goin’ to town.” So they saddles up an’ hits ’em a lope, Fer it warn’t no sight of a ride, And them was the days when a Buckeroo Could ’ile up his inside. Oh, they starts her in at the Kaintucky Bar, At the head of Whisky Row, And they winds up down by the Depot House, Some forty drinks below. They then sets up and turns around And goes her the other way; An’ to tell you the Gawd-forsaken truth, Them boys got stewed that day. As they was a-ridin’ back to camp A-packin’ a pretty good load, Who should they meet but the Devil himself, A-prancin’ down the road. Sez he, “You ornery cowboy skunks, You’d better hunt yer holes, Fer I’ve come up from Hill’s Rim Rock To gather in yer souls.” Sez Sandy Bob, “Old Devil, be damned, We boys is kinda tight, But you ain’t a-goin’ to gather no cowboy souls ’Thout you has some kind of a fight.” So Sandy Bob punched a hole in his rope, And he swang her straight and true. He lapped it on to the Devil’s horns, An’ he taken his dallies too.

535

536

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Now Buster Jig was a riata man, With his gut-line coiled up neat, So he sheken her out an’ he built him a loop, An’ he lassed the Devil’s hind feet. Oh, they stretched him out an’ they tailed him down, While the irons was a-gettin’ hot, They cropped and swaller-forked his yeres; Then they branded him up a lot. They pruned him up with a de-hornin’ saw, An’ they knotted his tail fer a joke. Then they rid off and left him there, Necked to a Black-Jack oak. If you’re ever up high in the Sierrry Petes, An’ you hear one Hell of a wail, You’ll know it’s that Devil a-bellerin’ around About them knots in his tail.46

Gail I. Gardner (1892–1987) represented the best of the cowboy poetry tradition. A college graduate, he was born and reared in Arizona and mastered the ability to write witty and convincing cowboy poetry without a hint of intrusive book learning. He wrote this poem in 1917, and before long, it had become one of the best-loved songs of working cowboys. A tall tale of gargantuan proportions, this work of art shoves Paul Bunyan, Davy Crockett, Mike Fink, John Henry, and the other American folk heroes to one side to clear some space on the pedestal for Sandy Bob and Buster Jig—unexcelled masters of the cowpuncher’s lariat. As one might imagine, in some versions, the affronts Bob and Jig perpetrate extend to some pruning not suitable for retelling in a family magazine.47 Wrote Gardner, One time I was camped with the late Bob Heckle at the old Bill Dearing ranch in the Sierra Prieta (Sierry Petes) mountains west of Prescott. One day we came into town for a little “whizzer,” and on the way back to camp, one of us remarked that the devil got cowboys for doing what we had been doing. That was the germ of an idea that came to life on a Santa Fe train in 1917 when I was headed back to Washington D.C. to get into military service. The gentle, broad-beamed cattle in the fields of Kansas were so different from the stock Bob and I had been working that I was inspired to write some verses about some drunken cowboys handling the devil the same way they handled wild cattle. These were the verses that Bill Simon decided would do for a song, and a song it has been ever since, pirated by a lot of drugstore cowboy singers, a couple of whom have even tried to claim authorship.48

“Sandy Bob” was Bob Heckle; “Buster Jig” was Gail himself. His father, J. I. Gardner, was known as “Jig” in accord with his initials; Gail came to be known as “Buster Jig.” El Corrido de la Quemazon de Bisbee The year, nineteen hundred and seven, And who would have thought it possible? At about eleven o’clock at night Half of Bisbee went to burn. Americans and Negroes and a part of the Mexicans Were running frantically with cans of water in their hands.

SOUTHWEST

537

And all the firemen didn’t know what to do— They said, “The water has given out; Now Bisbee is going to burn.” .... This song is composed, was composed by surprise, I would sing it over again for a glass of beer. To all my friends I give notice, if they don’t know, This song was composed by Señor Francisco Chavez.49

The history of Bisbee, in southern Arizona, is the story of its mines and began around 1875, when Hugh Jones came into the region hunting for silver. What he found was only copper, and he left in disgust. Before the decade was out, other, more patient prospectors found copper in abundance, and Bisbee soon became the center of America’s richest copper-producing district. The mining camp was named Bisbee in honor of Judge DeWitt Bisbee, a shareholder in the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company. Mexicans and Slavs were Bisbee’s lowest caste of workers and were generally forced to live in segregated neighborhoods. The Mexican section of the mining camp was called Chihuahua Hill and was the site of a devastating fire in 1907. The author of these lines, Francisco Chavez, was a well-known singer-guitarist much in demand at local parties and dances. The WPA State Guide, whence the above text was taken, preserved only the initial and final lines (in translation) of the corrido. A year later, another conflagration destroyed much of Bisbee’s Main Street. Bisbee! We are waiting, brother, waiting Tho’ the night be dark and long, And we know ’tis in the making Wondrous day of vanished wrongs. They have herded us like cattle, Torn us from our homes and wives; Yes, we’ve heard their rifles rattle, And have feared for our lives. We have seen the workers, thousands, Marched like bandits, down the street; Corporation gunmen round them, Yes, we’ve heard their tramping feet. It was in the morning early, Of that fatal July twelfth, And the year, nineteen seventeen, This took place of which I tell. Drove and dragged us out with curses, Threats, to kill on every hand. Servants of the damned bourgeois, With white bands upon their arms, Question, protest, all were useless, To those hounds of hell let loose; Nothing but an armed resistance Would avail with these brutes.

538

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

There they held us, long lines weary waiting, ’Neath the blazing desert sun; Some with eyes bloodshot and bleary, Wished for water, but had none. Yes, some brave wives brought us water, Loving hearts and hands were theirs, But the gunmen, cursing often, Poured it out upon the sands. Down the streets in squads of fifty We were marched, and some were chained, Down to where the shining rails Stretched across the sandy plains. Then in haste with kicks and curses We were herded into cars, And it seemed our lungs were bursting With the odor of the Yards. Floors were inches deep in refuse, Left there from the Western herds; Good enough for miners, Damn them; May they soon be food for birds. No farewells were then allowed us, Wives and babes were left behind; Tho I saw their arms around us As I closed by eyes and wept. After what seemed weeks of torture, We were at our journey’s end; Left to starve upon the border, Almost on Carranza’s land. Then they rant of law and order, Love of God, and fellow man; Rave of freedom o’er the border, Being sent from promised lands. Comes the day, ah! we’ll remember, Sure as death relentless, too; Grim-lipped toilers, their accusers, Let them call on God, not on you.50

The mining companies controlled Bisbee, Arizona, not only because they were the primary employers, but because local businesses depended heavily on the mines and miners to survive. Even the local newspaper was owned by one of the major mining companies, Phelps Dodge. During the first three years of World War I, the price of copper nearly tripled, and Bisbee was thriving. To maintain high production, Southern European immigrants and Mexicans were hired to work in the mines. Prior to 1917, union activity had repeatedly been stifled. Between 1906 and 1907, for example, about 1,200 men were fired for supporting a union. In 1916, the International

SOUTHWEST

539

Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter (formerly the Western Federation of Miners) successfully enrolled 1,800 miners. The Industrial Workers of the World’s ( IWW) presence in Arizona was also increasing. Some of the IWW’s tactics, such as advocating slowdowns and sabotage, were of great concern to the controlling interests. In addition, the IWW actively and successfully recruited miners from minority groups—Bisbee’s Mexican and Southern European immigrant workers, who were routinely given lower-paying jobs. On June 24, 1917, the IWW presented the Bisbee mining companies with a list of demands, including improved safety and working conditions, an end to discrimination against members of labor organizations and the unequal treatment of foreign and minority workers, and a flat wage system to replace sliding scales tied to the market price of copper. Using the war effort as justification, the copper companies refused all IWW demands. A strike was called, and in three days, half of Bisbee’s workforce was on strike. Tensions heightened when rumors spread asserting that the unions had been infiltrated by pro-Germans and that weapons and dynamite were cached around Bisbee for sabotage. The Citizen’s Protective League, an antiunion organization formed during a previous labor dispute, was resurrected by local businessmen and put under the control of Sheriff Harry Wheeler, and other miners loyal to the mining companies formed the Workman’s Loyalty League. Early on the morning of July 12, 2,000 Loyalty Leaguers from as far away as Douglas, Arizona, were assembled. All wore white armbands to distinguish them from other mining workers. Federal and state officials were kept ignorant of the vigilantes’ plans. The Western Union telegraph office was seized, preventing any communication to the town. At 6:30 A.M., Sheriff Harry Wheeler gave orders to begin the roundup. Throughout Bisbee, men were roused from their beds, their houses, and the streets. The vigilantes rounded up over 1,000 men, many of whom were not strikers—or even miners—and marched them two miles to the ballpark. There they were surrounded by armed Loyalty Leaguers and urged to quit the strike. Anyone willing to put on a white armband was released. At 11:00 A.M., a train arrived, and 1,186 men were loaded aboard boxcars inches deep in manure. Also boarding were 186 armed guards; a machine gun was mounted on the top of the train. The plan was to transport the men to Columbus, New Mexico, and leave them, but the train was turned back because there were insufficient accommodations. On its return trip the train stopped at Hermanas, New Mexico, where the men were abandoned. A later train brought water and food rations, but the men were left without shelter for two days, until federal troops arrived. The troops escorted the men to facilities in Columbus. Many were detained for several months. Meanwhile, Bisbee authorities mounted guards on all roads into town to ensure that no deportees returned and to prevent new so-called troublemakers from entering. A kangaroo court tried other people deemed disloyal to mining interests, who then faced deportation. Several months later, President Woodrow Wilson convened the Federal Mediation Commission to investigate the Bisbee deportation. The commission discovered that no federal law applied and referred the issue to the state of Arizona. The state of Arizona took no action against the copper companies. Approximately 300 deportees brought civil suits against the El Paso and Southwestern Railroad and the copper companies. None of these suits came to trial because of out-of-court settlements. Suits were also filed in state court against 224 vigilantes, but the only suit brought to trial ended in a not guilty verdict. The rest of the cases were dismissed.51

540

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Corrido al Mineral de Bisbee Por casi un siglo aqui en Bisbee trabajandose en la mina Junio de 75 toditito se termina.

After almost a century here Working in Bisbee In the mine, June of ’75 Everything was finished.

Ya les abian abisado con mucha antisipasion muchos abian recortado dandoles aplicasion

Already they have given notice, With much anticipation Many have been laid off And given pink slips.

Fue el puro 12 de Junio ultimo dia de el trabajo Cuando baharon la jaula todos ibancabisbajo [sic].

It was only June 12 The last day of work When they lowered the cage, Everyone was crestfallen.

Pues al pesar de el peligro que dia a dia pasaron piensan sus mejores anos en la mina se quadaron.

Well, in spite of the danger That they faced day to day They thought they would remain In the mines for most of their lives.

Nuestros padres trabajaron, nuestros abuelos tambien, nuestros hijos tambien quieren de minoros aprender.

Our fathers worked, Our grandfathers also, Our children also, Wanted to learn to become miners.

Por los rincones de Bisbee donde ay pura divercion sus caras se ben alegres pero sangra el corazon.

On the street corners of Bisbee Where folks gather to amuse themselves, Their faces were happy, But their hearts were bleeding.

En Bisbee asi nos miramos todititos como hermanos y a los companeros muertos todabia los lloramos

In Bisbee thus we regard ourselves All as brothers, And for our dead comrades We always are crying.

En la cantina del tavern famosa por los mineros el Yayo a todos consiente los be como companeros.

In the Tavern cantina Well-known among the miners, “Yayo” served everyone I see them as comrades.

Estos bersos que cante fueron compuestos de dia esperando que les gueste son de Victoria Garcia.

These verses that I sing Were composed on this day Hoping that you like them, They are by Victoria Garcia.

Aue termino cantado parandome en un declibe bersos que fueron compuestos al gran mineral de Bisbee.

Here I finish singing, Standing on a slope, Verses that were composed In honor of the great mines of Bisbee.52

On Friday the 13th, in June 1975, with barely a few days’ notice, workers in Bisbee’s mines were told the operations were closing for good. Bisbee abdicated its long-held dominance of copper production. Many were left jobless, with no prospect for employment elsewhere. Victoria Garcia, a stunningly attractive singer, sang this corrido regularly in

SOUTHWEST

541

Bisbee’s saloon, whose owner she eventually married. Bisbee’s open mine pit, an enormous hole scarred with shovel marks and truck paths, now stands mute less than a mile from Old Bisbee, a vista point for Bisbee’s steady parade of tourists who wander among its shops, restaurants, and historic landmarks. Three songs devoted to the town may seem disproportionate in the twenty-first century, when Bisbee is little more than a tourist attraction, but a century ago, it was Arizona’s third largest city and one of the busiest towns of the Southwest. El Corrido de Nogales

The Ballad of Nogales

Valientes nogalenses hicieron su deber: pelearon con los gringos hasta morir o vencer

Brave Nogalians Did their duty: They fought the gringos Until death or victory.

El veintisiete de agosto, como a las cuatro serían, se escucharon en la línea tiros de fusilería.

On the twenty-seventh of August, At about four o’clock, Rifle shots Were heard on the border.

Al pasar un mexicano por la línea divisora, le tiró un balazo un gringo: fue el principio de la historia.

When a Mexican crossed The border line, A gringo fired a shot at him: That was the beginning of the story.

Cumpliendo con su deber, Peñalosa corrió luego a la línea divisora a ver si calmaba el fuego.

Fulfilling his duty, Peñalosa ran right away, To the border To see if the firing had died down.

Pero luego que lo vieron, por los gringos fue baleado, y murió instantáneamente, y ahí se quedó tirado.

But as soon as they saw him, He was shot by the gringos, And he died instantly, And there he remained abandoned.

Todo el pueblo aglomerado al comandante fue a ver, pidiéndole parque y armas pa’ poderse defender.

All the people together Went to see the commander, Asking him for ammunition and arms So they could defend themselves.

Eran mil quinientos gringos. Todos eran federales, y no los dejó avanzar ese pueblo de Nogales.

There were fifteen hundred gringos. All were federal troops, And that town of Nogales Did not let them advance.

Hubo muchos mexicanos, traidores en demasía; tiraron contra su patria en el combate ese día.

There were many Mexicans, Traitors to excess; They shot at their fatherland In that day’s combat.

Sólo en Nogales, Sonora, todos eramos unidos, las mujeres entre balas recogiendo a los heridos.

Only in Nogales, Sonora, Were we all united, The women between shots Gathering in the wounded.

Esa soldadesca negra, abusando del poder,

That Black soldiery, Abusing their power,

542

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

tiroteó hasta la Cruz Roja, que cumplió con su deber.

Even shot up the Red Cross, Which fulfilled its duty.

Hirieron a dos mujeres las balas americanas, y dijieron [sic] “No hay cuidado, somos puras mexicanas.”

The American bullets Wounded two women, And they said, “Don’t worry, We’re true Mexicans.”

Sólo los soldados gringos no los volvimos a ver; metieron pura negrada y se fueron a esconder.

Only the gringo soldiers Did we not see again; They sent nothing but Blacks And hid themselves.

El señor gobernador, que luego llegó a Nogales, hubo algunas conferencias entre los dos generales.

The governor, Who arrived later in Nogales, Had some meetings Between the two generals.

Luego el jefe mexicano comenzó a conferenciar con el jefe americano, que quiso parlamentar.

Later the Mexican commander Began to meet With the American leader, Who wanted to parley.

Todo mexicano vil que pisa su pabellón es esclavo de los gringos y traidor a la nación.

Every vile Mexican Who tramples on his flag Is the slave of the gringos And traitor to the nation.

Él que muere por su patria muere con gloria y honor, y al sepulcro lo acompaña el pabellón tricolor.

He who dies for his Fatherland Dies with glory and honor, And the tricolor banner Will accompany him to his grave.

( Él ) Que compuso este corrido lo canta por cuatro reales, y especialmente lo hizo a los héroes de Nogales.

The man who composed this corrido Sings it for fifty cents, And he especially made it For the heroes of Nogales.53

The twin cities of Ambos Nogales (“both Nogales”) straddle the international border, one in the U.S. state of Arizona and the other in the Mexican state of Sonora. When José Elias Camou’s family received a Mexican land grant in 1841, the region was named “los nogales de Elias,” alluding to the local grove of walnut trees. For a brief period around 1883, the U.S. town was called “Isaactown,” after a Russian-born peddler with the (biblically apt) name of Jacob Isaacson, who established a border trading post around 1880.54 Between 1915 and 1918, the region was the site of more than the usual level of intercommunity tension and even violent hostilities. One of the provocations involved the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, whose forces executed more than a dozen U.S. citizens in Santa Isabel in January 1916 and then killed a similar number during an attack on Columbus, New Mexico, two months later. President Woodrow Wilson sent an expedition under the command of General John J. Pershing to capture Villa, but the efforts, including armed conflicts near Nogales, were unsuccessful. At about the same time, Arthur Zimmermann, Germany’s foreign secretary, conceived a plan to embroil the United States in war with Mexico and Japan. On January 16, 1917, he sent a secret coded telegram to the German minister in Mexico, authorizing him to propose an alliance with Mexico’s president Carranza. The offer included “an understanding on our

SOUTHWEST

543

part that Mexico is to reconquer her lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.” Intercepted and decoded by British intelligence, the telegram was made available to President Wilson, and it became one of the factors leading to the U.S. declaration of war against Germany five weeks later.55 Locally, animosities were running high in Ambos Nogales, when on the afternoon of August 27, 1918, an American customs official observed a Mexican crossing the border into Sonora and ordered him to halt. When the man ignored the demand, the customs officer and a military sentinel ran into the street, the latter with his pistol drawn. The Mexican customs official across the border witnessed the threatened attack and fired at the American soldier, wounding him. For the next two or so hours, shots were exchanged in both directions. By the time a truce was declared at around 6:30 P.M., 3 Americans had been killed and 24 wounded; Mexican fatalities were estimated at 30, with a similar number of wounded. The corrido quoted here came from a typed manuscript in the possession of the singer’s father. Many of the historical details are correctly recounted. The Anglo Americans earned the Mexicans’ contempt by sending African American soldiers into the fray, which was interpreted as fear of facing the Mexicans directly.56 The Hanging of Eva Dugan Down in Arizona was just the other day, The first time that a woman the death price had to pay; Yes, Mrs. Eva Dugan for whom there was hope, Stepped up to the gallows to receive the hangman’s rope. She led a wicked, lawless life, a murderess of note, But ere the time to pay the price these simple words she wrote: Bring me joy, oh, bring me sorrow, with the comin’ of the morrow, I won’t beg and I won’t borrow, of the fate that holds me fast; If I know there is no stayin’ that chill hand in spite of prayin’, And my hopes are ashes grayin,’ brave I’ll be until the last, Brave they’ll say when I have passed. It’s just another story of a poor soul gone astray, Misled by temptation but we know it doesn’t pay; The fate of Mrs. Dugan should teach us one and all, To heed our master up above and listen for his call. Now all that’s left of this sad tale is a moral, yes, indeed, On a little scrap of paper that she left for us to read.57

Early in 1927, Tucson rancher Andrew J. Mathis was in need of a housekeeper, and he hired Eva Dugan. Evidently, the arrangement was not satisfactory, and she was fired after a few weeks. Soon thereafter, Mathis and his Dodge pickup truck disappeared from the neighborhood without a trace. The Pima County sheriff put out a tracer on Dugan, and some time later, it was learned that she had sold the truck (either in Kansas or Texas) for $600, claiming that her husband, Mr. Mathis, needed the money for surgery. By then, Mathis needed no such thing, though it wasn’t for nine months that his decomposing body was accidentally uncovered by a camper in the process of setting up his tent. Meanwhile, a search for Dugan turned her up in White Plains, New Jersey, and she was extradited to Arizona in March 1927. She was tried for theft, found guilty, and sent to prison; then, after the body was discovered, she was tried again for murder. Though there was no direct evidence (no witnesses or fingerprints), and though all she admitted to was

544

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

a quarrel between her and Mathis, she was nevertheless found guilty and sentenced to hang—the only woman executed in Arizona until then. Composed and confident, Dugan continued to assert her innocence in interviews from her jail cell with journalists, for which she charged $1 each. She was hanged at Arizona State Prison on February 21, 1930, at age 52, after all avenues of appeal were exhausted. Witnesses were horrified to watch her head wrenched from her body as the improperly prepared hangman’s rope snapped taut at 5:02 A.M.

NEW MEXICO The first Europeans to visit New Mexico were Spaniards—including Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who had been shipwrecked on the Texas coast in 1528—almost a full century before the founding of Jamestown, Virginia. For the next decade, Cabeza de Vaca traversed the countryside, first south to the site of Mexico City and then north into New Mexico, in search of mineral wealth that he was assured was not far off. Colonization did not get under way until the very last decade of the century, when New Spain’s Juan de Oñate was granted a contract from the King of Spain to settle the region. Oñate’s explorations took him as far north as Kansas and as far west as the Gulf of California ( between Mexico and Baja California). Though the settlements grew and prospered, interactions were not always satisfactory with the native Indians, who resented attempts at Christianization and subjugation to the point of slavery. By the end of the eighteenth century, the Hispanic population had grown to about 20,000. In 1821, Mexico—the lands of New Mexico included—won independence from Spain. The Mexican War ended in 1848 with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which formally ceded New Mexico to the United States. The Compromise Measures of 1850 divided the area east of California into territories of New Mexico (including what is now Arizona) and Utah, and both were opened to impatient settlers. The 1845 annexation of Texas did not satisfy expansionist ambitions, and greedy eyes soon turned to all of the Southwest and California. At the same time the acquisition of Texas antagonized Mexicans, who considered an insult the transfer of territory that they formerly owned, and they severed diplomatic relations with the United States. President James K. Polk sent a special envoy to negotiate with Mexico over the disputed boundary between Texas and Mexico, but he also had secret instructions to negotiate the purchase of California and New Mexico. When the Mexican press found out, there was such an outcry of resentment that the Mexican president declined to negotiate further. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to march his troops from Louisiana to Texas and enter the disputed territory between the two countries, an act deliberately designed to provoke war. When the two armies engaged in a skirmish, Polk pressed Congress into declaring war on Mexico in 1846. General Stephen W. Kearny, commanding the U.S. Army of the West, invaded New Mexico after a long march from Kansas and captured Santa Fe without a shot, claiming New Mexico for the United States on August 19, 1846. Though the Mexican armies in many cases outnumbered the American forces, their weapons were outmoded by comparison, and they suffered many times more casualties in all their battles with the Americans. During the Civil War, New Mexico was briefly controlled by the Confederacy. After Confederate withdrawal in 1863, the federal government organized the western part into the territory of Arizona, reducing New Mexico to its present boundaries. On January 6, 1912, New Mexico became the 47th state.58

SOUTHWEST

545

Although at the beginning of the twenty-first century more than 40 percent of the state’s population considered themselves Hispanic, a much smaller proportion is traceable back to the direct migration from Spain. Nevertheless, twentieth-century folk song collectors have found songs and ballads still alive in oral tradition that are derived from Spanish lore of the eighteenth century and earlier. La Cucaracha

The Cockroach

Una cosa me da risa Pancho Villa sin camisa, Ya se van los Carrancistas Porque vienen los Villistas

Something makes me now to laugh, Pancho Villa takes his shirt off, See the Carranzistas coming Because old Poncho shakes the dirt off.

Chorus: La Cucaracha, (2) Ya no puede caminar, Porque no tiene, porque le faltan, Marihuana de fumar

Chorus: Little dancer, (2) I’m so tired I cannot walk, I have no pipe nor marihuana, Nor any cause just now to talk.

Necessita automovil, Para hacer la caminata, Al lugar a donde mando La convencion Zapata.

Now we need an automobile As we’ve a long ways to go To the place where we are ordered For the convention of Zapata.

Las solteras son de oro Las casadas son de plata Las viudas son de cobre, Y las viejas de hoja de lata.

Bachelor girls are pure gold, Married ones, silver’s their fate; The widows are all of copper, But the old ones are merely tin plate.

Las muchachas Mejicanas Son lindas como una flor, Y de verlas tan galanas Llena el corazón de amor.

The little girls of Mexico Are lovely like a flower, And to see them dressed so fine Fills the heart with love each hour.59

Doroteo Arango (1877–1923), celebrated Mexican revolutionary general, changed his name to that of a once-notorious bandit in his native state of Durango, Francisco “Pancho” Villa. In 1910, after an early career in cattle rustling, he joined in the revolt against Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz. Though Diaz was forced to resign in the following year, the administration of his successor, President Madero, did not proceed smoothly, and years of continual revolts and counterrevolts followed. Villa was principally concerned with equitable land reform and aligned himself with political and military leaders accordingly. Madero’s regime quickly collapsed, and he was followed in fairly rapid succession by General Victoriano Huerta and then General Venustiano Carranza. Villa served under Huerta but was later sentenced to execution by him for insubordination. He managed to escape into Texas, reentering Mexico in 1914 to join forces with General Carranza. The alliance was short-lived, and Villa was soon driven out of Mexico by Carranza’s chief general. In 1916 he entered the United States and raided Columbus, New Mexico, killing 16 citizens and partly burning the town. President Wilson sent General Pershing with a force into Mexico to capture Villa, but Carranza objected to U.S. troops coming into Mexico, so they withdrew. Villa was assassinated in 1923. The last line of the second stanza refers to Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919), another Mexican revolutionary leader and agrarian reformer. He joined Madero in the 1910 revolt against Diaz but later lost faith in Madero and continued his resistance against the governments of both Huerta and then Carranza. He was murdered by an agent of Carranza in 1914 in Morelos.

546

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Based on these historical events, the song probably dates from the 1910s. The collector provided the preceding extraordinarily liberal translation. A more literal rendition of the chorus would be as follows: The cockroach, the cockroach, I’m too tired to walk Because I don’t have—because I’m in need of Marijuana to smoke.

The song has remained widely popular in Hispanic American tradition, but not always with the historical references to Villa and his compadres.60 Natalicio de Washington

Washington’s Birthday

Hoy commemoramos el dia de Washington, cantando por las calles en grande batallón.

Today we commemorate Washington’s birthday, Singing through the streets In a great battalion.

Chorus: ¡Que viva la nación que viva la nación que flote la bandera en el campo de honor!

Chorus: Long live the nation, Long live the nation, Long float the flag In the field of honor!

Tarram, tarram, tarram, tarram, tarram, tarram, con pitos y tambores hoy dia de Washington

Tarram, tarram, tarram, Tarram, tarram, tarram, With fife and drum This day is Washington’s.

El primer presidente de nuestra grande unión fué un hombre muy valiente llamado Washington. Chorus.

The first president Of our grand union. Was a very brave man Called Washington. Chorus.

Fusiles disparemos en commemoración de feliz nacimiento de George Washington. Chorus.

We fire off guns In commemoration Of the happy birth Of George Washington. Chorus.

La bandera de la unión denota nuestro honor; así fué preservada por toda la nación

The flag of the union Is the symbol of our honor; So it was preserved For all the nation.61

It is a vivid testament to the local popularity of George Washington that this song was composed and sung about him in the Hispanic communities of New Mexico, which did not become part of the United States until many years after Washington’s demise. Clayton Boone Twas out in New Mexico Along the Spanish line, I was working for old Clayton Boone, A man well past his prime.

SOUTHWEST

547

Well, he rides in and asks of me, “What’s happened to my lady?” I says to him, “She’s quit your range And runs with a handsome Davy.” “Go saddle for me that proud cut dun With the coal black mane and tail. Point out to me their fresh laid tracks And after them I’ll trail, “I’ll buckle on my leatheren chaps I’ll tie my pistol lower, I’ll step aboard that blackstrap dun And ride this whole world over.” I rode upon a saddle fine, A saddle made of silver, My bridle rein of beaten gold Not of your common leather. I rode until the midnight sun Til I seen their campfire burnin’ And I heard the sweetest mandolin And the voice of young Dave singing, “Come home with me to your own sweet bed The sheets turned down so gaily, Do not forget my silver and gold And your darling baby.” “Well, I’ll not come home to my own sweet bed The sheets turned down so gaily, And I’ll forget your silver and gold, And all for the love of Davy, But I can’t forget my baby. “Last night I slept with a mean old man In golden rooms so stately, Tonight I sleep on the hard cold ground By the warm side of my Davy, And I’ll ride along with Dave.”62

One of the hallmarks of traditional folksinging is the facility of traditional singers to adapt older songs and ballads to circumstances that make more sense in their own world of experiences. “Clayton Boone” is an Americanized version of one of the oldest ballads that was brought to America by British song-bearing immigrants. Not only one of the oldest, it is also one of the most often collected (and therefore, probably most popular), having been recorded or published more than 200 times in a century of American folk song collecting. According to the traditional English story, John, sixth Earl of Cassilis, married Lady Jean Hamilton, whose affections (doubtless unknown to him) had already been bestowed on Sir John Faa of Dunbar. A few years elapse, in the course of which she bears two sons. Then, one day, the wily Faa, disguised as a gypsy and accompanied by a band of gypsies, appears at the Cassilis castle and persuades his true love, Lady Jean, to elope with him. Very soon the earl returns home, discovers the betrayal, and rides out, armed, in hot pursuit.

548

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Faa’s band is captured and all save one are hanged. This is supposed to have happened in the 1640s. Factual or not, it is known that there were gypsy chieftains in England at the time named Faa and that they (and the gypsies as a whole) were regarded with a mixture of fear, suspicion, and fascination. The earliest appearance of a ballad telling the story was in a broadside text of the 1720s, though it is assumed that the song is considerably older. The ballad was brought to the United States at an unknown time (or times) and spread across the continent, enthralling audiences in all parts of the country, including the Southwest. A fascinating variable story element concerns whether the wife’s elopement is viewed as a tragic and foolish rejection of status and comfort or a happy release from a joyless marriage. Different versions take different sides in this regard: Clayton Boone’s wife clearly can’t wait to be free of him. Also variable is the ultimate outcome: in some tellings, the story ends with the cuckolded husband exacting the ultimate revenge; in others, as in “Clayton Boone,” the ballad singer is content to let matters rest with the lovers’ successful flight. The Santa Fe Trail Say, Pard! have yuh sighted a schooner, way out on the Santa Fe Trail, They made it by Monday or sooner, with a water keg tied on the tail; There was Pappy and Maw on the mule seat, and somewhere along by the way, A little tow-headed gal on a pinto, just a danglin’ fer old Santa Fe. I saw her ride down the arroyo, ’way out on the Arkansas sand, With a smile like an acre of sunflowers, and a little brown quirt in her hand; She mounted her pinto so airy, and rode like she carried the mail, And her eyes nigh set fire tuh the prairie, ’way out on the Santa Fe Trail. I know a gal down by the border, I would ride tuh El Paso tuh sight, Got acquainted with her shippin’ cattle, and I sometimes kiss some gals goodnight. But Lord, they’re all fruffles and sweetin’, and afternoon tea by the pail, But I’ll stick to me sorter Sam beatin’, ’way out on the Santa Fe Trail. We mebbe’ll make Tooner by sundown, when yore huntin’ some gal it’s some way, And ’tis shorter from hell to Hilary than it is on the old Santa Fe. And if we make Tooner by sundown, where a tank may be made in the swale, I will ride with my gal on a pinto, ’way out on the Santa Fe Trail.63

It’s an undistinguished pop song from the days when Tin Pan Alley was just discovering the marketable potential of songs about cowboys and the West, but it was picked up by several western singers and enjoyed some oral currency for a while. It is more interesting as a reminder of an early commercial period in the West when wagon trails were the only avenues for transportation. The prairie schooner was a wagon similar to the Conestoga, but smaller—usually a farm wagon covered with a canvas top supported by wooden arches. The white canvas covering resembled the sails of a water-plowing schooner, inspiring the wagon’s name. They had long been obsolete by the time this song was written, in 1911, having been supplanted by the transcontinental railroads. For that matter, the Santa Fe Trail itself was out of business by then; a major trade route from Independence, Missouri, to Santa Fe, it was opened in 1821 but little used after 1880. Hills of Mexico It was in the town of Griffin in the year of eighty-three, When an old cowpuncher stepped up and this he said to me:

SOUTHWEST

549

“Howdy do, young feller, and how’d you like to go And spend a pleasant summer out in New Mexico?” I, being out of employment, to the puncher I did say: “Depends upon the wages that you will have to pay. You pay to me good wages and transportation too, And I think that I will go with you one summer season through.” We left the town of Griffin in the merry month of May, The flowers were all blooming and everything seemed gay. Our trip it was a pleasure, the road we had to go, Until we reached Old Boggy, out in New Mexico. It was there our pleasures ended and troubles then begun; The first hailstorm came on us, oh, how those cattle run! Through mesquite, thorns, and thickets we cowboys had to go, While the Indians watched our pickets out in New Mexico. And when the drive was over, the foreman wouldn’t pay; To all of you good people, this much I have to say: With guns and rifles in our hands, I’ll have you all to know, We left his bones to bleach upon the hills of Mexico. And now the drive is over and homeward we are bound. No more in this damned old country will ever I be found. Back to friends and loved ones, and tell them not to go To the God-forsaken country they call New Mexico.64

“Hills of ( New) Mexico” is a variant of “Buffalo Skinners,” encountered earlier in this chapter under the group of songs from Texas. “Hills of Mexico” describes one of the cattle drives along the Goodnight-Loving Trail, a trail west of the more famous Chisholm Trail that started from central Texas near Fort Griffin, followed the Pecos River, traversed the length of New Mexico northward, and continued on to Denver and other points. Cattle baron Charles Goodnight, believing too many Texas longhorns were already being driven to Kansas, opted for a more western route that would put him closer to far-west miners and army forts. Goodnight joined up with cattleman Oliver Loving in 1866 to drive 2,000 head of cattle north. The worst part of the trip was through the 100-mile sandy, waterless stretch of west Texas called the “Llano Estacado,” misleadingly translated as “Staked Plains” (“palisaded plains” would be more accurate). Undrinkable alkaline water was only one problem; hostile Comanche Indians in Texas and Mescalero Apaches of the Guadalupe Mountains were another. “Old Boggy” was the local name for the Delaware River, a tributary to the Pecos. Plantonio, the Pride of the Plain I’ll tell you a story: There is one I know, Of a horse I once owned In New Mexico. Swift as an antelope, Black as a crow, Star on his forehead Was whiter than snow.

550

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

His arched neck was hidden By a long flow of mane, They called him Plantonio, The Pride of the Plain. The country was new, And the settlers were scarce, And the Indians on the warpath Were savage and fierce. The captain stepped up, Said someone must go For the aid and protection Of New Mexico. A dozen young fellows Straightforward said “Here!” But the captain saw me— I was standing quite near. “You’re good for the ride, You’re the lightest one here; On the back of that mustang, You’ve nothing to fear.” They all shook my hand As I nodded my head; Rode down the dark pathway, And north turned his head. The black struck a trot, And he kept it all night; And just as the east Was beginning to light, Not a great ways behind There arose a fierce yell, And I knew that the redskins Were hot on my trail. I jingled the bells At the end of his rein, Spoke his name softly, And struck his dark mane. He answered my call With a toss of his head; His dark body lengthened And faster he sped. The arrows fell ’round us Like torrents of rain; Plantonio, Plantonio, The Pride of the Plain. I delivered my message And tried to dismount,

SOUTHWEST

551

But the pain in my foot Was so sharp I could not. The arrow you see Hanging there on the wall, Had passed through my foot, Stirrup, saddle and all. With New Mexico saved, We’d not ridden in vain; Plantonio, Plantonio, The Pride of the Plain.65

There were doubtless some felicitous interactions between western settlers and Native Americans, but for the most part, their relations were doomed, as are any between two peoples craving the same piece of land. A number of ballads from the frontier lands— regardless which end of the continent—retell or fabricate stories of attacks by bloodthirsty “redskins.” There are no accounts by the natives themselves to present their side of the story, though there are some ballads that credit the Indians at least with bravery and skill, if not justification. Plantonio’s story is set in New Mexico, but the song has been collected throughout the Southwest and as far away as Ontario, Canada. Billy the Kid I’ll sing you a true song of Billy the Kid, I’ll sing of the death-daring deeds that he did, Way out in New Mexico long time ago, When a man’s only chance was his own forty-four. When Billy the Kid was a very young man, In old Silver City he went to the bad; Way out in the West with a knife in his hand, At the age of twelve years, he killed his first man. Fair Mexican maidens play guitars and sing A song about Billy, their boy bandit king; How, ere his young manhood had reached its sad end, Had a notch on his pistol for twenty-one men. Then Governor Lew Wallace sent word to the Kid, To come in and talk for a pardon to bid. But Billy said, “I ain’t afraid of the law, There’s not a man livin’ can beat my fast draw.” The Governor then sent for another fast man, Pat Garrett the sheriff, and told of a plan, To catch Billy nappin’ at his gal’s so he said, “We’ll bring him to justice alive or dead.” Now, ’twas on the same night when poor Billy died, He said to his friends, “I’m not satisfied; There are twenty-one men I have put bullets through, But Sheriff Pat Garrett must make twenty-two.” Now this is how Billy the Kid met his fate: The bright moon was shining, the hour was late;

552

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

To Pete Maxwell’s ranch he rode all in pride Not knowing the dark hid the Sheriff inside. As Billy stood outlined in the moon-lighted door, He fell in his tracks and lay dead on the floor; Shot down by Pat Garrett, who once was his friend, The young outlaw’s life had now come to its end. There’s many a man with face fine and fair, Who starts out in life with a chance to keep square; But just like poor Billy, he wanders astray, And loses his life in the very same way.66

He is usually identified as William H. Bonney, but Billy the Kid (1859 or 1860–1881) used many different appellations in his short but exciting life. Born in New York City, Bonney and his family wandered to Kansas, then Colorado, and finally New Mexico, in the course of which travels his father died and his mother remarried. While his city-dwelling age mates would be playing cowboys and Indians on the streets of New York, teenage Billy the Kid spent way too much of his youth in rough-and-tumble frontier saloons of Silver City in his new home state. In scarcely a dozen years, he claimed to have shot and killed 21 men, the first at the age of 12, when his former playmates would be receiving confirmation in church. Possibly he did tally the shootings with notches on his pistol, but not likely; as one gunslinger supposedly said, “Why ruin a good gun?” Between murders, he was busy with robbery and cattle stealing—the latter probably the more serious offense on the frontier. In about 1878 he became involved in the Lincoln County wars between sheepherders and cattlemen, where, in 1880, he was captured by Sheriff Pat Garrett. On April 28, 1881, though convicted and sentenced to hang, Billy the Kid managed to escape from jail, shortening the sheriff’s roster of deputies by two in the process. Shortly after his escape, Billy was trapped and fatally shot by Garrett on July 14 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. A 1973 film by Sam Peckinpah, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson, told much of the story. This factually accurate ballad about him was not contemporary (though there may have been others, since lost), but was written in 1927 by Reverend Andrew Jenkins and recorded soon after by prolific recording artist Vernon Dalhart. Like many of Dalhart’s recordings, this one was widely audited and learned and soon entered oral tradition. Governor Lew Wallace, mentioned in the fourth stanza, is better remembered today as the author of Ben Hur than for having persecuted Billy. The Cowboys’ New Years Dance We were sitting ’round the ranch house some twenty hands or more, Most of us Americans but a few from Arkansas; One Dutchman from the fatherland and one Johnny Bull from Leeds, A Cornishman from Cornwall, all men of different creeds. They were sittin’ an’ a arguin’ busy as a hill of ants, How they’d get rid of the money they had buried in their pants. That they’d made by hard cow punching work all the year around, From sunup until sundown an’ a sleepin’ on the ground, Where at night the polecat saunters round the chuck box after grub And in passing by your hot roll gives your head a friendly rub; Where the rattlesnake lays dormant, his fangs are like a lance— ’Twas with them that I attended the Cowboys’ New Years Dance.

SOUTHWEST

The town was Roswell City, old Chaves’ county seat, Where they raise fine shorthorn cattle that are mighty hard to beat; Where they send the frail consumptive in search of instant health, And the hills is just a bustin’ with their pent up mineral wealth; Where the wells are all artesian and flow fish and water too, ’Least, so says the Roswell people, so I sorter guess it’s true; Where laughin’ Joe, the darky, bust up Mulkey’s show one day By laughin’ at prayer meetin’ and old Abe, he went away; Charles Perry he was a sheriff and G. Curry county clerk, Where they caught Bill Cook the outlaw and sent him off to work; Where the moonbeams on the Pecos seem to glitter and to glance, I received an invitation to the Cowboys’ New Years Dance. The boys had been invited and they just come in herds, The ladies more numerous had flocked to town like birds; Old Roswell was just crowded there was horses everywhere, Looked like some long procession headed for a county fair; Where everything was orderly as I remember well, Invitations were extended to the Roswell Stone Hotel. The music was a fiddle, a guitar, and a banjo, And the way those three boys played ’em, it was fully half the show; The women folks set together, all the boys stood in the door, ’Till the caller commenced yellin’ for just one couple more; And the music started windin’ an’ a wailin’ like some hants, That had come to cast their hoodo on the Cowboys’ New Years Dance. The caller was a feller, one of Atkinson’s men, Who had the reputation of once being in the pen; His outfit sort of gaudy, big spurs an’ conchas bright, Fringed leggin’s and gold buttons—six feet about his height; He was tall an’ angular an,’ a broncho buster, right, An’ at callin’ out the dances he was simply out of sight. Soon he commenced to beller: “Now fellers all begin: Grab your lovely partners an’ every one jine in; First bow to your partners now four hands cross an’ change, An’ chase those pretty footies once around the range; Join once again your partner around the circles prance”— It was getting interesting, the Cowboys’ New Years Dance. “Next dance will be the Lancers, round up your ladies, boys, Cut them all to the center and never mind the noise; Chase your lovely critters all into the branding pen, Everybody swing everybody else’s girl and swing them once again. Dash your line on the nearest filly and drag her from the herd, Resume your former places and swing her like a bird; Now, Brownfield, strike out in the lead, all grand right and left, Swing each one when half way round, never mind their hat. Now, ladies, to the center, all hands do-se-do, Right hand in left hand out, swing and let her go; Trail block Jack, to your settees for that winds up the lance”— My but it was getting furious, the Cowboys’ New Years Dance. The refreshments came round often till all hands had their fill, Past ’round uncerimonous [sic] like by Broncho Buster Bill;

553

554

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Though his gait was quite uncertain he never lost his feet, And at complementing [sic] ladies he was mighty hard to beat. To close up the night proceedings we ragged “Turkey in the Straw” Till we wore out the musicians and they could play no more. We were served with soda water, red eye, and pilsner beer, And the conversation never lagged ’twas most penetrating clear; ’En those who never danced before would dance with all their might, ’En the most peaceably inclined citizens went a hunting for a fight. So we saddled up our horses, drifted homeward to the ranch, With a happy recollection of the Cowboys’ New Years Dance.67

This song was based on an earlier composition of 1893 by Larry Chittenden, “The Cowboys’ Christmas Ball,” but never achieved the popularity of its inspiration. The Christmas ball took place somewhere in Texas; this New Years dance was set in Roswell, long before the alleged appearance of flying saucers. The “Lancers” was a popular type of quadrille dance introduced in the 1830s and at the height of popularity in the 1860s.

NOTES 1. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Oklahoma.” 2. Translated by Kathy Sierra from the Cherokee text, which can be seen at http://www.smith sonianglobalsound.org/images/docs/orphan_child_transcription. 3. Nargaset Indian singer-songwriter Peter LaFarge (1931–1965), who composed many trenchant songs about the plight of Native Americans ( best known of which is “The Ballad of Ira Hayes”), wrote and recorded a song about the Cherokee march, “The Trail of Tears,” available on On the Warpath/As Long as the Grass Shall Grow, Bear Family BCD 15626. 4. Recorded by Harry “Mac” McClintock on March 27, 1928, in Oakland, California, and issued on RCA Victor 21421, 78 rpm, in July 1928; reissued on Authentic Cowboys and Their Western Folksongs, LP album RCA LPV-522. 5. For more historical background, see John Rossel, “The Chisholm Trail,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 5 (February 1936): 3–14, and Wayne Gard, “Retracing the Chisholm Trail,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 60 (July 1956): 53–68. 6. For bawdy versions, see Ed Cray, The Erotic Muse: American Bawdy Songs, 2nd ed. ( Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992), pp. 186–92. 7. John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads ( New York: Macmillan, 1910), 58–59. 8. From Bradley Kincaid, My Favorite Mountain Ballads and Old-Time Songs (1931), 4:26. 9. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Red River ( United States)” and “Red River of the North.” 10. Actually, Churchill said, “I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” (1939). 11. Edith Fowke, “ ‘The Red River Valley’ Re-Examined,” Western Folklore 23 (July 1974): 163–71. 12. Henry Wehman’s Song Book, no. 24 (October 1889), 17. 13. “Oklahoma,” sung by Merle Lovell in Shafter, California, FSA Camp, on August 4, 1940, and recorded by Todd and Sonkin (AFC 4111 A2). 14. The text is readily available; see, for example, Dorothy Horstman, Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, 3rd ed. ( Nashville, TN: Country Music Foundation Press, 1996), p. 343. 15. Woody and Lefty Lou’s Favorite Collection Old Time Hill Country Songs, Being Sung for Ages, Still Going Strong ( Los Angeles: Radio Station KFVD, n.d. [1938?]). 16. Ibid. I thank Guthrie scholar-bibliographer Guy Logsdon for making this rare song folio available to me.

SOUTHWEST

555

17. For more information, see Guy Logsdon, “Woody Guthrie and His Oklahoma Hills,” MidAmerica Folklore 19 (1991): 57–73. Logsdon was instrumental in getting the state legislature to declare Guthrie’s composition the official state song. 18. From The National Songster, also titled The Rough and Ready Songster ( New York: Richard Marsh, n.d., ca. 1840), 47– 48. By T. A. Durriage, to the tune of “Bruce’s Address.” 19. “Yellow Rose of Texas,” as sung by Gene Autry, recorded January 27, 1933, in Chicago, Illinois, and issued on Victor 23792, 78 rpm, in 1933; reissued on Country Loon LP CSC 069. 20. From Sterling Sherwin and F. Henri Klickman, Songs of the Roundup ( New York: Robbins, 1934), 34–35. The text also appeared in Wehman’s Song Book, no. 30 (1891). Though the Wehman broadside was printed much earlier, the Sherwin version, the longest ever printed, seems to represent an older text. 21. For more historical background, see Robert M. Utley, Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Walter Prescott Webb, The Texas Rangers: A Century of Frontier Defense, 2nd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965); and also http://www.texasranger.org/history/ Brief History1 htm. 22. Another version, one of the earliest published, has the fight lasting five hours. See Sharlot M. Hall, “Songs of the Old Cattle Trails,” Out West 28 ( March 1908): 216–21. 23. Robert McReynolds, Thirty Years on the Frontier (Colorado Springs, CO: El Paso, 1906), 230–31. 24. At another Plum Creek, in Phelps County, Nebraska, on August 7, 1864, occurred what was also called the Plum Creek Massacre when a train of a dozen wagons was attacked in the night by Indians. This was the beginning of what was called the Indian War of 1864. McReynolds ( p. 221) implied that this fragmentary text was recalled by fellow frontiersman George P. Marvin, who believed it to have referred to that Plum Creek tragedy rather than the one in Texas. See also Levette Jay Davidson, “Songs of the Rocky Mountain Frontier,” California Folklore Quarterly 2 (April 1943): 102. If this indeed is the Plum Creek in question, then we have no sound basis for pushing the ballad back as far as the 1830s. 25. From N. Howard (“Jack”) Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys (1908), 31–33, where it is titled “Buffalo Range”; typographic errors have been corrected and punctuation has been regularized. For references to other collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), 137–38 [ B 10]. 26. Fannie Hardy Eckstrom and Mary Winslow Smyth, Ministrelsy of Maine (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), p. 22. 27. The relationships among these ballads was explored by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm in “Canaday I O,” Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast (Cambridge, MA, 1933), 6:10–13. 28. As sung by Johnny Prude for John A. Lomax at Fort Davis, Texas, 1942. Issued on Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls from Texas, Library of Congress LP AAFS L28; reissued as Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls, Rounder CD 1512. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 133 [ B 1]. 29. John A. Lomax, “A Cowboy’s Lament,” Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 74. 30. From a circular, “Albert’s Buckhorn Saloon,” sent by E. E. Peabody to Robert W. Gordon on March 2, 1927 (Gordon letter no. 2637, 2666). 31. Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys, 77–78. Thorp included an additional last stanza: The red pepper grows on the banks of the brooks; The Mexicans use it in all that they cook. Just dine with a Greaser, and then you will shout, “I’ve hell on the inside as well as the out!” 32. From the sheet music, words by Rob’t. F. Roden, music by Max S. Witt, copyright by Jos. W. Stern and Company, 1900. For references to collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 143–44 [B 23]. The song also was recorded three times by hillbilly artists between 1928 and 1935, most memorably by the Carter Family.

556

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

33. As recorded by Pedro Rocha and Lupe Martinez in San Antonio in October 1929 and issued on Vocalion 8351, 78 rpm; reissued in the two-CD set First Recordings of Historic MexicanAmerican Ballads (1928–37): Corridos y Tragedias de la Frontera, Arhoolie/ Folklyric 7019/7020. The transcription and translation (with minor modifications) are from the enclosed brochure. 34. Another recording was made in the mid-1950s in San Antonio by Timoteo Cantu and Jesus Maya and issued on Ideal 294, 78 rpm; reissued on Folk Music in America: Songs of Local History and Events, Library of Congress LP LBC 12. 35. “Midnight Special Blues,” recorded by Sam Collins on ca. September 17, 1927, in Chicago or Richmond; issued on Champion 15397, 78 rpm; reissued on Sam Collins: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order (1927–1931), Document DOCD 5034. Transcribed by R. R. Mcleod, Document Blues-1 (Edinburgh: PAT, 1994), 307–8. 36. From recording by Huddie Ledbetter for the Library of Congress, LC AFS 124 A1; reissued on Folksongs, CDs Frémeaux et Associés FA 047; on Rounder 1500 and Rounder 1143. For the historical background, see Mack McCormick, “A Who’s Who of ‘The Midnight Special,’ ” Caravan 19 (January 1960): 10–21. 37. Bob and Joe Attlesey, recorded August 4, 1933, in Chicago; issued on RCA Victor 23843, 78 rpm, and Bluebird B-6001 under pseudonym of Lone Star Cowboys; reissued on Folk Music in America. 38. Joe Evans, “Down in Black Bottom,” recorded May 21, 1931, and issued on 78 rpm Perfect 184; reissued on Two Poor Boys—Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order, Document DOCD 5044. 39. Black Bottom McPhail, “Down in Black Bottom,” recorded March 17, 1932, and issued on 78 rpm Vocalion 1721; reissued on Scrapper Blackwell, Yazoo LP L-1019. 40. As recorded by Dwight Butcher, May 28, 1934, in New York and released on RCA Bluebird B5521, 78 rpm (under the pseudonym Joe Smith). The song was written by Joe Hoover. Another ballad, “Bonnie and Clyde,” was recorded by Hermes Nye on Texas Folk Songs (Folkways LP FA2128). 41. See Webb, Texas Rangers, 538–44. 42. Recorded in 1949 by Peter Tufts from Abraham John Busby at Chandler, Arizona; issued on Songs of the Mormons and Songs of the West, Library of Congress LP AFS L30. 43. From a broadside published in Dundee, Scotland. 44. As sung by Slim Critchlow on Cowboy Songs: “The Crooked Trail To Holbrook,” Arhoolie LP 5007. For the earliest printed versions, see Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys (1921), 53; Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, 121; Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, rev. and enlarged ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 37; and Guy Logsdon, “The Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing” and Other Songs Cowboys Sing (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 70–73; Laws, Native American Balladry, 259 [dB 30]. 45. From Edward Arthur Dolph, “Sound Off !”: Soldier Songs from Yankee Doodle to Parley Voo ( New York: Cosmopolitan Book, 1929), 554–55. 46. Words by Gail I. Gardner, Orejana Bull for Cowboys Only ( Phoenix, AZ: Messinger, 1935), 7–8. A dogie (literally, a calf whose mother has died) with long ears was one that had not been earmarked, i.e., had some part of the ears clipped off for identification. Whiskey Row was (and perhaps still is) a block-and-a-half-long row of saloons on Montezuma Street in Prescott. Dallies are turns of the rope around the saddle horn. A riata is a braided rawhide rope; a seago is a tightly woven grass rope. Tailed him down means yanked his tail after he was all tied up so he would fall over. 47. See Logsdon, Whorehouse Bells, 127–32. 48. Gardner, Orejana Bull. 49. From Joseph Miller, Arizona: The Grand Canyon State. A State Guide, rev. ed. ( New York: Hastings House, 1966), 161. 50. From The Great Bisbee IWW Deportation of July 12, 1917: a Compilation of the events that took place from newspapers, magazines, photographs, official records and the accounts of some of the participants. With an introduction and interpretation by Rob E. Henson, IWW Member 327267. Reprinted from One Big Union Monthly (August 1919), signed “For the Second Anniversary, by

SOUTHWEST

557

Card No. 512210.” The punctuation has been modernized. Also reprinted, with minor differences, in Joyce L. Kornbluh, Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 309. 51. For more, see the University of Arizona Web site exhibit at http://www.library.arizona.edu/ exhibits/ bisbee/ history/overview html. 52. Copied exactly as given in the Bisbee Review, June 12, 1975 (from archive of Bisbee Museum). My thanks to docent Jack Riddle for bringing this to my attention and to Jim Griffith, Jesus Garcia, and Alfred Gonzales for assistance with the translation. “Yayo” is a standard nickname for Eduardo, Gerardo, or Hilario. The meaning of the line in the last stanza, “Standing on a slope,” is obscure; possibly she means standing on the slope overlooking the mine pit. 53. As sung by Robert Lee Benton Jr. and Oscar Gonzales, recorded in 1999 by Jack Loeffler and issued on the CD Heroes and Horses: Corridos from the Arizona-Sonora Borderlands, Smithsonian Folkways SFW CD 40475, transcription and translation from the brochure notes by Jim Griffith. I am grateful to Griffith for bringing this item to my attention. 54. Will C. Barnes’ Arizona Place Names, rev. and enlarged by Byrd H. Granger (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1960), 320–21; also Genevive H. Gutiérrez, “Ambos Nogales: The Wall Is Only Physical,” in Discover Southern Arizona (Green Valley: Green Valley News and Sun, n.d., ca. 2007), 36. 55. From Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Nogales.” 56. From the brochure notes by Jim Griffith. Griffith cites other versions of the corrido as well. 57. Recorded by Vernon Dalhart in New York City on March 6, 1930, and issued on Columbia 15530-D, 78 rpm, under the pseudonym Al Craver in May 1930. The song was written by recording artists Arthur Fields, words, and Fred Hall, music, in 1930. 58. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “New Mexico,” and Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “New Mexico.” 59. Spanish text and English translation from Mary R. Van Stone (collector and transcriber), Spanish Folk Songs of New Mexico (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1926), 13–14. Last two stanzas added in 1963 edition (Spanish Folk Songs of the Southwest ). No details are given regarding where, when, or from whom in New Mexico the song was collected. 60. Numerous other songs were recorded about Villa; a number of these were reissued on The Mexican Revolution: A Collection of Corridos from Early Historic Recordings, Folklyric CD 9041/44: El Corrido de Durango. Los Dorados de Durango (Mexico, ca. 1965) Gral. Francisco Villa. Los Cuatezones (Andres Alvarez and Salome Gutierrez, San Antonio, ca. 1965) La Toma de Torreon /The Assault on Torreon. Los Elegres de Teran (Mexico, ca. 1960) La Toma de Zacatecas /The Assault on Zacatecas. Los Errantes (Mexico, ca. 1960) Pancho Villa. Hermanos Chavarria (McAllen, Texas, ca. 1950) La Punitiva /The Punitive Expedition, parts ½ (Luis Hernandez and Leonardo Sifuentes, El Paso, Texas, July 16, 1929) La Toma de Celaya /The Assault on Celaya, parts ½ (Hermanos Banuelos, Los Angeles, January 23, 1929) Derrota de Villa en Celaya / Defeat of Villa in Celaya, parts ½ (Pedro Rocha and Lupe Martinez, New Orleans, March 15, 1936) Rendicion de Pancho Villa / Pancho Villa’s Surrender, parts ½ (Pedro Rocha and Lupe Martinez, Chicago, June 19, 1929) Corrido Historia y Muerte del Gral. Francisco Villa /Corrido of the History and Death of General Francisco Villa, parts ½ (More, Rubi, and Vivo, Los Angeles, August 31, 1923) 61. John Donald Robb, Hispanic Folk Music of New Mexico and the Southwest: A Self-Portrait of a People (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), 554 ( by permission of the University of Oklahoma Press). Collected from Samuel M. Lavadie, Prado, New Mexico.

558

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

62. As sung by Harry Jackson on The Cowboy: His Songs, Ballads, and Brag Talk, Smithsonian Folkways Cass 05723, from LP 5723; learned from a 50-year-old cowboy named Ed Marshbank in Wyoming. 63. From Powder River Jack and Kitty Lee, Songs of the Range: Cowboy Wails of Cattle Trails (Chicago: Chart Music, 1937), 28–29. The song was published in 1911, words by John Grafton Rogers, music by J. W. Gower. Lee glosses sweetin’ as candy and sam beatin’ as liquor. Swale means shade. Some other terms remain inscrutable. 64. From Jim Bob Tinsley, He Was Singin’ This Song (Orlando: University Presses of Florida, 1981), 32. Source not identified. 65. From Margaret Larkin, Singing Cowboy: A Book of Western Songs ( New York: Oak, 1963[1931]), 116–18; obtained from a “young custodian of western tradition” in Taos, New Mexico, Miss Frances Dwire. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 138–39 [B 12]. 66. As sung by Frances Roberts on Cowboy Songs, vol. 2, Arizona Friends of Folklore LP AFF-2. 67. From Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys (1908), 44–48. Thorp attributed the song to Mark Chisholm. Punctuation added and lines regularized.

8 Mountain Region

The states included in this chapter—Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada—were acquired by the United States through three separate land transactions: from France under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 (the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Rocky Mountains); by agreement with Great Britain over the northwest boundary between the United States and Canada in 1846 (Idaho); and then, in 1848 ( Nevada and parts of Colorado, and Wyoming), under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which concluded the Mexican War. As settlers gradually infiltrated, attracted by the promise of arable lands and precious natural resources, the federal government established a succession of territorial entities to provide political structure to the vast lands. Nearly half a century elapsed before all six regions achieved statehood and the political boundaries we know today. In those decades, their collective histories were marked by episodes of precious metal booms, waxing and waning cattle industries, railroad developments, and conflicts with the native inhabitants. There is nothing compelling in either the history or the geography of the region to make the category “mountain region” a logical entity, but it will serve the purposes of this discussion.

MONTANA When explorers Lewis and Clark returned East with reports of abundant beaver life in the Northwest, fur trappers and traders descended on Montana with gusto. By the 1840s, the fur trade had dwindled considerably, and disappointed traders and trappers left the territory. The discovery of gold at Gold Creek in 1858 brought many white settlers to the region— even more in 1862, when discoveries were made on Grasshopper Creek. Boom towns

560

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

thrived and declined as new discoveries of gold were announced and as the old sites became depleted. Bannack, the first of the boom towns, had a population of about 500 in 1862. It changed its name to Bannack City in 1864, when its population reached 1,000. Virginia City was founded on the site of a sizable 1863 strike and quickly grew to a city of about 10,000 people. Helena was founded at Last Chance Gulch after strikes were made there in 1864. Montana was made a territory in May 1864. Until 1875, Virginia City served as the territory’s capital, after which the seat was moved to Helena. In 1875, rich silver deposits were discovered at Butte. The growing silver industry was boosted by the arrival of the railroad in Montana, and by 1883 the Montana Territory had become the second largest silver producer in the nation, a position it maintained until the 1890s. At the Anaconda Mine, near Butte, one of the world’s richest copper veins was discovered. The Anaconda Mine soon became one of the leading copper producers in the country. Montana became the 41st state in 1889. The Star of Bannack Her beauty that once was as pure and sweet As that of the maiden you wed, Now lies in the dust at the miners’ feet, The beautiful Star is dead. She had a lover so good and true In the East which she left behind, When she came to the West as so many do, Her fame and her fortune to find. Her fame she did find on the dance hall floor, Where her beauty would turn men’s heads; She was the queen of them all, but now The beautiful Star is dead. She was young and light-hearted and danced and sang, Played the game as she knew it—square, She trusted her friends and did never dream A bullet would find her there. Now many an eye with tears is wet, Many a laugh is still; For the beautiful Star of Bannack lies In a grave on the lonely hill.1

According to Olive W. Burt, who published the preceding text, Helen Patterson left her native Illinois in 1863 to come out to Bannack, Montana, to visit her sister. Behind her she left a sweetheart, Howard Humphreys, and the humdrum life of a small, midwestern Town. In Bannack, sweetheart and humdrum were soon forgotten. Hundreds of lusty men roamed the streets and crowded the saloons. Liquor, men, music, and gold proved too much for the pretty sixteen-year-old—and she was proving almost too much for Bannack, at least for the feminine population. Her freshness and charm soon made her the darling of the dance halls. She changed her name to Nellie Paget and decided to remain in this unwholesome atmosphere. On the night of 20 April 1864, Nellie was shot by a rejected lover while she was dancing with her newest flame. The story of his errant sweetheart reached Howard Humphreys’ ears, but he would not believe it. Old-timers of Bannack tell how in 1917 an old man came into town, asked where Helen

MOUNTAIN REGION

561

Patterson was buried, and made his way to the rude pile of stones on the hillside that marked the girl’s grave. Some of those who were watching said that, as the old man stood with bowed, uncovered head, tears fell upon the stones piled there. “The Star of Bannack” was popular among Wyoming cowboys some forty years ago [i.e., in the 1910s].2 Custer’s Last Charge Across the Big Horn’s crystal tide, against the savage Sioux, A little band of soldiers charged, three hundred boys in blue; In front rode blond-haired Custer bold, pet of the wild frontier, A hero of a hundred fights, his deeds known far and near. “Charge, comrades, charge! There’s death ahead, disgrace lurks in our rear! Drive rowels deep! Come on, come on!” came his yells with ringing cheer. And on the foe those heroes charged; there rose an awful yell: It seemed as though those soldiers stormed the lowest gates of hell. Three hundred rifles rattled forth, and torn was human form, The black smoke rose in rolling waves above the leaden storm; The death groans of the dying braves, their wounded piercing cries, The hurling of the arrows fleet did cloud the noonday skies. The snorting steeds with shrieks of fright, the firearms’ deafening roar, The war song sung by the dying braves who fell to rise no more; O’er hill and dale the war song waved ’round craggy mountain side, Along down death’s dark valley ran a cruel crimson tide. Our blond-haired chief was everywhere mid showers of hurling lead, The starry banner waved above the dying and the dead; With bridle rein in firm-set teeth, revolver in each hand, He hoped with his few gallant boys to quell the great Sioux band. Again they charged: three thousand guns poured forth their last-sent ball, Three thousand war whoops rent the air; gallant Custer then did fall; And all around where Custer fell ran pools and streams of gore, Heaped bodies of both red and white whose last great fight was o’er. The boys in blue and their savage foe lay huddled in one mass, Their life’s blood ran a trickling through the trampled prairie grass; While fiendish yells did rend the air, and then a sudden hush, While cries of anguish rise again as on the mad Sioux rush. O’er those strewn and bloodstained fields those goading redskins fly, Our gang went down three hundred souls, three hundred doomed to die; Those blood-drunk braves sprang on the dead and wounded boys in blue, Three hundred bleeding scalps ran high above the fiendish crew. Then night came on with sable veil and hid those sights from view, The Big Horn’s crystal tide was red as she wound her valleys through; And quickly from the fields of slain, those gloating redskins fled, But blond-haired Custer held the field, a hero with his dead.3

The Sioux Indians were opposed to settlers using the Bozeman Trail, which crossed Sioux territory in the Great Plains region, to reach mining districts. The federal government attempted to negotiate with the Sioux at Fort Laramie in 1866, but the Sioux broke off the talks. Throughout the next few years, the Sioux regularly attacked settlements and

562

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

travelers along the Bozeman Trail. In 1868 the government and the Sioux signed a treaty closing the Bozeman Trail and establishing a reservation for the Sioux in the Black Hills in Dakota Territory. Some Sioux were dissatisfied with this agreement, including Sioux leaders Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. This group continued to dwell near the Bozeman Trail. In 1874 gold was found within the boundaries of the reservation in the Black Hills, which attracted white prospectors like flies to honey. Some Sioux left the reservation to join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse. In 1876 the U.S. government sent troops, including Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and his regiment, to relocate this group to the reservation. Custer’s regiment of 655 men formed the advance guard of a force under General Alfred Howe Terry. On June 25 Custer’s scouts located the Sioux on the Little Bighorn River. Unaware of the Native American strength—between 2,500 and 4,000 men—Custer disregarded arrangements to join Terry at the junction of the Bighorn and Little Bighorn rivers and prepared to attack at once. In the hope of surrounding the Native Americans, he formed his troops into a frontal-assault force of about 260 men under his personal command and two flanking columns. The center column encountered the numerically superior Sioux and Cheyenne. Cut off from the flanking columns and completely surrounded, Custer and his men fought desperately, but all were killed. Although the Sioux were victorious in this famous battle, the United States sent reinforcements, and Crazy Horse, acknowledging discretion as the better part of valor, gave up his arms in 1877. Sitting Bull conceded victory to the United States in 1881.4 The Wild Montana Boy There was a wild Montana boy, Jack Nolan was his name; He lived in old Montana, close to the Canadian line; He was his father’s only pride, his mother’s only joy, And dearly did these parents love that wild Montana boy. At the early age of sixteen Jack left his happy home, For the sunny shores of Texas he was inclined to roam; He robbed the rich and helped the poor, the farms he did destroy, He was a terror to old Texas, this wild Montana boy. At the early age of eighteen, Jack began his wild career With a heart that felt no harm and that knew no fear; He robbed the rich and helped the poor, he stopped George McCoy, Who trembling gave his gold unto the wild Montana boy. Jack bid the squire good morning and told him to beware, And not arrest a poor boy while acting on the square; And not to rob a mother of her only pride and joy, For she might go a-rambling like her wild Montana boy. One day Jack was a-riding on the prairie all alone, Listening to the mockingbirds that sang their mournful songs; Up to him there rode a mounted troop, Cole, Davis, and Fritz McRoy, They started to capture him, that wild Montana boy. “Surrender now, Jack Nolan—you know there’s three to one. Surrender to your government, you are its plundering son.” Jack snatched a pistol from his breast, and waved the little toy— “I’ll die but I’ll not surrender,” said the wild Montana boy.

MOUNTAIN REGION

563

He first fired at Fritz McRoy, which took him to the ground, Then he fired on Davis, which gave him a deathly wound; A bullet pierced Jack’s proud heart from the weapon of Fritz McRoy, And that’s the way they captured him, that wild Montana boy.5

This is a scantily concealed variant of an Australian bush ballad, “The Wild Colonial Boy.” Compare the following stanzas: There was a wild colonial boy, Jack Duggan was his name, He was born and reared in Ireland, in a place called Castlemaine; He was his father’s only son and his mother’s pride and joy, And dearly did his parents love the wild colonial boy. .... One day on the prairie wild, Jack Duggan rode along, While listening to the mockingbird singing a cheerful song, Out jumped three troopers, Kelly, Davis, and Fritzroy, They all set out to capture him, the wild colonial boy.6

In 1825, John Donahoe was a young Irish convict transported, along with many others, to the Australian colony to provide a cheap source of labor and get them out of the way in the mother country. Many of these transported convicts tried to escape from captivity to risk an uncertain but unfettered life in the bushland and mountains. Soon Donahoe did likewise, and for a few years he was on the loose, along with other escaped convicts committing a succession of robberies to feed themselves. In 1830 he and two comrades were tracked down and trapped, and Donahoe was shot to death when he resisted arrest. Songs about the dead bandit spread quickly from Australia and circulated in Ireland, England, Canada, and also the United States, in print and probably orally. “The Wild Montana Boy” could have been written any time in the late nineteenth century, perhaps one of several localizations of an Irish Australian ballad circulating on American soil. It is possible Jack Nolan was actually a Montana badman, but the wholesale borrowing of so many Australian details makes that rather unlikely. This text, reprinted from a nineteenth-century magazine column, is the only one known. The Big Diamond Mine There was hoboes from Kerry, and hoboes from Cork, Some from New Jersey, and more from New York. Well, they come from the near, and the near and the far; They’re the Sons of Old Erin that pushes the car. And the big bellied Dutchman from over the Rhine, Come a rustling a job in the Big Di’mond Mine. Well, I got me a job on the first day of May, Four and six bits they said was the pay. Well, I worked four shifts and I dragged me time; To hell with you, Ed Kane, and your Big Diamond Mine. There were tinkers and tailors, shoemakers and slobs, And all kinds of pickers to put waste in the gob. There was raisemen from Bisbee and timbermen from Butte, And all kinds of muckers to put the rock in the chute.7

564

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The successive discoveries of gold, silver, and copper in Montana’s hills brought in waves of prospectors and miners to the region, who imported lore as they exported ore for several decades. “The Big Diamond Mine” (a copper, not diamond, mine) mentions several of the different ethnic groups who worked in this Butte region mine. Though the song takes a poke at supervisor Eddie Kane, foreman of the Diamond in 1919, he was apparently well liked by his workers. Duncan Emrich published several other versions under the collective title “Tramp Miner’s Song” because all of his informants were tramp miners—that is, they moved from mining camp to camp as the opportunities arose. Several categories of underground mine worker are mentioned: raiseman, timberman, and mucker were all types of miners, and a tinker was a toolmaker. [When You and I Were Young, Maggie Parody] I wandered today up The Hill, Maggie, I applied for a rustling card; I got both the card and the job, Maggie, But the job it was too damned hard. Oh, the stope it was filled with gas, Maggie, And the ground it was fitchery as well; The rock it came a-tumbling down on me, Maggie, And the shifter was crazier than hell. Oh, there was time in Butte, Maggie, When you could take five and hold your job; But now it’s put the rock in the box, Maggie, And then put the waste in the bog. Oh, my blond hair has turned to green, Maggie, From the water that drips down the back; I’m the homeliest plug in the town, Maggie, And you’ll soon want your maiden name back.8

When a folk song parodies a pop hit, it usually can be dated to within a few years after the pop song was published. “When You and I Were Young, Maggie” was a wildly popular hit of 1866, but it remained a favorite for so long that it was still parodied decades later. Yet there is no evidence of this miners’ parody before the early 1900s. The song comments on the hardships of the miner’s life and its destructive effects on one’s body and spirit. The extensive use of the occupational language of the miners identifies this as a song sung exclusively within the miners’ cultural circle. The Miner The miners in the mines of Butte Are in rebellion fairly, The gathering clouds of discontent Are spreading fast and surely. The miner’s life is full of strife, In stopes and drifts and raises— Don’t judge him hard, give him his due, He needs our loudest praises. Down in these holes each shift he goes And works mid dangers many,

MOUNTAIN REGION

565

And gets the “miner’s con” to boot, The worst disease of any; In hot-boxes he drills his rounds, Mid floods of perspiration, And clogs his lungs with copper dust— A hellish occupation. The merry breezes never blow Down in these awful places, The sun’s rays are one-candle power That shines on pallid faces. The only birds that warble there Are “buzzies” and “jack hammers’ ” Their song is death in every notes, For human life they clamor. Conditions such as these, my friends, Have made the miners rebels; The under-current is gaining strength, The mighty system trembles. The revolution’s coming fast; Old institutions vanish. The tyrant-rule from off the earth For evermore ’twill banish.9

This song, and also the one following, was published in a little 22-page booklet titled New Songs for Butte Mining Camp, of which only one copy is known to survive. It was given by Wobbly folklorist John Newhouse to Archie Green in the 1950s, who in turn donated it to the library at the University of North Carolina. The pamphlet contained 25 songs written for the benefit of struggling miners who were attempting to unionize their industry in the 1910s. There is no indication that any of the songs survived in oral tradition for long, but it is certain that they reflected accurately the sentiments of a considerable portion of the mining community of the 1910s and reasonable to assume that they were sung at gatherings and meetings of miners. It is therefore only a small stretch of the definition to include them in a collection of folk songs.10 Solidarity Forever On the twelfth of June in seventeen, one bright mid-summer’s day, The workers in the mines of Butte, they took a holiday; Conditions sure were rotten, and they wanted better pay, So they made a union strong. Chorus: Solidarity forever (3) For the union makes us strong. The owners of the mines in Butte are called the A. C. M., A dirty bunch of parasites whose place is in the pen, So we call upon all workers—all good, red-blooded men, To join the union strong. It is we who sunk the shafts, drove drifts and contract-raises too, It is we who work in hot-box ’til the sweat runs out our shoe, Is there anything left for us but to organize and brew A great big union strong.

566

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The master class is organized in one big union strong, The workers are disorganized, a weak and motley throng, But now they are awakening and the time will not be long, For the union makes us strong. The rustling card has got to go—it ne’er shall see New Year, It’s kept the working class of Butte in misery and fear, But its days are nearly ended and its funeral is near, For the union makes us strong. Now we call upon all workers, no matter what your creed, Your color, nationality—to that we pay no heed; We’re workers all and nothing more, so hurry up and speed The one big union strong.11

Scottie’s Butte version of “Solidarity Forever” builds on one of the most enduring labor songs ever written. Labor poet Ralph Chaplin’s original song, destined to become a virtual anthem of the American labor movement, was published in 1916 in the ninth edition of the IWW’s Little Red Songbook. Like Scottie’s text, it oozed venom for the capitalist classes and urged unionization as the only solution to the workers’ problems: When the Union’s inspiration through the worker’s blood shall run, There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun; Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one? But the Union makes us strong.12 Casey Jones the Miner Come all you muckers and gather here, If you want to hear the story of a miner dear; Casey Jones was the miner’s name, On a Burleigh machine he won his fame. Chorus: Casey Jones was a ten day miner, Casey Jones was a ten day man; Casey Jones took a chance too many, And now he’s mining in the promised land. The story I am about to tell, Happened at a mine called the Liberty Bell; They went into a crosscut and mucked her out And Casey said, “We’d better step about.” Casey said, “We’d better dig in Before that damned old shift boss comes in; If he finds out we’ve been taking five, He’ll send us to the office to get our time.” They went to the crosscut, put up the bar, Placed the machine up on the arm, Put in a starting drill with its bit toward the ground, Turned on the air, and she began to pound. Casey said, “If I haven’t lied, There is a missed hole on that right hand side.”

MOUNTAIN REGION

567

His partner said, “Oh gracious me! If it ever went off, where would we be.” They went into the crosscut to drill some more; The powder exploded with a hell of a roar; It scorched poor Casey just as flat as a pan, And now he’s mining in the promised land. Casey said, just before he died, “There’s one more machine I would like to have tried.” His partner said, “What can it be?” “An Ingersoll jackhammer, don’t you see?”13

The Liberty Bell Mine was staked in 1876 by W. A. Cornett. There was some minor production, but no attempts were made to develop the property on a large scale. In 1897 Arthur Winslow acquired it for the United States and British Columbia Mining Company. A year later, the Liberty Bell Gold Mining Company was organized to operate the mine. By 1901 the plant had a capacity of between 300 and 325 tons per day. Two types of mining machinery are mentioned in this ballad: the Burleigh and the Ingersoll. Charles Burleigh organized his Burleigh Rock Drill Company of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, in 1867. He first tested steam power drills in western mining in June 1870 in Silver Plume, Colorado. When air compressors became available, he switched to pneumatic drills. The Ingersoll Rand Company was formed in 1905 when Michael P. Grace acquired both Ingersoll-Sergeant and the Rand Drill Company and merged them. They first made steam-driven jackhammers, and later, pneumatic hammers.14 These bits of industrial history would not by themselves serve to date this song accurately enough, but music history helps us. The pop hit “Casey Jones” was published in 1909 and swept the country in the following two or three years. That bit of information puts this song in the second decade of the twentieth century at the earliest. Farmers’ Union Song We’re farmers of Montana and we heard the call one day, Banding us together in the F. E. C. U. way; Whistling to keep up our courage, while we heard them say, “Farmers never stick together, flourish as they may.” Chorus: It’s a grand word, Cooperation, it’s a lode star for us all; When we weaken and dishearten, as the ranks around us fall; Goodbye to selfish interest, farewell, strife to you, For the Union is sure to triumph, if we all stay true. When they hear the echoes of the Farmers’ Union song; Each interest has its Union, but their faces all grow long, We must join together and unite in one strong band, Cooperate and do the work that waits on every hand.15

Early in the twentieth century, the Farmers Educational and Cooperative Union of America proudly published a pamphlet with 59 songs, mostly written by members of local chapters of the Farmers Union in Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, the lyrics all set to well-known tunes. The collection is nowhere dated, but the preceding song was put to the tune of “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” a song of World War I, so it was probably published in around 1920. The songs advocated neither violence nor militancy, but

568

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

solidarity and cooperation, consistent with the Farmers Union Creed, which read, in part, “Because I know that as an individual, I am nothing, but banded with my brother farmers, I am power, I pledge the work of my hands, the fruit of my soil and the loyalty of my heart to the Farmers Union.”16 Take Me Back to Old Montana Take me back to “Old Montana,” where there’s lots of room and air, Where there’s pine trees tall and handsome, bitter root and prickly pair; Where they have no pomp nor splendor, and a shilling’s called a “bit,” Where at night the magpies twitter, and the Injun fights were fit. Where the sagebrush is full and plenty, and there’s rattlesnakes and ticks, Where a stack of “whites” cost twenty, and they don’t sell gilded bricks; Where they have no gosh darned subways, and no twenty story shacks, Where the broncs they shy at autos, dudes, plug hats and three-rail tracks. Where the old Missouri River, and the muddy Yellowstone, Make green patches in the Band Lands, and old Sitting Bull was known; Where the sun-tanned old prospector dreams of wealth and pans the dirt; Where the sleepy night-herd puncher sings to steers and plies his quirt. Where they throw the diamond hitches, use ropes, brands, and cartridge belts, Where the boys wear chaps for breeches, flannel shirts and Stetson felts; Take me back to old Montana, let me die there when I’m old, Land of alkali and copper, land of sapphire and of gold.17

Powder River Jack Lee claimed authorship of many songs he didn’t write, but to this one he assigned himself credit only for the arrangement. In fact, he was at least the third

A colored picture postcard (originally in color; early 1900s) illustrating the song, “Take Me Back To Old Montana.” Author’s collection.

MOUNTAIN REGION

569

person to copyright the song. Probably the first, and therefore perhaps its originator, was J. Campbell Cory, who published two related songs: first, in 1910, “Old Montana” (“Live every day so that you can look every damn man in the face and tell him to go to hell”); and the second, four years later, “Take Me Back to Old Montana”: Take me back to old Montana Where there’s plenty room and air; Where there’s cottonwood an’ pine trees, Bitter root and prickly pear; Where there ain’t no pomp nor glitter, Where a shilling’s called a “bit,” Where at night the magpies twitter, Where the Indian fights were fit. Take me back where the sage is plenty, Where there’s rattlesnakes and ticks; Where a stack of whites cost twenty: Where they don’t sell gilded bricks.18

The theme seems to have been a catchy one: R. R. Doubleday took it east a few years later for a Dakota song: Take me back to South Dakota, Where there is plenty of room and air; Where there is grain and elevators, Self binders and prickly pear.19

and then drove it to Wyoming: We’re out here in old Wyoming, Where you never have the blues, Where the bandits steal the jitneys And the Marshals steal the booze.20

In the 1940s, E. C. Kropp took it down to Texas: We’re down here in old Texas, Where you never have the blues, Where the bandits steal the jitneys And the Marshals steal the booze.21

Chances are good that if we poke around under the sagebrush and tumbleweeds, we’ll find more maverick versions hiding out in a half dozen other western states.

WYOMING Wyoming Territory became part of the United States through two transactions: some of it was acquired from France under the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. In 1848 additional parts of Wyoming were acquired under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo concluding the Mexican War. In the course of its history, Wyoming’s boundaries were changed

570

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

some 30 times. Wyoming had been part of the Oregon Territory (1848), the Washington Territory (1853), the Dakota Territory (1861), the Idaho Territory (1863), the Montana Territory (1864), and again the Dakota Territory (1864). Throughout these years of active map changing, most of its land remained unknown and unexplored. The fur trade was not organized in Wyoming until the 1820s. The Rocky Mountain Fur Company, established by General William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry, began to send trappers into the Wyoming country in 1822. In the 1870s prospectors began invading Sioux land in the Black Hills of South Dakota in search of gold. Some Sioux, who resented white encroachment on their land, left the reservation to join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, who lived in southeastern Montana and northeastern Wyoming. In 1876 the U.S. government sent troops, including Lieutenant Colonel George Custer and his regiment, to relocate this group back onto the reservation. On June 25, 1876, a Sioux force under Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated Custer’s troops at the Little Bighorn in Montana. Their victory prompted a massive U.S. retaliation and a succession of Native American defeats that reverberated throughout the West. As a result, by the spring of 1877, almost all the Native Americans in Wyoming were settled on reservations. With the arrival of the Union Pacific Railroad and the development of the cattle industry, a separate Wyoming territory began to make sense, and in July 1868, the Wyoming Territory was created out of parts of the Dakota, Utah, and Idaho territories. The cattle industry reached its zenith on the open ranges in the middle of the 1880s. An estimated 1 million cattle grazed the rich grass on the public land, resulting in severe overgrazing. A drought during the summer of 1886 parched the range, and the unusually severe winter that followed caused staggering losses among many of the large open-range cattle operations. The severe weather, combined with declining prices in a saturated market for beef, spelled disaster in the cattle industry at the end of the 1880s. Many owners were forced out of business, and cattle ranchers began to move their herds from the overstocked open range to fenced-in ranches, on which they raised hay and other feed crops as insurance against drought and blizzards. Although cattle grazing dominated the ranges in territorial Wyoming, sheep were also introduced to the region in 1857. Though some cattle ranchers opposed raising sheep on the open range because they believed that sheep grazed too close to the ground and ruined the pastures for cattle, sheep raising continued to expand. By 1910 an estimated 6 million sheep were raised in Wyoming. Occasional conflicts between sheep and cattle ranchers led to violence. One instance, known as the Spring Creek Raid in Washakie County in 1911, resulted in the deaths of three sheep ranchers and the conviction of several cowboys for murder. Eventually, cattle and sheep were allowed to coexist on the range as ranchers learned that the animals could be raised economically on the same ranch. On July 10, 1890, Wyoming became the 44th state of the Union. We the Boys of Sanpete County We the boys of Sanpete County, in obedience to the call, Started out with forty wagons to bring immigrants in the fall; Without fear or thought of danger lightly on our way we sped, Every heart with joy abounded, Captain Seeley at the head. Chorus: To accomplish our mission, we were called to fill below, Left our friends and dear relations, on the dreary plains to go.

MOUNTAIN REGION

571

When we reached Green River Ferry, on its banks all night we stayed, In the morning we ferried our wagons over, thinking soon to roll away; Next to drive the cattle over, but we found they could not swim, And oh, the boys were in the water many hours up to their chin. Some to oxen’s horns were clinging but to them it was all o’er, Boys and cattle all went under never more to step on shore; Some to planks and boards were clinging down the swelling tide did float, But some by heaven seemed protected driven to shore upon the boat. One had landed on an island was clinging to the willows green, But to him life seemed extinguished and he backward fell into the stream; Thus six boys from parents parted and from friends that they did love, Yet there is a brighter morning where we all shall meet above. Chorus: Farewell parents, we will never meet you on this earth again, But there is a brighter morning when we all shall meet again.22

“In 1868 Brigham Young sent William Stewart Seeley of Mount Pleasant, Utah, with forty wagons manned by young men to the vicinity of Laramie, Wyoming to assist a party of immigrants en route to Salt Lake Valley. The tragedy that befell the young men as they crossed Green River is recounted accurately in this historically true song.”23 The ballad was set to the tune of the Civil War song “Just before the Battle, Mother,” written by George F. Root in 1863. The Red Rock Canyon Fight ’Twas in camp we lay as you quickly shall hear Mckenzie came to us and bade us prepare; Saying, “Saddle your horses by the setting sun, For the Indians were laying in Red Rock Canyon.” We saddled our horses and away we did go Over rivers of ice and mountains of snow; To the Red Rock Canyon our course we did steer, It was the Fourth Horse who had never known fear. We rode all that night ’til the daylight did break, When the herd from the Cheyennes the Pawnees did take; But the squaws they escaped, papooses and all, For we wasn’t in time to capture them all. The Indians formed up, the fight it began, They thought they could frighten the bold white man; With our glistening arms right at them we sped, They turned tail about, to the rocks they all fled. We soon overtook them as frightened they fled, Cut off the long hair they wore on their head; “No mercy, no mercy,” so loud was our cry, Have vengeance for Custer brave soldiers or die. Mid snow on the rocks the Indians lay dead, Over thirty were scalped and the rest of them fled. Six hundred dragoons made thousands to yield, Their chiefs soon likewise lay dead on the field.

572

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

McKenzie came to us and this he did say: “I thank you brave boys for your valor today. Catch up your horses and feed everyone, For the fight it is over and the battle is done.” “Here’s success to McKenzie” so endeth our stave, Likewise Captain Hamphill, an officer brave; With a full flowing glass we’ll drink and let wring, Success to the Fourth Horse so loud let us sing. The twenty-fifth of November, my boys, was the day, When six hundred dragoons made those Indians run away; Although they did number eight hundred or more, We’ll drink and we’ll sing now the battle is o’er.24

On November 25, 1876, Colonel Ranald S. Mackenzie (1840–1889) led an attack on Chief Dull Knife’s village on the Red Fork of Powder River in Wyoming. A primary motive for the attack was revenge for the Cheyenne victory over General Custer’s troops at Little Bighorn, Montana, exactly five months earlier. Many of the natives at Dull Knife’s camp had apparently taken part in the Custer battle. At least two dozen Indians, and possibly as many as 40, were killed, and their village, consisting of some 200 canvas and hide lodges, was obliterated. From the vantage point of a rim rock refuge, the surviving Cheyennes watched the conflagration engulfing their homes in despair. Seven of Mackenzie’s men were killed; 25 of his soldiers and Indian scouts were wounded. This poem has not been reported elsewhere; whether or not it was sung is uncertain, but the text has the mood of a traditional Anglo American ballad of that period. The note accompanying the text suggests that at least several soldiers had written, copied, or wanted the poem, which is as close as we can get to evidence for oral currency. Goodbye, Old Paint Farewell, fair ladies, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne, Farewell, fair ladies, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne, Goodbye, my little dony, my pony won’t stand. Old Paint, old Paint, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne, Goodbye old Paint, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne, Old Paint’s a good pony, and she paces when she can. In the middle of the ocean there grows a green tree, But I’ll never prove false to the girl that loves me. Oh, we spread down the blanket on the green grassy ground, And the horses and cattle were a-grazing all ’round. Oh, the last time I saw her, it was late in the fall, She was riding old Paint, and a-leading old Ball. Old Paint had a colt down on the Rio Grande, And the colt couldn’t pace, and they named it Cheyenne. For my feet’s in my stirrups, and my bridle’s in my hand, Goodbye, my little dony, my pony won’t stand. Fare well, fair ladies, I’m a-leaving Cheyenne, (2) Goodbye, my little pony, my pony won’t stand.25

John A. Lomax recorded this western song from Jess Morris (1878–1953), a Texas fiddler-singer who claimed to have learned it when a boy of seven from Charley Willis, an

MOUNTAIN REGION

573

ex-slave working on Morris’s father’s ranch. Lomax’s publication turned it into one of the West’s best-known songs. Most western songs are characterized by their focus on western scenery (sagebrush, mountains, open skies) and animals. The cowboy’s special relation to his horse has occasioned considerable commentary; one gets the feeling sometimes that the horse means more to him than his female companions. And in fact, the facility with which the singer eases from the subject of woman to horse is almost unsettling. Cheyenne Boys Come all you pretty girls and listen to my noise, I’ll tell you not to marry the Cheyenne boys, For if you do a portion it will be; Cold butter milk and Johnnie cake is all you’ll see. (2) They’ll take you down to a sandy hill, Take you down contrary to your will; Put you down in some lonesome place, And that’s just the way with the Cheyenne race. (2) When they go to church I’ll tell you what they wear, An old gray coat all covered with hair, An old gray coat all torn down, A stove-pipe hat more rim than crown. (2) When they go in, down they set, Take out their handkerchief and wipe off the sweat, Look at all the pretty girls and then begin to laugh, And roll around their eyes like a dying calf. (2) When they go to milk they milk in a gourd, Put it in a corner, cover with a board. . . . .26

This is yet another derivative from the 1840s minstrel song discussed in the section of Virginia songs, “De Free Nigger” (chapter 3). Cheyenne was founded in 1867 and was soon made territorial capital and seat of Laramie County. Wyoming Song O, dear Wyoming, clear and bright, Thy breezes are a treasure; They give us health, they give us wealth, And joy, they rocks and templed hills, Thy limpid streams and rushing rills, O, dear Wyoming, clear and bright, Thy breezes are a treasure. O, dear Wyoming, clear and bright, Much gold comes from thy mountains, And from thy valleys broad and light Spring forth artesian fountains. With all thy fields of golden grain And sheep and cattle in the plain, O, dear Wyoming, clear and bright, Thy breezes are a treasure.

574

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

O, dear Wyoming, clear and bright, We love thy sunny weather, Thy people stand for all that’s right, In usefulness and pleasure. They always keep the golden rule At home, in college, and in school. O, dear Wyoming, clear and bright, Thy breezes are a treasure.27

Louise Pound, the Nebraska folklorist who published this song, didn’t provide information on its source, but it is probably from early in the twentieth century, written either as a school song or perhaps a booster song to extol Wyoming’s praises and lure more immigrants to its mountains and valleys. The Invasion Song Sad and dismal is the tale I now relate to you, ’Tis all about the cattlemen, Them and their murderous crew. They started out on their man hunt, Precious blood to spill, With a gang of hired assassins To murder at their will. Chorus: God bless poor Nate and Nick Who gave their precious lives To save the town of Buffalo, Its brave men and their wives. If it hadn’t been for Nate and Nick, What would we have come to? We would have all been murdered by Frank Canton and his crew. Poor Nate Champion is no more, He lost his precious life. He lies down in the valley Freed from all care and strife. He tried to run the gantlet When they had burned his home, And Nick was lying lifeless, Lips wet with bloody foam. The run was made; his doom was sealed, A fact you all know well. They left his lifeless body there On the slope, above the dell. No kindred near to care for him, To grasp his nerveless hand; A braver man was never faced By Canton’s bloody band. The very next name upon the list Was that of brave Jack Flagg. Frank Canton must have surely thought

MOUNTAIN REGION

575

That he would “fill his bag.” Jack and his stepson came in view A-riding round the curve; “Throw up your hands! By God they’re off !” Frank Canton lost his nerve. “Red Angus” next, the “Canny Scot,” Was marked for Canton’s lead; But Angus, warned by bold Jack Flagg, For aid and succor, sped. The countryside now swarmed to life; The settlers armed in haste; Soon Red had hundreds at his back Who Canton’s minions faced. To Crazy Woman’s winding bank, The cowed invaders fled With K. C., blazing in their rear, And Ray and Champion dead. Here, held at bay the cravens halt Till soldiers come to aid; And now secure in jail they rest, The debt of blood, unpaid.28

This ballad tells one version of the events of 1892 in Star Valley, Wyoming. The official account is that the Wyoming Stockmen’s Association, to halt cattle rustling, blacklisted all ranchers who employed rustlers or gunmen to prey on honest ranchers. Clashes between rustlers and stockmen increased in frequency and ferocity. Six rustlers were arrested and tried, but an intimidated jury freed them. Then, two were killed by assassins—members of the Stockmen’s Association, the rustlers claimed. In the next spring, stockmen hired a large number of Texas lawmen and organized an expedition into outlaw territory. At the K. C. Ranch, the stockmen and their gunmen stopped for their first attack, killing Nate Champion and Nick Ray (or Rae), after setting fire to the ranch house. Unfortunately for the “regulators,” two men, Jack Flagg and Alonzo Taylor, managed to bring news of the invasion to Sheriff “Red” Angus of Johnson County. Immediately, a defense was organized and a band of over 100 deputies sworn in. They besieged the ranchers at the T. A. Ranch until troops came, sent by Acting Governor Amos W. Barber by authorization of President Harrison. The interpretation of historical events supported by the ballad would have it that the wealthy cattle owners wanted to own everything and persecuted and harassed small independent ranchers. They hired a trainload of Texas toughs and sent them after the small operators, claiming that the latter were one and all thieves and rustlers. These gunmen killed Champion and Ray, and their opponents banded together to avenge this act. The song expresses the “rustler” perspective of events. The source of this ballad, Mr. Martin, was a cowboy in Wyoming in the early 1890s. He recalled that the ballad was sung during the conclusion of the Johnson County trouble, in April 1892, and that it was “composed (in part) by a drunken cowpuncher and set to music by one of Buffalo’s ‘soiled doves.’ ” Buffalo was the county seat of Johnson County.29 Blood Stained Diary It’s just a little blood-stained book, Which a bullet has torn in two;

576

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

It tells the fate of Nick and Nate, Which is known to all of you. He had the nerve to write it down, While the bullets fell like rain; At your request I’ll do my best To repeat those lines again. “Two men stayed with us here last night, Bill Jones and another man; They went to the river, took a pail, And will come back if they can. “I told old Nick not to look out, There may be someone near; He opened the door, was shot to the floor, He’ll never live I fear. “Two hours since the shots began, The bullets fly thick as hail! Must wait on Nick, he’s awful sick, He’s still alive but pale. “At stable, river, and back of me The men are sending lead; I cannot get a bead on any— It’s nine and Nick is dead. “Down at the stable I see a smoke, I guess they’ll burn the hay; From what I’ve seen they do not mean For me to get away. “It’s nearly noon, I see a rope Thrown in and out the door; I wish that duck would show his pluck, He’d use a gun no more. “I don’t know what has become of the boys That stayed with us last night; If I had just two boys with me, We’d guard the cabin right. “I’m lonesome, boys, it’s two o’clock, Two men just come in view; And riding fast, as they went past, Were shot at by the crew. “I shot at a man down in the barn, Don’t know if I hit him or not; Must look again; I see someone. It looks like—there’s a blot. “I hope they did not get those men That across the bridge did run; If I had a pair of glasses here I think I’d know some one.

MOUNTAIN REGION

577

“They’re just through shelling the house, I hear the splintering wood; I guess they’ll light the house tonight And burn me out for good. “I’ll have to leave when night comes on, They’ll burn me if I stay; I guess I’ll make a running break, And try to get away. “They’ve shot another volley in, To burn me is their game; And as I write, it’s not yet night, And the house is all aflame. “So, goodbye, boys, if I get shot, I’ve got to make a run; So on this leaf I’ll sign my name, Nathan D. Champion.” The light is out, the curtain drawn, The last sad act is played; You know the fate that met poor Nate, And of the run he made. And now across the Big Divide And at the Home Ranch door; I know he’ll meet and warmly greet The boys that went before.30

This is a very different ballad account of the same incidents described in the preceding song. According to Olive Woolley Burt, The “Invaders,” as the Johnson County folks called the Texans, went after Nate Champion and Nick Ray, who were at the KC ranch between Casper and Buffalo. The Texans surrounded their cabin. The two wanted men were alone, but for two trappers who had spent the night in the shack. When morning came, one trapper, an old man, went outside to wash in the stream and was taken prisoner by the Invaders. When the younger trapper came out, he, too, was captured. Ray was shot and mortally wounded on his way to get a bucket of water. He managed to crawl back to the cabin, where Champion pulled him in. From then on, all day long, Champion, though wounded, kept up a fight with the Invaders. At the same time he kept a running account of the battle. When night fell, the Invaders fired the cabin and Champion was forced to run. Trying to reach the shelter of the brush on the hillside, he was shot and killed. His diary, in which he had recorded the day’s events, was found under his body. Put into rhyme, “The Blood-Stained Diary” was sung for years by Wyoming cowboys.31 I’m Glad I Live in Wyoming I’m glad I live in Wyoming, The glorious State of Wyoming. Oh! I’m glad I live in Wyoming, The best of all the states. The best of all the states. The best of all the states. Oh! I’m glad I live in Wyoming,

578

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The glorious State of Wyoming. I’m glad I live in Wyoming, The best of all the states.32

The instructions call for the tune of “We Won’t Go Home Til Morning,” but most of today’s readers will know it better as “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” With the words, “Home Til Morning,” the song was published in New York in 1842 and in London at about the same time. The melody is considerably older, however, having been published in France in the 1760s or 1770s. The “Jolly Good Fellow” variant (doubtless a British creation) first appeared in 1870. That the editor of the 1932 song folio from which the above text was taken referenced “We Won’t Go Home Til Morning,” rather than “Jolly Good Fellow,” which certainly would have been more familiar to readers during the 1930s, suggests it was taken directly from a much older publication. In any case, here’s a song to be sung, steins in hand, cozy by the crackling fireside or sitting tight in the neighborhood saloon, while the wintry Wyoming wind blows through the window cracks and makes one long for spring. Best of all the states? Surely one beer too many.

IDAHO Possession of the territory that now constitutes the states of Idaho and Washington was contested by the United States and Great Britain in the early nineteenth century. Britain claimed land as far south as the Columbia River and established Fort Vancouver on its northern banks ( present-day Vancouver, Washington). Some Americans agitated for the United States to seize control of land all the way to Alaska (“Fifty-four forty or fight!” referred to latitude 54° 40'). In 1846, the dispute was settled and the boundary was set at the 49th parallel, where it remains today. In 1853 the Idaho region was divided between the Washington Territory and the Oregon Territory. When Oregon became a state in 1859, the borders of the Washington Territory were extended to include all of the Idaho region. The discovery of gold in 1860 in the Nez Perce country brought thousands of miners into the mountains north of present-day Boise, and in three years, the white population of the Idaho region soared from practically nothing to more than 20,000 inhabitants. Administration of these new settlements became difficult for the Olympia-based government of the Washington Territory, and in March 1863, Idaho was established as a separate territory, including nearly all of what was later to become Montana and Wyoming. In 1864, Montana was made a separate territory, and four years later, the Wyoming Territory was created, leaving Idaho with its present boundaries. In 1890 Idaho became the 43rd state. Snake River Massacre A cruel massacre took place, Of late upon the plains; ’Tis hard to describe the place— It was upon Ward’s train. While on their way the little band, In harmony progressed; Nor thought of danger near at hand, Of quietude possessed. The savages, they did assail, Eight men at once were slain;

MOUNTAIN REGION

579

They had no means to prevail, As eight composed the train. A wounded lad escaped by chance, The mournful news to tell; Awaking as if from a trance— He rose from where he fell. While eight poor fellows were left dead, All weltering in gore; The Indians in haste fled, The spoil in triumph bore. Their hatred did not yet abate, In darker arts indulged— Most horrible for to relate The cruelty divulged. Even to crown the horrible deed, And thus augment their guilt; The Females’ cries they did not heed Until their blood they spilt. Their cruelty they did portray, Most shocking, it is true— Inflicted wounds in every way That savage art could do. They did fire and hot irons use, Hatchets and cudgels, too; And thus they cut, burned and bruised, And the poor females slew. The children met a cruel fate, As burned to death they were; And ’tis most shocking to relate, Their mothers present were. How awful thus for to behold One’s offspring treated so— Their anguish never can be told, Their feelings none can know.33

Olive W. Burt, who published the preceding ballad, provided background information: On 20 August 1854, Alexander Ward with a party of twenty-one Missourians was camped along the Oregon Trail on the south side of the Boise River, near the site of what later became Middleton, Idaho. The emigrants were eating their noonday meal when a band of some two hundred Indians surrounded them. Although they put up a stiff fight, by sundown all the men had been killed. The Indians made short work of the women and children. Two small boys escaped: William Ward, eleven, and his older brother, Newton. A rescue party found Newton and took him back to Fort Boise. William wandered about for several days without food before he found his way back to the fort.34 We’re Coming Idaho They say there is a land, Where crystal waters flow,

580

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

O’er beds of quartz and purest gold, Way out in Idaho. Chorus: O! wait, Idaho! We’re coming, Idaho; Our four hoss team Will soon be seen Way out in Idaho. We’re bound to cross the plains, And up the mountains go, We’re bound to seek our fortunes there, Way out in Idaho.

Sheet music cover for Frank French’s “Idaho” (1864). Sheet music located in the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University.

MOUNTAIN REGION

581

We’ll need no pick or spade, No shovel, pan, or hoe, The largest chunks are ‘top of ground, Way out in Idaho. We’ll see hard times no more, And want we’ll never know, When once we’ve filled our sacks with gold, Way out in Idaho.35

Late in 1860, not long after the California gold rush, the yellow metal was discovered in Nez Perce country of the Idaho territory, and another rush was on. It lasted only a few years, but it lured nearly 20,000 more white settlers. Popular songwriter Frank French wrote a song about the excitement, and it was published in 1864. The enthusiastic lyrics proclaim the gold seekers’ naive confidence that once they’re in Idaho, they’ll find gold nuggets lying about for the picking, and they’ll know poverty no more. Compare also the song “Eureka,” given in chapter 4 in the section on Arkansas songs, which is based on French’s song. The Seven Devils Mines Come all ye bold adventurers And listen to my song, About the Seven Devils mines—I will not keep you long; Those mines of wealth that’s lately found Display the ore bright, And millions yet beneath the ground Is bound to see the light. Chorus: Then dig boys, dig, Let us the ore find, And open up in handsome style The Seven Devil mines. And when you pack your old cayuse And start to make a raise, And stop upon a grassy plot To let the equine graze; You’re liable at any time To meet a rattle bug, Then don’t forget the snake bite cure, Corked up in the brown jug. Then when you reach the Devil mines, All filled with wind and gush, Don’t mope about and hang your head— You’d make the Devils blush; But shoulder up your pick and pan And take your shovel too, Then when you strike an ore vein, Just pop the Devils through. And when the rock becomes so hard You can no longer pick, Don’t hang your head and look so sour—

582

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

You’d make the Devils sick; But seize your drill and hammer too, Put down a four-foot hole, Then charge it well with dynamite, And let the thunder roll. Then when we’re down a hundred feet, With ore on the dump, The money kings will all take hold And make the Devils hump; Then when we sell our mines of wealth, We’ll money have to spend, We’ll put our plated harness on And visit all our friends. For when a man has wealthy grown, The past is all forgot; He’s honored, petted, loved and praised, Although a drunken sot. And as our wealth accumulates, The ladies all will smile; We’ll bid the Devils a good-bye And live in splendid style. Chorus: Then laugh, boys, laugh, we have the ore found; We’ll make our pile, we’ll live in style, Then pass the lager round.36

The Seven Devils refers to a mountain range in western Idaho east of the Snake River, named for seven rocky alpine peaks more than 9,000 feet high. The Grand Canyon of Snake River is also called the Seven Devils Canyon. Copper discoveries at the end of the nineteenth century inspired the rise of several boom towns, including Helena, Cuprum, Decorah, and Landore, but the difficulties in transporting the ore out of the rugged mountains deterred development. The song is optimistic enough to suggest it originated during the first hopeful years of mining activities in the area. Hannibal F. Johnson, an Idaho miner and folk poet of the 1890s, wrote a number of local songs and ballads. He had come to the region in the early 1870s, according to some miners, and was known locally as “Seven Devils” Johnson, credited by some with naming the Seven Devils Mountains. Johnson composed and sang his songs in the mining camps of the region. This one is in a very traditional come-all-ye ballad style, but there remains no evidence that it ever entered oral tradition.37 Grand Idaho Kind Providence our lot may cast, And yet we have to choose at last. If you’re inquiring where to go, Come down to southern Idaho. Chorus: Oh, Idaho, grand Idaho, It’s just the place for you to go,

MOUNTAIN REGION

583

With climate fair and sunny skies, Where mountains rich in grandeur rise, Where fruit in great abundance grows Down here in southern Idaho. The farmers here may be at ease, And work amid fruit-laden trees; Whate’er he plants is sure to grow, And make a crop in Idaho. For genial showers you need not wait, You only have to hoist the gate, And let the waters ever flow, Our valleys rich in Idaho. Now you who would contentment gain, Help build the state with brawn and brain, To mine the hills, or reap or sow, You’re welcome here in Idaho.38

The hymn “Beulah Land” generated many parodies that took the form of booster songs, and also a few that were somewhat sarcastic. Some of each type are represented elsewhere in this collection. The preceding text was submitted by a correspondent from Caldwell, Idaho. If we take the phrase “help build the state” literally, we would infer that the song is from the 1890s or later: statehood was achieved in 1890. Way Out in Idaho Come all ye jolly railroaders, I’ll sing you if I can, Of the trials and the troubles of a luckless railroad man; I started out from Denver, my fortune to make grow; I struck the Oregon Short Line way out in Idaho. As I was walking down the street one luckless April day, Up stepped a gentleman to my side, and this to me did say: “Pay me down five dollars, as quickly as you can, And hurry down and catch the train that is leaving for Cheyenne.” I quickly paid five dollars unto this railroad man; He handed me a ticket that would take me to Cheyenne. When I got to Cheyenne City, to Ogden I did go, ’Twas there I took the narrow gauge way out in Idaho. When I got to Pocatello, my troubles began to grow, Sleeping out in the sagebrush, in rain, sleet, and snow; But that did not discourage me, but farther on did go, Till I struck the Oregon Short Line way out in Idaho. One cold and frost morning with my blankets on my back, I started for American Falls, ’twas there I met Fat Jack. He said, “You are a stranger, perhaps your funds are low— I’ll take you down to my hotel, the best in Idaho.”

584

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

I followed my conductor into his canvas hut, And for a square and hearty meal I paid him my last cent; Fat Jack, he is happy—you will always find him so; He gave me the only square meal I got way out in Idaho. I struck a job next morning with a cranky cuss called Bill, Who gave me a ten pound hammer to pound upon a drill; He said if you don’t like it, pick up your duds and go; We’ll keep your blankets for your board way out in Idaho. It filled my heart with pity while walking down the track, To see so many railroaders with their blankets on their back; They say the work is hard, and the grub they cannot go, In those dirty railroad camps way out in Idaho. Come all ye Eastern rovers now, from village or from farm, I have told you my experience, I hope I have done no harm; If you ever roll your blankets, your fortune to make grow, Keep away from those lousy railroad camps way out in Idaho.39

The growth of mining, lumber, and cattle raising in the Northwest created the need for a rail link with the rest of the country. In 1881 the Oregon Short Line (OSL) was chartered to connect the Union Pacific ( UP, which owned controlling interest in the OSL) with the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company of the far Northwest. This would give the UP another route to the West Coast, the primary one being the link with the Southern Pacific at Ogden, Utah. Several spur lines were constructed in 1882–1884. All but one of these lines were standard railroad gauge (4 feet 8.5 inches between the rails); one section, from Pocatello, Idaho, through Silver Bow County, Montana, was a “narrow gauge” track. These facts alone would pinpoint the origin of the preceding song, both in time and in place. However, in 1926, one of Robert W. Gordon’s correspondents gave him the following information concerning the song: This one I know the author of, also the date, I composed the verces [sic] myself at the Massasoit Hotel on C & 17th St. Tacoma, Wash. in August or Sep 1887, dictated by stutering [sic] Ed Brown, who had the experience and told it to me. The foreman Bill Lowery I knew well. he & his two brothers Joe & Ed worked for Nelson Bennett, contractor of Takoma.40

“Way Out in Idaho” is very similar to both “Buffalo Skinners” and “Canaday-I-O,” which appear in sections on Texas (chapter 7) and Maine (chapter 1), respectively. All complain about intolerable working conditions on the frontier.41 Judge Martin Duffy Old Judge Martin Duffy was judge of the court In a small mining town in the West; Although he knew nothin’ ’bout rules of the law, At judge he was one of the best. One night in the winter a murder occurred, And the blacksmith, accused of the crime. We caught him red-handed and gave him three trials, But the verdict was “guilty” each time.

MOUNTAIN REGION

585

Now he was the only good blacksmith we had, And we wanted to spare his life. So Duffy stood up in the court like a lord, And with these words, he settled the strife: “I move we dismiss him; he’s needed in town.” Then he spoke out these words, which have gained him renown. “We’ve got two Chinese laundry men, everyone knows. Let’s save the poor blacksmith and hang one of those!”42

There is an Old World joke about the tailor in a small town who has committed murder. Though everyone agrees he is guilty, someone points out that they can’t hang him because he’s the only tailor in town. The dilemma is resolved when someone else suggests that they hang a cobbler because the town has two of them.43 In “Judge Martin Duffy,” some clever poet has turned this old chestnut into a song about life in the Wild West. As an added touch, the very real issue of anti-Chinese attitudes is grafted onto what is probably a tale about a fictitious judge. Folklorist J. Barre Toelken, who published this text, believed the story originated in Florence, Idaho. The Song of Harry Orchard Harry Orchard is in prison, The reason you allow; He killed Frank Steuenberg Right here in Idyho. He set his bomb out carefully, He did not hesitate; It blew poor Frank to Kingdom Come When he tried to shut the gate. Harry says he has killed others, For them my heart it bleeds; He should pray for God’s forgiveness For his terrible misdeeds. Harry blamed the Wobblies, And maybe he spoke true; For no one on this earth can tell What such a band will do. The chiefs were brought from Denver, They were shanghaied as you know; Bill Haywood and George Pettibone Were brought to Idyho. Clarence Darrow stood to shield them; The result it was so sure; Bill Haywood and his comrades Free men walked out the door. Now listen, all you young men, The lesson it is plain— Just be prepared to pay the cost When you set a bomb for gain.44

586

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Ex-governor Frank Steunenberg was killed on the night of December 30, 1905, by a bomb set to explode when he opened the gate to his yard at Caldwell, Idaho. Pinkerton detectives were called in, and Harry Orchard, alias Tom Hogan, was arrested, though he protested his innocence. Idahoans were convinced that Orchard had acted on behalf of the Western Federation of Miners, who wanted to get even with Steunenberg for alleged wrongs against the union during his governorship, from 1896 to 1900. Pinkerton agent James McParland (who earlier made his reputation breaking up the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania) eventually obtained a confession from Orchard that implicated the union president (Charles H. Moyer), secretary-treasurer William D. “Big Bill” Haywood (who had helped to found the IWW, or “Wobblies”), and George Pettibone, another activist union member who had already earned eight years’ prison residence for dynamiting a Helena-Frisco smelter in 1892. Renowned criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow was hired to defend the accused union men (which he did by casting all the blame at Orchard’s feet), and the flamboyant William E. Borah, then recently elected U.S. senator, was chief prosecutor. The union officials were all exonerated in successive trials in May–July 1907, leaving only Orchard found guilty. Orchard, born Albert E. Horsley but identified by a succession of aliases, first saw daylight in 1866 in Ontario, Canada. After early employment as a logger, Orchard was to be found working as a miner in the Coeur d’Alenes of western Idaho. There, in the late 1890s, he became embroiled in the conflicts between the Western Federation of Miners and the Mine Owners Association—a pair of adversaries that traded much more than harsh words in the then-turbulent world of western hard rock miners. In 1899 he participated in dynamiting a Northern Pacific passenger train that was carrying a crew of scabs—nonunion miners—to edge out militant union miners at the Tiger-Poorman mine at Burke. Thus began Orchard’s career as dynamite man par excellence, and in the next decade or so, dozens of victims were blasted to bits like so many chunks of recalcitrant coal seams. When Orchard was finally caught after the Steunenberg episode, he seemed almost relieved to be able to confess to his long string of misdeeds. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Idaho State Penitentiary at Boise, where he died on April 13, 1954, at age 88.45 Fifty Thousand Lumberjacks Fifty thousand lumberjacks Goin’ out to work, Fifty thousand honest men That never loaf or shirk, Fifty thousand lumberjacks They sweat and swear and strain, Get nothin’ but a cussin’ From the pushes and the brains. Fifty thousand lumberjacks Goin’ in to eat Fifty thousand plates of slum Made from tainted meat, Fifty thousand lumberjacks All settin’ up a yell To kill the bellyrobbers An’ damn their souls to hell.

MOUNTAIN REGION

587

Fifty thousand lumberjacks Sleepin’ in pole bunks, Fifty thousand odors From dirty socks to skunks, Fifty thousand lumberjacks Who snore and moan and groan While fifty million graybacks Are pickin’ at their bones. Fifty thousand lumberjacks Fifty thousand packs, Fifty thousand dirty rolls Upon their dirty backs, Fifty thousand lumberjacks Strike and strike like men, For fifty years we packed our rolls, But never will again.46

By 1900, logging was becoming an important industry in the Northwest. “Fifty Thousand Lumberjacks” was collected in northern Idaho in 1917 and details some of the unsavory work conditions of the day. An IWW version of the song, with more emphasis on unionization of the loggers involved in a 1917 strike, was published in the IWW’s Little Red Songbook in 1918.47 Ida Ho For her I’d leave Virginia, I’d leave my Mary Land, I’d part with Mrs. Sippi, That widow, fair and bland. I’d leave Louisa Anna, And other Annas, too, I’d bid farewell to Georgia, Though Georgia would be true. I’d part with Minna Sota, I’d part with Della Ware, I’d leave brunette Miss Souri, Or the Carolina pair. These women all are lovely, True-hearted girls, I know; But I’d give them all the go-by, And stick to Ida Ho. I like her breezy manners, I like her honest ways, I like her in the moonlight, And in the sunny days. Goodbye, my own Virginia, And other girls I know; I’m hanging around the gatepost Of a girl named Ida Ho!48

588

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

During the Great Depression, the Federal Works Projects Administration inaugurated many projects to give employment to otherwise unemployable artists, writers, actors, and musicians. A series of state guides was published; some were virtual travel guides, others simply collections of regional folklore. Not intended as scholarly collections, they often neglected to provide the source documentation that would make them useful to folklorists and ethnographers. The preceding and the following song were published in such a collection. They probably were written around the beginning of the twentieth century; whether or not they circulated in oral tradition was not indicated. Both are good examples of professions of local pride, or booster songs. Eagle Rock Millionaires grow in Chicago, In mansions of marble and pride; Homes grow in Eagle Rock, And friendships, true and tried. Plutocracy thrives in proud New York Though poverty dogs its heel; Real brotherhood grows on Eagle Rock, Where hearts have time to feel. It’s pleasant to play in Paris, Where gaiety gains renown; But oh! when it comes to living Give me that dear Idaho town.49

“Eagle Rock” is an early name of Idaho Falls. It was settled in the 1860s and named Taylor’s Ferry, for Matt Taylor, who built a toll bridge across the Snake River in southeastern Idaho, and renamed Eagle Rock in 1872. The name was again changed in 1891, this time to Idaho Falls. A reasonable person would therefore conclude that this song (or poem) was written between 1872 and 1891.

COLORADO Eastern Colorado was acquired by the United States in 1803 as part of the Louisiana Purchase. The western portion was part of Mexico from 1821, when Mexico became independent from Spain, until 1848, when it was ceded to the United States at the conclusion of the Mexican War. Until 1854, present-day Colorado was part of the Kansas Territory, after which, as a consequence of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, it became part of the newly formed Nebraska Territory. In 1861 the Colorado Territory was created by Congress and endured until 1876, when Colorado became the 38th state of the Union. Pike’s Peak, at 14,100 feet, was discovered in 1806 by the American explorer and army officer Zebulon Montgomery Pike. Pike may have found a mountain no one could have overlooked, but in 1858, much greater interest was stirred by the discovery by a party of prospectors of gold in Cherry Creek in what is now downtown Denver. Two mining camps, Denver and Auraria (“Goldville”), materialized that same year, and thousands of glassyeyed prospectors flocked to Colorado to muck about for the root of all evil. By the spring of 1859 the Colorado gold rush was at its zenith, and “Pikes Peak or Bu(r)st” was the mantra of many westbound adventurers. In 1891, gold was again discovered, this time at Cripple

MOUNTAIN REGION

589

Creek, a mere nugget’s throw from Pike’s Peak, and the unsuccessful were given a second chance at failure. The following three songs all originated in Colorado in the 1860s during the gold frenzy. Song of the Times There’s a crowd in every village, and every town astir Who are going to gather up the gold; There’s a sound in every cottage, and a ring in every ear, “Pike’s Peak” is the land for the young and old. Chorus: ’Tis the life and the dream of the many, “Pike’s Peak,” “Pikes Peak,” the land of the brave and the bold; Many ways we have wandered and now we are told, “Pike’s Peak” is the place to get the gold. There’s a young lovely maiden, scarce sixteen summers old, Whose thoughts o’er the distant prairie roam; Where the idol of her vision is digging for the gold— “Pike’s Peak” is the place to make your home. “Fare thee well,” says the farmer to his loving child and wife, “Be merry till the day we meet again; For we’ll farm then no longer, but lead a happy life— ‘Pike’s Peak’ is the place to get the tin.” “I am tired!” says the merchant, “Of selling goods for years, When a fortune can be made in half the time.” So he takes a barrel of whiskey, besides a sweitzer cheese, “Pike’s Peak” is the place of his design. There are youths of every nation, and men from far and near, Who are going to make their fortunes quick; There goes Paddy with his shovel, there Yoccup with his beer; “Pike’s Peak” is the place to raise the chink.50

This song was printed in a short-lived local Denver City newspaper at the time when Denver was part of the Nebraska Territory. It was set to the tune of Stephen C. Foster’s 1855 hit “Hard Times Come Again No More,” still popular in 1859. Cherry Creek Emigrant’s Song We expect hard times, we expect hard fare, Sometimes sleep in the open air; We’ll lay on the ground and sleep very sound, Except when Indians are howling around. Chorus: Then ho boys ho, to Cherry Creek we’ll go. There’s plenty of gold in the west, we are told In the new Eldorado. We’ll rock our cradles around Pike’s Peak, In search of the dust, and for nuggets seek; If the Indians ask us why we are there, We’ll tell them we’re made as free as the air.

590

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The gold is there, ’most anywhere, You can take it out rich with an iron crowbar; And where it is thick, with a shovel and pick You can pick it out in lumps as big as a brick. At Cherry Creek if the dirt don’t pay, We can strike our tents most any day; We know we are bound to strike a streak Of very rich quartz among the mountain peaks. Oh dear girls, now don’t you cry, We are coming back by and by; Don’t you fret nor shed a tear, Be patient wait about one year.51

The author of this piece used as a model “Ho for California” (“Banks of the Sacramento”), about the California gold rush of a decade earlier. In the Summer of Sixty In the summer of sixty as you very well know The excitement at Pike’s Peak was then all the go; Many went there with fortunes and spent what they had And came back flat-busted and looking quite sad. ’Twas then I heard farming was a very fine branch, So I spent most of my money in buying a ranch, And when I got to it with sorrow and shame I found a big miner had jumped my fine claim. So I bought a revolver and swore I’d lay low The very next fellow that treated me so; I then went to Denver and cut quite a dash And took extra pains to show off my cash. With a fine span of horses, my wife by my side, I drove through the streets with my hat on one side; As we were a-goin’ past the old “Denver Hall” Sweet music came out that did charm us all. Says I, “Let’s go in and see what’s the muss For I feel right now like having a fuss.” There were tables strung over the hall, Some was a-whirling a wheel with a ball. Some playin’ cards and some shakin’ dice And lots of half dollars that looked very nice; I finally strayed to a table at last, Where all the poor suckers did seem to stick fast. And there stood a man with cards in his hand, And these were the words which he did command, “Now gents, the winning card is the ace, I guess you will know it if I show you its face.” One corner turned down, it’s plain to be seen, I looked at that fellow and thought he was green,

MOUNTAIN REGION

591

Yes I looked at that fellow and thought he was green, One corner turned down, ’twas so plain to be seen. So I bet all my money and lo and behold ’Twa a tray-spot of clubs and he took all my gold. Then I went home and crawled into bed And the divil [sic] a word to my wife ever said. ’Twas early next morning I felt for my purse Biting my lips to keep down a curse; Yes, ’twas early next morning as the sun did rise You might have seen with your two blessed eyes. In an ox wagon, ’twas me and my wife Goin’ down the Platte river for death or for life.52

The protagonist of this sad musical tale was a ne’er-do-well if ever one there was, losing his claim, his money, and his pride in quick succession. At the end of his escapade, all he still has is his ox and faithful wife. But the song captures the spirit of the lawless and amoral West, where virtue was ousted by vice and element number 79 outshone the sun. The song’s author has not been identified, though there is a hint of the Hibernian in his (or her) language. Oh, Give Me the Hills Oh, give me the hills and the ring of the drills, And the rich silver ore in the ground, Where seldom is heard a discouraging word, And many true friends will be found. Oh, give me the camp where the prospectors tramp, And business is always alive; Where dance halls come first, and the faro banks burst And every saloon is a dive. Oh, give me the steed and the gun that I need, Shoot game from my own cabin door; With Glenwood below, where the one-lungers go, And we’ll camp on the banks of the Grand. Oh, give me the wife, the pride of my life, She can ride, she can shoot like a man; She’s a fond and true heart, and we never will part— Together we’ll roam through the land. Oh, give me the hills, and the roaring stamp mills, And the riches that in the hills lie; We’ll work and we’ll play all the live long day, Oh, there let me live till I die.53

Silver was unearthed in many locations in Colorado in the 1870s, after every last troy ounce of gold had been hunted down and carted off. Curative hot springs were discovered in Colorado at the conf luence of Roaring Fork and the Colorado River, and the town of Glenwood Springs was established there in 1882; this song could have been composed soon after. The “one-lungers” may refer to bathers in the springs. “The Grand” is the Colorado

592

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

River, still known among old-timers in the 1940s by that name. Its headwaters are in Grand Lake, Colorado. This song is evidently a parody of “Home on the Range,” first published (though not by that title) in 1874 (see the discussion of Kansas songs in chapter 6). Faro was (in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) a popular gambling game with cards, in which players bet on which card would turn up next when disclosed sequentially from the top of the deck. The Faro bank was either the gaming house or the banker’s supply of money. Perhaps at one time, one of the picture cards depicted a pharaoh; hence the game’s name. Lay of the Vigilantes Not a bark was heard, not a warning note, As we o’er to the calaboose hurried; Not a Thomas cat cleared his melodious throat When our hero in slumber lay buried. We entered his cell at the dead of night, The bolt with the jail keys turning, The moon’s pale crescent had sank out of sight, And never a lamp was burning. No useless stogas encased his feet, And we saw, as we carefully bound him, That he stood like a coward, dreading to meet The shades of the victims around him. Few and short were the prayers he said— He did not have time to say long ones— But he steadfastly gazed at the frames o’er his head, And grieved that the posts were such strong ones. We thought, as we hoisted him up from the ground, And made the rope fast to a corner, That the cool morning zephyrs would whisper around A corpse without even a mourner. Lightly they’ll talk of the deed that is done, And wonder, “Who was it that hung him?” Though little they’ll grieve to see him hang on The beam where the “Vigilance” swung him. As soon as our cheerful task was done, Ere the light of the morning was firing The peaks that glow in the rays of the sun, We prudently spoke of retiring. Sternly and gladly we looked on him there, As we thought of his deeds dark and evil; We heaved not a sigh and breathed not a prayer, But we left him alone with the devil.54

According to Olive W. Burt, Robert Schramle murdered Henry Thiede at the slaughterhouse (giving its name a new meaning) a few miles below Georgetown, Colorado, on October 11, 1877, while robbing Thiede of $95. Schramle was apprehended and imprisoned,

MOUNTAIN REGION

593

but on the morning of December 9, a crowd of masked men entered the jail, took the prisoner out, and hanged him on the wooden frame over a pigpen near the brewery. For such a somber theme, the song has a disconcertingly lighthearted mood. And There Is No Night in Creede Here’s a land where all are equal, Of high or lowly birth— A land where men make millions Dug from the dreary earth. Here meek and mild-eyed burros On mineral mountains feed, It’s day all day in the day-time And there is no night in Creede. The cliffs are solid silver With wond’rous wealth untold, And the beds of the running rivers Are lined with the purest gold. While the world is filled with sorrow, And hearts must break and bleed, It’s day all day in the daytime And there is no night in Creede.55

This poem’s author, Illinois-born Cy Warman (1855–1914), moved to Colorado in 1880, working first in an orchard, then a smelter, and then a succession of jobs for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad. In 1888 he turned to journalism, first for the short-lived Western Railway Magazine, and then the Rocky Mountain News. In 1892 he moved to Creede and began publishing the Creede Chronicle, which lasted for about half a year. After its demise, he returned to Colorado Springs and went back to work for the Rocky Mountain News. He wrote numerous railroad poems that enjoyed currency in railroad men’s magazines, including “Will the Lights Be White?,” and was best known for his pop song hit of 1893, “Sweet Marie”—a love song for his wife-to-be. His poem about Creede’s hyperactive night life was written in 1892 during his stay in the mining town.56 The editor of the publication that reprinted the text noted, “The first time I heard this piece it was sung as a song by a miner from Creede.”57 It was early springtime when the strike was on; They drove us miners out of doors; Out from the houses that the Company owned. We moved into tents up at old Ludlow.58

So begins Woody Guthrie’s prose-like recitation of the horrors at Ludlow in 1914. Long after the exploitation of gold and silver was concluded, Colorado continued to yield up lead and then coal. Mining was profitable to the state and to mine owners, but the hardworking miners did not feel they received a fair compensation for forcing mother earth to surrender her treasures. In 1880, at the Chysolite mine in Leadville, miners struck after they were told they could not talk while on the job. Mine owners organized a private army and persuaded the governor to declare martial law. They drove the strike leaders out of the area and the strike ended.

594

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

A much worse confrontation exploded into tragedy near Ludlow in 1913 and 1914 at coal mines owned by John D. Rockefeller. Striking miners, many of them Greek and Slavic immigrants, had built a tent settlement after they had been evicted from company-owned housing. On April 20, 1914, National Guard troops attempted to clear the camp, but the miners resisted; 39 people were killed in the ensuing battle. Ten days of near–civil war followed, as armed miners tried to destroy mine property, while militia and private guards tried to protect it. The violence ended only after President Woodrow Wilson sent in federal troops.59 In 1918 the UMWA erected the Ludlow Monument to commemorate those who perished in the strike. The monument was damaged in 2003 by vandals but was repaired two years later. Woody Guthrie wrote his song in about 1941 after reading an account of the incident in the autobiography of Ella Reeve “Mother” Bloor, an East Coast labor organizer.60 Told in an unrhymed verse and set to a tune similar to the traditional “Butcher Boy,” his song underplays the emotions of the tragedy. Guthrie’s rendition is available on a few recordings, as are performances by others.61 The text can be seen at the Web site of the song’s present publisher.62

UTAH Although there were Spanish explorations in the eighteenth century and visits by fur traders in the nineteenth, Utah’s written history is largely entwined with that of the Mormons. In 1846 the Mormons, who had been persecuted or shunned in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois for their religious beliefs, determined to move west into what was then Mexico. In 1847 an advance party of Mormons, under the leadership of Brigham Young, crossed the Wasatch Range and emerged at Emigration Canyon. Young, Mormondom’s leader after Joseph Smith, the founding father, had been dragged from jail and lynched in Illinois, declared this a suitable place for a settlement, and the Mormons established the first permanent white settlement in Utah at that site, between the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Range. In 1848, ownership of the region was transferred to the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which formally ended the Mexican War. Eager to preserve the independence of the Mormon colonies, Brigham Young called a convention in Great Salt Lake City in 1849 to draw up a constitution for a new state, to be called Deseret (a name taken from the book of Mormon), which was to include parts of eight present-day western states as far flung as San Diego, California. However, the U.S. Congress refused to recognize the state of Deseret. Instead, Congress created the territories of New Mexico (now New Mexico and Arizona) and Utah. Considerably smaller than the proposed state of Deseret, Utah Territory included all of present-day Utah, most of Nevada, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado. The size of the territory was decreased and finally, in 1868, was reduced to the area of the present state. Despite initial hardships, Mormon pioneers migrated to Utah in large numbers, and by 1850, Mormon communities were beginning to flourish. By then, about 10,000 settlers were living in Great Salt Lake City (later renamed Salt Lake City) and in other Utah settlements. About 6,000 of the newcomers during the 1850s were the remainder of the main body of Mormons previously camped in Iowa. Many others were recent converts, principally from New England, Britain, and Scandinavia. Year after year the Mormons traveled westward along a route that came to be known as the Mormon Trail. For the most part,

MOUNTAIN REGION

595

the Mormon pioneers traveled by wagon train. In 1856, Young inaugurated the cheaper and faster handcart method of transportation for poorer emigrants. By 1860, about 40,000 Mormons had settled in colonies in the Utah region.63 Utah became the 45th state in 1896. The Handcart Song Ye saints who dwell on Europe’s shore, prepare yourselves for many more, To leave behind your native land, for sure God’s judgments are at hand. For you must cross the raging main before the promised land you gain And with the faithful make a start to cross the plains with your handcart. Chorus: For some must push and some must pull, as we go marching up the hill; So merrily on our way we go, until we reach the Valley-o. The lands that boast of modern light, we know are all as dark as night; Where poor men toil and want for bread, where peasant folks are blindly led; These lands that boast of liberty you ne’er again would wish to see, When you from Europe make a start to cross the plains with your handcart. As on the road the carts are pulled, ’twould very much surprise the world To see the old and feeble dame thus lend a hand to pull the same; And maidens fair will dance and sing, young men more happy than a king, And children, too, will laugh and play, their strength increasing day by day. But some will say, “It is too bad, the saints upon the foot to pad, And, more than that, to pull a load as they go marching o’er the road.” But then we say, “It is the plan to gather up the best of men, And women, too, for none but they will ever travel in this way.” And long before the Valley’s gained, we will be met upon the plains, With music sweet and friends so dear, and fresh supplies our hearts to cheer; And then with music and with song, how cheerfully we’ll march along, And thank the day we made a start to cross the plains in our handcarts. When you get there among the rest, obedient be and you’ll be blessed, And in God’s chambers be shut in while judgments cleanse the earth from sin; For we do know it will be so, God’s servant spoke it long ago, We say it is high time to start to cross the plains with our handcarts.64

If it hadn’t been for the tragedy of 1856, Brigham Young’s handcart venture would be remembered as an innovative method to bring impoverished Mormon immigrants cheaply and quickly out to Utah. The Mormons’ Perpetual Emigrating Fund that lent to the needy was depleted, and wagons and ox teams were expensive. Therefore Young announced, on October 19, 1855, a venture by which the church would provide carts to be pulled by hand across the Mormon Trail. Between 1856 and 1860, nearly 3,000 Latter-day Saint emigrants joined 10 handcart companies—about 650 handcarts total—and walked to Utah either from Iowa City, Iowa (the first seven companies—a distance of 1,300 miles), or, later, from Florence, Nebraska (1,030 miles). At Iowa City, two-wheeled carts that could be pushed or pulled by two adults were distributed to the emigrants, who were then permitted to take what belongings could be fitted in their vehicles for the trek to Great Salt Lake City. Eight of these expeditions were successful; tragedy struck two others. Because of greater numbers than expected and delays in obtaining carts, these two companies had left Iowa City too late in the summer of 1856

596

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

and ran into a premature and brutally severe winter. Before help could reach them from Salt Lake Valley, over 200 immigrants perished from cold and hunger, and many others suffered from frostbite.65 The preceding song makes no mention of the tragic episode and must have been written early in the handcart period—perhaps at the time of one of the first companies in the summer of 1856. It refers to Europe in the opening lines—a reminder that many Mormons from England and the European continent were enticed to make the pilgrimage to Utah by the promise of quick and inexpensive means of transport. Mountain Meadows Massacre Come all ye sons of liberty, unto my rhyme give ear, ’Tis of the bloody massacree you presently shall hear; In splendor o’er the mountain some thirty wagons came, They were awaited by a wicked band, oh Utah, bear the blame! In Indian colors all wrapped in shame this bloody crew was seen, To flock around this little train all on the meadows green; They were attacked in the morning as they were on their way, They forthwith corralled their wagons and fought in blood array. Till came the captain of the band, he surely did deceive, Saying, “If you will give up your arms we’ll surely let you live.” When once they had give up their arms, thinking their lives to save, The words were broken among the rest, which sent them to their graves. When once they had give up their arms they started for Cedar City, They rushed on them in Indian style, oh, what a human pity! They melted down with one accord like wax before the flame; Both men and women, old and young, oh Utah, where’s thy shame? Both men and women, old and young, a-rolling in their gore, And such an awful sight and scene was ne’er beheld before; Their property was divided among this bloody crew, And Uncle Sam is bound to see this bloody matter through. The soldiers will be stationed throughout this Utah land, All for to find those murderers out and bring them to his hands. [By order from their president this bloody deed was done; He was the leader of the Mormon Church, his name was Brigham Young.]66

It would be interesting to compile a list of taboo songs—songs that touch on such sensitive feelings that they have been socially or politically forbidden. The list would perhaps start with “Lillibulero,” the seventeenth-century political satire that helped drive King James II from the British throne in 1688, and would probably include “Marching through Georgia” from Civil War days and some of the ballads about the Appalachian feuds of the late nineteenth century. Prominent on the list would be “Mountain Meadows Massacre,” recounting an incident so shameful to Utah Mormons that anything relating to the subject, especially this song, would be recalled only with extreme reluctance, if at all. In 1857, tensions between the Utah Mormons and the federal government could not have been much worse. The Mormons were drilling troops in preparation for an anticipated attack by federal soldiers. Young issued orders for the purchase of whatever arms and ammunition his followers could find; food was to be stored and conserved in preparation for

A rare broadside of “The Utah Horror—Mountain Meadow Massacre,” printed ca. 1857. The printer, Bruce’s Printing House, is not eager to be identified, giving his address only as “537 Sac.” From The Library Company of Philadelphia.

598

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

siege conditions. That fall, a party of some 140 Arkansas and Missouri emigrants, led by Captain Alexander Fancher, passed through Utah on their way to California. Fancher’s party was refused their request to purchase food and supplies. Probably the Mormons were ill-disposed to the travelers because not long before, a Mormon leader had been murdered in Arkansas. Possibly Fancher’s party antagonized the Mormons (some Missourians bragged that they had been present at the slaying of Joseph Smith—perhaps even participated); possibly they poisoned wells and committed other destructive acts. True or not, the Mormons, girding for war in any case, identified the emigrants with their American enemies and decided to incite the Indians to attack and obliterate the party. When the emigrants fought back valiantly, killing some of their attackers, the Indians were furious and threatened the Mormons. Mormons joined Indians in a five-day siege of the circled wagon company. Having failed to route them, the Mormons separated from the Indians and emerged as the Iron County Militia, showing a white truce flag and offering the Fancher party safe conduct to Cedar City if they laid down their arms. The grateful wagoners agreed to the outrageous proposal, and all women and children were loaded in wagons which proceeded single file, the men following some distance behind on foot, each man accompanied by an armed militia guard—to “protect” against further Indian assaults. On a prearranged signal from one of the Mormon leaders, the “guards” turned on the men they were protecting and shot them. (Some Mormons protested at being asked to murder; they were instructed to kneel down out of the way of the Indians, who would do the rest.) Those who tried to flee were run down and dispatched by the Indians. The children and women were left to Indians waiting in the bushes, who slaughtered them. After the murders, the bodies were looted, and cattle were driven off and divided up. Seventeen children, deemed too young to talk, were taken to safety by the Mormons and reared to adulthood. All but those 17 were left dead on or about September 11, 1857.67 Subsequent investigations disagreed on assigning blame. The Paiutes denied responsibility, as did the Mormons for many years. Two decades later, in July 1875, when rumors and suspicions still refused to die quietly, one Mormon elder, Bishop John D. Lee, was put on trial. Testimony implicated several other Mormon leaders. The jury was unable to reach a verdict, and a second trial was commenced in the following September. This time, witnesses had conveniently forgotten the names of everyone present, except Lee, who was found guilty. He was convicted and executed at the site of the massacre on March 23, 1877. He was the only person punished for the holocaust. In 1932 a monument was erected to the memory of those who perished. In 1966, representatives of the Mormon Church purchased the site upon which the monument stood. All signs leading to the site suddenly disappeared; a picnic table was hauled away, and the dirt access road was allowed to fall into disrepair. In 1990, descendants of the Mormon pioneers involved in the massacre and descendants of the victims came together in a spirit of reconciliation and planned a new memorial site. A new plaque was dedicated in September 1999.68 The singer of this text, George Barter (1879–1956), was a wheat rancher in Washington State who had learned this song in the 1920s while he was farming in southern Utah within a few miles of the massacre site. He was not a Mormon, though several of his children had married Mormons and /or joined the Mormon church. The omission of the final couplet from the recording may not have been a simple technological oversight: the laying of blame at Young’s feet would have been a contentious and provocative act. Young was first implicated, but later assessments suggest that while he contributed to the climate that made the event possible, he had no hand in planning the massacre, nor knew about it until afterward. In 2002 an inscribed sheet of lead was found in John Lee’s fort in Arizona, just

MOUNTAIN REGION

599

across the border from Utah, that allegedly implicated Young in the planned massacre. The authenticity of the artifact has been questioned.69 Echo Canyon (Mormon Railroad Song) In the canyon of Echo, there’s a railroad begun, And the Mormons are cutting and grading like fun, For friends and relations they’re longing to meet. They vow they’ll stay with it until it’s complete. Chorus: Hurrah! Hurrah! the railroad’s begun, Three cheers for our contractor, our own Brigham Young, Hurrah! Hurrah! we’ve a mighty crew, And if we stay with it, it’s bound to go through. Now there’s Mister Reed he’s a gentleman, too, He knows very well what we Mormons can do, He knows in our work we are lively and gay, And just the right boys to build a railway. Our camp is united, we all labor hard, And if we work faithfully, we’ll get our reward, Our leader is wise, and a great leader, too, And all things he tells us we’re right glad to do. The boys in our camp are light-hearted and gay, We work on the railroad ten hours a day, We’re thinking of fine times we’ll have in the fall, Then we’ll take our ladies, and go to the ball.70

When the Union Pacific was building a transcontinental railway in the late 1860s, Brigham Young negotiated a contract to build a section of the road across Utah. Almost all the men working for him under this contract were Mormons, which delighted the UP: the Mormons worked hard, were well behaved, and prayed daily. The railroad entered the northeastern corner of Utah from Wyoming and passed from flat plains to the steep-sided Echo Canyon. Mister Reed, mentioned in the second stanza, was a UP official. After completion of the cross-country link in 1869, Mormon church officials pushed for a connecting link between Ogden and Salt Lake City. That line was completed in January 1870 and had a greater impact on the Mormon community than the transnational link at Promontory in the preceding year. The (Utah) Iron Horse Th’ iron horse draweth nigh, With his smoke nostril high; Eating fire as if grazing, Drinking water while he’s blazing; Then his steam forces out, Whistling loud, “Clear the route”; For he’s so fond of racing, That he shan’t heed a shout. Make him room to come on, Grade the road he’s to run; Dig tunnels through the mountains, Turn the currents of the fountains;

600

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Bridges build, stations make, Lay the track he will take; For this steam horse is moving, With a train in his wake. The railroad passes here; Its iron horse is near: We’ll raise our flags and rally, With loud shouts, in Salt Lake Valley. When it comes through our land, Let us all be on hand To mount the cars together, Like a proud happy band. We can lead to the Lake; Little time will it take; And there enjoy much pleasure— Bathing, swimming at our leisure. Then we’ll jant [sic] to the East, With our friends there to feast, And west to the Pacific, With this best iron beast. Mighty horse, iron steed, O’er the plains let him speed, Until he links both oceans, And transport to us all notions: Then we’ll find in Salt Lake Every thing good to take, With scores of curious fashions, Such as pride loves to make. “Civilized” we shall be; Many folks shall we see; Lords and nobles, p’raps some bigger; Any how we’ll see the nigger; Saints will come, sinners too; We’ll have all we can do; For this great “Union” railroad Must fetch the devil through. We’ve isolated been, But soon we can be seen: And round this mountain region, All can learn of our religion; Count each man’s many wives, How they’re held in their “hives”; And see those dreadful “Danites,” Said to lynch many lives! So, make haste, fearless steed, Make us all one in creed; We seek to form acquaintance, And bring people to repentance. Then, hurrah! come along; Thro’ these high mountains throng; May th’ Iron Horse and Mormons Always right every wrong.71

MOUNTAIN REGION

601

This song, written a few months before the completion of the UP’s transcontinental railroad, is a jumbled hodgepodge of emotions in anticipation of that portentous event. The author, probably the compiler of The Bee-Hive Songster, wherein it was published, pours out his fears and delights of what will come about. The Mormons will now be able to travel in relative comfort and speed from one end of the continent to the other; at the same time, they will lose their precious isolation, as gentiles will be able to descend freely upon their settlements. He anticipated lords and nobles, saints (i.e., Mormons), and greater dignitaries; but on the other hand, the lowly negroes will also be able to come. (At this period in their history, Mormon attitudes toward blacks were shamefully prejudiced; one expressed opinion had it that negroes were put on earth so that Satan would have representation.) The “Danites” referred to in the last stanza were the so-called angels of death—those Mormons given dispensation to break the law (e.g., murder) at the church’s behest. It was the philosophy that was partly responsible for enabling the Mountain Meadows Massacre and for justifying it in retrospect. The name was taken from the Old Testament, where Danites were members of the tribe of Dan (the name may derive from Hebrew for “to judge or vindicate”); the tribe included some avenging judges such as Samson and Deborah. The author’s opinion of the Danites is ambiguous—perhaps he believed they were simply an unfounded rumor. All Are Talking of Utah Who’d ever think that Utah would stir the world so much? Who’d ever think the Mormons were widely known as such? I hardly dare to scribble, or such a subject touch, For all are talking of Utah. Chorus: Hurrah, hurrah, the Mormons have a name, Hurrah, hurrah, they’re on the road to fame; Don’t matter what they style us, it’s all about the same, For all are talking of Utah. ’Tis Utah and the Mormons, in Congress, pulpit, press, ’Tis Utah and the Mormons, in every place, I guess; We must be growing greater, we can’t be growing less, For all are talking of Utah. They say they’ll send an army to set the Mormons right, Regenerate all Utah, and show us Christian light; Release our wives and daughters, and put us men to fight, For all are talking of Utah. They say that Utah cannot be numbered as a State, They wished our lands divided, but left it rather late; ’Tis hard to tell of Mormons, what yet may be their fate, For all are talking of Utah. Whatever may be coming, we cannot well foresee, For it may be the Railroad, or some great prodigy; At least the noted Mormons are watching what’s to be, For all are talking of Utah. I now will tell you something you never thought of yet, We bees are nearly filling the hive of Deseret; If hurt we’ll sting together, and gather all we get, For all are talking of Utah.72

602

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Although Brigham Young had taken his followers out west to the nearly empty territory of Utah to escape religious and political persecution, the controversy continued over various Mormon practices, especially polygyny. In 1857–1858 the federal government sent the army to force Mormons into conformity, but a peaceful compromise was reached by Young and the territorial governor. This song was first published by the folk poet John Davis in his Bee-Hive Songster, where it was dated January 11, 1867. It was set to the tune of Henry C. Work’s Civil War song of 1865, “Marching through Georgia,” so it was written several years after the confrontation. Mormon Army Song When Uncle Sam he did send out his army to destroy us, He thought, “The Mormons we will rout, so they cannot annoy us.” The force he sent was competent, to “try and hang” for treason, That is, I ween, it would have been, but there was a good reason. Chorus: There’s great commotion in the East about the Mormon question, The problem is, to say the least, too tough for their digestion. As they went marching up the Platte, they sang a catchy ditty, And boasted, “We’ll do this and that, when we reach Salt Lake City.” And right they were when they got there, they made the Mormons stir, Sir, That is, I swan, they would have done, but, say, they didn’t get there. Then they returned with wildest tales, said Mormons beat the devil, They ride up hill and over rocks as fast as on the level. And if you chance to shoot one down, and you are sure he’s dead, Sir, The first you know he’s on his horse, and riding on ahead, Sir. Then on Hams Fork they camped a-while, saying we will wait longer, ’Till Johnston and his troops come up, and make our forces stronger. Then we’ll advance, take Brigham Young and Heber, his companion, That is, they would have done, but were afraid of Echo Canyon.73

In May 1857, as national sentiments against the Mormons were becoming more vituperative, President Buchanan terminated Young’s governorship of the Utah Territory and ordered federal troops to Utah to enforce federal authority over the Mormons. When news of Buchanan’s action reached Great Salt Lake City in July, Young sent a company of scouts to harass and delay the federal troops, which were moving west from Fort Leavenworth, in Kansas. Young’s scouts burnt supply trains, destroyed animal feed, and stampeded U.S. Army cattle, thereby delaying the federal troops long enough to force them to camp for the winter in Wyoming. During the next winter, President Buchanan dispatched Colonel Thomas L. Kane, a friend of the Mormons, to Great Salt Lake City to try to negotiate with Young. Kane persuaded Young to relinquish the territory to Alfred Cumming, Buchanan’s appointee. When federal troops under Colonel Albert Sidney Johnston passed through Great Salt Lake City in June, they found the city nearly deserted. Most of the 8,000 inhabitants had joined more than 20,000 other Mormons at Provo. The federal troops marched southward from Great Salt Lake City and camped at Camp Floyd, west of Utah Lake. After no fighting occurred, most of the Mormons returned to their land. Federal troops remained at Camp Floyd until shortly after the start of the Civil War in 1861.74

MOUNTAIN REGION

603

This song reflects the Mormons’ sense of victory over the federal government’s troop withdrawal and magnifies the episode into a testimony to the Mormons’ invincibility. The Railroad Cars, They’re Coming The great Pacific Railway, for California hail! Bring on the locomotive, lay down the iron rail, Across the rolling prairie, ’mid mountain peaks so grand, The railroad cars are steaming, gleaming, through Mormon Land, The railroad cars are speeding, fleeting, through Mormon Land. The prairie dogs in Dogtown will wag their little tails, When they see cars a-coming, just flying down the rails, Amid the sav’ry sage brush, the antelope will stand, While railroad cars go dashing, flashing, through Mormon Land, While railroad cars go dashing, flashing, through Mormon Land.75

Although the first transcontinental railroad was not completed until 1869, plans for a coast-to-coast connection began long before the Civil War. In the 1840s and 1850s, several bills were placed before Congress, backed by farsighted industrialists and merchants who envisioned lucrative economic benefits resulting from a direct link with the far West. The factor that finally persuaded Congress to pass the Pacific Railroad Act, which President Lincoln signed into law in 1862, was the fear of western regions being defenseless in the event of a military invasion by a foreign power. The rails of the UP, snaking westward from Omaha, Nebraska, and those of the Central Pacific Railroad, reaching eastward from Sacramento, California, were joined at Promontory, in northwestern Utah, on May 10, 1869, completing the coast-to-coast connection. Incidental beneficiaries of the new route were the Mormons, who could now toss aside wagons and handcarts and travel in relative comfort. [Brigham the Prophet] Brigham the Prophet he is our head, He is our Seer since Joseph is dead; The keys of the Kingdom of God now he holds, The gospel of Jesus to the nation he rolls. Chorus: For the lion of the Lord Is Brigham, is Brigham, is Brigham Young; Hail to the brave! Hail to the brave! The mantle of Joseph right straight on him fell, In spite of apostates and devils in hell; How many this mantle have sought for to gain, They have sought it, and sought it, but sought it in vain. Chorus. When Joseph and Hiram were morted in jail The devil thought then that he had a fine tail To boast to the nations of what he had done, But little he thought of the brave Brigham Young. Chorus.76

James Chisholm was a staff writer for the Chicago Tribune when he accepted an assignment in 1867 to travel to Wyoming’s South Pass to report on the gold frenzy of the late 1860s. He set off toward the end of that year, and through the final months of 1868, he

604

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

kept a journal of his Wyoming adventures. In one entry he included the text of “a genuine Mormon song which I learned from an apostate Saint—Sandy was born in the Cowcaddens and became converted along with the rest of the family, but the good seed was planted in stony ground. . . . The following . . . is one of the popular hymns of Mormondom sung to the tune of ‘Mistletoe Bough.’ ”77 The last stanza refers to the assassination of Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum on June 27, 1844, when an angry mob in Carthage, Illinois, descended on the jail, dragged them out, and murdered them. The use of “morted” for murdered is deliberately archaic: the word hasn’t been used as a verb since the fifteenth century. The tune to which Chisholm refers is “The Mistletoe Bough,” words by Thomas H. Bayly and music by Henry B. Bishop, published ca. 1834. It was very popular for the next several decades. Bishop Zack, the Mormon Engineer Zack Black came to Utah back in eighty-three, A right good Mormon and a Bishop, too, was he, He ran a locomotive on the D. ’n’ R. G., And Zack was awful popular as you will see. Hear him whistle! He ran a locomotive on the D. ’n’ R. G. Zack he had a wife in ev’ry railroad town, He numbered from twelve ’way down to number two, Oh, in his locomotive he’ll go steaming ’round, And when he’d pass each wifie’s home his whistle blew. Zack he always said he loved ’em all the same, But wifie number twelve he loved her mighty well, He had her picture mounted in his engine cab And when he passed her home he’d always ring the bell. Listen, ev’rybody, ’cause this story’s true, Zack had a wife in ev’ry town his train passed through; They tried to shift Zack over to the old U. P., But Zack demurred, ’cause he preferred the D. ’n’ R. G.78

The “D. ’n’ R. G.” was the Denver and Rio Grande Railway, incorporated in 1870, by which time the UP was already well established. Since Zack supposedly came to Utah in 1883, the song was probably composed in the 1880s or later. An ill-behaved rhyming scheme suggests a song with several contributing authors. The song was probably written by gentiles (the Mormons’ term for non-Mormons) since Mormons would not likely have made a fuss over Zack’s polygyny. Down in Utah While the workmen stopped in Denver one fellow came to me— Said he, “Are you from Utah, and why are you so free?” I smiled and said, “Young fellow, unless you break my jaw, I’m a Mormon man with residence in Utah.” Chorus: And if you are from Utah, they’ll often question you All about the hated Mormons and really what they do.

MOUNTAIN REGION

605

Some have a bad opinion while others pick a flaw; They think we live on carrots down in Utah. We had it hot and heavy ’til both were getting sick, My eyes were getting black and blue and my lips were getting thick, But I stayed with my young smarty ’til he was getting raw, And the battle fell in favor of old Utah. I knew I was a-sweating and looking mighty blue, When a cop comes stepping up to me, said he, “I’m on to you.” I smiled and looked upon him while he held me in his claw, And the battle fell in favor of old Utah. We rode along together down to the city hall, ’Twas there I met my smarty I scarcely knew at all. The cop he said, “Young fellow, to you I’ll read the law.” And the battle fell in favor of old Utah.79

Folk song collector Thomas Cheney, who published this song, thought it must have originated in Sanpete County, Utah. It probably comes from the period of the building of the railroads but, in any case, reflects the near-spontaneous flare-ups that must have been common between Mormons and gentiles when they came in contact with one another. A Tough Utah Boy I am a Mormon, from Utah I came, And I am a tough boy and Wells it is my name; I traveled Nevada, Montana and Idaho, And the name I go under is a tough Utah boy. When I return to my own Utah home I’ve no lover to caress me, but my mother she will come; She knows well I love her and my love ’twill never fail, And for Utah I am bound and for Utah I will sail.80

There is something strangely incongruous in this song by a “tough boy” who first brags of his toughness and then speaks tenderly of his beloved mother; the musical equivalent of the leathery old tar with the tattoo of “mother” on his brawny arm. Blue Mountain My home it was in Texas, My past you must not know; I seek a refuge from the law Where the sage and the piñon grow. Chorus: Blue Mountain, you’re azure deep, Blue Mountain with sides so steep; Blue Mountain with horse head on your side— You have won my heart for to keep. I chum with Lattigo Gordon, I drink at the Blue Goose Saloon; I dance at night with the Mormon girls And ride home beneath the moon.

606

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

I trade at Mons’s store With the bullet holes in the door; His calico treasure my horse can measure When I’m drunk and feeling sore. Yarn Gallas with shortened bale, Doc Fewclothes without any soap; In the little green valley have made their sally, And for the sick there’s still some hope. In the summer the wind doth whine, In the winter the sun doth shine; But say, dear brother, if you want a mother There’s Ev on the old chuck line.81

With all its references to local places and characters, this song would have made a lot more sense to the residents of the locale involved. The narrator’s past peccadilloes are not revealed. Blue Mountain is in southern Utah, near Monticello.

NEVADA Two years after the United States acquired Nevada from Mexico in 1848, Congress created the territory of Utah, which included much of Nevada, or “Western Utah,” as it was then called. The southern region of modern Nevada was included in the New Mexico Territory. The end of the Mexican War and the discovery of gold in California, both in 1848, spurred westward emigration, and temporary way stations sprang up along the emigrant trails to sell supplies to the travelers. Mormon Station (now Genoa), a trading post built in 1850 by Mormon traders from Salt Lake City, became Nevada’s first permanent settlement. By the end of 1851, about 100 settlers were living in Nevada’s western river valleys. Mormon leader Brigham Young was named Utah Territory governor, but his Salt Lake City–based government could not exercise authority in remote Western Utah. Settlers there wanted to establish law and order and escape Mormon rule by joining California. Controversy was averted when, in 1858, Young summoned all Mormons back to Salt Lake City to help repel a federal army sent to punish the Mormons there for allegedly ignoring the orders of federal judges. Mormon influence in Western Utah ended at that time. The settlers who remained petitioned Congress repeatedly for their own territorial government. In March 1861, outgoing President James Buchanan signed a bill creating the territory of Nevada. Motivating congressional approval was the 1859 discovery of abundant gold and silver at the Comstock Lode. When Nevada became the 36th state in 1864, it was smaller than it is today. The state’s eastern boundary was extended east in 1862 and again in 1866; in 1867, Nevada obtained its southern tip from the Arizona Territory.82 Baldy Green I’m going to tell a story, and I’ll tell it in my song; I hope that it will please you, and I won’t detain you long; It‘s about one of the old boys, so gallas and so fine, He used to carry mails, on the Pioneer Line.

A San Francisco broadside version of “The Pioneer Stage Driver,” ca. 1865. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

608

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

An advertisement from the Gold Hill News, June 1868, offering a reward for another robbery in which Baldy Green was the victimized stage coach driver. Author’s collection.

He was such a favorite where he was seen, He was known about Virginia by the name of Bally Green. Oh! he swung a whip so graceful, for he was bound to shine— As a high-toned driver on the Pioneer Line. As he was driving up one night, as lively as a coon, He saw four men jump in the road, by the pale light of the moon; One sprung for his leaders, while another his gun he cocks, Saying, “Bally, I hate to trouble you, but pass me out the box.” When Bally heard him say these words, he opened wide his eyes; He didn’t know what the devil to do, it took him by surprise. But he reached down in the boot, saying, “Take it sir with pleasure,” And out into the middle of the road went Wells & Fargo’s treasure. Now, when they’d got the treasure-box, they seem’d quite satisfied— The man that held the horses, politely stepped aside, Saying, “Bally, we’ve got what we want, just drive along your team,” And he made the quickest time to Silver City ever seen.

MOUNTAIN REGION

609

If you say “greenbacks” to Bally now, it makes him feel so sore, It’s the first time he was ever stopped, and he’s drove that road before; But they play’d four hands against his one, and shot guns was their game, And if I had been in Bally’s place, I’d have passed it out the same.83

The incident that prompted this song occurred shortly after midnight on May 22, 1865, involving one of the best-known stage drivers of eastern California and western Nevada during the 1860s. The Pioneer stage was stopped at gunpoint by three men a short distance from Silver City. They politely requested the driver, George E. “Baldy” Green (misnamed “Bally” in the broadside text), to hand out the treasure box, with which request Green promptly complied. The robbers thus made away with $6,500 in gold, belonging to the express company, and $4,000 in greenbacks, belonging to bankers (about 10 times as much in today’s dollars). Wells, Fargo and Company offered a reward of $2,500 for the recovery of the money and a similar sum for the arrest of the malefactors. Five suspects were arrested in the weeks afterward, one of whom was convicted in September. The broadside credits Charley Rhoades with composing and performing the song. One Berkeley singer who recalled the song in the 1920s explained that Baldy Green “often boasted that he had never been robbed and had hinted that those who had been held up probably had an understanding with the robbers. When Baldy’s turn came, the incident aroused so much amusement that a friend celebrated it in this song, much to Baldy’s disgust.”84 According to the story, when Rhoades played this song at Piper’s Opera House, the miners joyfully beat their pistols on the benches. Green was frequently referred to in newspapers in the following years with snide allusions to his nonresistance. The Pioneer line was taken over by Wells, Fargo in 1866. After this unfortunate encounter, Baldy’s luck was not so good. On June 10, 1868, Baldy was driving the Overland stage and was stopped near the mouth of Six-Mile Canyon by three highwaymen, who robbed the treasure box and passengers to the extent of $5,000. Commented the Gold Hill News the next evening, “Baldy Green is decidedly unfortunate, this being the third time he has been stopped in a similar manner and with like effect since he has been staging within the borders of this State.”85 Are You a Hood-a-lum I came to town the other day about a week or more, I travelled many a weary mile, my feet were very sore; I called at Jerry G’s saloon to get a little rum; He looked at me and smiling said, “Are you a Hood-a-lum?” Chorus: Are you a Hood-a-lum? I’m a Hood-a-lum I hear where’er I go, what is this Hood-a-lum? Does anybody know? Next day I went up to the mine and soon I found the boss; He hardly spoke a word to me, he was so very cross; I asked if he could give me work; he looked at me so glum, Says he, “I have no work for you, you are a Hood-a-lum.” I started down the street again, I felt a little vexed, Not knowing what the people meant, though very much perplexed; A fellow looked at me and said, “I want you to keep mum, Or I will put a head on you; I’m big chief Hood-a-lum.”

610

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

I went to buy a suit of clothes, a hat and pair of boots, The store man said how very cheap; he sold the cheapest suits; I said to him, “How can you dare to ask me such a sum?” “They’re cheap,” says he; “I think,” said I, “you are a Hood-a-lum.” I met a lady at a ball; I thought myself in luck. She smiled so very sweet, on me, of course, she must be stuck; I told her I would like to call; she said I need not come; I did not tell her, but I thought she was a Hood-a-lum. This word is nearly new to me, I hear it talked about; I know not what to think of it, I cannot make it out. Next evening I intend to go and see the Lyceum, In hope that I might find one there—a genuine Hood-a-lum.86

The slang term hoodlum originated in California and, so far as can be determined, first appeared in print in 1871 in newspapers there. This Nevada song was printed in the same year and supports the contention that the word was a new one then. Hard Rock Dann The sun was setting in the West One evening late in May; While on the burning desert sand Two fortune-hunters lay. Their pack was scattered on the ground, While the burro seemed to beg, But the thing their eyes were centered on Was the empty water keg. The first to speak, with voice made weak From travel, thirst and cramp, Was Hot Water Dan, a hard rock man, From Nevada’s greatest camp. “It seems,” says he, “twixt you and me, That life’s great jig is up; From Dawson’s slush, to Bisbee’s bush I’ve drunk a bitter cup. “So, I bury the pick and the prospect pan, And leave forever the haunts of man.” His voice was hushed by a mighty sound; The burro was rolling on the ground. A kick, a plunge, a staggering fall, The burro has gone beyond recall. The silence is broken by Stuttering Jack, Who, for years, has followed the prospect pack. Whose fiery eyes and heated breath Tells him he faces a desert death. “Goodbye, old Comstock, with your mighty hills, Goodbye, old Bodie, and Carson river mills. “Goodbye to long eared jacks, Hot water, mines and prospect packs;

MOUNTAIN REGION

611

I’m going now, where gold will bring no joy, Goodbye, Dan, goodbye, old boy.” And they fell asleep in the desert’s gloom, Under the gaze of a smiling moon. After many months the bones are found, Bleached and white upon the ground, By Chapperal Joe, from New Mexico, A northbound trapping Navajo, And finding a message on the pack, To the haunts of man, he brought it back: “Take me back to old Comstock, And bury me under bonanza rock, And on my tomb, place ‘Hard Rock Dan, A roving Western mining man.’ ”87

In June 1859, a rich deposit of silver was discovered on property owned (in part) by Henry Comstock. Named the Comstock Lode on his account, the lode’s output of silver was so bountiful that the Treasury Department opened a branch of the U.S. mint at nearby Carson City. In the peak years of 1876–1878, silver ore worth about $36,000,000 was extracted annually. Production declined sharply thereafter, and the rich lower levels of the lode were flooded in 1882. Virginia City and the other mining towns disappeared or became ghost town tourist attractions. Undated and without attribution, this song must have originated in the 1880s or 1890s as one more parody on Lady Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan Norton’s classic “Bingen on the Rhine,” probably first published (undated) in the 1840s. Compare the opening stanza with another parody of the same poem: The sun was sinking in the West and fell with lingering ray, Through the branches of a forest where a wounded ranger lay; Beneath a tall palmetto and the sunset, silver sky, Far away from his home in Texas they did lay him down to die.88

However, halfway through the song, the author abandons his model and switches from ABAB to AABB quatrains. The moribund heroes of the poem must have covered considerable territory: Bisbee is in Arizona; Bodie, in California; Dawson, in the Yukon; and Comstock, in Nevada. The Highgrader Way out in the State of Nevada In a mining camp far out of the way, A hobo, a Cripple Creek miner, Struck for a job there one day. He was a hell of a fine lookin’ fella, A gentleman, at once you could see; But he had a look in his face That said plainly, “Nearer, my God to Thee.”

612

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The boys they all laughed when they saw him, And started to throw the bull con; For the book that they saw in his pocket Was the Gospel According to St. John. He gave us a sermon each Sunday, He taught us to pray and to kneel; He said, “Leave the high-grade for the company, ’Cause only wicked men steal.” He worked there just three months and ten days, Then he said, “Turn in my time”; He’d lent the boys most of his wages, So I said, “Here, pal, take some of mine.” When he answered, his eyes they were smiling With that “Nearer, my God, to Thee” look; He said, “No, pard, now I’m trusting In almighty God and this book.” Well, the next morning I had the occasion To pick up his grip from the floor; Say, it’s a wonder I didn’t get ruptured— And God knows he might ha’ had more. Now he is bucking the tiger, And say, but I hope he will win; For he was a jolly good mucker, If he did take a piece for a pin.89

Cripple Creek Colorado miners perfected and brought to Goldfield the practice of highgrading—taking home rich ore in the lunchbox. “Bucking the tiger” was an old gold prospectors’ expression for playing the card game Faro.90 Goldfield, in southwestern Nevada, was the site of a gold rush that began in 1902 and lasted until 1918. In 1910 the production of ore reached an all-time high, valued at more than $11 million. Federal troops were stationed in the town during a bitter labor struggle (1907–1908) between the miners and the operators. After 1918, Goldfield’s population declined rapidly, from an estimated 40,000 in 1910 to fewer than 200. I’m a Roaring Son of the Comstock I’m a roaring son of the Comstock And I work in the Chollar Mine, I fight my whiskey with both hands And never have a dime; And when I’m dead and lying In a coffin bound for hell, I’ll still be a son of the Comstock And the devil knows it well!91

Folklorist Duncan Emrich collected songs and ballads out in the western states before retiring to Washington, D.C., to become the Head of the Archive of American Folk Song

MOUNTAIN REGION

613

at the Library of Congress. In 1940 he published a modest collection of four songs from Virginia City, Nevada, identifying the author as “the Comstocker.” In his introduction, the Comstocker wrote, “All of the songs here reprinted have, at one time or another, appeared in the Comstocker’s column in the Virginia City News of Virginia City, Nevada. I hope that you will enjoy them. They are dedicated to all people who know and love the town.” Of the preceding song, he wrote, “The drinking song of the men in the Chollar Mine obviously suggests part of the air of ‘I’m a Rambling Wreck’ ” (“. . . from Georgia Tech”—a pop song of 1903). Subsequently, as a footnote to a scholarly article of collectanea in California Folklore Quarterly in 1942, Emrich noted that he himself wrote this song “for local consumption only.” Hopefully the spirit of the Comstocker will forgive this effort to make his local song more widely known. The Chollar Mine was part of the Comstock Lode. Opened in 1859, it was the leading producer in the lode, mined for both gold and silver. The Comstocker Died in Virginia The Comstocker died in Virginia, We’ve buried him high on the hill, He watches over old C Street, And wants us to drink with him still. The girl that the Comstocker married Held him when he died, Her lips were wet upon his lips, And when he’d gone, how she cried. And that’s the reason we’re gathered At this particular place, We see in the mirror before us The Comstocker’s usual face. So drink to him all of your strangers Who’ve gathered from near and from far, Remember he once stood beside us At this particular bar. And when you drink to his passing, Drink to his presence, too, The glass that is standing before you Is a glass that he drank from, too. So drink to the health of the Comstock, To the health of the Mother Lode, To the men who builded Virginia And have gone to their last abode. And drink again to the Comstock To the roaring men that she’s bred, And drink to the health of your loved one Until you’re done for and dead. Because the Comstocker told us, There’s nothing will guard you and save Like the love of a faithful woman When you’re ready to go to the grave.

614

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

So drink again to the Comstock, To the roaring men that she’s bred, And drink to the health of your loved one, Until you’re done for and dead.92

Virginia City, one of several mining boom towns settled during that 1859 rush, was named for a prospector, “Old Virginia” Festinum. In the 1870s its population reached 30,000, and if it had yellow pages, then they would have listed six churches and more than 100 saloons. In 1875 the town was incinerated by a fire that destroyed the entire downtown district. The Comstocker noted that this song “can be sung to almost any popular ballad tune of the southwest, particularly to the tune of ‘I’ve Got No Use for the Women.’ ”93 Reno Blues I come home this morning, when my clock was striking two (2) The first thing I saw was another man’s hat and shoes. (Then) I turned around and I started right back to town (2) She asked me where I was going, told her I was Reno Bound. I’m leaving you, honey, and I’m never coming back (2) I’m a-headed for Reno if I have to walk that track. Well I went down the railroad singin’ this lonesome song (2) Oh them roads am rocky but they won’t be rocky long. If my feet get sore and I can’t even wear my shoes (2) Then I’ll lay down on that railroad and die with the Reno blues.94

In the nineteenth century, most states had a one-year residency requirement between filing for and obtaining a divorce. Toward the end of the century, Nevada lowered that requirement to six months and, by the early 1900s, had a reputation as the quickie divorce state. Although there was opposition on moral grounds, the business owners of Nevada found that the procedure was a great economic boon, and they pressed for further reductions. In 1927 it was reduced to three months, and then, in 1931, to six weeks. Nevada, and in particular the city of Reno, became associated in the public mind with fast divorces, and “going to Reno” came to mean going for a quick divorce. Also in 1931, gambling was legalized. Nevada danced into the depths of the Great Depression with a stunning advantage over the other states. Reno became the divorce venue of choice among many American celebrities, polishing yet further the shine on its special reputation. As late as the second half of the twentieth century, Nevada’s divorce rate ( per population) was approximately 10 times greater than the national average. The Tobacco Tags, a hillbilly ensemble from North Carolina, wrote this so-called white blues song by stitching together traditional blues stanzas and phrases. Other songs capitalized on the association between Nevada / Reno and divorce. As early as 1910, William Jerome and Jean Schwartz wrote “I’m on My Way to Reno,” recorded by popular recording artist Billy Murray: My wife and I don’t get along, We simply fight and fight. I married her to win a bet, It really serves me right.

MOUNTAIN REGION

615

The love she once declared was mine Has simply turned to hate. So I’ve made up my mind To visit old Nevada State.95

In the 1940s, Woody Guthrie contributed to Reno’s song lore with a composition he titled “Reno Blues.” The humorous country song tells of a great Philadelphia lawyer who fell in love with a Hollywood maid. (“Philadelphia lawyer” has since the 1780s meant a shrewd lawyer—or worse.) While he is wooing her, her husband, a gun-toting Bill, draws near to her window and overhears the lawyer’s amorous proposition. The final stanza dryly notes that there is now one less Philadelphia lawyer out in old Reno. If Gutherie’s text left the outcome of the story ambiguous, that uncertainty was removed in the first important recording of the song by Rose Maddox and the Maddox Brothers (who also retitled the song “Philadelphia Lawyer” when they recorded it). In their recorded version, a loud gunshot and the sound of a windowpane breaking precede the final stanza. Guthrie’s song is about as close to a traditional folk song as one can get without actually having been collected from oral tradition. The tune was borrowed from a nineteenth-century folk song, “The Jealous Lover,” though the story is quite different. In “The Jealous Lover,” the jealous man murders his sweetheart, but the reason is not made explicit. In Guthrie’s song, the husband murders his wife’s lover, not—so far as we can tell—the woman also. There is perhaps a small narrative inconsistency: locating the song in Reno is clearly meant to suggest the association between “Reno” and “divorce,” and the lawyer is by implication also involved with divorce cases. If so, why is the husband so offended?

NOTES 1. From Olive Woolley Burt, American Murder Ballads and Their Stories ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 54. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. www.oup.com. A recorded version collected by Max Hunter in Missouri can be heard online at http://maxhunter. missouristate.edu, recording MFH#0599. 2. Ibid. 3. As sung by Warde H. Ford at Central Valley, California, 1938, recorded by Sidney Robertson; issued on Songs of the Mormons and Songs of the West from the Archive of Folk Song, Library of Congress LP AFS L30; reissued on Songs of the Mormons and Songs of the West, Rounder CD 1520. Rowels are the sharp-toothed wheels on the cavalry’s spurs. 4. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Little Big Horn, Battle of the.” 5. From John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, rev. and enlarged ed. ( New York: Macmillan, 1938), 167–68; taken from a contribution by Mrs. Alberta Head of Missouri to “Fiddlin’ Joe’s Song Corral” in the Wild West Weekly (n.d.). 6. From John Meredith, The Wild Colonial Boy: Bushranger Jack Donahoe, 1806–1830 (Ascot Vale, Australia: Red Rooster Press, 1982), 48–49, reprinted from Walton’s 132 Best Irish Songs and Ballads (s.l.: Fodtila Printing, n.d.), 50–51. For references to versions of the Australian ballad collected in the United States and Canada, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., American Balladry from British Broadsides (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1957), 177 [L 20]. 7. Sung by John Dell Duffy, who learned the song in about 1921, collected by Wayland Hand et al. and published in Wayland D. Hand, Charles Cutts, Robert C. Wylder, and Betty Wylder, “Songs of the Butte Miners,” Western Folklore 9 (January 1950): 23. Gob = worked-out chambers and tunnels into which waste rock is dumped; pickers = muckers who hand pick the waste rock; raisemen = miners who operate the raisers that connect the horizontal mine shafts on different levels; rustling = hunting for a job.

616

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

8. Reported by Hand et al., “Songs of the Butte Miners,” 37. The authors explain that a stope is a workings off from the main tunnels, or drifts, where ore is taken out. Fitchery ground is usually soft or loose rock. The expression put the rock in the box is a symbol of the sped-up of mining. Back is the top of the tunnel or drift. A rustler is a miner (but can also mean someone looking for work). Green hair was probably a result of copper ore exposure. 9. From New Songs for Butte Mining Camp (Butte, MT: Century, n.d., ca. 1918), 2–3. Words credited to “Scottie”; tune: “Standard on the Braes O’Mar.” 10. See also Joyce L. Kornbluh, Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 302–3, for more information on this publication. 11. From New Songs for Butte Mining Camp, 5. Words credited to “Scottie”; tune: “John Brown’s Body” or” Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory.” The ACM was the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, known as the Amalgamated Copper Mining Company until 1915. The term rustling cards referred to a system used by the mine owners to identify troublemakers in the workforce. Many mines were called “hot boxes” because the temperatures at 3,000–5,000 feet underground could easily exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit. 12. Reprinted in Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, and Salvatore Salerno, eds., The Big Red Songbook (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007), 171. 13. Duncan Emrich, “Mining Songs,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 6 (June 1942): 104–5; other variants are given in Emrich, “Songs of the Western Miners,” California Folklore Quarterly 1 (July 1942): 213–32; Emrich, Casey Jones and Other Ballads of the Mining West (Denver, CO: W. H. Kistler, 1942); and also in Hand et al., “Songs of the Butte Miners,” 33–34. 14. From http://www.answers.com/topic/ingersoll-rand-company-limited; http://miningbureau. com/mining/hard_rock htm; and http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GDX/is_6_75/ai_67151173. 15. From Farmers Union Songs (St. Paul, MN: Farmers Union Herald, n.d.), 12. Words by Mrs. Ruth Bowman; tune: “Tipperary.” 16. Ibid., inside cover; by Gladys Talbott Edwards. 17. From Powder River Jack and Kitty Lee, Songs of the Range: Cowboy Wails of Cattle Trails (Chicago: Chart Music, 1937), 16–17. A stack of whites is probably a stack of white poker chips. For a collected version, see Lomax and Lomax, Cowboy Songs, 334. Wilf Carter sings a version on Cowboy Songs, Bear Family BCD 16939, eight-CD box set. 18. Butte, MT: Cohn Bros., [1910], and Minneapolis, MN: Bloom Bros., [1914], resp. 19. “Old South Dakota.” Cheyenne, WY: R. R. Doubleday, 192?. 20. “Out in Wyoming.” Cheyenne, WY: R. R. Doubleday, [1928]. 21. “Down in Texas.” Milwaukee, WI: E. C. Kropp, 194?. 22. Thomas E. Cheney, Mormon Songs from the Rocky Mountains (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 129. Sung by M. E. Wakefield, Ogden, Utah, 1959, to the tune of “Just before the Battle, Mother.” 23. Ibid. 24. From Sherry L. Smith, Sagebrush Soldier: Private William Earl Smith’s View of the Sioux War of 1876 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 86–87. Quoted from W. E. Smith’s diary, where a notation at the end of the poem reads, “Copied Sept. 16, 1877, by Chas. S. Fowler for Wm. E. Smith, Co. E, 4th Cav., Ft. Wallace, Kansas.” Spelling and punctuation have been modernized slightly. “Fourth horse” in the second and penultimate stanzas must refer to the Fourth Cavalry. 25. As sung by Jesse Morris for John A. Lomax at Dalhart, Texas, 1942. Issued on Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls from Texas, Library of Congress LP AAFS L28; reissued on Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls, Rounder CD 1512. Doney, meaning “sweetheart,” comes from the Spanish word doña (feminine of don), but probably via British slang, rather than directly from Mexico. 26. From Louise Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska and the Central West: A Syllabus (Lincoln: Nebraska Academy of Sciences, n.d., ca. 1915), 25. 27. From Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska, 25–26. 28. From Levette J. Davidson, “A Ballad of the Wyoming ‘Rustler War,’ ” Western Folklore 6 (April 1947): 116–18. Written down by W. A. Martin. See also G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native

MOUNTAIN REGION

617

American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. ( Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), 260 [dB 40]. A recording by David Wilkie and Cowboy Celtic (titled “Nate Champion”) can be heard on the CD Cowboy Ceilidh, Red House Records RHR CD117. 29. From Davidson, “A Ballad of the Wyoming.” See also Davidson, Poems of the Old West (Denver, CO: University of Denver Press, 1951), 59–61, and Olive Woolley Burt, “The Minstrelsy of Murder,” Western Folklore 17 (1958): 263–72. 30. From Burt, American Murder Ballads, 175–77. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. www.oup.com. Obtained from a student of hers, Leland White. 31. Ibid. 32. From Burton W. Marston, comp., The Little Brown Song Book for Wyoming ( Laramie, WY: Agricultural Extension Service, University of Wyoming, 1932), 15. To the tune of “We Won’t Go Home Till Morning.” 33. Published in the Salem, Oregon, Statesman for November 28, 1854, and reprinted by Burt, American Murder Ballads, 138–39. The song was credited to “Nicholas Lee of Pole Co. Oregon T.” 34. From Burt, American Murder Ballads. 35. From the sheet music “Idaho” by Frank French (Chicago: H. M. Higgins, 1964). For a collected version, see Rosalie Sorrels, “We’re Coming Idaho,” in Way Out in Idaho (Lewiston, ID: Confluence Press, 1991), 30; found in a manuscript book of the late 1800s. 36. From Richard E. Lingenfelter, Richard A. Dwyer, and David Cohen, Songs of the American West ( Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 140–41, and reprinted from H. F. Johnson, Poems of Idaho ( Weiser: Signal Job, 1895); see also Jan Harold Brunvand, “Folk Song Studies in Idaho,” Western Folklore 24 (October 1965): 244–45. 37. For more information, see Sister M. Alfreda Elsensohn, “The Seven Devils,” in Pioneer Days in Idaho County (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1951), 2:293–321. 38. Brunvand, “Folk Song Studies,” 231–48. 39. From a letter by Ben A. Ranger to Robert W. Gordon, December 29, 1926 (letter no. 419). A recorded version by Blaine Stubblefield, made in 1938 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., can be heard on Railroad Songs and Ballads, Rounder CD 1508. The “hut” ending the first line of the sixth stanza must have been a tent originally. 40. Letter by Ben A. Ranger to Robert W. Gordon, December 29, 1926 (letter no. 419). 41. For more information, see Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 561–66. 42. J. Barre Toelken, “Northwest Traditional Ballads: A Collector’s Dilemma,” Northwest Review 5 (Winter 1962): 9–18. For other versions, see Tom Nash and Twilo Scofield, The Well-Traveled Casket: Oregon Folklore (Eugene, OR: Meadowlark Press, 1999), 139–40; W. K. McNeil, Southern Folk Ballads, Vol. 2 (Little Rock, AR: August House, 1988), 51; and Brunvand, “Folk Song Studies,” 231–48. 43. See, for example, Nathan Ausubel, A Treasury of Jewish Folklore ( New York: Crown, 1948), 337. 44. From Burt, American Murder Ballads, 94–95. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. www.oup.com. As sung to her by E. H. Hardy of Moore Idaho in Salt Lake City. 45. Details from Burt, American Murder Ballads, and Stewart H. Holbrook, Murder Out Yonder: An Informal Study of Certain Classic Crimes in Back-Country America ( New York: Macmillan, 1941), 42–68. 46. Collected by William Alderson from Professor Harold Barto, who learned it in the logging camps of northern Idaho in 1917. Published in “Notes and Queries,” California Folklore Quarterly 1 (October 1942): 375–76. 47. Little Red Songbook, 14th ed. (Chicago, 1918); reprinted in Green et al., Big Red Songbook, 200–1, to be sung to the tune of “Portland County Jail.” A recording by Joe Glazer can be heard on Songs for Woodworkers, Collector LP 1929. 48. From Idaho Lore. American Guide Series (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1939), 224. 49. From Idaho Lore, 227.

618

American Folk Songs

50. From Davidson, “Songs of the Rocky Mountain Frontier,” California Folklore Quarterly 2 (April 1943): 93; reprinted from the Cherry Creek Pioneer (Denver City, Nebraska Territory), April 23, 1859, by a “Frontier Individual.” Punctuation has been modified. Sweitzer is “Swiss.” 51. From Davidson, “Rocky Mountain Frontier,” 96; reprinted from the Rocky Mountain News ( Denver), June 18, 1859; the tune is evidently Stephen Foster’s “Banks of the Sacramento.” 52. Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska, 23–24. 53. From Emrich, “Songs of the Western Miners,” 225. 54. From Burt, American Murder Ballads, 169. By permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. www.oup.com. Calaboose (or calabouse) was a creole French term in Louisiana for “prison,” adapted from the Spanish calabozo (dungeon). It was first attested in the 1830s. “Stoga” should probably be “stogy,” a roughly made heavy shoe or boot (originally made in Conestoga, Pennsylvania). 55. Reprinted from Janice Coggin, comp., Rhymes of the Mines: Life in the Underground, 2nd ed. (Phoenix, AZ: Cowboy Miner Productions, 2006), 90. 56. Information based mainly on http:// pages.globetrotter net / burridge / Lit-WarmanBio html. 57. Ibid. 58. From John Greenway, “Songs of the Ludlow Massacre,” United Mine Workers Journal, April 15, 1995. “Ludlow Massacre” Written by Woody Guthrie © Copyright Secured WOODY GUTHRIE PUBLICATIONS (BMI) ADMINISTERED BY BUG. All rights reserved. Used by Permission. 59. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Colorado.” 60. Ella Reeve Bloor, We Are Many ( New York: International, 1940). 61. Recordings by Woodie Gutherie include Struggle (1976; Folkways LP FA2485) and Hard Travelin’: The Asch Recordings Vol. 3 (1998; Simthsonian/Folkways CD 40102). 62. See the Web site http://www.woodygutherie.org / Lyrics / Ludlow_Massacre htm. 63. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Utah.” 64. As sung by Lalovi M. Hilton in Ogden, Utah, 1946, recorded by Austin E. Fife; issued on Songs of the Mormons and Songs of the West from the Archive of Folk Song, Library of Congress LP AFS L30; reissued on Songs of the Mormons and Songs of the West, Rounder CD 1520. The ballad was again recorded by Hilton in 1952 and issued on Mormon Folk Songs, Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2036/Cass 02036. 65. See http:// historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/pioneers_and_cowboys/ handcartcompanies html. 66. As sung by George Harter, Kahlotus, Washington, September 1952, and recorded by Joseph Tarbet; issued on Folk Music in America: Songs of Migration and Immigration, Library of Congress LP LBC 6. The last two (bracketed) lines were included in the written transcript taken down at the time of the recording but were omitted from the original recording itself. For references to other collected versions, see Laws, Native American Balladry, 142 [ B 19]. Some of these are discussed by Austin E. Fife in “A Ballad from the Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Western Folklore 12 (Octo­ber 1953): 229–51, and Fife, “A Ballad of the Mountain Meadows Massacre,” in Exploring Western Americana (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988), 239–52. 67. For many years, it was assumed that 123 of the party of 140 perished, but later research by Juanita Brooks uncovered information suggesting there were not so many in the party at the time of the massacre, and perhaps as few as 66 died. Juanita Brooks, The Mountain Meadows Massacre, new ed. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), xx. 68. The best account is that of Mormon historian Juanita Brooks, Mountain Meadows Massacre. 69. See http://www.archaeology.org /online /features/massacre, “A Sight Which Can Never Be Forgotten,” September 16, 2003. Juanita Brooks argued convincingly that it was extremely unlikely Young had advance knowledge of the plans—both on humanitarian and military grounds (he could foresee what the consequences would inevitably have been). 70. From George F. Briegel, 44 Old Time Mormon and Far West Songs ( New York: George F. Briegel, 1933), 2–3. The ballad was recorded by L. M. Hilton and issued on Mormon Folk Songs. 71. From “Ieuan” [John Davis], The Bee-Hive Songster (Salt Lake City: Daily Telegraph Office, 1868), 11–13, dated August 18, 1868. To the tune of “Caerfilly March.” See Cheney, Mormon Songs, 93, for references to collected versions.

MOUNTAIN REGION

619

72. Ieuan, Beehive Songster, 18–19. The same text was printed in William Willes, The Mountain Warbler (Salt Lake City, UT: Deseret News Book and Job Establishment, 1872), 66–67. A recorded version, titled “Marching to Utah,” by Rose Thompson, was issued on Folk Music in America: Songs of Migration and Immigration. 73. From Briegel, 44 Old Time Mormon, 20–21. Ham’s Fork is a creek in Wyoming; “Heber” is Heber C. Kimball, one of Brigham Young’s lieutenants. The punctuation has been modified. 74. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Utah.” 75. Briegel, 44 Old Time Mormon, 35. 76. From Lola M. Homsher, ed., South Pass, 1868: James Chisholm’s Journal of the Wyoming Gold Rush (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960), 159–60. 77. Homsher, South Pass, 1868, 159–60. 78. Briegel, 44 Old Time Mormon, 38–39. A recording by L. M. Hilton was issued on Mormon Folk Songs. 79. From Cheney, Mormon Songs, 130–32. Sung by Job Porfter of Victor, Idaho, in July 1957; contributed by his daughter Helen Dewolf of Jackson, Wyoming. 80. From Lester A. Hubbard, Ballads and Songs from Utah (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961), 425; from the singing of Mrs. Salley A. Hubbard of Salt Lake City, 1946. Mrs. Hubbard remembered hearing “Rasty” Wells singing these verses before 1880; Wells sang his own compositions to well-known tunes. 81. From Cheney, Mormon Songs, 136; from the singing of Bob Christmas, Provo, Utah, 1960. Christmas had collected it from the composer, Judge F. W. Keller. 82. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Nevada.” 83. From a broadside, “The Pioneer Stage Driver,” printed by T. C. Boyd, San Francisco, 1865. The text was reprinted by William L. Alderson, “The Comical History of Baldy Green,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 9 (March 1945): 1–11, except that “gallas” was regularized to “gallus”—an old American slang term that could mean either splendid, attractive, or, alternatively, peculiar. Quotation marks have been added. See Alderson for references to collected traditional versions. Alderson reported the broadside as in the collection of the California State Library in Sacramento, but at present, the library staff has no knowledge of the present or past whereabouts of such an item. 84. Quoted by Alderson, “Comical History,” 5. 85. The Gold Hill News ( Nevada), June 11, 1868, p. 2. 86. Reprinted by C. W. Bayer, The Miner’s Farewell, 117–18, from Pine Grove Lyceum, a series of handwritten newspapers (1872) at the Nevada Historical Society. Punctuation has been modified. 87. From the Nevada Federation of Women’s Clubs, Book of Nevada Poems (Reno: Reno Printing, 1927), 92–93. Reprinted from the Nevada State Journal. The inconsistent spelling of Dan / Dann is in the original. 88. “The Dying Ranger,” from Charles J. Finger, Frontier Ballads (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1927), 170. See Laws, Native American Balladry, 125, for references to collected versions [A 14]. 89. From Emrich, “Songs of the Western Miners,” 229. 90. Bayer, Miner’s Farewell, 157. 91. From the Comstocker [Duncan Emrich], Who Shot Maggie in the Freckle? and Other Ballads of Virginia City, Nevada (Virginia City, NV: Bucket of Blood Saloon, 1940), 9. 92. Ibid., 15–16. 93. Ibid., 5. 94. As recorded by the Three Tobacco Tags (George Wade, Reid Summey, and Luther Baucom) in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 3, 1937, and issued on RCA Bluebird B-7361; reissued on Mountain Blues: Blues, Ballads and Stringbands, JSP 7740, four-CD box set. The band had previously recorded the same title in 1932 for the Champion record label. 95. From Billy Murray, recorded on Victor Talking Machine 16475, 78 rpm, and Edison twominute cylinder 10405, both 1910; as quoted on the Web site http://www.jour.unr.edu /outpost.

9 Far West and Pacific

United only by the fact that all border on (or are surrounded by) the Pacific Ocean, the five states of this chapter are as disparate a collection as any of the other chapters in this region-by-region survey. Oregon and Washington share the greatest similarity, being both divided from north to south into coastal lands, forested mountains, and high desert, moving eastward from the ocean. California’s northern extremity is a natural continuation of southern Oregon (it is but an illusion that the location of the state border is determined by the onset of clouds), but southern California is different topographically, meteorologically, and culturally. A radio quiz program in the 1950s that pitted rival teams from Los Angeles and San Francisco against each other may have echoed a more deep-seated feeling of incongruity separating the two moieties of the very long state. The remaining two states—Alaska and Hawaii—are the only ones in the Union that are not contiguous with the lower 48 and were made states after long periods as territorial possessions. Non-European cultural heritages play larger roles here than in the other states—especially in Hawaii. The set of songs chosen to represent Hawaii therefore reflects the prominent status of non-European language and culture in this, the 50th state.

WASHINGTON Before the United States acquired the Oregon Territory, most Anglo American pioneers in the Northwest had settled in the Willamette Valley, but soon after 1848, settlers headed north into present-day Washington to establish residences. Communities to the north of the Columbia River and on the rim of Puget Sound, such as Seattle, Oysterville, and Port Townsend, came into existence. But settlers there complained that it was hard to participate in Oregon Territory government and requested a closer, more convenient capital.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

621

Congress acted on their petition, and on March 2, 1853, the Washington Territory was established, which also included northern Idaho and western Montana. The first governor for the nearly 4,000 white settlers was Isaac Ingalls Stevens, a West Point graduate and a veteran of the Mexican War. Olympia was selected as the capital. The inauguration of transcontinental railroad service brought an influx of new settlers. The population, which had been growing slowly, nearly quadrupled to more than 357,000 in the 1880s. In particular, the black, Chinese, and Japanese populations grew as these groups took advantage of employment opportunities with the railroads. In 1882 Congress passed anti-Chinese legislation, which resulted in hardship and discrimination for the Chinese living in Washington State. Anti-Chinese riots broke out in Seattle, Tacoma, and other towns in 1885, as the Chinese, who had been brought to the United States to work on the railroads, were blamed for an economic downturn in the early 1880s. On November 11, 1889, Washington became the 42nd state. The Old Settler [Acres of Clams] I’d wandered all over the country, Prospecting and digging for gold; I’d tunneled, hydraulicked and cradled, And I had been frequently sold. And I had been frequently sold, (2) I’d tunneled, hydraulicked and cradled, And I had been frequently sold. For one who gets riches by mining, Perceiving that hundreds grew poor; I made up my mind to try farming, The only pursuit that is sure. So, rolling my grub in my blankets, I left all my tools on the ground; And started one morning to shank it, For a country they call Puget Sound. Arriving flat broke in mid-winter, I found it enveloped in fog; And covered all over with timber, thick as hair on the back of a dog. As I looked at the prospect so gloomy, The tears trickled over my face; For I felt that my travels had brought me, To the edge of the jumping-off place. I took up a claim in the forest, And sat myself down to hard toil; For two years I chopped and I labored, But I never got down to the soil. I tried to get out of the country, But poverty forced me to stay; Until I became an Old Settler, Then nothing could drive me away.

622

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And now that I’m used to the climate, I think that if man ever found; A spot to live easy and happy, That Eden is on Puget Sound. No longer the slave of ambition, I laugh at the world and its shams; As I think of my pleasant condition, Surrounded by acres of clams.1

The author of one of the best-known folk songs of the Northwest, police court judge Francis D. Henry, was born in Galena, Illinois, in 1827, educated in a log schoolhouse, and worked in one of the lead mines for which Galena was named. During the Mexican War he was commissioned second lieutenant and served under General Winfield Scott. After the war he studied law, but in 1851 he was unable to resist the lure of California’s gold and headed west for Placerville. In a few months he turned north for Gold Beach, Oregon, and for the duration of his life remained in the Northwest, practicing law, dealing in real estate, dabbling in Democratic politics, serving in the territorial legislature, and, at various times, serving as probate judge, clerk of the state supreme court, and Olympia’s city treasurer. He died in Olympia in 1893.

Two pages from the 1902 song booklet, “The Old Settler”—the earliest publication of text and tune together. Author’s collection.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

623

“The Old Settler” was written in 1877 to be sung at the Olympia Choral Society concert on April 2, set to the tune of “Old Rosin, the Beau.” It was sung by Ross G. O’Brien and was an instant hit, the soloist repeating his performance five days later for the Olympia Dramatic Club. In the next two weeks it was published first in the Olympia Daily Courier (April 9), but with errors and a stanza omitted, and then, corrected, in that city’s magazine, the Washington Standard (April 14). Nine years after his death, his companion, Miss Mary O’Neil (relationship unknown), published the booklet with words and music, from which the accompanying illustrations were taken.2 Pete Seeger once wrote that his “claim to fame” was that “it was me and Woody (Guthrie) that taught Ivar [Haglund] that song.”3 And it was Haglund (1905–1985), a Seattle balladeer, who used the song extensively on his radio show during the 1940s. In 1938, Haglund opened a seafood restaurant, Ivar’s Original Acres of Clams, on Seattle’s Pier 54, and it has remained a culinary favorite ever since.4 “Old Rosin, the Beau /Bow” appeared in print first around 1835 without textual attribution, using the tune of a seventeenth-century Irish harper’s melody, “The Gentle Maiden.” Anonymity notwithstanding, its easily remembered and very singable tune propelled it into widespread popularity, and for much of the nineteenth century, it served as an irresistible vehicle for parodies, political and otherwise. Quincyland, My Quincyland You’ve reached the land of drought and heat, Where nothing grows for man to eat; The wind that blows the burning heat Brings nothing for our stock to eat. Chorus: O Quincyland, my Quincyland! As on this burning soil we stand, Then look away across the plans And wonder why it never rains. ’Til Gabriel blows the trumpet sound, And says, “The rain has gone around.” Our horses are of bronco race, Starvation shows upon their face; We do not live, we only stay, We are too poor to get away. We have no wheat, we have no oats, We have no corn to feed our shoats; We have not much ourselves to eat, Our pigs are squealing around our feet. We’ve got soil and altitude, We’ve got the sun to grow the food; We’ve got the space and everything ’Cept water we ask Congress to bring. Now we hope your delegation Favors Columbia Irrigation; With water we will have prosperity Come to this land of aridity.5

624

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

About a century ago, conservationists and policy makers gathered annually at the National Irrigation Congress. The official motto of the get-together was, “To save the forests, store the floods, re-claim the deserts and make homes on the land.”6 The 17th such meeting was held in Spokane in August 1909, and it was at this event that representatives from the town of Quincy sang their booster song—one last parody of the nineteenth-century gospel hymn “Beulah Land” (see also parodies in the sections on Kansas, chapter 6; Nebraska, chapter 6; North Dakota, chapter 6; and Idaho, chapter 8). There is a local legend explaining how this central Washington agricultural town in Grant County received its name. One day, when railroad magnate James J. Hill and his daughter detrained for a brief water stop, they were told the station had no name; “Hill suggested his daughter christen it. She chose the present name after a city in the East, but which one is unknown. Approximately fifteen states have communities named Quincy.”7 Not many of us can offer our offspring the chance to name a city. The Peninsula Pike There’s a railroad they call the Peninsula Pike— Go get me the Bible and read it— Just two streaks of rust on top of a dike— O, where is salvation? I need it. From Megler this railroad goes winding about, Like two streaks of rust in an alley, On low joints and high joints we’re jostled about Till the doctor can scarcely make us rally. From Megler to Holman there’s 900 pains To scourge your anatomy’s function; In fact, those who ride are near void of their brains When they get down to Ilwaco Junction. You ache in your feet and you ache in your legs, You ache in your arms and your shoulders; In fact, one can scarcely stand on his pegs As he bounds over split logs and boulders. There is no place to stop when you wait for a train, If raining, if sunshine or storming; If chilled to the core you may struggle in vain, You’ll surely find no way of warming. It’s the hen wallow shuffle you get every mile, The half Nelson hold and the strangle; And agony lurks where there should be a smile, And the trip is a terrible wrangle. This railroad was built just after the flood— No effort’s been made to improve it; Just two streaks of rust in the weeds and the mud, And nothing, it seems, will behoove it. Thousands of ties nearly rotten today, Bridges unsafe as the devil, The rails were aged when laid, they say, But the roadbed is not on the level.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

625

The spikes are all rusted and loose as old teeth, The fish plates have passed all redemption; The whole thing is dead; so I am weaving this wreath— As a railroad it’s surely an exemption. This railroad is owned by the famous U.P., The same as the Southern Pacific, And the way the whole looks now to me, Is something most damnably terrific.8

Ilwaco, Washington, is a tiny fishing village located on the Long Beach Peninsula at the mouth of the Columbia River. It was originally established in 1868 as Unity, then renamed in honor of Chinook subchief Elwahko. In 1872, Lewis Alfred Loomis appeared on the peninsula, built a wharf at Ilwaco, and then organized the Ilwaco Steam Navigation Company in 1875. Loomis, who already had railroad experience, decided that rail transportation would be an improvement over steamboats, and in 1880 the Ilwaco Canal and Railroad Company was incorporated. Rail construction began in 1888, and soon, the railroad stretched 28 miles between Nahcotta, on Willapa Bay, and Megler, on the Columbia River, serving the southern part of the sparsely settled peninsula with regular passenger and freight service. The adjective regular requires some qualification. The Ilwaco Railroad and Navigation Company was perhaps unique in that its trains ran not according to a timetable, but as determined by the tides: this was because the docks at Ilwaco were inaccessible to steamers when tides were too low. In 1900, Loomis sold out to the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company (later the Oregon Washington Railroad and Navigation Company), which promptly assumed management of the line. In the years following, the O W R & N found the I R & N line not very profitable and held expenses (including maintenance) to a minimum, earning the unofficial nickname “Irregular Rambling & NeverGet-There Railroad.” The editor of the Ilwaco Pacific Journal published a mock timetable, which recorded departure time from Ilwaco dock as “when it gets ready” and arrival time at Nahcotta as “when it gets there.” The neglected maintenance resulted in the state of disrepair and passenger discomfort expressed in the preceding poem (or song). It was composed by Charley L. Gant, editor of the Ilwaco Tribune, who published it in 1914.9 The Everett County Jail In the prison cell we sit Are we broken hearted?—nit [nyet] We’re as happy and as cheerful as can be, For we know that every Wob Will be busy on the job, Till they swing the prison doors and set us free. Chorus: Are you busy, Fellow Workers, Are your shoulders to the wheel? Get together for the cause, And some day you’ll make the laws; It’s the only way to make the masters squeal. Though the living is not grand, Mostly mush and coffee and, It’s as good as we expected when we came; It’s the way they treat the slave

626

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

In this free land of the brave; There is no one but the working class to blame. When McRea, and Veitch, and Black, To the lumberyards go back, May they travel empty handed as they came; May they turn in their report That the Wobs still hold the fort, That a rebel is an awful thing to tame. When the sixty-five percent That they call the working gent Organizes in a Union of its class, We will then get what we’re worth— That will be the blooming earth; Organize and help to bring the thing to pass.10

Everett, Washington, was founded (1892) as the site of the western terminus of a transcontinental railroad (completed 1893). It was named by one of the founders, Charles L. Colby, for his son Everett. On Sunday, November 5, 1916, Everett was the scene of a deadly confrontation between armed local citizens and a large group of Industrial Workers of the World ( IWW; also called “Wobblies”). On that day, about 300 members of the IWW boarded the steamers Verona and Calista from Seattle and headed north toward Port Gardner Bay. The IWW had planned a public demonstration in Everett that afternoon, to be held on the corner of Hewitt and Wetmore, a location commonly used by street speakers. Hoping to win converts to their dream of “One Big Union,” the Wobblies had begun street speaking in Everett during a local shingle weavers’ strike, encountering brutal suppression by local law officers. Free speech soon became the dominant issue. The number of demonstrators and the violence of the response from law enforcement grew as the weeks wore on. On November 5, word reached Everett that a band of armed anarchists was coming to burn their town. Two hundred citizen deputies, under the authority of Snohomish County sheriff Donald McRae, met to repel the invaders. The Verona arrived first, pulling in alongside the dock. McRae informed passengers they could not land. A single shot was fired, followed by minutes of chaotic shooting. Whether the first shot came from boat or dock was never determined. Passengers aboard the Verona rushed to the opposite side of the ship, nearly capsizing the vessel. Bullets pierced the pilot house, and the Verona’s captain struggled to back it out of port. The Calista returned to Seattle without trying to land. On the dock, deputies Jefferson Beard and Charles Curtis lay dying, and 20 others, including the sheriff, were wounded. The official IWW toll was listed as 5 dead and 27 wounded, but as many as 12 Wobblies may have lost their lives. National Guard troops were sent to Everett and Seattle, and terror hung over Everett for days. Seventy-four Wobbly passengers aboard the two steamers were arrested upon their return to Seattle and were eventually taken to the Snohomish County jail in Everett. All were released but one: teamster Thomas Tracy. He was charged with murdering deputies Curtis and Beard, but in the dramatic and much-publicized trial that followed, Tracy was acquitted.11 The song was written by William Whalen and set to the tune of George F. Root’s longpopular Civil War song “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the Boys Are Marching.” That was not the first time Root’s tune had been coopted for service by the Wobblies: Joe Hill used the tune for “The Tramp” in 1913.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

627

The Tragedy of Sunset Land There’s a little Western city in the shadow of the hills Where sleeps a brave young rebel ’neath the dew; Now he’s free from life’s long struggle, his name is with us still; We know that he was fearless, tried and true. In a homely pine-board coffin our warrior lies at rest; Those henchmen turned loose on him one day. These parting words were spoken: “Boys, I did my best!” Where the old Chehalis River flows its way. Chorus: Now the moonbeams in the dell linger there in sad farewell, In memory of that fateful autumn day; And some day we are coming home, in the Sunset Land to roam, Where the old Chehalis River flows its way. The monarchs of the forest were secure in their regime When they took brave Wesley Everest’s life away. His name will be a memory in the workers’ high esteem Where the old Chehalis River flows its way. When the sunlight floods the hilltops and the birds will sing no more, In that valley we will settle down to stay, There to organize the workers on that lonely woodland shore Where the old Chehalis River flows its way.12

Three IWW martyrs—Joe Hill, Frank Little, and Wesley Everest—inspired tributes from Wobbly and non-Wobbly writers. John Dos Passos compared Wesley Everest to Paul Bunyan in his 1932 novel Nineteen Nineteen. Robert Cantwell recreated the situation in Centralia in his story “The Hills around Centralia,” included in the Anthology of Proletarian Literature, published in 1935. Other Centralia defendants paid tribute to him in verse.13 The celebration of the first anniversary of Armistice Day, November 11, 1919, resulted in a gunfight between local members of the IWW and the American Legion. The clash claimed the lives of four Legionnaires by Wobblies, who were defending their union hall from an attack by the Legion. After members of the IWW were arrested and jailed, Wesley Everest was turned over to a mob by jail guards. He was reportedly tortured, mutilated, hanged three times, shot, and buried in an unmarked grave. Nevertheless, the official coroner’s report inexplicably listed the cause of his death as suicide. Other Wobblies received prison sentences but ultimately were released; no Legion members were charged. The University of Washington’s Special Collections Library holds a cache of 35 items taken from the Seattle office of the IWW relating to the episode. The pop song “Where the Silvery Colorado Wends Its Way” was written in 1901 by C. H. Scoggins and Charles Avril; it was recorded by half a dozen hillbilly artists between 1927 and 1941. Loren Roberts wrote this account of the Centralia massacre using that song as a framework; his song first appeared in the 21st edition of the IWW’s Little Red Songbook, in 1925. Down on the Corner (of Dock and Holly) Down on the corner of Dock and Holly, A woman come and say to me, “Will you come and work for Jesus?” I say, “How much Jesus pay?”

628

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

She say, “Jesus pay no money,” I say, “I no work for him; I go up to York Addition, And I work for Charley Lind.”14

Linda Allen wrote that this song “was widely known around Whatcom County during the 1920s. Bellingham streetcars ended their run at the corner of Dock (now Cornwall) and Holly—a location popular with the Salvation Army. The Charley Lind mentioned in the song was a well-known Swedish contractor who lived in a big house in Bellingham’s York Addition.”15 The latter identification explains the genesis of this song: it is a slightly revamped excerpt from “The Swede from North Dakota,” which can be found in the section of North Dakota songs in chapter 6. During the Great Depression, a major land reclamation project in the Northwest was undertaken, involving the construction of several dams on the mighty Columbia River. A result of this project would be inexpensive electric power to rural homes and undeveloped areas in and around the Columbia basin. In 1937 the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) was created as an agency within the Bureau of the Interior to manage the new dams, the largest of which was the Grand Coulee Dam. As work on the Grand Coulee was nearing completion in 1941, after almost a decade of construction work, the BPA advertised for a folksinger to come to the Northwest for a month and write a batch of songs for use in a public information film about the new dams and how they would improve the region. Woody Guthrie applied for the job and auditioned for Dr. Paul J. Raver, BPA’s administrator. Raver asked BPA manager Stephen B. Kahn to sign him up for 30 days. Guthrie and his wife piled their belongings into a rickety car and drove from Los Angeles to Portland, Oregon, where Guthrie was assigned a work space on the top floor of the BPA’s office building. Guthrie worked at a metal desk and used to beat out his tunes on the side of the desk with the aid of an acetate record.16 He would write 26 songs in about as many days. Some of these songs have been practically forgotten, but a few seem destined to remain popular for many years to come. Perhaps the best known of these songs is “Roll on, Columbia, Roll On,” written to a tune similar to Huddie Ledbetter’s “Irene Goodnight.” Widely sung, and not only in the Northwest, “Roll On” has a good chance of entering oral tradition.17 The first two stanzas discuss the wooded northwest through which the Columbia rolls, gathering waters from the several confluent rivers—the Yakima, Snake, Klickitat, Sandy, Willamette, and Hood rivers. (Actually, two of these, the Willamette and Sandy rivers, flow into the Columbia downstream of all the dams.) President Jefferson’s vision in sending Lewis and Clark to explore the Northwest is mentioned in a third stanza written in 1947 by Michael Loring, another BPA employer and singer. Then follow three stanzas based on some local history familiar to very few singers of the song: they mention Sheridan’s boys, Coe’s store, the Mary, and “Injuns” resting peacefully on Memaloose Isle. Kahn had provided Guthrie with a history of the Columbia River, from which he gleaned background information for the events told somewhat incoherently in the fourth through sixth stanzas. The fight described took place at the Columbia Cascades in what was called the Indian War of 1855–1856. It began with an attack on March 6, when a band of Klickitats raided the settlement at the mouth of the White Salmon River. Later joined by Yakima Indians, the Native Americans overwhelmed the Anglo American settlements, and several days of siege and massacre ensued. A lengthy account was written later by Lawrence W. Coe,

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

629

whose store became a stronghold for the besieged whites and is mentioned in the song. After several days, the settlers were assisted by soldiers from the steamers Wasco and Mary, the latter also alluded to. The Sheridan mentioned was Lieutenant Phil Sheridan, later to gain fame in the Civil War. Memaloos Island was a Klickitat cemetery (the word memaloos meant “dead” in the native tongue).18 Woody Guthrie’s lyrics are vigorously protected by copyright. This might seem strange because Guthrie was a federal employee at the time he wrote the songs, and therefore the public owns any copyrights or patents that might result from such employment—in other words, the song should be public domain. However, in the 1980s, Bill Murlin, then a Bonneville Power Administration employee with a serious interest in American folk music, discovered long-hidden materials relating to Guthrie’s BPA association. Murlin undertook the task of assembling all the Columbia River songs that Guthrie wrote, many of which had been unpublished since the 1940s. In the course of the production of a booklet with texts and tunes to all the songs as well as historical background, BPA and Guthrie’s publisher, TRO/Ludlow, reached an agreement giving future copyright control to the latter. Therefore, whatever the ambiguous status of the songs prior to the 1980s, they are now owned by TRO/Ludlow Music.19 Mighty Mount Saint Helens We listened to you rumble, we listened to your roar, We watched the smoke roll from your top like we’d never seen before; You’d given us fair warning that where there’s smoke there’s fire, Oh, mighty Mount Saint Helens, you’ve left nothing to admire. It may have been better if you’d only blown your top, Instead you blew out from your side, many lives were lost Yes, you destroyed our timber, like a giant you command— You had to show your fury was much mightier than man. Chorus: Oh, mighty Mount Saint Helens, with all the misery you have made, The taste of sulfur, smothering ash, in every breath I take; They say it sometimes takes a shock for every man to see, That what I took for granted now means everything to me. We never understood your anger, never understood your rage, You not only made the headlines, you made every page; How could you with all your beauty be so violent deep inside? Once a lovely snow-covered mountain, now you’ve nothing left to hide. The way you spread your steaming ash, far across the land, Now the whole world knows about you; but we still don’t understand What turned a radiant beauty into some awful sight to see, Oh, mighty Mount Saint Helens, we now share your destiny.20

The Cascade mountain range extends for more than 700 miles from Lassen Peak, in northern California, through Oregon and Washington to the Fraser River in southern British Columbia. The English navigators George Vancouver and William R. Broughton saw the Cascades in 1792, for which they are accorded some form of priority by those who do not acknowledge the relevance of much earlier sightings by Native Americans. Most of the peaks are extinct volcanoes, but some have erupted in the recent past: Lassen Peak erupted without warning in 1914 and encored a year later; Mount Baker steamed

630

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

profusely in 1975. Mount St. Helens, in southwest Washington, erupted in 1857, and then remained dormant until 1980. On March 27 of that year, an explosive steam eruption was followed by several minor eruptions, during which a bulge began to grow on the north side of the peak. On the morning of May 18, an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale triggered a gigantic landslide on the mountain’s north face. A rapidly rising cloud of superheated ash and cinders generated a plume more than 12 miles high that deposited ash as far east as central Montana. Mud flows, lava flows, and floods followed, burying the river valleys to the east in deep layers of mud and debris as far away as 17 miles. Sixty people and thousands of animals perished in the May 18 event, and some 10 million trees were blown down by the centrifugal air blast, looking much as if some gigantic Paul Bunyan had dropped a fistful of tree-sized pickup sticks. Mount St. Helens’s volcanic cone was completely blasted away, reducing its 9,680-foot majesty to a crater of about 8,000 feet. Minor eruptions, temblors, and plumes have occurred intermittently, and a dome of lava has begun to push up within the crater. Periodically, a more prominent rumble or sulfurous whiff brings carloads of hopeful spectators to nearby vista points with cameras and camcorders cocked and pointed at the stirring giant.21 Jeanie Bigbee, a native of Mossyrock, Washington, was a locally known songwriter who witnessed the volcanic eruption while she and her husband were at a baseball tournament in Yakima, one of the towns hardest hit by the cloud of ash spewed forth by the mighty cataclysm. Bigbee found the experience terrifying and refused to return to the vicinity of St. Helens for many years. Her lyrics portray the volcano as a vengeful deity—reminiscent of the manner in which ancients deified volcanoes to account for their otherwise inexplicable acts of destruction. But Bigbee stops short of identifying specific human actions that prompted the necessity of the volcano’s outburst. Bigbee recorded her song on a 45-rpm record and had 1,000 copies pressed up, most of which sold locally.22

OREGON Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark launched their celebrated expedition from near St. Louis in 1804, slowly exploring westward until, in November 1805, they reached the Pacific Ocean. Next spring, after wintering at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, they returned up the Columbia River and explored the Willamette River. The beaver fur trade was only in its initial phase in 1810 when John Jacob Astor of New York City launched his own fur trading business, the Pacific Fur Company. Astor planned to build a chain of trading posts from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, with a depot at the mouth of the Columbia River. In January 1813, during the War of 1812, Astorians learned from the North West Company that a British vessel was coming to capture Astoria. Short of supplies and without hope of receiving any, the Astorians sold their interests in Astoria to the North West Company of Canada. After the war’s conclusion, the British returned Astoria to the Americans. In 1818 the former rivals signed a treaty of joint occupation, which, after renewal, remained in effect until 1846. At that time the term Oregon country referred to a vast area extending from the Continental Divide to the Pacific Ocean and from the present border between California and Oregon to Russian Alaska. In June 1846 the United States and Britain signed a treaty recognizing American claims to the Oregon country south of the 49th parallel. In August 1848 President James Knox

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

631

Polk signed a bill creating the Oregon Territory, and in the following March, Governor Joseph Lane arrived in Oregon City, which was then the capital, to proclaim the territory organized. Salem became the capital of Oregon Territory in 1851. Oregon Territory then included the present states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho as well as western Montana and part of western Wyoming. On February 14, 1859, Oregon, with its present boundaries, was admitted to the Union as the 33rd state. Salem remained the capital of the new state.23 [The Girl I Left behind Me] As slow our wagons rolled the track, Their teams the rough earth cleaving, And drivers all still looking back To that dear land they’re leaving— So loath to part from all we love, From all the links that bind us, Or to turn our hearts, where’er we rove, From those we’ve left behind us.24

This song, perhaps taken from a diary of one of the pioneers who traversed the Oregon Trail to the Oregon Territory, was reportedly sung at a frontier social gathering in Oregon City in 1846. It is a parody of an English song, “The Girl I Left behind Me,” which was known in England (and doubtless the American colonies) as “Brighton Camp” before the American Revolution. It remained popular in America throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Oregon Question Good evening folks—it’s old Dan Rice, Just come to give you good advice, And tell the Senate to be sure, Like Polk to go for fifty-four. And if John Bull’s mischief bent, To rally round our President, He then will find it is no joke, For him to fool his time with Polk. It is true that some time ago, It was proposed by James Monroe, To fix up another line, And give John Bull some forty-nine. But if he’s on mischief bent, We’ll rally round our President, And teach them that ’twill be no joke If he fools his time with James K. Polk. And here it is the mischief lies, Once named he thought possession sure, And like a dog he growls for more. But if upon a fight he’s bent, We’ll rally round our President, And teach them that ’twill be no joke To get in his ribs a Yankee Polk.

632

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

He’s now sent over Pakenham, Who thinks to stuff us with his flam, But in his name there is no luck, He’s not a match for our old Buck. And if John Bull’s on mischief bent, We’ll rally round our President, And him tho’ it be in joke He cannot come it over Polk. So now go in for fifty-four, It is our right, we’ll talk no more, For it all parties do unite, We’ll have it all, or have a fight. And if John Bull’s on mischief bent, We’ll rally round our President, For Whigs and Locos all are one, They all go in for Oregon.25

The Pacific edge of North America may have seemed unimportantly remote to the negotiators of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which established the boundary between the newly independent United States and the British colony of Canada as a line extending west from the northwestern point of Lake of the Woods (at the boundary of what are now Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota) to the Mississippi River. The treaty negotiators, however, used a map that depicted the source of the Mississippi as considerably north of its actual location. Britain and the United States disputed the boundary from 1792 until the Convention of 1818 was accepted, setting the boundary at the 49th parallel, about 121 miles north of the Mississippi source. The agreement extended the northern boundary westward to the Rocky Mountains. The United States proposed to continue the line all the way to the Pacific Ocean to divide the Oregon country between the two claimants. The offer was rejected by Britain because it would have placed the Columbia River within the United States. Unable to reach agreement, the two powers consented to joint occupation of the Oregon territory for 10 years. During the administration of President John Tyler (1841–1845), the British offered to accept the 49th parallel as far west as the Columbia River and from there to follow the Columbia River to the Pacific, but the United States declined this concession. Popular American sentiment strongly favored extending U.S. territory north to 54° 40'N (all the way to Alaska), giving rise to the slogan “fifty-four forty, or fight.” The Democratic Party, and its national platform of 1844, asserted the right of the United States to the whole of Oregon. Minor skirmishes between American and British armed forces in Washington did not bode well for peaceful resolution, but the dispute was finally settled in 1846 by the Oregon Treaty: the boundary line was established at the 49th parallel. Britain gave up its settlements in Washington, including Fort Vancouver on the north bank of the Columbia.26 This song was performed by Dan Rice, a major minstrel entertainer in the 1840s, and would have been very relevant in the few years prior to 1846, when this text was published. “Buck” was James Buchanan, later 15th president, but at the time, he was President Polk’s secretary of state (1845–1849) and the skillful negotiator who helped reach the settlement. Richard Packenham was the British minister to the United States. “Locos” were the Locofoco Party, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, formed in 1835 and politically

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

633

significant for about a decade. The Whigs were a major political party from 1834 to 1854 in opposition to the Democrats. They were eventually displaced by the Republican Party. Oregon and Texas Hark! Freedom’s eagle loudly calls, His cry rings through our hills and halls, He calls to arms each freedom’s son, For Texas and for Oregon. Chorus: Then march away, Then march away, March away, ’tis freedom beck us, On for Oregon and Texas. All Mexico’s foul traitor hordes, Have threatened us by boasting words; But for big words we’ll give them deed, Until each croaking tyrant bleeds. Chorus. On San Jacinto’s bloody plain Her murdered sons shall rise again, And cry aloud on to the war, “Remember our foul massacre.” Chorus. Then shall each freeman’s bright eye glow, For vengeance on the murd’rous foe, The spot where ev’ry patriot fell, Shall echo ev’ry tyrants knell. Chorus. Then freemen rouse from south to north, Come quickly arm, and boldly forth, Come raise on high the Texas star, And Oregon’s proud flag of war. Chorus. Beneath each flag we’ll brave the foe, From Britian [sic] into Mexico, And on the sea, or o’er the land, We’ll fight till they give up each strand. Chorus.27

This curious linkage of Oregon and Texas in a song of ca. 1846 reflects American expansionist ambitions in both northern and southern directions. The Democratic platform upon which James K. Polk had run in 1844 called for “re-occupation of Oregon, re-annexation of Texas”—in other words, termination of the agreement of 1818, by which the United States and Britain had jointly occupied much of the Oregon Territory, and annexation of the recently established Republic of Texas. Texas, an independent republic since 1835, was willing to be annexed then, but it would have shifted out of equilibrium the balance between slave and free states, so the question had been tabled. Although Texas seemed a much more important piece of land than Oregon in the presidential campaign of 1844, the popular appeal of expanding the country by taking in Oregon and Texas had become irresistible, and because Polk favored it, he won over his more competent and talented opponent, Henry Clay. The reference to San Jacinto recalls the last battle in Texas’s war for independence from Mexico, waged on April 21, 1836, near what is now Houston.

A broadside text of “The Gipsey Girl,” printed ca. 1890s by Henry DeMarsan of New York. The original sheet has hand-tinted borders. From the Library of Congress.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

635

The Oregon Gipsy Girl My father was the king of the gypsy true, My mother died and left me some traveling for to do; With my pack upon my back, my friends all bid me well, I went traveling off to London some fortunes for to tell; Some fortunes for to tell, some fortunes for to tell, I went traveling off to London some fortunes for to tell. I went walking through a fair London street. A handsome stranger I chanced to meet: With my brown eyes and he likes my looks so well; Said he: “You the Oregon gypsy girl, will you my fortune tell? Will you my fortune tell? Will you my fortune tell?” Said he: “You the Oregon gypsy girl, will you my fortune tell?” “Yes, kind sir, pray give me your hand. You have houses and ladies at your command; You have servants to wait and open every door, And for the kind ladies leave them aside. I am the Oregon gypsy girl that is to be your bride. That is to be your bride, that is to be your bride, I am the Oregon gypsy girl that is to be your bride.” He took me to his home, a palace high and pure, He had servants to wait on him and open every door; And the bells ring so merrily, as thro’ the streets we roam, She was once the Oregon gypsy girl, but now a squire’s bride. (2)28

Students of traditional folk songs are familiar with the process of localization—the tendency for a song or ballad to become localized by the minor alteration of a few words such as place names, occupations, or regional dialect. Nevertheless, the insertion of “Oregon” into this nineteenth-century Anglo American broadside ballad is arresting. Publisher William Delaney gave no source for this text (nor did he indicate a tune), but the slightly garbled wording strongly suggests it came either directly or indirectly from an oral source. Since “Oregon” seems so out of place in its present position, one searches for another word that might have been misheard or misunderstood. But the older broadside versions have either “little” or “pretty”—neither of which can be easily mutated into “Oregon.” We must conclude that the transformation is a deliberate one—and one that appears in no other known texts. Romnichel Gypsies came to America from England in the 1850s, and other groups from Central and Eastern Europe between the 1880s and 1914. A significant number established a community in Oregon, and possibly this text was meant to refer to them.29 In the fourth stanza, the third line is clearly a mistake: it has been lifted from the last stanza, from which another line is missing; it should probably end with something like “my new home.” In the British broadside texts, the young Gypsy does not tell the squire’s fortune until he has taken her to his estate and she has delivered him a baby nine months later. The protagonists of American versions are spared such an impropriety.30 Alsea Girls Come, you Alsea girls, and listen to my noise; Don’t you marry the Oregon boys;

636

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

If you do, your fortune it’ll be, Cold johnny-cake and venison is all you’ll see. They’ll take you to a side-hued wall Without any windows in it at all, Sandstone chimney and a puncheon floor, A clapboard roof and a button door. Every night before you go to bed, They’ll build up a fire as high as your head; Rake away the ashes and in they’ll throw A great big chunk of old sourdough. When they go a-milkin’, they milk in a gourd, Strain it in a corner and hide it with a board; Some gets little and some gets none, And that’s how things in Oregon run.31

One last time we encounter a descendant of the minstrel stage song “De Free Nigger” (see the section on Virginia songs in chapter 3). Though the theme remains the same— deprecation of the local bachelors—the specifics are modified to reflect the regional customs and lifestyle. The town of Alsea, in northwestern Oregon, is situated on the Alsea River, about midway between the Willamette River and the coast. It was settled in the 1850s. The Alsea are a Native American tribe who lived at the mouth of the Alsea River. Webfoot Land I’ve reached the land of mud and rain, I’ve struggled long this land to gain; And now that I have reached the spot, I sometimes wish that I had not. Chorus: Oh, webfoot land, wet webfoot land, As in my house I sadly stand; And gaze with-out through dripping pane And wonder when ’twill cease to rain, I often wish that I could fly To land where it was sometimes dry. It rains at morn, it rains at eve, It rains at night, there’s no reprieve; Day after day it’s just the same— I often wonder why I came. The people ride around in hacks With green moss growing on their backs; They leave their apples on the trees, And dig potatoes when they please. If ever I do get the cash, For eastern lands I’ll make a dash. I’ll live where I the sun can view, And have my clothes look dry and new. Then when my garden gets too dry, And when for gentle rain I cry,

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

637

Or shoveling snow makes blistered hand, I’ll run right back to Webfoot Land.32

The annual inches of rainfall in the Northwest aren’t so overwhelming, but their even distribution from late fall to early spring means the denizens can go for weeks at a time without seeing the sun. For such meteorological reasons is the Oregonian called a “webfoot,” and the football teams of the two major universities are the Ducks and the Beavers. The song is obviously a parody of “Beulah Land,” a late-nineteenth-century gospel hymn (see also chapter 6). Cove Cherry Fair Many years ago our cherries Were the haws and huckleberries That were wild and free as air; We would crawl out in the morning When the daylight gave us warning For to beat the Siwash there. Where the Indians were a camping, And the cattle herds a tramping Are the great commercial orchards of today; Now we raise the wonder cherries And the precious wonder berries, But the Siwash’s gone away. Chorus: Cove is the land of berries And the place they raise the cherries, Don’t you see that wonderful display? You can hear the autos humming Of the multitudes a coming For this is our cherry day. In this land of milk and honey Where the cherries bring the money, And the prize fruit brought renown, Go and buckle on your armor, Every interest farmer, Help to boost the cherry town. We are famous cherry pickers, All except the chronic kickers, Who are interested only in their pay; But we all extend a greeting To the people of this meeting For this is our holiday.33

Cove, in eastern Oregon’s Union County, lies in a pocket where Mill Creek flows from the Wallowa Mountains. It was first settled in 1862, and in the following year, it was named Forest Cove, descriptive of the terrain. Five years later, the postal authorities truncated the name to “Cove” out of concern for confusion with Forest Grove, Washington County. This action cause considerable consternation among the locals for many years.

638

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Nineteenth-century Cove settlers soon found out that the soil was best suited to fruit crops. This enterprise was greatly helped in 1898, when the railroad from Cove to Union Junction was inaugurated. By 1900, fruits were the best money crop. At about that time, the cherry growers and the Commercial Club sponsored the annual Cherry Fair, the first of which was held in 1911 and which lasted until 1917. A King Bing and a Queen Ann were elected each year, and they led a gala parade in an automobile—if one could be found. M. L. Carter, locally known as the Sandridge Poet, wrote a number of songs about the Cove region. One, the preceding, was sung to the tune of the 1909 favorite “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet.” Pete Orman I’ll tell all you skinners from John Day to Bend That the road south o’ Shaniko ain’t got no end; It’s rut-holes and boulders, it’s alkali dust But the jerkliners gotta make Maupin or bust. They rolled out Pete Orman a quarter past three, He never had time to get over the spree That he’d started at noon only two days before; When the call-boy come ’round, old Pete was right sore. “Now what the hell are they fixin’ for me?” He wanted to know, “Get out, let me be; Last night my poor side-kick was throwed in the can, Today we ride jerk-line for no God-damn man!” They rolled out Pete Orman and bailed out McBee, They set a stiff price with oats and grub free; The boys had to take it, the contract was made, They watered, fed, harnessed, and then hit the grade. The sun was just risin’, the weather was fine, They figured clear sailin’ to the Cow Canyon line; But while they was startin’ up Shaniko Hill, Orm tickled Old Tommy with a porcupine quill. “Put in the oats and shovel in the hay, We’re goin’ to make it through if we can find a way; We ain’t quite as fast as the Oregon Trunk, But we’ll pull ’em into Bend if we are both drunk.”34

The Oregon Trunk Line was incorporated on February 24, 1906, to build a railroad up the Deschutes River for 250 miles. On October 30, 1909, the Oregon Trunk Railway was established with the goal of a road from the Columbia River to Klamath Falls, and it took over the assets and route of the aforementioned company. The heroes of this song are apparently stagecoach drivers in central Oregon, where the (then) small towns of John Day, Shaniko, Bend, and Maupin are located. Shaniko (named for the prosperous German merchant August Scherneckau) was poised to become the world’s largest wool market when the Columbia Southern Railway completed tracks into the town in 1900, but it had become practically a ghost town by 1960.35 It is currently enjoying a modest resuscitation. The song seems to be a parody of “Casey Jones,” which would put it no earlier than 1909—consistent with the beginnings of the competing rail line.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

639

Ballad of the Territorial Road The Umpqua country was the best every found For hills and rocks and fountains. The Umpqua mud it stuck to our feet, But we shook it all off on the Calapooia mountains. Chorus: Save your money, boys, to pay your way through, Two to One Salmon agin’ Caribou; Save your money, boys, and don’t get the fever, For we’ll all make a strike when we git to Salmon River. The Umpqua country was the best ever found For long tail frogs and alligators, And when the hogs they root up the ground, The farmers all come out and plant their potaters. In the Long Tom country we all clumb a tree, To see the land of promise; But clear to the north as far we could see, There was nothing in sight but the river Long Thomas. I asked a Long Tommer to lend me his hoss, And wait for his pay next summer; But his wife railed out like a lightnin’ flash, “Git outa here, ya Californy bummer!”36

Randall V. Mills was a professor of English at the University of Oregon, Eugene, with a long interest in folklore and folk song. In the 1940s he established a folklore archive at the university. He received the preceding item from one of his students, who “turned it up in the back-country.” “Long Tom” was a post office station in Lane County, Oregon, from 1853 to 1904 and the name of a river in Benton and Lane counties. The name was said to be an imitation of an Indian name, “Lung-tum-ler.” The Salmon River is in Lincoln, Polk, and Tillamook counties and flows into the Pacific Ocean. The Calapooya Mountains, in Douglas and Lane counties, are a westward spur of the Cascade Range. “Umpqua” is a widely used historic name in Oregon: a river, a city, and, at various times, several forts, most all in Douglas County. The antipathy expressed toward California emigrants persisted on and off in Oregon through much of the twentieth century, reaching a zenith (or nadir?) in the 1990s with bumper stickers that read, “Don’t Californicate Oregon!” The Hobos’ Convention You’ve heard of big conventions, And there’s some you can’t forget; Now get this straight, there’s none so great, As when we hobos met. To Portland, Oregon, last fall, They came from near and far; On brake beams and blinds, where cinders whines, They rode on every car. Three hundred came from New York State, And some from Eagle Pass;

640

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

That afternoon, the third of June, They gathered there for mess. From the Lone Star State came Texas Slim, With Jack and Katydid; With Lonesome Lou from Kalamazoo, Came the Canandago Kid. Denver Dan and Boston Red Blew in with Hell-Fire Jack; Andy Long from the Lake Shore Gang, With Big Mac from Mackinac. I saw some boys I’d never met, One called New York Spike; Con, the Sneak from Battle Creek, And Mississippi Ike. Old New York Bill, dressed like a Duke, Shook hands with ’Frisco Fred; While Half-Breed Joe, from Mexico, Shot craps with Eastport Red. Then Jocky Kid spilled out a song, Along with Desperate Sam; While Paul the Shark from Terry’s Peak Clog danced with Al-a-bam. St. Louis Jim and Pittsburgh Paul Fixed up a Jungle stew, While Slippery Slim and Bashful Tim Both creeked Gumps for it too. We sat around the Jungle fire, The night was falling fast; We had all done time, for every crime, And talk was of the past. We flopped around the Jungle fire Until the morning sun, ’Til from the town, the Bulls came down— We beat it on the run. We scattered through the railroad yards And left the Bulls behind; Some grabbed freights for other states, And others rode the blinds. Now here I am in Denver Town, As hungry as a crow; The Flyer’s due; when she pulls through, I’ll grab her, then I’ll blow. That’s her! She’s whistling for the block, I’ll get her on the fly; It’s Number Nine on the Santa Fe Line— I’m off again! Good bye!37

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

641

Hobo conventions were once more common events than today—if indeed they still take place at all. Several were memorialized in monika songs, whose main purpose seemed to be to record the nicknames (monikers) of as many ‘boes as possible. George Milburn, who published a similar text in his collection of hobo songs, The Hobo’s Hornbook, included texts commemorating the 1890 convention in Greencastle (Indiana, though the text says Iowa) as well as this one, which he stated took place in 1921. He credited delegate George Liebst with writing the song, though it was clearly based on older material. Portland County Jail My name is Paddy Flynn; I got I’m a stranger in your city, drunk the other night, And the coppers run me in. I had no money to pay my fine, No friends to go my bail, So I got soaked for ninety days In the Portland County Jail. Oh, such a lot of devils, The like I never saw; Robbers, thieves, and highwaymen, And breakers of the law; They sang a song the whole night long, And the curses fell like hail, I’ll bless the day they take me away From the Portland County Jail. The only friend that I had left Was Happy Sailor Jack, He told me all the lies he knew, And all the safes he’s cracked. He cracked them in Seattle, He’d robbed the Western Mail; It would freeze the blood of an honest man In the Portland County Jail. They said I was a lazy bum, And it may be what I am, But just because I got tight They throwed me in the can; Along with yeggs and petermen— Oh, listen to ’em rail! They would get away, for who cares to stay In the Portland County Jail?38

The origin of this song is obscure. It first appeared in print in Carl Sandburg’s American Songbag (1927), but it was clearly known in the Northwest a decade earlier, when its tune was borrowed for “Fifty Thousand Lumberjacks” (ca. 1917). A “yegg” was a safecracker or a thief, especially one who traveled as a hobo. A “peterman” was also a safecracker; both uses are from the late nineteenth century. Strictly speaking, there is no Portland County jail—it’s the Multnomah County jail—though being in Portland, it could be called the Portland county jail. And prior to 1973, it was under the jurisdiction of the city of Portland.39

642

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Perhaps the writer of the song felt constrained by the number of syllables in his verses; however, poetic licenses are not usually so restrictive. It is tempting to trace the origin to the days of the hoboes’ conventions of the preceding song, but that would be only speculative. My Heart Goes Back to Dear Old Pendleton Now I’ve sailed the sea, I’ve seen gay Paree, I’ve seen the sights of old London. Though I’m far away, I never stray From that dear old town I was born in; Now once ev’ry year there’s one town looks dear, Pendleton, you know the town; My heart seems to cling, so that’s why I sing Of Pendleton’s Round-Up renown. Chorus: For my heart goes back to dear old Pendleton, That’s the only place for me, For I’m going back to dear old Pendleton, Where ever I may be; You may talk about your sights of Cheyenne, But take a little tip from me For Pendleton, September, Let ’er buck— That’s the place for me. We’ve fairs ev’rywhere, some good, some just fair, Some towns went broke when ’twas over. But there won’t come a time that this town don’t shine, When her people won’t be in clover; Her women are fair, her business men square, Good fellowship night and day; From the mayor to the cop, she’s always on top, A hummer, a dinger, she’s there.40

Every September since 1910, Pendleton, in northeastern Oregon, has hosted its annual Round-Up. Established in the late 1860s, the city was, in its early years, a staging point for cattle drives from Oregon to Idaho and Montana. In 1889 the arrival of a line of the Northern Pacific Railroad made it a center for the Columbia River Basin wheat industry. The city was named for George H. Pendleton, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for vice president in 1864. Pendleton’s annual Round-Up was the subject of Charles Wellington Furlong’s fascinating book Let ’Er Buck. Furlong (1871–1967) was a man of many talents, including bronco riding; teaching art at Cornell University; exploration in South America, the Middle East, and Africa; and consulting to the Military Intelligence Division of the War Department during World War II. Furlong included this song among several offered up by a group of Pendleton cowmen in a saloon one night after the day’s events (sometime between 1913 and 1920); it was sung by one Jock Campbell. Who ultimately was its author was not disclosed. The Crime of the D’autremont Brothers Way out west in Oregon in nineteen twenty-three, The D’Autremont brothers wrecked the train as brutal as could be.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

643

’Twas train number thirteen of the Southern Pacific line, They just had passed through Siskiyou and were making regular time. When going through the tunnel, upon the engine they came, Shot dead Bates and his fireman, and then they wrecked the train. They killed the brakeman and the mail clerk, too, And endangered all of the lives of the passengers and crew. Then they fled to the mountains to hide their brutal crime, Leaving death and destruction on the Southern Pacific line. For nearly four long years they were sought in vain, To pay for the lives and wrecking of this train. But God is always good and just, as we all know well, They were finally caught at last as the time will always tell. Now they are in prison for the lives they led, Without any hope of pardon until they are dead.41

When the conversation turns to songs about train robbers, the stories of the infamous James Brothers and Younger Brothers back in the 1880s spring first to mind. These gangs terrorized the Midwest for many years, received wide publicity in their day, and were the subject of numerous books, articles, and films. Fifty years later, a minor family of train robbers, involved in a single act of crime (which they badly botched), was memorialized in a recorded ballad. In the early afternoon of October 11, 1923, three brothers—Hugh, aged 19, and twins Ray and Roy, aged 23—held up the Southern Pacific’s southbound San Francisco Express just as it emerged from a tunnel south of Siskiyou, Oregon. They dynamited the mail car to gain access to the money and securities usually carried but managed only to start a fire that burned the mail clerk to death in his car. When brakeman Johnson came running out of the tunnel to see what the matter was, he was ordered to uncouple the mail car from the rest of the train. He fumbled unsuccessfully with the coupling, then was shot without warning by the impatient and nervous bandits. The DeAutremonts also shot the engineer, Bates, and the fireman, Seng. At this point, the killers fled from the scene, their attempted robbery a failure. The identities of the perpetrators remained unknown for some days, until an abandoned pair of overalls near the scene of the crime was examined and found to contain a registeredmail receipt for a letter from Roy DeAutremont of Eugene, Oregon. The hunt for the three men continued until February 1927, when Hugh, living under an alias in a military base in the Philippines, was identified by an army sergeant, who recognized his picture on the post office bulletin board. Roy and Ray were apprehended in June in Steubenville, Ohio. Hugh was tried in Jacksonville, Oregon, found guilty, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Oregon State Penitentiary at Salem. Ray and Roy confessed after Hugh’s trial and were also sentenced to life imprisonment. Hugh was paroled in November 1958 after leading the life of a model prisoner and died in March 1959. Roy was judged insane and transferred to a state asylum. Ray was paroled in October 1961.42 The preceding ballad was recorded by Charles and Paul Johnson, two Appalachian musicians who recorded a dozen or so songs and ballads for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1928. Just why the brothers, who hailed from Tennessee, recorded a song about this Oregon train robbery is not known (unless they were related to the murdered brakeman); nor is it known whether they wrote the ballad themselves or learned it from someone else.

644

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

In short, we know nothing about the ballad or its origins apart from the recording itself. Nor is there any evidence that the ballad survived for any period in oral tradition (unless the Johnsons did not originate it).43 Its inclusion in a book of folk songs, then, is justified mainly by its traditional style and the fact that its composers-performers were musicians of traditional backgrounds whose other recordings were definitely traditional. The ballad is full of accurate historical details (but the robbers’ name should have been spelled “DeAutremont”), so it was probably written shortly after the trials, when newspaper accounts were still fresh; although the robbery occurred in October 1923, the brothers weren’t captured and brought to trial until 1927. In good broadside ballad style, the narrative concludes with a moral warning others that justice and God are sure to triumph, and the wicked will pay their debt to society.44

CALIFORNIA Mexico gained independence from Spain in 1821; in 1825 Alta California became a province of Mexico. In June 1846, some Californians captured the presidio at Sonoma, north of San Francisco, and declared independence from Mexico—a political condition that lasted three weeks. Thereupon, Commodore Sloat brought his pacific fleet near the shore and ordered the United States flag to be raised at Monterey, claiming the territory for the United States. However, over the next two years, skirmishes continued, as Mexican forces attacked southern California and regained control. General Stephen W. Kearny and Commodore Stockton, the governor, led a force that captured Los Angeles on January 10, 1847, and Mexicans agreed to submit to U.S. rule. But soon, local conflicts were superseded by events on a national scale: on February 2, 1848, California was ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. A week earlier, on January 24, James Marshall and John A. Sutter made the momentous discovery of gold flecks where they were building a sawmill on the American River, 35 miles northeast of Sacramento. By the end of the year the whole world knew, and half of it flocked to California to join in the greatest gold rush in American history. California’s population jumped from 90,000 to 220,000 in three years, by which time gold production had peaked and quickly tapered off. Congress foot-dragged over the question of organizing California as a territory because of the contentious issue of slavery, so Californians took matters into their own hands and adopted a state constitution. On September 9, 1950, California became the 31st state of the Union. Racial issues dominated much of California politics for the next half century: concerning Hispanics, over the demand to break up the Mexican land grant ranchos (some larger than 100,000 acres) so that white settlers could purchase land; concerning Chinese laborers, imported to provide cheap labor for railroad construction and therefore a perceived threat to American would-be laborers; and concerning Native Americans, who were continually being displaced from their historic lands. ¡Ay! Vienen los Yankees

Hey! Here Come the Yankees

¡Ay! vienen los Yankees, ¡Ay! Los tienen ya. Vienen a quitarles, La formalidad.

Hey! here come the Yankees, Hey! They’re coming near. Now let’s all put aside All formality!

Ya las señoritas Que hablan el inglés,

See how the young ladies Rush to learn English!

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

Los Yankees dicen, “Kiss me!” Y ellas dicen, “Yes.”

645

“Kiss me!” say the Yankees. The ladies answer, “Yes.”45

The collector, Eleanor Hague, published this text with the following headnote: “From southern California. Variant of tune of ‘Las Margaritas’ as sung in Mexico. Words date from 1848 or about that time”—that is, when the United States took over administration of California. Corrido de Joaquin Murrieta Yo no soy americano pero comprendo el inglés. Yo lo aprendí con mi hermano al derecho y al revés. A cualquier americano lo hago temblar a mis pies.

I am not an American But I understand English. I learned it with my brother Forwards and backwards, And any American I make tremble at my feet.

Cuando apenas era un niño huérfano a mí me dejaron. Nadie me hizo ni un cariño, a mi harmano lo mataron, Y a mi esposa Carmelita, cobardes la asesinaron.

When I was barely a child I was left an orphan. No one gave me any love; they killed my brother, And my wife, Carmelita— The cowards assassinated her.

Yo me vine de Hermosillo en busca de oro y riqueza. Al indio pobre y sencillo lo defendí con fiereza Y a buen precio los sherifes pagaban por mi cabeza

I came from Hermosillo In search of gold and riches. The poor and simple Indians I defended with fierceness And a good price the sheriffs Would pay for my head.

A los ricos avarientos, yo les quité su dinero. Con los humildes y pobres yo me quité mi sombrero. Ay, que leyes tan injustas fué llamarme bandolero.

From the greedy rich, I took away their money; With the humble and poor I took off my hat. Oh, what laws are so unjust To call me a highwayman.

A Murieta no le gusta lo que hace no es desmentir. Vengo a vengar a mi esposa. y lo vuelvo a repetir, Carmelita tan hermosa, Come lo hicieron sufrir.

Murieta does not like To be falsely accused. I come to avenge my wife, And again I repeat it— Carmelita, so lovely, How they made her suffer.

Por cantinas me metí, castigando americanos. “Tú serás el capitán que mataste a mi hermano. Lo aggaraste indefenso, orgulloso americano.”

Through bars I went, Punishing Americans. “You must be the captain Who killed my brother; You grabbed him, defenseless, You stuck up American.”

Mi carrera comenzó por una escene terrible.

My career began Because of a terrible scene.

646

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Cuando llegué a setecientos ya mí nombre era temible. Cuando llegué a mil doscientos ya mi nombre era terrible.

When I got to seven hundred [killed], Then my name was dreaded. When I got to twelve hundred Then my name was terrible.

Yo soy aquel que domin hasta leones africanos. Por ese salgo al camino a matar americanos Ya no es otro mi destino ¡pon cuidado, parroquianos!

I am the one who dominates Even the African lions. That’s why I go out on the road To kill Americans. Now, my destiny is no other; Watch out, you people!

Las pistolas y las dagas son juguetes para mí Balazos y puñaladas, carcajadas par mí. Ahora con medios cortadas ya se asustan por aquí

Pistols and daggers Are playthings for me. Bullets and stabbings Big laughs for me. Now, with their means cut off They’re afraid around here.

No soy chileno ni extraño en este suelo que piso. De México es California, porque Díos así lo quizo, Y en mi sarape cosida traigo me fe de bautismo.

I’m neither a Chilean nor a stranger On this soil on which I tread From Mexico to California Because God wanted it that way, And in my stitched serape, I carry my baptismal certificate.

Que bonito es California con sus calles alineadas, donde paseaba Murieta con su tropa bien formada, con su pistola repleta, y su montura plateada.

How pretty is California With her well-laid-out streets, Where Murieta passed by With his troops, With his loaded pistol, And his silver-plated saddle.

Me he paseado en California por el año del cincuenta, Con mi montura plateada, y mi pistola repleta, Y soy ese mexicano de nombre Joaquín Murieta.

I’ve had a good time in California Through the year of [eighteen]-fifty, With my silver-plated saddle and my pistol loaded. I am that Mexican By the name of Joaquín Murieta.46

Joaqíin Murieta was born in the Mexican state of Sonora; in around 1850, at the age of 18, he left home to mine gold in the Stanislaus district of California. He attempted to become an honest miner but was subjected to vicious racial maltreatment. Wherever he tried to settle, he was told to move on. He turned to dealing Monte, a then popular card game. According to some accounts, Murieta was so subjected to continual insults that a desire for revenge was engendered and led him to turn to a career of brigandage and murder. By 1852 Murieta had gathered a band of some 70 followers, divided into three companies, who survived by horse and mule stealing. Murieta’s downfall was precipitated by the assassination of General Josh Bean in Los Angeles. Murieta was suspected of having masterminded the murder, and posses were organized to apprehend him. In 1853 U.S. marshal Harry Love—described by historian Hubert H. Bancroft as “a lawful desperado who liked to shoot men, but disliked the idea of hanging for it”—brought back Joaquín’s head and the mutilated hand of his companion, Three-fingered Jack—which

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

647

were reputedly preserved in alcohol in a San Francisco saloon until destroyed in the 1906 fire and earthquake.47 The truth may not be as straightforward as the preceding paragraph suggests. It seems five or perhaps more Mexican bandits of the early 1850s used the name of Joaquín Murieta/ Murietta. The celebrated name was later attached to several geographical locations in California, including Joaquin Murieta Caves (Alameda City) and Joaquin Peak near San Andreas in Calaveras Cty, so named because Murieta was said to have fought a battle there in 1853.48 In any case, Murieta remained a heroic figure in the Hispanic Southwest well into the twentieth century. A song about him from the Anglo perspective was written by John A. Stone: Joaquin, the Horse-Thief I suppose you have heard all the talkin’ Of the very noted horse-thief Joaquin; He was caught in Calaveras, but he couldn’t stand the joke, So the Rangers cut his head off and have got it now in a soak. Chorus: Now I warn everybody not to ramble, Never drink, never fight, never gamble, For you’ll never have a cent, all your money will be spent, And you to Sacramento to the prison brig be sent. They took three-fingered Jack and cut his hand off, Then the Rangers drove the rest of the band off; Then they took the head and hand, and they had it well preserved, And the Rangers got the credit, which they very much deserved. Joaquin to the mountains advancing, When he saw Lola Montez a-dancing; When she danced the Spider dance, he was bound to run her off, And he’s feed her eggs and chickens, make her cackle, grunt and cough.49

These two mementos of Murieta could not be more different, representing, respectively, the perspectives of the Hispanic Americans and the Anglo Americans. More is said about John Stone in the notes to “Sweet Betsey from Pike” (discussed later). Lola Montez (1818– 1861) was an Irish-born dancer with a spectacular résumé that included a voyage to India, a dancing career in most of the capitals of Europe, and a stint as the mistress of the King of Bavaria, who made her a baroness and countess. She dabbled in some other marriages, liaisons with Franz Liszt and Alexandre Dumas, and stage performances in Australia and the United States before settling in New York City. During the 1850s she lived for a few years in California, and her name turns up frequently in accounts of the theater there. The “spider dance” was a celebrated performance of hers in which she would stomp on fake spiders as they fell out of the folds of her dress. The Dying Californian Lay up nearer, brother, nearer, For my limbs are growing cold, And thy presence seemeth dearer When thine arms around me fold. I am dying, brother, dying,

648

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Soon ye’ll miss me in your berth, For my form will soon be lying ’Neath the ocean’s briny surf. Hearken to me, brother, hearken, I have something I would say, Ere the veil my vision darkens And I go from hence away, I am going, surely going, But my hope in God is strong, I am willing, brother, knowing, That he doeth nothing wrong. Tell my father, when you greet him, That in death I prayed for him, Prayed that I might one day meet him, In a world that’s free from sin; Tell my mother, (God assist her, Now that she is growing old,) That her child would gladly kissed her When his lips grew pale and cold. Listen, brother, catch each whisper, ’Tis my wife I’d speak of now— Tell, oh tell her, how I missed her, When the fever burned my brow; Tell her, brother, closely listen, Don’t forget a single word— That in death my eyes did glisten With the tears her mem’ry stirred. Tell her she must kiss my children, Like the kiss I last impressed, Hold them as when last I held them, Folded closely to my breast; Give them early to their Maker, Putting all her trust in God, And He never will forsake her, For He’s said so in His word. Oh, my children! heaven bless them! They were all my life to me; Would I could once more caress them, Ere I sink beneath the sea: ’Twas for them I crossed the ocean, What my hopes were I’ll not tell, But I’ve gained an orphan’s portion Yet He doeth all things well. Tell my sisters, I remember, Every kindly parting word, And my heart has been kept tender, With the thought their mem’ry stirr’d, Tell them I ne’er reached the haven, Where I sought the “precious dust,”

A Boston broadside, one of many, of “The Dying Californian,” ca. 1850s. From the Library of Congress.

650

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

But have gained a port called Heaven, Where the gold will never rust. Urge them to secure an entrance, For they’ll find their brother there, Faith in Jesus and repentance, Will secure for each a share. Hark! I hear my Savior speaking, ’Tis, I know his voice so well— When I’m gone, oh! don’t be weeping, Brother, here’s my last farewell.50

Harvard ballad scholar George Lyman Kittredge was first to point out that this very popular poem from the California gold rush era was originally published in the New England Diadem and Rhode Island Temperance Pledge of Providence in 1850. It was quickly reprinted on numerous broadsides. The author is not known, but several printings indicate it was based on lines in a letter written by Captain Chase concerning the death of his brotherin-law, Brown (or Herbert) Owen of Brunswick, Maine, on his way to California. Five years later, the sheet music was published as “The Dying Californian, or the Brother’s Request,” by Oliver Ditson, with music credited to A. L. Lee. The song was published frequently in the 1850s and 1860s, often with slight textual variations. For example, in the Ulster County Almanac of 1855, the last line of first stanza is “ ‘Neath the coral-bedded earth.” The song is drenched in Victorian pathos and sentiment. Shining through the tears of sadness is the moral: the quest for gold is vain and foolish; better still to quest after Heaven, where gold will never rust (never mind that it won’t rust here on earth, either). It has been written that the poem was influenced the William Haines Lytle’s “Antony to Cleopatra,” which began, “I am dying, Egypt, dying,” but Lytle’s piece was written in 1858, and the influence, if any, must have been in the other direction. Sweet Betsey from Pike Oh, don’t you remember sweet Betsey from Pike, Who crossed the big mountains with her lover Ike; With two yoke of cattle, a large yellow dog, A tall shanghai rooster and one spotted hog. Chorus: Tooral lai looral lai looral lai la, &c. One evening quite early they camped on the Platte, ’Twas near by the road on a green shady flat; Where Betsey, sore-footed, lay down to repose— With wonder Ike gazed on that Pike County rose. Their wagons broke down with a terrible crash, And out on the prairie rolled all kinds of trash; A few little baby clothes done up with care— ’Twas rather suspicious, though all on the square. The shanghai ran off, and their cattle all died, That morning the last piece of bacon was fried; Poor Ike was discouraged, and Betsey got mad, The dog drooped his tail and looked wondrously sad.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

651

They stopped at Salt Lake to inquire the way, When Brigham declared that sweet Betsey should stay; But Betsey got frightened and ran like a deer, While Brigham stood pawing the ground like a steer. They soon reached the desert, where Betsey gave out, And down in the sand she lay rolling about; While Ike, half distracted, looked on with surprise, Saying, “Betsey, get up, you’ll get sand in your eyes.” Sweet Betsey got up in a great deal of pain, Declared she’d go back to Pike County again; But Ike gave a sigh, and they fondly embraced, And they travelled along with his arm round her waist. They suddenly stopped on a very high hill, With wonder looked down upon old Placerville; Ike sighted when he said, and he cast his eyes down, “Sweet Betsey, my darling, we’ve got to Hangtown.” Long Ike and sweet Betsey attended a dance; Ike wore a pair of his Pike County pants; Sweet Betsey was covered with ribbons and rings; Says Ike, “You’re an angel, but where are your wings?” A miner said, “Betsey, will you dance with me?” “I will that, old hoss, if you don’t make too free; But don’t dance me hard; do you want to know why? Dog on you! I’m chock full of strong alkali!” This Pike County couple got married of course, And Ike became jealous—obtained a divorce; Sweet Betsey, well satisfied, said with a shout, “Good-by, you big lummux, I’m glad you’ve backed out!”51

John A. Stone, nicknamed “Old Put,” was a celebrated actor, singer, and songwriter in the 1850s. (Put is an obsolete slang term from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries meaning a blockhead or bumpkin.) He crossed the plains by covered wagon in 1849 from Pike County with gold on his mind and soon struck it rich, reportedly finding a gold nugget worth $15,000 in Sonora County in 1853. He then turned to music making and organized a troupe called the Sierra Nevada Rangers and became a musical favorite among the miners. He took up residence in Greenwood, California, about a dozen miles northwest of Placerville, and rapidly dissipated the remainder of his fortune on alcohol and gambling, finally committing suicide on January 23, 1864.52 Stone’s neighbors knew him as “Joe Bowers,” which contributed to the notion that he had composed that popular song of the 1850s (see the section on Missouri songs in chapter 4); and since the author of that piece has so far evaded unequivocal identification, Stone cannot be entirely ruled out. His most enduring creation, though, was undoubtedly “Sweet Betsey from Pike,” another song about those woebegone Pikers from Missouri. The song was first published in his little pamphlet Put’s Golden Songster (1858), from which the preceding text is taken. The original printing bore instructions that it was to be sung to the tune of “Villikins and His Dinah,” a popular 1853 stage parody of an older serious British ballad, “William and Dinah.” That jauntily singable air in three-quarters time has been used as the vehicle for many songs since then. The jovial references to a lecherous Brigham Young and pausing near Salt Lake City

652

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

suggest that at the time he wrote it, word had not yet reached Stone about the tragedy that befell another group of California-bound Ozarkers in 1857 at Mountain Meadows, Utah (see the section on Utah songs in chapter 8). “Sweet Betsy” reportedly resulted in a plagiarism lawsuit, and much of his earnings were lost in legal expenses. I’m Off for California Air—Oh! Susannah Now, darkies gather round me—I got a thing to tell; ’Twill make you burst your eyelids, and make your bosom swell; The white folks all am crazy wid nuffin’ in dar mouth, But de mines ob California—whose a gwan Souff ? Chorus: Oh, Jerusha! whose gwine to go? I’m gwine to California, so fotch along de hoe! Oh, Jerusha! whose gwine to go? I’m gwine to California, so fotch along de hoe! Now, darkies, just believe me—but you needn’t if you like— I heard from California by de telegraph to-night; De letter was so heaby, dat dis darkey couldn’t hold, So I took and bust de seal, and found eleben pound of gold. Chorus. Now, I’ll hab a wooden shobel, and I’ll hab it made ob tin, And de way I’ll scoop de grabel up, it surely am a sin; And I’ll tell de staring white folks, when dey ask us who am we— We’re de famous California Gold Mining Company. Chorus. Den Ise gwan to work my passage on de telegraph to hire, ’Case dey want a handsome darkie for de greasin’ ob de wire; An’ when I get to Mexico, I’ll take de charcoal train, ’Till I get to Sally-Gordy, den de telegraph again. Chorus. Den Daniel Tucker neber want for supper any more; We’ll take de old man back again to old Virginia shore And dearest Mae, take care yourself, and farewell, Mary Blane— We’re going to California, but we’re coming back again. Chorus.53

Painter and professor Samuel F. B. Morse turned his hand to inventing, and the telegraph sprang into existence. The first public message was sent in 1844, and it was still new enough at the time of this song to occasion three mentions. Stephen Foster’s “Oh Susanna,” on which this song is based, was written in 1848. Other songs mentioned are “Dearest Mae” (1848), “Mary Blane” (1847), and “Old Dan Tucker” (1843); “Old Virginny’s shore” is a phrase from “The Floating Scow of Old Virginia” (1847). There have been several California Gold Mining Company organizations; the song probably refers to the one organized in Philadelphia in about 1850. The broadside appears to have been published between 1853 and 1858, based on the publisher’s address. That the first transcontinental telegraph line, connecting California with the East Coast, was not in operation until 1861 suggests that the song’s prescient author was anticipating somewhat. Very likely, the song was inspired by the following much more widely known parody of “Oh Susanna,” from ca. 1850: I came from Salem City, With my washbowl on my knee, I’m going to California,

A New York broadside for “I’m Off for California,” ca. 1853–1858—set to the tune of Foster’s “Oh Susannah.” From the Library of Congress.

654

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The gold-dust for to see. It rained all night the day I left, The weather it was dry, The sun so hot I froze to death— Oh, brothers, don’t you cry! Oh, California, That’s the land for me! I’m bound for San Francisco With my washbowl on my knee.54 The Days of ’49 You are gazing now on big Tom More—a relic of bygone days, A bummer, too, they call me, now, but what care I for praise? It’s oft I sigh for the days of yore, and oft I do repine For the days of old and the days of gold and the days of ’49. In the days of old and the days of gold and the days of ’49. I had comrades then that loved me well, a jolly, saucy crew. A few hard cases, I’ll admit, but all were brave and true; They’d never flinch whate’er the pinch, nor even fret nor whine, For like good old bricks they stood the kicks in the days of ’49. There was Kentucky Bill, I knew him well, a fellow so full of tricks— At a poker game he was always there, and heavy at his bricks; He’d play you draw, he’d antie a slug then go a hat full blind. But in a game of death he lost his breath in the days of ’49. There was Monte Peet, I’ll ne’er forget the luck he always had, He’d deal for you both night and day, or as long as you had a scad; But a pistol shot it laid him out, ’twas his last layout, in fine, For it caught him sure right in the door in the days of ’49. There was Roaring Bill that could outroar any buffalo, you can bet, He’s roar all day, he’d roar all night, and perhaps he’s roaring yet; One night he fell in a prospect hole, with a roaring bad design, And in that hold he roared out his soul in the days of ’49. There was New York Jake, the butcher boy, so fond of getting tight— And every time he got on a spree he was spoiling for a fight; One night he ran against a knife in the hands of one Bob Cline. So over Jake we held a wake in the days of ’49. There was old Lame Jess, that hard old case, he never would repent— He’s never miss a meal nor he’d never pay a cent; But old Lame Jess, like all the rest, to death he did resign. For in his bloom he went up the flume in the days of ’49. Of all the comrades I had then not one is left to toast; They have left me in memory, like some poor old wandering ghost; And as I go from place to place folks call me a traveling sign. “There goes Tom More, a bummer sure, since the days of ’49.”55

This wonderful musical sketch of the seedy characters of the gold rush days was another from the pen of the popular minstrel singer-musician-composer Charley Rhoades

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

655

(real name, Charles Bensell).56 Its earliest known appearance was in 1872, but not over Rhoades’s name, which suggests it was already well known by then.57 It next appeared in sheet music arranged by E. Zimmer in 1876, with stanzas describing two other characters and a concluding diatribe of a virulently racist nature: Since that time how things have changed In this land of liberty, Darkies didn’t vote nor plead in court Nor rule this country; But the Chinese question, the worst of all, In those days did not shine, For the country was right and boys all white In the days of ’49.58

As is the case with other ethnic groups in more recent times, in the nineteenth century, cheap Chinese labor provided a welcome boost to the economy when jobs were plentiful but became a source of contention when the economy weakened. An economic slump in the 1870s brought increased discontent among the unions and agitation for exclusion of the Chinese. A law banning immigration of Chinese laborers for 20 years was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1879 but was vetoed by President Arthur. In the next year a treaty agreement with China allowed U.S. regulation of Chinese immigration. This was followed by the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which suspended Chinese immigration for 10 years. These added verses must have been composed in those turbulent years. As for the rest of the piece, it has the earmarks of a saloon recitation, but there’s no doubt that Rhoades conceived it as a song. It offers a good counterweight to the common portrayal, in novels and movies, of the gold rush as some wildly exciting era when everyone made his or her fortune and the mood was ever optimistic and expansive. In many versions, the narrator’s name is spelled “Moore.” Bob Dylan recorded the song in 1970, employing it to another worldwide audience after just about a century of retirement.59 Ho! For California! We’ve formed our band, and are well mann’d, To journey afar to the promised land, Where the golden ore is rich in store, On the banks of the Sacramento shore. Chorus: Then, ho! Brothers ho! To California go. There’s plenty of gold in the world we’re told, On the banks of the Sacramento. Heigh O, and away we go, Digging up the gold in Francisco. O! don’t you cry, nor heave a sigh, For we’ll all come back again, bye-and-bye Don’t breathe a fear, nor shed a tear, But patiently wait for about two year. Chorus. As the gold is thar, most any whar, And they dig it out with an iron bar,

656

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And where ’tis thick, with a spade or pick, They can take out lumps as heavy as brick. Chorus. As we explore that distant shore— We’ll fill our pockets with the shining ore; And how ’twill sound, as the word goes round, Of our picking up gold by the dozen pound. Chorus. O! the land we’ll save, for the bold and brave— Have determined there never shall breathe a slave. Let foes recoil, for the sons of toil Shall make California God’s Free Soil. Chorus: Then ho! Brothers, ho! to California go, No slave shall toil on God’s Free Soil, On the banks of the Sacramento. Heigh O, and away we go, Chanting our songs of Freedom, O.60

The chorus, at least, of this song, was modeled on Stephen Foster’s “De Camptown Races” (originally “Gwine to Run All Night”) of 1850. Since this text was published in 1851, that narrows its date of composition to a very brief interval. At some time, the text was simplified and reworked into a sea shanty, and so it appears as such in most commonly in folk song collections. The shanty lacks the pointedly abolitionist sentiments of the final stanza and chorus, replacing them (ironically) with the more typical racially insensitive lyrics common on the antebellum minstrel stage. In one form or another, the song’s popularity must have been considerable: it was even recorded in Finnish in 1928.61 Hangtown Gals Hangtown gals are plump and rosy, Hair in ringlets mighty cozy; Painted cheeks and gassy bonnets; Touch them and they’ll sting like hornets. Chorus: Hangtown gals are lovely creatures, Think they’ll marry Mormon preachers; Head thrown back to show their features— Ha, ha, ha! Hangtown gals! They’re dreadful shy of forty-niners, Turn their noses up at miners, Shocked to hear them say, “gol durn it,” Try to blush, but cannot come it. They’ll catch a neighbor’s cat and beat it, Cut a bean in halves to eat it; Promenade in silk and satin, Cannot talk, but murder Latin. On the street they’re always grinning, Modestly they lift their linen; Petticoats all trimmed with laces, Matching well their painted faces.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

657

To church they very seldom venture, Hoops so large they cannot enter; Go it gals, you’re young and tender, Shun the pick and shovel gender.62

“Hangtown” was a local nickname for Placerville, California, first settled in 1848 and originally known as “Dry Diggings.” It acquired the “Hangtown” sobriquet because of an incident that occurred on January 22, 1849, when two Frenchmen and a Chileno were hanged after they and two others had tried to rob a gambler in his hotel room. The five were caught, tried by an improvised court, and sentenced to a whipping. But then, when it was learned that three of the offenders previously had been driven from Stanislaus for stealing and attempted murder, they were hastily retried and condemned to be hanged.63 Stone based his song, tune and structure, on a popular minstrel stage song of the 1840s, “New York Gals,” the chorus of which was as follows: New York gals, pretty faces, Bran’ new frocks trimm’d with laces; Ankles small and a waist so slender, Ah! ah! ah! and a goodbye John.64 Clementine In the centre of a golden valley dwelt a maiden all divine, A pretty creature, a miner’s daughter and her name was Clementine; Her noble father was the foreman of every valued mine, And every miner and ranchman was in love with Clementine. Chorus: Oh, my darling, oh, my darling, my darling Clementine, You are lost to me forever, dreadful sorrow, Clementine. The foreman miner, an old forty-niner, in dreams and tho’ts sublime, Lived in comfort with his daughter, his pretty child, Clementine; When far away he would often pray that in his sunny clime, No harm might overtake her, his favorite nugget, Clementine. When the day was done, and the setting sun its rays they ceased to shine, Homeward came the brawny miner to caress his Clementine; None was nearer, none was dearer since the days of forty-nine, When in youth he had another who was then his Clementine. She led her ducks down to the river, the weather it was fine, Stubbed her toe against a sliver, fell into the raging brine; He heard her calling, calling father, her voice was like a chime, But, alas! he was no swimmer, so he lost his Clementine.65

So popular has this song become in the century and a half since its composition that one would be hard-pressed to find someone reared in America who has not heard it. Chances are, however, that the words everyone will immediately recall are nothing like these. The more familiar words were published in 1884 and credited to Percy Montrose. The version given here tells a rather more convoluted story than we are wont to remember: here there were actually two daughters named Clementine, one who drowned, and another who still lives. Both versions (not to mention the many later parodies and additions) substantially postdate gold rush days; however, there is an earlier related song.

658

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The ill-fated Clementine’s story was first told in a song, of a quite different tune, that was published in 1863 by H. S. Thompson with the title, “Down by the River Lived a Maiden.” The setting in this minstrel-dialect song had nothing to do with the gold rush, but the essential riverine tragedy is still central: (1) Down by the river there lived a maiden In a cottage built just seven by nine; And all around this lubly bower The beauteous sunflower blossoms twine. Chorus: Oh! my Clema, Oh! my Clema, Oh! my darling Clementine, Now you are gone and lost forever, I’m dreadful sorry Clementine. (5) De ducks had gone down to de ribber To drive them back she did incline; She stubbed her toe and oh, kersliver She fell into the foaming brine. Chorus.66

The Blue Velvet Band In the city of wit, wealth and fashion, Known as Frisco, where I first saw the light, With its numerous adventures and frolics, So fresh in my memory-tonight. One evening, while out on a ramble, Walking here and there, without thought or design, I met a girl, tall and slender, On the corner of Kearney and Pine. On her cheeks was the pure flush of nature, And her dark eyes seemed to expand; While her hair in luxuriant masses Was entwined with the blue velvet band. To a house aptly called the “Four Corners,” She invited me with a sweet smile; She seemed so refined, gay and charming, That I thought I would tarry awhile. After spreading a dainty collation, With some wines of an excellent brand; She conversed in polite conversation, Did this girl with the blue velvet band. After lunch to a suite of apartments, We adjourned to a room up above; While I thought myself surely in heaven, Where supreme reigns the goddess of love. A fine lady’s taste seemed apparent, By the dainty arrangement of things; From the ornaments so charming To the little white Cupid in wings.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

But the object that most struck my fancy Was the work of some artistic hand; ’Twas the costly layout of a dope fiend, That fiend wore the blue velvet band. The pipe it was carved out of ivory, With rubies inlaid round the bowl; The lamp was a masterpiece or ornament, While the yen-hoke was made of pure gold. I sought a pile of pillows and cushions, While she cooked the hop so grand; And we both hit the pipe until slumber Overtook the eyes of my blue velvet band. It was just a sweet dream of happiness, That lasted just a year or so; And by her advice and teaching I had plenty of cloth and dough. She taught me the confidence racket, And no equal had I as a dip; I could get the rocks from their mounting, With never a slide or a slip. From opium smoking to stealing, My downfall she artfully planned; That’s why I tell you young fellows, Stay away from the blue velvet band. One evening, coming home wet and dreary, With a swat from a jewelry store, I heard someone and my dearie, Taking love as I came near the door. “If you’ll give me the clue to convict him,” Said a strange tone soft and bland, “I’ll know for sure that you love me.” “That’s a go,” said my blue velvet band. Oh, what rage filled my heart as I listened, How false seemed all women, and vile; To think that once I adored her, Makes a grim mockery of smile. Just an hour that I had been hunted, By the bulls that had wounded me, too; And my temper, being none of the sweetest, As I cast myself into their view. And the copper, not liking the glitter Of a forty-five Colt in my hand, Took a dive through the window and left me, Alone with my blue velvet band. What happened to me I will tell you, I was ditch for a burglar crime;

659

660

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

There was hell in the bank at midnight, And my pal was cut off in his prime. A speedy conviction then followed, Fifteen long years then understand; That’s why I tell you, youth of Frisco, Stay away from the blue velvet band. If she had only been true when I met her, What a bright future was in store; For I was an able mechanic, Honest and true to the core. Oh, when this girl double-crossed me, My life in steep bliss faded away; That’s when our purses grew empty, She cunningly taught me to play. Many years has passed since these happenings, This story all belongs to the past; I forgave her, but just retribution Proved fair to the false one at last. What ages of old have contended, What is deemed best mortal can stand; So the law in a hop joint ended My romance with the blue velvet band. One evening when taps was ringing, I found myself close to the bars; I thought I heard someone singing Away out in the ocean of stars. It had the same tone of sadness, All of youth that we could demand; Back past radiance of gladness In days with my blue velvet band. One day the Superintendant addressed me, In his same good-natured way: “Jack, let’s take a trip Sunday to Potters Field, And there spend the day.” While gazing over the different tombstones, A low slab caught my sight; And the two words on it were unknown, And nearly covered from sight. For there was the full description, Even to the mole on her hand, And my tears fell on the pauper’s grave, ’Twas the grave of my blue velvet band. I listened as they told the story Of a raid one cold dark night, In a hop joint on Dupoint Street, And this girl had died from fright.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

661

Some claimed that she grabbed the gun, On her lover she laid the raid; But he killed her, to keep her from talking, Where crooks and plotters had laid. They said when she was dying, She called one girl to her side; And murmured: “Tell Jack Leonard in Quentin My thoughts were on him when I died.” My face turned as white as my clothing, And the blood it froze in my veins; My head started aching and throbbing, And my heart was bursting with pain. Now that my romance was ended, I’ll go back to my home town again, Where my chances are good for the dollars, All the way from a thousand to ten. And if I am lucky I’ll endeavor To live honest in some other land; And bid farewell to old Frisco And the grave of my blue velvet band.67

This glorious recitation would seem to hail from the same era as other pieces of heroic declamation such as “The Face on the Barroom Floor” and “Casey at the Bat”—which is to say, late 1800s. The preceding text was printed in 1921. Another version, printed by George Milburn in The Hobo’s Hornbook (1930), is as long, but with differences—some minor, some entire stanzas. In 1926, William Delaney, who published the preceding version, wrote, “Five or six years ago I paid the author for permission to print the words and he told me that it was written while he was in San Quentin, a California prison. After his release he had it printed and told me he sold a great many copies of the poem in Frisco.”68 Unfortunately, San Quentin prisoner records for those years make no mention of a Jack/ John Leonard (nor, for that matter, Otis Rogers). What is further puzzling about the recitation is its relation to the traditional song that is found both in America and in Britain—generally as “Black Velvet Band” in the latter venue. On both sides of the Atlantic, the song is much shorter—perhaps six to eight stanzas: the narrator tells of meeting a lovely young woman who slips into his pocket a stolen piece of jewelry; she flees when the police approach and the narrator is apprehended, arrested, tried, and sent to prison, never to see the woman again. English broadside texts date from the early nineteenth century, so whether the song or the recitation is the earlier is difficult to determine. In the United States, it enjoyed a revival in the 1970s thanks to performances and a 1949 recording by Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. Monroe probably learned the song from a 1934 recording by fellow Kentucky musician Cliff Carlisle. In all American texts the setting is San Francisco. A Story [Evans and Sontag] Come all you bold detectives, a story I’ll relate Of how poor Smith and Witty they almost met their fate. They started out one August day, when it was hot and dry;

662

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

To take two of our citizens they both did boldly try; And O it was so very sad, but I’ll tell the truth to you: Poor Witty he was wounded and Smithy, how he flew; And in his haste to get away he went right through the fence With Sontag close upon him, and he has not seen him since. He ran until he met a cabman, and unto him did cry; “O, take me to the Doctor, for I know I’m going to die!” The cabman being kind hearted he did listen to his cry. While his poor wounded comrade was left alone to die. Then Sontag and Evans they to the hills did fly; They took the Sheriff’s buggy, and it’s “Smithy, mind your eye!” The Sheriffs and detectives went in hot pursuit. They did not know these men at all, but knew that they would shoot. Oscar Beaver was the next to fall upon the field alone. He thought to take these two brave men, no matter what they’d done; And Overall and posse they did themselves conceal Behind the barn and fences and even in a field. Poor Oscar lay there groaning his cries were fainter now, While Dan G. Overall stampeded like a cow! When Overall was sure these men had gone, to the fence he ran, And called Frank Byrd to come and help the dying man; And Frank being kind-hearted, he could not him deny; He ran out to the corner and heard the poor man cry: “For God’s sake help me, comrades—I am wounded and must die!” When next we heard of these brave men it was at Sampson Flat; The bold detectives they did say: “Ah, now we have them pat.” But, O, it was a sad mistake; when to take them they did try They found them in the hornet’s nest, but they were very “fly.” Then Wilson and McGinnis they soon did bite the dust And Burke and his brave Injuns took quickly to the brush. Smith and Hill were left alone, their courage for to try. They did not know what moment they on the field would lie. Now, all you wise reporters, whene’er you come to town Please call on Mrs. Evans in her quiet little home. She will tell you all she does not know, for you all she must mislead Because she is as cute as these brave men who were drove to this terrible deed.69

Christopher Evans (1847–1917) and John Sontag (1860 –1893) made quite a name for themselves under the job description of “train robber” in the 1890s in central California. When the string of robberies started (five in all, which both men always denied having committed), both had good reason to bear a grudge against the railroads. Sontag, formerly a brakeman, had been discharged by the Southern Pacific in 1887 after he was seriously injured on the job near Fresno. Evans had heavily mortgaged property that he eventually lost because of financial pressures, including the railroad’s exorbitant hauling rates. Sought by the law, one day they shot and killed posse man Oscar Beaver in Evans’s stable. The hunt intensified, culminating in a wild shootout at James Young’s ranch, during which lawman Victor Wilson and bounty hunter Andrew McGinnis were shot and killed. On June 11, 1893, a posse ambushed them and several hundred shots were exchanged during a battle lasting several hours. Both Evans and Sontag were severely wounded. Sontag was apprehended the following morning; Evans, in spite of having lost an eye and an arm so badly wounded it required amputation, fled on foot and escaped. Sontag died three weeks later of tetanus.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

663

Evans was put on trial and brilliantly defended by a lawyer hired by his daughter (and Sontag’s widow) Eva. (To pay for court costs, Eva and her mother, Molly, wrote and produced a play about the aggrieved Evans, in which they played themselves.) As a result, he was spared execution and sentenced to life imprisonment. Nevertheless, he escaped five months later, only to be recaptured in February 1894. He remained in prison for 17 years, until he was pardoned by Governor Hiram Johnson during a political campaign that exploited antirailroad sentiments. Banished from the state of California, he moved to Oregon, where he spent his last 10 years. While in prison, he wrote Eurasia, a political treatise about a socialist state.70 Frank Norris’s novel Octopus also told their story, albeit somewhat fancifully.71 Ambrose Bierce is known today mainly (if not exclusively) for his acerbic Devil’s Dictionary, but in the mid-nineteenth century, he was one of the pre-eminent journalists of California’s post–gold rush community. In his regular newspaper column, he offered gossip, poems, editorial opinion, and literary pronouncements as he saw fit. He preceded this poem with the following statement: The following verses were written for publication several weeks ago by Miss Eva Evans, the daughter of the famous “outlaw.” The circumstances under which they came into my hands are such as to forbid harsh criticism, even if that were consistent with the forbearance upon which subsequent events have given their author a claim. I print them here merely because they seem to me to have at this time an interest greater than that of anything that I could write—albeit I am proud to remember that it has sometimes been said of me that I write in much the same spirit.72

Not surprisingly, Eva Evans’s poem (if it is indeed hers) skirts the issue of whether Evans and Sontag committed any of the crimes of which they were accused; in fact, they are hardly regarded as criminals at all (even Bierce, who met and interviewed Chris Evans in jail, feigns neutrality in the preceding headnote); rather, she focuses on the men involved in the attempted capture and does not regard them very highly. The text may or may not ever have been sung, but its style is that of nineteenth-century broadside ballads, and it does no injury to anyone—including the ballad muse—to call it a song and include it herewith. Song of the Death Valley Prospectors We’ve roamed the hills and made new trails, Our burros by our side We’ve looked for gold, but ain’t found none, Old Timer, don’t you cry. Chorus: Oh! Oh! you desert rats, don’t you cry no more We’ve almost reached the Golden Gate Our Old pals waiting there. We few are left, the most are gone Up on to Heaven’s shore, And soon we’ll be within the gates, Old Timer, don’t you cry. There’s water there, the sun don’t burn, The hills are low, not steep, And sand don’t choke your breath away, Old Timer, don’t you cry. The wind don’t blow, the rain don’t rain, The trails ain’t got no rocks;

664

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The weather’s mild, just as you like, Old Timer, don’t you cry. No need to hobble Johnny now, Or look for him all day; The grass is green and not burned up, Old Timer, don’t you cry. The steel don’t dull no need to muck, No real work more to do; The Lord is there awaiting, too, Old Timer, don’t you cry. The gulches are all water filled, And gold dust by the pan; The next round shot will blast her in, Old Timer, don’t you cry. So down the drink and make a toast To all who still are here; Another one to pals now gone, Old Timer, don’t you cry. They’re waiting there with burros packed, With cinches tight and fast; I’ll join them now and wait for you, Old Timer, don’t you cry. Our pals are waiting patiently, The jacks are reared to go; I’m going now, good-by old pals, I’ll wait up there for you. My last shift’s in, I’m on my way, I’ll wait until you come; And start again to look for gold, Old Timer, don’t you cry. You won’t have long to wait no more, Maybe a year or two; And sing again as now we do, Old Timer, don’t you cry. So tap her light until you come, And when it’s deep enough; Just load her light and tamp her soft, Old Timer, don’t you cry. And when we all have reached those gates, Our pals awaiting there; We’ll roam again on golden trails, Old Timer, don’t you cry. Chorus: Oh! Oh! you desert rats, I’ve landed straight up here, The boys all say to hurry up, They’re waiting here for you.73

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

665

The year 1849 was the year gold nuggets were spotted at Sutter’s Mill, California, but half a century later, the hopefuls were still sifting sand searching for the precious metal. Frank Crampton was one of them, and he spent many years prospecting in Death Valley, where he and fellow miners put together the preceding verses in the early twentieth century, using the familiar tune of “Oh Susannah.” He recalled, “We added new verses whenever a few of us would meet. The last verses were made up by a large group, all of us prospectors, desert rats, and hard-rock stiffs, at the almost deserted camp of Greenwater in the fall of 1919, when most of the group got together. It was to be the last reunion for most of us, although we did not know it at the time.”74 The title of Crampton’s autobiography appears as a phrase in the song. He explained, The expression “deep enough” probably originated in Cornwall and came to the United States with Cornish miners—“Cousin Jacks”; they were usually called their wives and women “Cousin Jennies.” At first the term referred to a drill hole in which powder was placed for blasting. When the hole had reached a desired depth, it was “deep enough.” Later the use of the term broadened to include anything one did not like or wanted nothing more to do with. However it was used, the attitude of “I don’t care” was ever present. Today the equivalent would be “that’s that” or “I’ve had it.”75 The San Francisco Earthquake ’Twas on a balmy April day, the springtime flowers in bloom. California’s prosperous city seemed so gay; The citizens are in happiness, not dreaming of their doom And peacefully the ships lay in the Bay. But suddenly a rumbling sound, an earthquake, some one cries, The earth rolls and rocks, the people pause in dread. Our mind’s eye pictures Pompeii’s destruction long ago The Pacific’s pride lay numbered with the dead. The earth is cut from place to place, as from a cruel knife, Tall buildings fall and fire is quickly seen; And brave ones are striving to ease that earthly strife. Tis true, but reads just like a hideous dream. Great excitement then prevails and panic everywhere. Deeds of bravery on every side are found; Firemen, soldiers, doctors, nurses, great heroes all, are lost, Dear old San Francisco’s burning to the ground. A poor mother drew her loving ones closely to her side; My God, take me, but save my loving child! Good brothers and dear sisters, too, fathers and their sons, Locked in each other’s arms they cruelly died. Fond husbands sacrifice their lives to save a loving wife. A last embrace, a farewell kiss, good-by; God’s ways are all mysterious, and He loves us one and all. Those poor souls have gone to rest with Him on high.76

God’s ways are indeed mysterious, but not so mysterious are the ways of the San Andreas Fault, the jagged tear in the earth’s fabric that cuts across 800 miles of California’s western edge. Not since Pompeii was built on the slopes of Mt. Vesuvius has a major city been so poorly positioned.

666

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

On April 18, 1906, the fault slipped, generating an earthquake that turned San Francisco into the world’s largest roller coaster, destroying buildings, toppling trees, twisting streets, and rupturing gas and water lines. More damage was done by the fires that subsequently erupted because of gas leaks (and the lack of water to fight them) than from the temblor itself. Lacking water, firefighters resorted to dynamiting buildings to create a firebreak and stop the fire from spreading. The earthquake and fire destroyed 28,000 buildings, including the homes of three-quarters of the city’s population. More than 3,000 people died in the earthquake and its aftermath. [Golden Gate Firmly Locked] Fellow countrymen, four hundred million strong; Many are great, with exceptional talents. We want to come to the Flowery Flag Nation but are barred; The Golden Gate firmly locked, without even a crack to crawl through. This moment— Truly deplorable is the imprisonment. Our hearts ache in pain and shame; Though talented, how can we put on wings and fly past the barbarians?77

The gold rush of 1849 offered impoverished and uneducated Chinese willing to brave a voyage to a strange and foreign land an opportunity to earn money that they could then bring back to their families. Unlike Japanese immigrants, who generally brought spouses, Chinese immigration consisted largely of males, who, if married, left spouses behind in the hopes of returning soon with a fortune in so-called yellow eagles, or American gold coins. Immigration commenced in the 1850s and swelled rapidly, peaking in 1882, when nearly 40,000 Chinese debarked on American shores. The greeting they received was far from cordial, especially after their growing numbers threatened the livelihoods of native laborers. In 1882 the Chinese Exclusion Act virtually brought Chinese immigration to a standstill—though a small but steady trickle did manage to enter the country each year. Forced to live in ghettos called “Chinatowns,” discriminated against at every opportunity, and driven to prostitutes and the ilk for female companionship, the Chinese did not have an easy time. In San Francisco in the early 1910s, a major publisher of Chinatown sponsored two collections of songs (or poetry) by Chinese Americans. Over 1,600 were published, all in the same stanzaic form known as the 46-syllable song. The texts were not necessarily directly autobiographical, but they certainly captured the collective experiences of the Chinatown community. Santa Barbara Earthquake Way out in California Among the hills so tall, Stands the town of Santa Barbara, That they thought would never fall. And then one fatal morning Just before the break of day, When all the town lay sleeping, The hills began to sway.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

667

Then homes and buildings trembled, And went crashing to the ground, The town was all in darkness And lights could not be found. There were wives and children screaming, And dying every where, And the people all were praying, “Oh Lord, please hear our prayer.” Then daylight found the people With sad and aching hearts, They were searching for their families That the earthquake tore apart. But some of them lay sleeping, Beneath the fallen stone; And their lips were closed forever, Nevermore to cry and moan. Its just another warning, From God up in the sky; To tell all you good people, That He still reigns on high. We cannot tell the moment When He will call us home, And we should all be ready Before the time has come.78

Songwriter Carson J. Robison worked out a formulaic tragedy ballad that was so generic, all he needed was the place and nature of the event to produce one suited to the event. Note that there are no individuals mentioned, nor any specifics about the effects of the temblor. The 6.3-Richter-magnitude earthquake struck on June 29, 1925, at 6:44 A.M., following three hours of minor tremors. Most residential homes generally survived, but in the downtown area, homes and commercial buildings did not fare as well. Along State Street, a main thoroughfare, most structures were leveled, and accumulations of rubble were so thick that automobile travel was impeded. Thirteen people were killed; damage was estimated at $6.3 million. City officials established a stricter building code, requiring commercial buildings along State Street to conform to the Spanish-Moorish style of architecture that now endows Santa Barbara with much of its charm and tourist attraction. Little Marian Parker Way out in California, a family bright and gay, Were plannin’ for their Christmas, not very far away, They had a little daughter, a sweet and purty child, And all the folks who knew her loved Marian Parker’s smile. She left her home one mornin’ for school not far away, And no one dreamed that danger could come to her that day; And then a murderous villain, a fiend with heart of stone Took little Marian Parker away from friends and home.

668

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The world was horror stricken and people held their breath, Until they found poor Marian, her body cold in death; And then they caught the coward, young Hickman was their man, They brought him back to justice, his final trial to stand. There is a great commandment that says “Thou shalt not kill,” And those who do not heed it a cup of sorrow fill; This song should be a warnin’ to parents far and near, We cannot guard too closely the ones we love so dear.79

On December 15, 1927, 12-year-old Marian Parker was enjoying her junior high school Christmas party in Los Angeles when a well-dressed man came to the school and told school officials that Mr. Parker had been injured in an automobile accident and he had come to take his daughter home. Which daughter? he was asked. The younger, he replied. No one seemed to be puzzled by this exchange since Marian had a twin sister, Marjorie. When Marian failed to return home that evening, her parents alerted authorities. The next day, two telegrams arrived. The first stated, “Do positively nothing until you receive special delivery letter,” and was signed Marian Parker and, in parentheses, “George Fox.” The second followed 20 minutes later: “Marian secure. Use good judgment. Interference with my plans dangerous.” The following day came the special delivery letter: Use good judgment. Do this. Secure 75 $20 gold certificates—U.S. currency—1500 dollars—at once. Keep them on your person. Go about your business as usual. Leave out police and detectives. Make no public notice. Keep this affair private. Make no search. Fulfilling these terms with the transfer of the currency will secure the return of the girl. Failure to comply with these requests means—No one will ever see the girl again. Except the angels in heaven. The affair must end one way or the other within 3 days. 72 hours. You will receive further notice, but the terms remain the same. FATE. If you want aid against me ask God not Man.

Another message followed, then a phone call to Mr. Parker telling him to bring the money to an appointed street corner (10th and Gramercy). Parker did so, but the kidnapper failed to appear. He then wrote Parker a note upbraiding him for trying to outwit “the Fox”—he had seen police cars following Parker’s vehicle. Another assignation was made. An armed, masked man met Parker, took the money, quickly showed Parker Marian’s pale and still face and left her limp body at the curb a block away. Parker rushed up and discovered, in horror, that Marian was dead and brutally mutilated. From fingerprints, police soon learned the kidnapper to be William Edward Hickman, who was captured on December 22 near Echo, Oregon, tried, and executed on October 19, 1928. Six hillbilly ballads were written and recorded in the weeks following the kidnapping, several of which have been recovered from oral tradition. The one given here was the most widely reported. It was written after Hickman’s capture but before the execution. Ballad of Bloody Thursday As I went walking one day down in Frisco, As I went walking in Frisco one day, I spied a longshoreman all dressed in white linen, Dressed in white linen and cold as the clay. “I see by your outfit that you are a worker,” These words he did say as I slowly walked by;

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

669

“Sit down beside me and hear my sad story, For I’m shot in the breast and I know I must die. “It was down on the Front where I worked on the cargoes, Worked on the cargoes ten hours a day; I lost my right fingers because of the speed-up, The speed-up that killed many a man in my day. “With too much of a sling load on old rusty cable, The boss saved ten dollars, ten dollars, I say! That old rusty sling broke, and fell on my buddy; Ten lousy bucks carried Jimmie away. “Those were the days when the boss owned the union, We poor working stiffs—we had nothing to say; Ours was to work and to keep our big traps shut; We stood in the shape-up for a dollar a day. “But our children were hungry, their clothing was tattered; It’s then that we workers began to get wise; We tore up our fink books and listened to Bridges, Saying, ‘look at your kids, brothers, let’s organize!’ “Strong and united we went to the bosses, For better conditions and a decent day’s pay; And the bosses just laughed and we all had a meeting, That’s why we’re hitting the bricks here today. “Our struggles were many, our struggles were bloody, We fought the ship-owners with all that we had; With thousands of dollars they tempted our leaders, But our guys were honest, they couldn’t be had. “It was there on the line that I marched with my brothers, It was there on the line as we proudly walked by; The cops and the soldiers they brought up their rifles, I’m shot in the breast and I know I must die. “Four hundred strikers were brutally wounded; Four hundred workers and I left to die; Remember the day, sir, to all of your children, This bloody Thursday, the fifth of July. “Don’t beat the drums slowly, don’t play the pipes lowly, Don’t play the dead march as they carry me along; There’s wrongs that need righting, so keep right on fighting, And lift your proud voices in proud Union songs. “Fight on together, you organized workers, Fight on together, there’s nothing to fear; Remember the martyrs of this bloody Thursday, Let nothing divide you—and victory is near.”80

In 1934 San Francisco was at the center of a three-month strike by longshoremen all along the Pacific Coast that shut down most shipping. When the Industrial Association tried to open the port of San Francisco on July 5, using strikebreakers under police protection,

670

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

a daylong battle broke out between strike supporters and police, leaving two strike supporters dead. Governor Frank Merriam dispatched the National Guard, armed with tanks and machine guns, to protect against further violence and, in the process, to permit the reopening of the port using strikebreakers. In the meantime, union after union voted to join a general strike intended to shut down the city in protest against the killings and the use of the National Guard. The general strike began on July 16 and lasted four days. Both sides claimed victory, but the strike forever changed labor practices along Pacific Coast waterfronts. It also led to the creation of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in 1937. By the late 1930s San Francisco was once again a highly unionized city. The Death of Kathy Fiscus On April the eighth, the year forty-nine, Death claimed a little child so pure and so kind; Kathy they called her, met her death that day I know it was God that called her away. Playmates for Kathy were all having fun, The story was told, they all started to run; As they looked back, she was not there, It’s so sad to think of this tragic affair. Thousands were there from far and from near, Workmen they struggled against all their fears; But after two days they felt so weak, They called down to Kathy but she never did speak. After working so hard both day and night, Digging forever, she came into sight; The little darling was dead, her life it was gone, In San Marino, there’s a heart-broken home. Just like a beast in a forest that day, The abandoned well took Kathy away; And as I stand along so humble I bow, I know Kathy is happy up there with God now.81

On April 8, 1949, three-year-old Kathy Fiscus was playing with some friends in an empty field when she fell down a 14-inch-diameter abandoned dry well pipe and was trapped 95 feet underground. Still alive, she could speak to her frantic parents, who notified emergency workers. One hundred thirty-two volunteer rescuers struggled around the clock, digging a parallel shaft to reach the girl, and 5,000 spectators gathered around. When she was finally reached after 49 hours, she was already dead. Jimmie Osborne (1923–1957), a country music entertainer from Winchester, Kentucky, wrote and recorded a ballad soon after the tragedy, and the disc reputedly sold a million copies. Osborne wrote his song in the style of the traditional accident ballads of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and as a result, it was readily assimilated into the repertoires of traditional singers. Osborne was working at radio station WLEX in Lexington, Kentucky, at the time and doubtless sang the song many times on the air, which is probably how Paul Clayton’s informant learned it. The song has been collected from other traditional singers as well.82

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

671

ALASKA Natives of Siberia knew of a landmass lying to their east long ago, but it wasn’t until 1728 that it was explored by Europeans. The Russian tsar appointed an exploratory expedition lead by Danish mariner Vitus Bering. In 1784 the Russians established the first European settlement near present-day Kodiak. The land offered rich opportunities for fur hunting (mainly sea otters), and competition was fierce between Americans, British, and Russians. In 1867, Russia, following its defeat in the Crimean War and the declining fortunes of the sea otter industry, sold Alaska to the United States; there was so much American public opposition to the purchase, negotiated by Secretary of State Seward, that Alaska was dubbed “Seward’s folly.” In 1878 the first salmon cannery was built—a harbinger of what was to become a major industry for more than a century. The discovery of gold proved a major event in Alaska’s history several times: first, in 1861, on the Stikine River, and then in the Klondike and Canadian Yukon in 1897–1900. In 1898, gold was discovered at Nome, and in 1903, at Fairbanks. In the 1950s, the discovery of reserves of petroleum and natural gas launched another major industry, one that is still the subject of bitter controversy over the conflicting goals of promoting fossil fuel production and preserving a pristine wilderness. In January 1959, Alaska was made the 49th state. Song to Baranov In eighteen hundred and eight, In Novo-Arkhangel’sk port, Refrain: Ai liuli, ai liuli, In Novo-Arkhangel’sk port. Under the rule of the Monarch, The Tsar of all Russia. Refrain. On Sitka island, Stands a fortress on a hill. Refrain. Stands a fortress on a hill, In all its pristine beauty. Refrain. In it the hunters stood, In the dark night they scarcely slept. Refrain. In the dark night they scarcely slept, Guarding their fortress. Refrain. We looked here and we looked there, Their boats were all around. Refrain. In the boats were people indescribable, Looking like beasts. Refrain. They were naked, Without shoes. Refrain. Faces painted, With feathered bodies. Refrain. They thought, the scoundrels, To catch us napping—so they thought. Refrain.

672

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

But, despite their bravery, We were able to repel them. Refrain. The beautiful spring came, The snows slid from the mountains. Refrain. Little birds began to sing, Our chores increased. Refrain. Despite the fog upon the bay, Baranov came to see us. Refrain. We launched small boats, And went to meet Baranov. Refrain. We met Baranov, And greeted him. Refrain. Hail, father, We make a wreath for thee. Refrain. We make a wreath for thee, From the depths of our simple hearts. Refrain. We will place it on your head, We will sing a boisterous greeting. Refrain. Let us sing, let us sing, Of how in America we dwelled. Refrain. We in America dwelled, And were dealt a hundred willow rods. Refrain. And were dealt a hundred willow rods, Many sorrows we received. Refrain. Many sorrows we received, And we tossed down half a goblet. Refrain. We tossed down half a goblet, At our sorrows we discarded. Refrain.83 But there was yet another song, which has come down to us. Made up by promyshlenniks [Russian exploiters of natural resources, in particular furs] in Alaska in 1808 in honor of Baranov after the successful repulse of a threatened Indian attack, this song was never published, but survived in the Aleutians until modern times. Part of it was then collected before World War II by the late Father Makarii Baranov (no relation to Alexander Baranov), an authority on the Russian period, who served for nearly thirty years on St. Paul Island, in the Pribylovs. Father Makarii travelled constantly—his parish included all of the Aleutian Islands—and met old natives who remembered fragments of the song. Other sources provided a few additional stanzas, making in all, four versions, each incomplete. These have been pieced together to make what is provided here.84 The Lady Franklin Come, all ye seamen who’ve withstood The dangers of the briny flood; Give ear to these few lines, I ween They’ll put you in mind of a sailor’s dream.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

673

As we were sailing upon the deep Slung in my hammock I fell asleep; I had a dream I hope it’s not true Concerning Franklin and his bold crew. As we were nearing old England’s shore I saw a lady who did deplore; She wrung her hands and this did say, “I have lost my Franklin, he’s far away. “It’s seven long years since this ship of fame, Bore my dear Franklin across the main, With a hundred seamen, bold and stout, To find the Northwestern passage out. “To find a passage ’round the North Pole Where the lightnings flash and thunders roll, Alas ’tis more than man can do With heart undaunted and courage true. To the East they sailed, and they sailed West ”To Greenland’s Isle, as they thought best; With hardship, toil and danger past, On mount’nous icebergs the ship was lost. “In Baffin’s Bay, where the white whale blows, The fate of Franklin there no one knows; Alas, he’s gone, like many more Who’ve left their bones on the Arctic shore. “It’s a sad foreboding that gives me pain, Since my dear Franklin crossed the main; Ten thousand pounds I’d freely give To know if on earth my dear Franklin lives.”85

Sir John Franklin (1786–1847) was appointed lieutenant governor of Van Diemen’s Land ( Tasmania) in 1837 and moved to the capital, Hobart, with his wife that year. During the politically turbulent years of his office (1837–1843) he strove to promote the development of cultural pursuits in a colony of brutalized convicts, Aborigines, and free settlers (until 1853, Tasmania was a British penal colony). He established a state education system, founded the Tasmanian Natural History Society (which became the first scientific Royal Society to be established outside Britain), and subsidized the Tasmanian Journal of Natural History. During his period in office, Tasmania became the intellectual hub of the Australian colonies. In 1819–1822, before his Tasmanian appointment, he had conducted two significant polar explorations. In 1845 he made his last, ill-fated voyage in an attempt to discover the Northwest Passage—a hypothetical sea route across the Arctic Sea from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The expedition set sail with 128 officers and crew in two ships—the Erebus and the Terror—which had heated cabins for the crew’s comfort and engines, iron-reinforced bows to break through the ice, and large supplies of canned food, along with pickles and lemon juice to ward off scurvy. The ships were last seen by other Europeans on July 26, 1845, in Baffin Bay. Then, the entire expedition vanished. In around 1848, three search parties set out: ships approached

674

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

the area from the east and from the west (through the Bering Strait), while an overland party came from the south. Initially, nothing was found. Two years later, graves were discovered on tiny Beechey Island, just off Devon Island, which bore the names of three members of Franklin’s crew. Nearby was a pile of tins that had once contained beef stew, but there was no account of why the sailors had died. There followed more than 40 attempts to find Franklin—or at least to discover clues about what had happened. When Sir John’s expedition vanished, Lady Franklin (1791–1875) began to campaign for rescue expeditions, eventually financing four herself. The last, in 1859, was led by Francis McClintock, and found, on King William Island, 350 miles south of Beechey Island, where the graves had been found, an expedition log in a cylinder hidden in a cairn. It recorded that, in 1846, Franklin had sailed his ships down the treacherously unpredictable Peel Sound, between Somerset and Prince of Wales islands; that on April 22, 1848, the two ice-bound ships, Terror and Erebus, were abandoned, and Sir John Franklin had died earlier on June 11, 1847. “Lady Franklin’s Lament” is a traditional ballad of British origin (generally sung to the tune of the older Irish ballad, “The Croppy Boy”) commemorating the loss of Franklin’s British Arctic Expedition of 1845. It was probably written in the early 1850s—almost certainly before the fate of the expedition was learned—and the song has since been recovered in several different versions, mostly in Canada. The ballad is not strictly an Alaskan song, but inasmuch as Lady Franklin is supposed to have visited Alaska on her searches for information about the lost expedition, it is not too unreasonable to include it here. The preceding text was given in a Wehman Song Book of ca. 1886 without attribution. It was probably copied from an earlier broadside. The Carmack Song George Carmack in Bonanza Creek went out to look for gold. Old timers said it was no use, the water was too cold. Chorus: I wonder why, I wonder why, I wonder, wonder why, They said that he might search that creek until the world would end. They said the willows on the creek, the other way would bend, And not enough gold he would find, a postage stamp to send. Chorus. Oh Tagish Charley, Skookum Jim, they went with him as well, The crowd did sing when they came back, the news of gold to tell. Chorus. With scarlet hat bands, gaudy ties, plaid shirts were of the best, And double rows of nuggets draped, across each velvet vest. Chorus. Well treated like the white men now, allowed to drink and sing, And join the crew at Belinda’s house, to do most anything. Chorus.86

George Carmack was the prospector who discovered gold in the Klondike on August 17, 1896, an event memorialized in this song of unknown authorship. Paul Roseland, who collected the first two verses and chorus of this song, says nothing about the origin of the other verses; quite possibly he wrote them himself, as most of the songs in his collection are self-penned. It sounds like the men mentioned in the third stanza are Native Americans; if so, the last stanzas offer a wry social commentary on how possession of a little gold earns even the occupants of the lowest rungs on Alaska’s social ladder some respect.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

675

Just from Dawson A Dawson City mining man lay dying on the ice; He didn’t have a woman nurse, he didn’t have the price. But a comrade kneeled beside him as the sun sank in repose, To listen to his dying words and watch him while he froze. The dying man propped up his head above four rods of snow, And said, “I never saw it thaw at ninety eight below; Send this little pin-head nugget that I swiped from Jason Dills To my home, you know, at Deadwood, at Deadwood in the hills. “Tell my friends and tell my en’mies, if you ever reach the east, That this Dawson City region is no place for man or beast. That the land’s too elevated and the wind too awful cold, And the Hills of South Dakota yield as good a grade of gold. Tell my sweetheart not to worry with a sorrow too intense, For I would not thus have panned out had I had a lick of sense. Oh! the air is growing thicker, and those breezes give me chills. Gee, I wish I was in Deadwood, in Deadwood in the hills. “Tell the fellows in the homeland to remain and have a cinch, That the price of patent pork chops here is eighty cents an inch. That I speak as one who’s been here scratching ’round to find the gold, And at ten percent of discount, I could not buy up a cold.” “Now so long,” he faintly whispered, “I have told you what to do.” And he closed his weary eyelids and froze solid, p.d.q. His friend procured an organ box and c.o.d.’d the bills, And sent the miner home that night to Deadwood in the Hills.87

Lady Caroline Norton’s poem “Bingen on the Rhine” was set to music in 1850 by Judson Hutchinson of the celebrated Hutchinson family of singers and became so popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century that it inspired numerous parodies. A similar version was collected by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax.88 A slightly different version of this Klondike parody was published in 1922 under the title, “The Klondike Miner.” The principal differences are that the miner is from Gibbons, Nebraska, rather than Deadwood, and is dying in Klondike City, rather than Dawson City.89 (For another parody of the same poem, see “A Northern Tragedy,” discussed later.) Deadwood, South Dakota, was founded in 1876 following the discovery there of gold. Making it the home of the narrator suggests that he was a gold prospector in South Dakota who then went north in 1896–1899 during the height of the Klondike gold frenzy. Placer deposits of gold were first discovered along the Yukon River in both Alaska and Canada in 1869. In 1880 Joseph Juneau and Richard Harris found gold near what became city of Juneau in 1880. Dawson (formerly Dawson City) is actually in Canada, so some editorial license is exercised in placing this song in the chapter of Alaska lore. A Northern Tragedy An old sour-dough prospector lay dying on the trail, There was “nary” squaw to miss him or young halfbreed to wail But a Siwash bent beside him, in the north wind’s icy blast, And whispered Chinook jargon while the pioneer froze fast. The dying man was thankful, as a dying man could be,

676

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

And he said, “My ice-lined cabin is a home no more for me. Take a message and a totem to the friends outside I know, And tell them to avoid old scurvy, yes, and seventy-four below. “I’ve lived here long as Jack McQueston, thirty years or more, And I never saw such weather as this zephyr at my door; I’ve been caught in many an ice jam, on the Yukon a half a score, But I always mushed home safely and I never froze before. Tell my white wife if you can find her, for I left her years agone, She can have my creek and hill claims and all the dust thereon. She is welcome to all frozen muck between here and Siberia’s snow, And tell her painkiller freezes at just seventy-two below. “Please bury me beneath the ice if you have strength to spare, It will take a pile of cord-wood but I trust you won’t despair. You can raise a heap of boulder wash when I meet this awful fate, A warning to chee-chacoes to leave before too late.” The dying man stopped speaking after draining his seal oil and whiskey flask; His breath was gone, the wind blew on, he lay out in the blast, Then the pale moon rose up slowly and the harsh winds ceased to blow, And the N.W.M.P. thermometer registered just seventy-two below.90

Occasionally, amid the news items in the Klondike Nugget, the newspaper serving the prospector’s community, were poems and songs by local writers. Short-lived and sparsely circulated, they left no evidence of currency after publication. One assumes they were recited or sung for a while in local watering holes, but corroboration is wanting. The “painkiller” that freezes at −72° is whisky, approximately 180 proof. The “N.W.M.P.” is presumably the North West Mounted Police—organized in part to fend off the liquor trade. Cheechako means “tenderfoot” or “newcomer” in the Chinook jargon. Siwash is a (generally pejorative) Chinook word for “Indian.” Wanted—My Darling Papa To the Minneap’lis Tribune came a little child one day. And asked to see the paper man in her own childish way. She was taken to the editor and he placed her on his knee, And he said, “Tell me your story, yes, dear, tell it all to me.” “My papa’s gone away, sir, I’m as lonely as can be. You found a stolen baby; find my papa, please for me? Ev’rybody reads the Tribune.” So the little maiden said, “Won’t you place this in your paper?” It was just an ad which read: Chorus: “Wanted, my darling papa, to come home right away; Mother’s health is fading; she is sinking day by day. She dearly loves and forgives you, she is still your darling June; Come home to mama and Mamie when you read tonight’s Tribune.” It was way up in Alaska at a mining camp at noon, There sat a group of miners reading papers from back home. One was looking o’er the personals when he said, “What can this be?” It is from a child named Mamie, and it is meant for me. There’s a steamer leaves today, boys, I can make it if I try; I love my little fam’ly, and I’m going home—goodbye!”

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

677

They all gathered ’round the Tribune, to their comrade softly said, “God bless your June and Mamie.” For they each these words had read: Chorus.91

Jean Murray, who reported the preceding text, noted, “During the winter of 1897–98 the men of the Monitor Gold Mining and Trading Co. of Minneapolis prospected in the Black Hills near the Stewart River,”92 implying this is how and when the song originated. One suspects a popular song original on which the Klondike song was based, but it has so far eluded detection. The Copper River Song Once in old Seattle I went upon a stroll, I spied an advertisement upon an urban pole, And as I read this advertisement it went on to say, That a thousand men were wanted in Alaska far away. If you’ve had experience in digging dirt and rock, So I ‘plied to M. J. Heney, 415 Coleman Block, So there went my blankets I had them neatly rolled, I boarded an ocean liner for the land of shining gold. With eight days of travel in the merry month of May, The old gold ship Almeda anchored in Cordova Bay, And as I looked around me upon the moss and rocks, I knew that I had landed in the place that God forgot. Next morning bright and early with shovels on our backs, We started up the hill side to lay those railroad tracks, In less time to tell you, less time than it will take, We’d graded down the hill side and reached Eyak Lake. Where once there was a cannery and a few old salmon cans, The big town of Cordova and its mighty buildings stands, Where you could buy most anything from an anchor to a pin. And you could buy the juice from grapes to drown your sorrows in. Of all the jobs I ever had this job it was the worst, The only joy I found in life was to quench the burning thirst. The sun had lost its bearing and never went from sight, And I’ll be darned if I can work where they never have a night. So next came the mosquitos, they bit me fore and aft, The way those diamond drillers bit was enough to drive me daft. They wiggled through my head net, and in right through my jeans, And when it came to eating, they beat me to the beans. So darn to Alaska, darn to railroad work, Darn to M. J. Heney, and all his beans and pork, For we will go back home to the things we love so well, But we’ll come back to Cordova—as sure as heck we will.93

The city of Cordova, in southern Alaska, was founded in the 1900s as a port for the Copper River and Northwestern Railroad, which served the Kennecott Copper Company mines (which ceased operations in 1938). A century ago, doubtless all the men named in

678

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

the ballad would have been well known in Alaska’s Copper River region, but today, they are all forgotten. The Klondiker’s Return From the field of gold I come, Sweet Marie, Will you kiss me welcome home, Love, to thee? I am only skin and bones, All my sweetest songs are groans, And I’m full of pork and beans, As can be. Oh! I got it in the neck, Sweet Marie; I am but a battered wreck, Don’t you see; On the snow and ice I slept, While Jack Frost o’er me crept, And the ravens vigils kept Over me. When I left you I was fat, Sweet Marie; Never was a Thomas cat Spry as me; I could lift a barrel of beer, I could run like a deer, And there never was a tear In my eye. Now I am thinner than a ghost, Sweet Marie; You could make a hitching post Out of me; Every joint that’s in my frame Is with rheumatic stiffness lame, Oh! Klondike, I’m ashamed, Indeed, of thee. But I’m with you once again, Sweet Marie; Though you seem not to Identify me. Now that I am on my feet, And will have a chance to eat, I’ll accumulate more meat Than you see. From the bitter spruce bough tea, [Holy gee!] And from Klondike scurvy pains I am free; Now I’ll live almighty high

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

679

And I soon will be as spry As the boy you kissed good-by, Sweet Marie. Sweet Marie, list to me; list to me, Sweet Marie, Though a living skeleton Now you see, I have got the framework yet, And the meal I soon will get, We’ll be happy yet you bet, With the gold we have got to get, Sweet Marie.94

This Klondike poem is a parody of “Sweet Marie,” an 1893 hit by Cy Warman and Raymond Moore. Whether it enjoyed much popularity in the Klondike is unknown, but its inspiration was certainly widely sung. The Cheechaco’s Lament (Dedicated to Joseph Pennman) My name is Joseph Pennman, I have a comrade, Jack, I’ll tell you why I left the States And wish to God I’m back; I caught the Klondike fever, Like many other foals And o’er the cursed Skaguay . . . We packed our grub and coals. Then hoisted sail upon the lakes— As all cheechacoes do— And did the part of gallant tars ’Mid scenes sublime to view. We boated down the Yukon Through grinding ice and snow, We “shot” the White horse rapids, And sped our way below. At length the “golden city” Broke on our anxious gaze, As round the point of rocks we saw The dream of many days. ’Twas Dawson in her glory— A [city?] built of logs, With lots of room between the tents To cache their grub from dogs. We landed on the icy shore, Amid a ’wildering scene, Of boats and scows, or camps and tents With stacks of stores between.

680

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

A throng of bustling miners here In garb of Arctic style, Were mingling with cheechaco’s fresh, Who came to make their “pile.” To then indulge in city life, We hadn’t got the grit, For grub was scarce and high in price, So we resolved to “git.” On fast becoming millionaires Our minds were truly bent; Hence we struck up Bonanza creek To pitch our prospec’ tent. We took our little handsleds And loaded up like fools— The fact is, men don’t know out here If they be dogs or mules. Thus, up the frozen river trail, We daily made the go With temperature ’twixt zero And to forty-seven below. Conforming to the climate We built our huts quite small, With moss and dirt upon the roof And moss to caulk the wall. The back of my “boiled” shirt I took A substitute for glass And tacked it o’er the little hole Through which daylight must pass. At length our cache securely stored, We looked the country round, To see if gold grew on the trees Or where it should be found. We rushed on many a mad stampede And “pegged” on many a “pup”; We [slept?] by campfire on the snow While mercury froze up. We had no yelping malamoot To “mush” along our sled. So with the “gee stick” in our fist, We played the dog, instead. Securing some few “wildcats,” For “suckers” in the east, We felt ourselves quite millionaires Bonanza kings, at least. We settled down in business At length upon a “lay”

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

681

And “burned” the ground to bedrock Some twenty feet to pay. With Jack on top, to windlass, While I below did drift, We piled out quite a dump e’re spring In hopes of quite a lift. We managed, in the meantime, To live within our means— Three times a day we reveled, In dainty pork and beans. But, now, our group is giving out, Our tea is very low. The flour we wound up yesterday, And sugar long ago. We slice our bacon mighty thin— And gamble now for that. Alas! how can we cook our beans When we run out of fat? So ho! for down the river! St. Michaels, now, or bust— Our “lay” has proved a failure, And panned out little dust. Our skiff is on the Yukon, Our hearts turn back to home; The midnight sun will [keep?] our way And we no more shall roam. Farewell to Dawson city, Farewell to Klondike, too. Adieu to silent blighted hopes, And, friends, good-bye to you. —Henry W. Brown, 31 below on Bonanza.95

Here we have another tribute to the hardships faced by the prospectors in the Yukon and Alaska around the end of the nineteenth century—admittedly of uncertain credentials regarding its place in folk tradition. Did a handful of gold flakes justify their suffering? Not for us to say. Alaska, or Hell of the Yukon The devil in hell, we are told, was chained, Thousands of years he there remained. He did not complain nor did he groan, But determined to have a hell of his own, Where he could torment the souls of men Without being chained in a solitary pen. So he asked the Lord if he had any land In a colder clime than a poor soul could stand.

682

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

The Lord said, “Yes, but it’s not much use, It’s cold Alaska, and it is cold as the deuce. In fact, old boy, the place is bare, I don’t think you could make a good hell there.” The devil said he couldn’t see why, For he sure knew his business and would like to try. So the bargain was made and the deed was given And the devil quickly departed from heaven. We next see the devil far up in the north Examining Alaska, to see what it’s worth. From the top of McKinley he looked at the truck, And said, “If I get this for nothing I still am stuck.” But, oh, it was fine to be out in the cold. The wind blew a gale and the devil grew bold, And there on the height of the mountain he planned To make of Alaska the home of the damned— A different place from the old-fashioned hell Where each soul burned in an awful hot cell. He used every means that a wise devil needed To make a good hell, and he sure succeeded. He filled the air with millions of gnats And spread the Yukon over the flats, And set a line of volcanoes in Yawnamice Pass, And bred mosquitoes in the dungre grass. And made six months’ night where it’s sixty below, A howling wind and a pelting snow; Six months’ day with a spell now and then Too hot for the devil, too hot for his men; Hungry dogs and wolves by the pack, That when they yell send chills down your back. And when you mush o’er the barren expanse, The wind blows wicked holes in your pants. But of all the pests the imps could devise, The Yukon mosquitoes were the devil’s pride. They’re like the rattlesnake’s bite or scorpion’s sting, And they measure six inches from wing to wing. And the devil said, when he fashioned these, “Each one will be worth a million fleas.” And over the mountains, valleys and plains, Where the dew falls heavy and sometimes rains, He grew a few flowers and berries, just for a bluff, For the devil sure knew how to peddle his stuff. To show how well he knew his game, The devil next salted his new hell claim, Put gold nuggets in some of his streams To lure men on in their hopes and dreams. He hid them deep in the glacial ice Like a reformed city hides its vice,

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

683

And bid Dame Rumor to spread the news To all the world and its holy crews, That there was gold in heaps and piles In all the colors and all the styles. He grinned a grin, a satisfied grin, And said, “Now watch the fools rush in. They will fight for gold and steal and slay, But in the end it’s me they will pay.” Oh, what a fine hell this that the devil owns, His trails are marked by frozen bones; The wild wind moans o’er plain, hill and dell, It’s a hell of a place he has his hell. Now you know, should any one ask you, What kind of a place is our own Alaska.96

The preceding song is a localized version of a song better known from the southwestern United States as “Hell in Texas” (see the section on Texas songs, in chapter 7, for comparison). Song of the Alaskero It’s a hard lonesome fate We face in Alaska. Oh! what a fate! Stale fat and ill-cooked fish, Our major, daily dish From the stingy, bossy Chink, Give us tummy-ache. We may curl and be bold Beneath some cover thick. Yet oh! how cold! And then ere the break of day Though dog tired we may be Up we must willy-nilly For another day. With food still in our mouth, To the can’ry we must rush. What a hard luck! No time to joke or to ask The whys of our hard task, Yet like the mule lacking flight We crave for respite. When why did I have to make A trip to this far place? Oh! What a mistake! At home it’s easy life For there’s no task nor strife Nor labor as hard to stand As that in this land.

684

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Oh, Skies, give approvation [sic] For all these tribulations Ah! consolation! The fish, let it run low To give us less to do, Or let the work be through So home we go.97

“Alaskeros” were the Filipino workers in Alaska. In 1930, of the 45,000 Filipinos in the United States, 4,200 were at work in Alaska’s salmon fisheries. Recruited on the West Coast by Japanese and Filipino labor contractors, they were hired for a seven-month season, working six days each week and 12 hours each day. Filipinos represented 15 percent of the Alaskan fishery workforce. After season, Alaskeros returned to Seattle and San Francisco to count out how much their labors had produced. The results were discouraging at best. Back in 1912, the average wage for the season was $163, of which $128 was deducted for food and other expenses. The preceding song, “Canta Ti Alaskero,” was sung (and perhaps written) by Trinidad A. Rojo, a university student, who had worked in Alaska for 10 summer seasons. The Fate of Will Rogers and Wiley Post Here’s the story of two brave Americans, Will Rogers and Wiley Post; They were both loved by their countrymen, Both known from coast to coast; Oklahoma was where they both come from, Each one was the other ones’ friend; A beautiful friendship that lasted for years, Right up to the tragic end. Will and Wiley had gone up to Alaska To the land of the midnight sun; Where the mountains are covered with snow all year And the polar bears frolic in fun; On a happy go lucky flight they went [?] . . . Alaska . . . away And hearty Will Rogers and brave Wiley Post Never dreamt they would call [fall?] that day. When they left good old Fairbanks On Friday that afternoon Point Barrow was five hundred miles away Said Wiley, “we’ll make it soon”; But they hadn’t gone more than about fifty miles The fog hindered them in their flight They had to descend down on Hodding [?] Lake To get their directions right. Then resuming their journey they started on Wiley knew he had lost control; His airplane come crashing down to the earth While death took its awful toll; ’Twas an Eskimo runner who brought the news,

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

685

The word about that tragedy; Stanley Morgan sent the word to all of the world Of the death of Will and Wiley. Here’s the story of two brave Americans, Never greater ones you’ll ever find; They’ll stand of examples of all that’s great, Examples for all mankind; There’s a place in that heavenly promised land That faces [?] that heavenly host But both were courageous and lost their chance, Will Rogers and Wiley Post.98

On August 15, 1935, Will Rogers (b. 1879, Oklahoma) and Wiley Post (b. 1898, Texas) were killed in a plane crash 15 miles from Point Barrow, Alaska. Already a world-renowned pilot, in 1933, Post became the first person to fly solo around the world, having two years earlier circumnavigated the globe with navigator Harold Gatty. In 1925, he first met his fellow Oklahoman (Post’s family had moved from Texas to Oklahoma when he was young), the widely known and beloved humorist Will Rogers; Rogers needed to get to a rodeo, and Post was pleased to fly him there. The two became good friends. In 1935, Post became interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from the West Coast to Russia. Funded by the airlines, he began to assemble a hybrid plane built from two wrecks. He added pontoons so that he could land in Alaska’s and Siberia’s many lakes. On August 15, they left Fairbanks, Alaska, for Point Barrow. While Post piloted the plane, Rogers wrote his newspaper columns on his typewriter. They were a few miles from Point Barrow when they became lost in bad weather and landed in a lagoon to ask directions. The engine quit when they tried to take off again, and the plane plunged into the lagoon, causing the right wing to shear off as it tumbled. Both men died instantly. An Inuit named Clare Okpeah saw the plane wreck and ran the 15 miles to Barrow to report it. When he described the two men to Army sergeant Stanley Morgan, Morgan knew that it must be the two famous travelers. He radioed the War Department and led a recovery party to the site. The remains of both men were taken back to Oklahoma.99 Three hillbilly recordings were all made within a month of the crash. Two were written by Bob Miller, a prolific songwriter of the 1920s and 1930s, and both were recorded by Billy Cox on September 3, 1935, two weeks after the accident. The third was written by popular songwriter Fred Rose and recorded by both Ray Whitley and Ken Card. The tune that Cox uses on the recording transcribed here is almost the same as the 1898 pop hit “The Lightning Express.”

HAWAII The early history of the Hawaiian Islands is uncertain. The first inhabitants may have reached the islands as early as 400 C.E. from the Marquesas Islands. Contact with and settlement by Tahitians began about 1000 C.E. Powerful classes of chiefs and priests arrived and established themselves, followed by conflicts similar to the feudal struggles in Europe, with complicated land rights contributing to the disputes. The early Hawaiians lacked a written language, and their culture was entirely oral. English explorer and navigator Captain James Cook is generally credited with having made the first European discovery of Hawaii in 1778. He named them the Sandwich

686

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Islands, in honor of his patron, John Montagu, fourth Earl of Sandwich. In the following years, there were intermittent contacts with the West. During this period, Kamehameha I used European military technology and weapons to establish himself as the primary Hawaiian leader, and Hawaii remained a kingdom for 85 years thereafter. In the early nineteenth century the American whaling fleet began wintering in Hawaii, and the islands were visited with mounting frequency by explorers, traders, and adventurers. In 1820 the first of 15 companies of New England missionaries arrived. A written language had been introduced, and European and American skills and religious beliefs—Protestant and Roman Catholic—had been imported. Political maneuvering between U.S., British, and French consuls and naval forces brought about uncertainty in the governmental situation. A constitutional government was established in 1839–1840 by Kamehameha III, followed by formal avowals of Hawaiian independence by the United States, Great Britain, and France, who nevertheless continued to try to exert political influence. The kingdom was overthrown in 1893, and a republic was formed with U.S. support. The republic was short-lived, however; it was annexed by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1898, made a territory in 1900, and, finally, in 1959, it became the 50th state. In the last two centuries, the racial and religious makeup of Hawaii have changed drastically. Thousands of settlers from the Pacific Basin—primarily from Japan, the Philippines, and China—as well as immigrants from Europe and from the U.S1ainland carried their own customs, languages, and religions into the Hawaiian way of life. The descendants of these later settlers now far outnumber the descendants of the original Hawaiians. Hawaii is English speaking. Although Hawaiian, formerly a major means of communication, is all but extinct, it remains in place names and street names and in songs, and the local residents liberally sprinkle their speech with words and phrases from the traditional language. A pidgin English is spoken throughout the state in varying degrees of richness, while some of the older immigrants from Japan and China—and then, from the Philippines—continue to speak their native tongues.100 The infusion of cultural elements from Europe naturally brought European music as well. The instruments most associated with Hawaiian music in the twentieth century all came from Europe: the guitar, ukulele, mandolin, and taro-patch fiddle were all introduced in the nineteenth century. Prior to their coming, the only stringed instrument the Hawaiians had was a simple musical bow. It seems established that the ukulele (Hawaiian word for “flea”; called braguinha in Portuguese), a small four-stringed instrument of the guitar family, was brought in 1878–1879 by the first groups of Portuguese immigrants. The taropatch fiddle (rajao in Portuguese) is five-stringed; it got its Hawaiian nickname because it was small enough for field workers to take to the fields with them and play in their spare time.101 Like the ukulele, it is plucked or strummed. The steel guitar is held horizontally on the lap and tuned to an open chord (slack-key tuning); a steel bar is used to stop (fret) the strings. Joseph Kekuku, a young Hawaiian, is credited with modifying the standard guitar in this fashion in 1893–1895. The first guitar makers had come to the islands in 1879 from Portugal. These instruments took root so quickly in the islands that by the 1920s, they were taken to be native. In the 1920s, traveling troupes of Hawaiian musicians toured the mainland and achieved great popularity. The slack-key guitar, in particular, impressed mainland Anglo American (“hillbilly”) and African American (“race”) musicians so much that it became quickly adapted to the traditional musical style. Such 1920s–1930s bands as the Hauulea Entertainers, the Hawaiian Pals, the Hawaiian Songbirds, and the Hawaiian Trio were all hillbilly or pop ensembles.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

687

In the last half century, the mainland vacationers in the Hawaiian Islands have regarded the hula as a sensuous, if not erotic, form of dance entertainment (perhaps akin to belly dancing), and the big hotels obligingly provide so-called traditional hula dance exhibitions for their amusement, if not education. In fact, the original function of the hula is something completely different: The hula was a religious service, in which poetry, music, pantomime, and the dance lent themselves, under the forms of dramatic art, to the refreshment of men’s minds. Its view of life was idyllic, and it gave itself to the celebration of those mythical times when gods and goddesses moved on the earth as men and women and when men and women were as gods. . . . Like the Shah of Persia, but for very different reasons, Hawaiians of the old time left [the hula dance] to be done for them by a body of trained and paid performers. This was not because the art and practice of the hula were held in disrepute— quite the reverse—but because the hula was an accomplishment requiring special education and arduous training in both song and dance, and more especially because it was a religious matter, to be guarded against profanation by the observation of tabus and the performance of priestly rites.102 Mele No Ka Hula Ala’a-Papa

Song for the Hula Ala’a-Papa

Pauku 1 A Koolau wau, ike i ka ua, E ko-kolo la-lepo ana ka ua, E ka’i ku ana, ka’i mai ana ka ua, E nu mai ana ka ua i ke kuahiwi, E po’i ana ka ua me he nalu la. E puka, a puka mai ka ua la. Waliwali ke one i ka hehi’a e ka ua; Ua holo-wai na kaha-wai; Ua ko-ké wale na p;ali. Aia ka wai la i ka ilina, he ilio, He ilio hae, ke nahu nei e puka.

Stanza 1 ’Twas in Koolau I met with the rain; It comes with lifting and tossing of dust, Advancing in columns, dashing along, The rain, it sighs in the forest; The rain, it beats and whelms, like the surf; It smites, it smites now the land. Pasty the earth from the stamping rain; Full run the streams, a rushing flood; The mountain walls leap with the rain. See the water chafing its bounds like a dog, A raging dog, gnawing its way to pass out.103

Emerson notes that “this song is from the story of Hiiaka on her journey to Kauai to bring the handsome prince, Lohiau, to Pele [goddess of the volcano]. The region is that on the windward, Koolau, side of Oahu.”104 If the text is difficult to understand even in translation, it is wise to read further Emerson’s strictures: The origin of many of these [poetical pieces] is referred to a past so remote that tradition assigns them to what the Hawaiians call the wa po, the night of tradition, or they say of them, no ke akua mai, they are from the gods. It matters not how faithful has been the effort to translate these poems, they will not be found easy of comprehension. The local allusions, the point of view, the atmosphere that were in the mind of the savage are not in our minds to-day, and will not again be in any mind on earth; they defy our best efforts at reproduction. To conjure up the ghostly semblance of these dead impalpable things and make them live again is a problem that must be solved by each one with such aid from the divining rod of the imagination as the reader can summon to his help.105 He Mele No Kane

The Water of Kane

He u-i, he ninau: E u-i aku ana au ia oe, Aia i-hea ka wai a Kane? Aia i ka hikina a ka La, Puka i Hae-hae; Aia i-laila ka Wai a Kane.

A query, a question, I put to you: Where is the water of Kane? At the Eastern Gate Where the Sun comes in at Haehae; There is the water of Kane.

688

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

E u-i aku ana au ia oe, Aia i-hea ka wai a Kane? Aia i Kau-lana—la-la, I ka pae opua i ke kai, Ea mai ana ma Nihoa, Ma ka mole mai o Lehua; Aia i-laila ka Wai a Kane.

A question I ask of you: Where is the water of Kane? Out there with the floating Sun, Where cloud forms rest on Ocean’s breast, Uplifting their forms at Nihoa, This side the base of Lehua; There is the water of Kane.

E u-i aku ana au ia oe, Aia i-hea ka wai a Kane? Aia i ke kua-hiwi, i ke kua-lono I ke awawa, i ka kaha-wai; Aia i-laila ka Wai a Kane.

A question I ask of you: Where is the water of Kane? Yonder on mountain peak, on the ridges steep, Where the rivers sweep There is the water of Kane.

E u-i aku ana au ia oe, Aia i-hea ka wai a Kane?

A question I ask of you: Where is the water of Kane?

Aia i-kai, i ka moana, I ke Kua-lau, i ke anuenue, I ka punohu, i ka ua-koko, I ka alewa-lewa; Aia i-laila ka Wai a Kane.

Yonder, at sea, on the ocean, In the driving rain, In the heavenly bow, In the piled-up mist-wraith There is the water of Kane.

E u-i aku ana au ia oe, Aia i-hea ka wai a Kane? Aia i-luna ka Wai a kane, I ke ouli, i ke ao eleele, I ke ao pano-pano,

A question I ask of you: Where is the water of Kane? Up on high is the water of Kane, It the heavenly blue, In the black piled cloud, in the black-black cloud,

I ke ao popolo-hua mea a Kane la, e!

In the black-mottled sacred cloud of the gods;

Aia i-laila ka Wai a Kane.

There is the water of Kane.

E u-i aku ana au ia oe, Aia i-hea ka wai a Kane? Aia i-lalo, i ka honua, i ka Wai hu, I ka wai kau a Kane me Kanaloa— He wai-puna, he wai e inu, He wai e mana, he wai e ola.

A question I ask of you: Where is the water of Kane? Deep in the ground, in the gushing spring In the ducts of Kana and Loa, A well-spring of water, to quaff, A water of magic power—the water of life!

E ola no, e-a!

Life! O give us this life!106

To quote once again ethnologist Emerson: If one were asked what, to the English-speaking mind, constitutes the most representative romanticomystical aspiration that has been embodied in song and story, doubtless he would be compelled to answer the legend and myth of the Holy Grail. To the Hawaiian mind the aspiration and conception that most nearly approximates to this is that embodied in the words . . . The Water of Kane. One finds suggestions and hints of this conception in many passages of Hawaiian song and story, sometimes a phosphorescent flash, answering to the dip of the poet’s blade, sometimes crystallized into a set form; but nowhere else than in the following mele [poem, song, or chant] have I found this jewel deliberately wrought into shape, faceted, and fixed in a distinct form of speech. This mele comes from Kauai, the island which more than any other of the Hawaiian group retains a tight hold on the mystical and imaginative features that mark the mythology of Polynesia; the island also which less than any other of the group was dazzled by the glamor [sic] of royalty and enslaved by the theory of the divine birth of kings.107

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

689

Oli

Song

Ka wai opua-makani o Wailua, I hulihia e ke kai; Awahia ka lau hau, Ai pala-ka-ha, ka ai o Maka’u-kiu. He kiu ka pua kukui, He elele hooholo na ke Koolau; Ke kipaku mai la i ka wa’a—

The wind-beaten stream of Wailua Is tossed into waves from the sea; Salt-drenched are the leaves of the hau, The stalks of the taro all rotted— ’Twas the crop of Maka’u-kiu. The flowers of kukui are a telltale A messenger sped by the gale to warn the canoe to depart Pray you depart! Hot-foot, she’s off with her pack— A bundle red-stained with the mud— And ghost-swift she breasts Malu-aka Quest follows like smoke—lost is her companion; Fierce the wind plucks at the leaves, Grabs—by mistake—her burden, the man. Despairing, she falls to the earth. And, hugging the hillock of sand, Sobs out her soul on the beach Mo-mo-iki. A tale this wrung from my heart, Not told by the tongue of man. Wrong! yet right, was I, my friend; My love after all was for you, While I lived a vagabond life there and here, Sowing my vagrom tears in all roads— Prompt my payment of debt to your house— Yes, truly, I’m wrong!108

“E holo oe!” Holo newa ka lau maia me ka pua hau, I pili aloha me ka mokila ula i ka wai; Maalo pulelo i ka wai o Malu-aka. He aka kaua makani kaili-hoa; Kaili ino ka lau Malua-kele, Lalau, hopu hewa i ka hoa kanaka; Koe a kau me ka manao iloko. Ke apo wale la no i ke one, I ka uwe wale iho no i Mo’o-mo’o-iki, e! He ike moolelo na ke kuhi wale, Aole ma ka waha mai o kanaka. Hewa, pono ai la hoi au, e ka hoa; Nou ka ke aloha, I lua-ai-ele, ai i o, i anei; Ua kuewa i ke ala me ka wai-maka. Aohe wa, ua uku i kou hale— Hewa au, e!

An oli is a song, or also a method of chanting. Wrote Emerson, The story on which this song is founded relates that the comely Pamaho’a was so fond of her husband during his life that at his death she was unwilling to part with his bones. Having cleaned and wrapped them in a bundle, she carried them with her wherever she went. In the indiscretion begotten of her ill-balanced state of mind she committed the mortal offense of entering the royal residence while thus encumbered, where was Kaahumanu, favorite wife of Kamehameha I. The king detailed two constables (ilamuku) to remove the woman and put her to death. When they had reached a safe distance, moved with pity, the men said: “Our orders were to slay; but what hinders you to escape?” The woman took the hint and fled hot-foot.109 Aloha Oe

Farewell to You

Ha’aheo ’e ka ua i nā pāli Ke nihi a’ela i ka nahele E uhai ana paha i ka liko Pua ’āhihi lehua o uka.

Proudly the rain on the cliffs Creeps into the forest Seeking the buds And miniature lehua flowers of the uplands.

Hui: Aloha ’oe, aloha ’oe, E ke onaona noho i ka lipo. One fond embrace, a ho’i a’e au A hui hou aku.

Chorus: Farewell to you, farewell to you, O fragrance in the blue depths. One fond embrace and I leave To meet again.

690

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

’O ka hali’a aloha ka i hiki mai Ke hone a’e nei i ku’u manawa. ’O ’oe no ka’u ipo aloha A loko e hana nei.

Sweet memories come Sound softly in my heart. You are my beloved sweetheart Felt within.

Maopopo ku’u ’ike i ka nani Nā pua rose o Mauna-wili I laila ho’ohie nā manu, Miki’ala i ka nani o ia pua.

I understand the beauty Of rose blossoms at Mauna-wili. There the birds delight, Alert the beauty of this flower.110

This best known of all Hawaiian songs (on the mainland, at least) is credited to Queen Liliuokalani; a copy of the song in her own handwriting is dated 1877 in Maunawili. According to popular belief, “the inspiration for the words and music of this composition was furnished by the fond parting embrace of two lovers, whom the queen discovered when returning over the pali from a horseback party on the other side of the island.”111 Hawai’i Aloha

Beloved Hawaii

E Hawai’i, e ku’u one hanau e, Ku’u home kulaiwi nei ’Oli no au i na pono lani e E Hawai’i, aloha e

O Hawaii, O sands of my birth, My native home, I rejoice in the blessings of heaven. O Hawaii, aloha.

Hui: E hau’oli no ’opio o Hawai’i nei ’Oli e! ’Oli e! Mai na aheahe makani e pa mai nei Mau ke aloha, no Hawai’i.

Chorus: Happy youth of Hawaii Rejoice! Rejoice! Gentle breezes blow Love always for Hawaii.

E ha’i mai kou mau kini lani e, Kou mau kupa aloha, e Hawai’i. Na mea ’olino kamaha’o no luna mai. E Hawai’i, aloha e.

May your divine throngs speak, Your loving people, O Hawaii. The holy light from above. O Hawaii, aloha.

Na ke Akua e malama mai ia’oe, Kou mau kualono aloha mei, Kou mau kahawai ’olinolino mau, Kou mau mala pua nani e.

God protects you, Your beloved ridges, Your ever glistening streams, Your beautiful flower gardens.112

This song was composed by Reverend Lorenzo Lyons (d. 1886), also known as Makua Laiana, who had a church at Wai-mea, Hawaii. Bili Boi

Billy Boy

I hea la ’oe, Bili Boi, Bili Boi? (2)

Where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? (2)

I ka hale kula wau, i ka ’imi na’auao,

I’ve been to school trying to learn to be wise, But it’s hard and I almost cannot do it.

Pa’akiki na’e a ’ane loa’a ’ole Ua komo anei ’oe, Bili Boi, Bili Boi? (2) ’Ae, ua komo le’a wau, a ho’a’o na’auao,

Did you go in, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? (2) Yes I went in with a smile to learn to be wise,

Pa’akiki na’e a ’ane loa’a ’ole.

But it’s hard and I almost cannot do it.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

He puke anei kau, Bili Boi, Bili Boi? (2)

691

’Ae, he puke maika’i ko’u a e ’ake e ’ike no,

Have you got a book, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? (2) Yes I’ve got a fine book and I want to know it,

Pa’akiki na’e a ’ane loa’a ’ole.

But it’s hard and I almost cannot do it.

Ua ’ike anei ’oe, Bili Boi, Bili Boi? (2)

Do you know it now, Billy Boy, Billy Boy? (2) Yes I know a little now, but I’m still as slow as can be,

’Ae, ua ’ike iki noa’e nui ka na’aupo Pa’akiki na’e a ’ane loa’a ‘ole.

But it’s hard and I almost cannot do it.

Aloha nui ’oe, Bili Boi, Bili Boi, (2) A i ho’oikaika mau i ka ’imi na’auao,

Good for you, Billy Boy, Billy Boy (2) Just keep doing all you can and you’ll learn to be wise,

E loa’a no me kona waiwai nu.

And you’ll do it and be very rich.113

This charming song wonderfully represents the Europeanization of Hawaiian music. The song is the Anglo American “Billy Boy,” a parody of an adult song intended for singing in the nursery. The song is based on one of the most widespread of the older British ballads, “Lord Randall.” The latter, whose suspense-filled drama unfolds entirely through dialog between a young man and his mother, gradually reveals that the son has been poisoned by his sweetheart, and concludes with his oral testament (also called a nuncupative testament), in which he leaves his valued possessions to his sister, brother, and parents, but to his “true love” he leaves a rope and a gallows to hang her. “Billy Boy” likewise is built up from dialog between a mother and her son, who has visited his sweetheart/girlfriend, but the consequences are considerably more mundane. The Hawaiian version is not simply a translation of the usual lyrics, but rather sounds like a missionary’s reworking to turn a song of little consequence into a didactic lesson in personal virtue. Hilo March

Hilo March

’Auhea wale ’oe e ka ’ala tuberose, He moani ’a’ala i ke ano ahiahi Ua like me ka lau vabine I ka hoene i ka poli pili pa’a.

Heed, O fragrance of tuberose, Fragrance wafted at evening time Like verbena leaves Singing in the heart tightly clasped.

Hui: ’Ike hou ana i ka nani a’o Hilo I ka uluwehiwehi o ka lehua, Lei ho ’ohihi hi’i a ka malihini Mea ’ole i ke kono a ke aloha.

Chorus: Behold again the beauty of Hilo And beautiful lehua growth, Cherished lei worn by visitors Not indifferent to the call of love.

E aloha a’e ana i ka makani Pu’ulena, Ka makani kaulana o ka ’aina, Home noho a na i’iwi polena Mea ’ole i ke kono a ke aloha.

Greeting the Pu’ulena wind, Famous wind of the land, Home of scarlet honey-creepers Not indifferent to the call of love.

Nani wale no Hilo I ka ua Kani-lehua Mehe mea ala e ’i mai ana Eia iho a hiki mai

Hilo is so beautiful With the rain rustling lehua As though saying Wait until the princess comes.114

692

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

Elbert and Mahoe stated that this famous march was composed by Joseph K. Ae’a, a member of the Royal Hawaiian Band and a friend of Lili’uokalani, when he was told that the Princess had requested the band to accompany her on an official visit to Hilo. The town of Hilo was endangered by the massive eruption of lava from Mauna Loa on the island of Hawaii which began on 5 November 1880, and continued for nine months. The main flow was in the direction of the town of Hilo. The princess arrived on 4 August 1881 and attended Christian services to pray for the town of Hilo. Plans were made for earth barricades and possible dynamiting of the flow. Nevertheless, a celebration was held and “Hilo March,” with an arrangement by Henry Berger, was played in August 1881.115

Hilo is the largest city on the island of Hawaii in the Hawaiian Islands. The “Hilo March” became a very popular instrumental piece on the mainland and was recorded numerous times in the 1920s and 1930s. Hole Hole Bushi

[Japanese Work Song]

Hawaii, Hawaii, Kite mirya Jigoku Boshi ga Enma de Luna ga oni

Hawaii, Hawaii, But when I came What I saw Was hell. The boss was Satan, The lunas, his helpers.

Kyo no hole-hole Ga yoo Tsuraku wa nai Yuube todoita Sato dayori

Today’s work Was not so hard Because last night A letter from home Came from Japan116

In the 1870s, Hawaii’s sugar cane plantations began to increase exponentially, creating an immediate demand for field laborers. At about the same time, economic hardships afflicting Japan’s farmers created a willing supply of emigrants to work Hawaii’s cane fields. In the four decades starting 1885, 200,000 Japanese emigrated to the Hawaiian Islands—more than the number that left for the American mainland. They found life in their new country to be not nearly so lucrative or pleasant as they had anticipated. When the Japanese laborers complained or tried to organize an opposition, plantation owners pursued vigorously a policy of importing laborers from other countries—China, Korea, the Philippines, Portugal—to keep the workers from developing a united front. It was as if the owners were inspired by the biblical story of the builders of the tower of Babel, among whom the heavenly hosts introduced a multiplicity of languages to confound their cooperative efforts. In about 1891 in Kauai, Japanese immigrants to Hawaii began to express their bitterness in this song “Hole Hole Bushi,” a mixture of Japanese, Hawiian, and English lyrics. Over the years various workers added their own verses to it; the stanzas here are two of the many that were created. The tune was taken from a Hiroshima folk song about rice harvesting, “Inekari Bushi.”

NOTES 1. By Honorable Francis Henry. Dedicated to the Pioneers of Puget Sound. Illustration by Major W. H. Bell, U.S. Army. Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1902 by Mary A. O’Neil. In Henry’s original text, the last word in line three of the sixth stanza was “niggered,” not “labored,”

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

693

but this colloquialism, since considered offensively racist, was modified some time in the twentieth century. A recording, titled “Puget Sound,” by Walt Robertson, can be heard on American Northwest Ballads, Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2046; CD/cass 02046. 2. Biographical information from Lucile McDonald, “Francis Henry, Pioneer Bard, Led Life of Adventure,” Seattle Times, January 26, 1964, p. 2. 3. From Linda Allen, comp., Washington Songs and Lore (Spokane, WA: Melior, 1988), 3. 4. Allen, Washington Songs and Lore, p. 3. 5. From Allen, Washington Songs and Lore, 14–15. Allen notes that this “was first heard at the National Irrigation Congress in 1909. Quincy’s enthusiastic delegation paraded the streets of Spokane carrying a banner and singing their booster song” (p. 3). 6. From an address by Gifford Pinchot, in the Official Proceedings of the Seventeenth National Irrigation Congress (Spokane, WA, 1909), 96. 7. James W. Phillips, Washington State Place Names (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976), 115. 8. From Ilwaco Tribune (Washington), September 1914; as quoted in Thomas E. Jessett, “The Ilwaco Railroad,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 58 (1957): 144–57. 9. Jessett, “Ilwaco Railroad.” Reprinted, with additions and corrections, as “Clamshell Railroad”: America’s Westernmost Line, 1888–1930, 3rd ed. (Ilwaco, WA: Pacific, 1988). 10. The IWW Song Book, 14th ed. (Chicago, 1918); reprinted in Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, and Salvatore Salerno, eds., The Big Red Songbook (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007), 126–27. 11. See Norman H. Clark, Mill Town: A Social History of Everett, Washington, from Its Earliest Beginnings on the Shores of Puget Sound to the Tragic and Infamous Event Known as the Everett Massacre (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970); David C. Botting Jr., “Bloody Sunday,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 49 (October 1958): 162–72; William J. Williams, “Bloody Sunday Revisited,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 71 (April 1980): 50–62; see also http://www.epls.org/nw/ dig_emassacre.asp. 12. From Songs of the Workers, Issued July, 1956 in Commemoration of 50th Anniversary of the I.W.W., 29th ed. (Chicago: Industrial Workers of the World, 1956), 21. Words credited to Loren Roberts, one of the Centralia victims; tune: “Where the Silvery Colorado Wends Its Way.” 13. Joyce L. Kornbluh, Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964), 274. 14. Allen, Washington Songs and Lore, 31. 15. Ibid., 28. 16. Memorandum to James N. Smith, Resources Program Staff, Office of the Secretary of the Department of the Interior, BPA, from Robert E. Reed, BPA’s Information Officer, April 6, 1966, in BPA’s Woody Guthrie files. 17. For more on Guthrie’s life and career, see Ed Cray, Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004). 18. The fight is recounted in detail in Fred Lockley, History of the Columbia River Valley from the Dalles to the Sea (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1928), 1:890–900. See also James W. Phillips, Washington State Place Names (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971). 19. The lyrics can be found in Bill Murlin, ed., Woody Guthrie, Roll On Columbia: The Columbia River Songs (Department of Energy, Bonneville Power Administration, n.d.[1987?]), 2–3. 20. By Jeanie Bigbee, as transcribed by J. Revell Carr III, “Disaster Songs: A Continuing Tradition in American Folksong,” MA thesis, June 1998, University of Oregon Folklore Program. The song is set to the familiar tune of “Wabash Cannonball.” Carr also included discussions of four other songs about the eruption: “The Ballad of Harry Truman,” by Rick Bartlett; “Little Town,” also by Rick Bartlett; “Mount Saint Helens,” by Gil Révet; and “Harry Truman (of Mount Saint Helens),” by Tom Hunter. 21. See Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Saint Helens, Mount.” 22. Carr, “Disaster Songs.”

694

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

23. From Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Oregon.” 24. Quoted by Hazel Gertrude Kinscella, History Sings: Backgrounds of American Music (Lincoln, NB: University Publishing, 1957), 327. Kinscella is vague on the song’s source. 25. From Book of 1001 Songs, or Songs for the Million (New York: William H. Murphy, n.d., ca 1846), 2:65–66: “Composed and sung by Dan Rice in Washington City during the heighth [sic] of the Oregon excitement.” Flam is an old American slang term for “nonsense.” 26. Encarta Encyclopedia Standard 2005 Edition CD-ROM, s.v. “Northwest Boundary Dispute.” 27. From The Rough and Ready Songster (also titled The National Songster) (New York: Richard Marsh, n.d., ca. 1848), 31–32; tune: “Old Dan Tucker.” 28. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 67 (May 1914), 22; punctuation modified. 29. Demographic details are difficult to come by since the Gypsies themselves have maintained a deliberately low profile in the New World. A brief survey was given by Gabrielle Tyrner-Stastny, The Gypsy in Northwest America (s.l.: Washington State American Revolution Bicentennial Commission, 1977). 30. See G. Malcolm Laws Jr., American Balladry from British Broadsides: A Guide for Students and Collectors of Traditional Song (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1957), 228, for references to other versions [O 4]. 31. Tom Nash and Twilo Scofield, The Well-Traveled Casket: Oregon Folklore (Eugene, OR: Meadowlark Press, 1999), 14. “Side hued” should probably be “side-hewn,” and “button” door may be “butted” or “butting” door. 32. Nash and Scofield, Well-Traveled Casket, 40. The same source gives a similar parody titled “Oregon Girls” (p. 39). 33. From Supplement to History of Union County (Union County, OR: Union County Historical Society, 2002), 6:62–63. The song was submitted by the editor, Bernal D. Hug. Siwash was a term for Indians in the Pacific Northwest—often used pejoratively. “Haws” are the fruit of the hawthorn. 34. From Harold Benjamin, “Case Study in Folk-Song Making,” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 19 (June 1953): 28–30. Benjamin identifies the song’s author only as “Asher”; the tune was taken from a song by another singer, Chesley Olson, “The Siskiyou Miners.” 35. See Helen Guyton Rees, Shaniko: From Wool Capital to Ghost Town (Portland, OR: Binford and Mort, 1982). 36. Collected by Lester Thompson in 1940–1941 in Lane County, Oregon, and given to Professor Randall Mills of the English faculty of the University of Oregon; Mills published it in Mills, “Battle of Territorial Road,” Oregon Historical Quarterly 43 (June 1941): 149. 37. Sent to Robert W. Gordon on March 21, 1928, by Joseph F. McGinnis, one of several songs he learned from prisoners at the Castle Williams military prison on Governor’s Island near Manhattan (Gordon letter no. 3709). George Milburn, The Hobo’s Hornbook ( New York: Ives Washburn, 1930), 28–30, prints a text that clarifies some garbled text in this version: in the 3rd stanza, “for mess” should be “en masse”; “Canandago Kid” (4th stanza) should be “San Diego Kid”; “creeked Gumps” (9th stanza) should be “croaked gumps”—meaning killed chickens; bulls (11th stanza) are railroad police. 38. From Milburn, Hobo’s Hornbook, 177–78. A recording can be heard by Walt Robertson on American Northwest Ballads. 39. I’m grateful to Liza Dormady, manager-curator of the Portland Police Museum at the Portland Police Historical Society, for this information (e-mail, January 11, 2008). 40. From Charles Wellington Furlong, Let ‘Er Buck: A Story of the Passing of the Old West ( New York: Overlook Press, 2007), 131–33. 41. As recorded by Charles and Paul Johnson in 1928 for the Victor Talking Machine Company, issued on Victor 21646, 78 rpm; reissued on The Railroad in Folksong, RCA Victor LPV-532. Sung to the tune of “Polly Wolly Doodle All the Day.” 42. For more details, see Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 166–68. In addition, two booklets have been written about the robbery: Larry Sturholm and John Howard, All for Nothing: The True Story of the

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

695

Last Great American Train Robbery (Portland, OR: BLS, 1976), and Bert Webber and Margie Webber, Oregon’s Great Train Holdup: Bandits Murder 4—Didn’t Get a Dime (Medford, OR: Webber Research Group, 1988). 43. Folklorist Archie Green recalled hearing discussion of the DeAutremonts in 1940 while he was working in a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp in southern Oregon, in which they were regarded as local heroes, but the song itself wasn’t mentioned. 44. For more on the background of this event and ballad, see Cohen, Long Steel Rail, 166–68. 45. From Eleanor Hague, collector, Spanish-American Folk-Songs (Lancaster, PA: American Folk-Lore Society, 1917), 109. Hague’s translation has been modified slightly. 46. As recorded by Hermanos Sanchez and Linares, Los Angeles, fall 1934, issued on Columbia 4266-X, 78 rpm; reissued on Texas-Mexican Border Music, vol. 2, Corridos, Part 1: 1930–1934, Folklyric LP 9004. The transcription and translation (slightly modified) are from the booklet. 47. Bancroft is quoted in Cornel Lengyel, ed., A San Francisco Songster (San Francisco: WPA of Northern California, 1939), 44. 48. Information from brochure notes to Folklyric LP 9004; see also C. L. Sonnichsen, Roy Bean: Law West of the Pacos (New York: Devin-Adair, 1943), 34–35; John Rollin Ridge, Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit (1854); and Richard G. Mitchell, “Joaquín Murieta: A Study of Social Conditions in Early California,” MA thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1927. 49. From John A. Stone, Put’s Original California Songster (San Francisco: D. E. Appleton, 1854), 26. 50. From the New England Diadem and Rhode Island Temperance Pledge, Providence 6 (February 9, 1850), captioned, “Suggested on hearing read an extract of a letter from Capt. Chase, containing the dying words of Brown Owen, who recently died on his passage to California.” It was republished “by particular request” in the same periodical (vol. 9) on March 2, 1850. Three broadside versions—by Andrews, Horace Partridge (Boston), and Thomas Doyle (Baltimore)—are in the Library of Congress American Song Sheets collection and can be seen at http://memory.loc.gov. A recorded version by the Calicanto Singers can be heard on their CD Days of Gold! Songs of the California Gold Rush (Berkeley: Calicanto Associates, 1999). 51. From Stone, Put’s Songster, 50–52; to the tune of “Villikins and His Dinah.” Dog on (you) is an older form of doggone and may indicate the origin of the term (rather than as a euphemism for goddamn). 52. Article in Stone file at California State Library, Sacramento, quoting the Oakland Tribune, January 5, 1947; other information from the County of El Dorado Historical Museum, Placerville. 53. From a broadside published by J. Andrews, 38 Chatham Street, New York, “Printer of Songs, Circulars, Cards, Labels &c. &c. Neat, Quick & Cheap,” n.d., ca. 1853–1858; LC American Song Sheets collection, viewable at http://memory.loc.gov. 54. Quoted in “California’s Half Century: Two Argonaut Songs,” in Land of Sunshine 13 (August 1900): 165–66. 55. From Wehman’s Song Book, no. 3 (1883), 95. A recording by the Calicanto Singers can be heard on their CD Days of Gold!, and also on their CD They Came Singing: Songs from California’s History (Oakland: Calicanto Associates, 1995). 56. Some current Web sites credit the piece to John A. Stone, known as “Old Put.” Stone did write several of the songs in this chapter, but “The Days of ’49” was certainly not among them. For more on the song’s background, see William L. Alderson, “ ‘The Days of ’49,’ Reprise,” Northwest Folklore 1 (Summer 1965): 5–10. 57. Published in The Great Emerson New Popular Songster (San Francisco: S. C. Blake & William Sharp Jr., 1872). 58. Arranged by E. Zimmer (San Francisco: Sherman and Hyde, 1876). This text was reprinted in Richard E. Lingenfelter, Richard A. Dwyer, and David Cohen, Songs of the American West (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1968), 558–59.

696

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

59. Recorded by Bob Dylan on March 4, 1970, Columbia Studios, Nashville, Tennessee, and issued on the LP Self Portrait. 60. From Book of Words of the Hutchinson Family (New York: Baker Godwin, 1851), 22–23. A recording, titled “Sacramento,” by the Calicanto Singers can be heard on their CD Days of Gold! 61. Titled “Laivan Kannella” by Leo Kauppi, issued on Columbia 3083-F, 78 rpm, and reissued on Oi Niitä Aikoja 3, Sävel SA*LP 662, Helsinki. 62. By John A. Stone, published in Stone, Put’s Songster, 58, to the tune of “New York Gals.” A recording by the Calicanto Singers can be heard on their CD Days of Gold! 63. Quoted by Lengyel, A San Francisco Songster, 49. See also Erwin G. Gudde, California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 250. 64. The sheet music can be seen on the Web site for the Lester Levy sheet music collection (http:// levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu). 65. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 18 (ca. September 1898), 26. Copyright 1885 by Willis Woodward and Company. Words credited to Barker Bradford on the sheet music. 66. “Down by the River Lived a Maiden,” song and chorus. By H. S. Thompson, copyright 1863. 67. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 87 (ca. May 1921), 17, where it is credited, “By Jack Leonard. Revised by Otis O. Rodgers (Overland Whitey).” 68. Quoted by Norman D. Stevens, “Notes and Queries,” Journal of American Folklore 87 (September 1974): 252, from the New York Times Book Review for March 14, 1926, p. 26. 69. From Ambrose Bierce, “Prattle: A Transient Record of Individual Opinion,” San Francisco Examiner, June 18, 1893. 70. Chris Evans, Eurasia (San Francisco: James H. Barry, n.d.). 71. Frank Norris, The Octopus: A Story of California (New York: Doubleday and Page, 1901). 72. Bierce, “Prattle.” 73. From Frank A. Crampton, Deep Enough: A Working Stiff in the Western Mine Camps (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956), 267–69. 74. Ibid., preface, xvii–xviii. 75. Ibid., xi. 76. From Delaney’s Song Book, no. 45 (January 1907), 16. Written by Fred Bessel; air: “Milwaukee Fire.” 77. From Marlon K. Hom, Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco China Town (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987), 86 (reprinted with permission of The University of California Press). Reprinted from Jinshan ge ji (Songs of Gold Mountain) (San Francisco: Tai Quong, 1911). “Flowery Flag Nation” was a Cantonese colloquialism for the United States. 78. Recorded by Vernon Dalhart in New York City on July 10, 1925, and issued on Columbia 15037-D, 78 rpm. Words and music by Carlos B. McAfee (Carson J. Robison). 79. Recorded by Vernon Dalhart, January 5, 1928, in New York City; issued on Columbia 15218D, 78 rpm (as by Al Craver), in March 1928. Written by Bill Barrett (pseudonym for Carson Robison). For references to collected versions, see G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), 207–8 [F 33]. 80. From John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960), 237–38. 81. From the singing of Paul Clayton, who collected the ballad from Mrs. Lily Maggard of Letcher County, Kentucky; on Cumberland Mountain Folksongs, Smithsonian Folkways LP/cass 2007. 82. See the Max Hunter Collection, catalog no. 1224 (MFH 846), as sung by Glenda Sue Richardson of Mountain View, Arkansas, on August 31, 1971. 83. From B.H.A. Roderick, sr. ed., et al., Panhandler’s Songbook, Vol. II: Folksongs of Southeast Alaska and the North-Northwest (Douglas, AK: Archipelago, 1981), 2:80. 84. Ibid., 79.

FAR WEST AND PACIFIC

697

85. From Wehman’s Song Book, no. 10 (April 1886?), 24; the same text appears in Delaney’s Song Book, no. 23 (January 1900), 26; punctuation has been modified. For a collected text, see Helen Creighton, Maritime Folksongs (Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1961), 146, as sung by Edward and Everett Little at Terence Bay, Canada, September 1949. For references to other collected texts, see Laws, American Balladry, 144 – 45 [K 9]. A recording by the group the Gold Ring can be heard on Classic Maritime Music, Smithsonian Folkways CD SFW 40053. 86. From Paul Roseland, Alaska Sourdough Ballads and Folk Songs (Spenard, AK: Alaska Folk Music, 1969), 15. Roseland notes, “The first two verses and part of the chorus are collected as they were sung in Belinda Mulroney’s roadhouse around 1898. Belinda, a young woman of ‘rigid morals and canny disposition’ became, in her own right, one of the richest women of the Klondike” (p. 15). Also reprinted, in part, in Jean A. Murray, Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush: Songs and History (Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 1999), 17. Roseland says nothing about the origin of the other verses; quite possibly he wrote them himself, as most of the songs in his collection are self-penned. 87. Words from the Klondike Nugget, June 23, 1898, p. 4, credited to “Deadwood Pioneer.” According to Murray, Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush, 19, who also quoted the text, the poem was said by Elmer J. “Stroller” White, Tales of a Klondike Newsman, ed. R. N. DeArmond (Skagway, AK: Lynn Canal Press, 1990), to have been written by “Two Step” Johnson. 88. See John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, American Ballads and Folksongs (New York: Macmillan, 1934), 440–41. 89. See Michael Cassius Dean, Flying Cloud and One Hundred and Fifty Other Old Time Songs and Ballads (Virginia, MN: Quickprint, 1922), 132–33, where it appears without attribution. 90. From the Klondike Nugget, May 13, 1899, p. 2. Credited to B. F. Clayton. 91. From Murray, Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush, 41–42. Murray received it by cassette tape from June Baldridge of Dodge Center, Minnesota, via her daughter Connie Sackett of Glennallen, Alaska. Mrs. Baldridge recalled learning the song as a child. Mrs. Baldridge’s recording can be heard on the CD Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush, JM 001, the companion to Murray’s book. 92. Murray, Music of the Alaska-Klondike Gold Rush, 38. 93. From Roseland, Alaska Sourdough, 30–31, where Neil Finnesand is credited with collecting the traditional text and Roseland with the music. 94. From the Klondike Nugget, March 25, 1899, p. 3. Credited to C. Curtis. 95. From the Klondike Nugget, December 17, 1898, p. 3. Some of the words are difficult to make out in the microfilmed copy of the newspaper. 96. From Austin E. and Alta S. Fife, Cowboy and Western Songs: A Comprehensive Anthology (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1969), 83–84. Taken, in turn, from the manuscript collection of the Pacific Northwest Farm Quad, Spokane, Washington. 97. From Lauren Wilde Casady, “Labor Unrest and the Labor Movement in the Salmon Industry of the Pacific Coast,” PhD thesis, University of California, 1938, pp. 137–38. Translation from Ilocano to English by Sebastian S. Abella. 98. Recorded by Bill Cox on September 3, 1935, in New York City, and issued on ARC 5–11– 54, 78 rpm, and associated labels in late 1935. 99. Information taken from http://www.acepilots.com/post html. 100. Encyclopedia Britannica 2005 Deluxe, CD-ROM ed., s.v. “Hawaii.” 101. Helen Roberts, Ancient Hawaiian Music (New York: Dover, 1967), 9–10. 102. Nathanial B. Emerson, “The Hula,” in Unwritten Literature of Hawaii: The Sacred Songs of the Hula (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909), 11–13. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid., 58–59. Though Emerson calls them “savages,” a term that would have been used freely in his day, he clearly had great admiration and respect for the Hawaiian culture and probably did not mean to demean the people.

698

AMERICAN FOLK SONGS

106. Ibid., 257–59. 107. Ibid., 257. 108. Ibid., 255–56. 109. Ibid., 255. 110. From Samuel H. Elbert and Noelani Mahoe, collectors, Na Mele o Hawai’i Nei: 101 Hawaiian Songs (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1970), 35. 111. Elbert and Mahoe, Na Mele, 35, quoting Helen Caldwell, “Hawaiian Music,” in Hawaiian Almanac and Annual for 1916 (Honolulu: T. G. Thrum), 71–79. 112. From Elbert and Mahoe, Na Mele, 42. 113. Ibid., 37. 114. Ibid., 50. 115. Ibid., 50–51. 116. From “ ‘Hole Hole Bushi’—The Only Song of the Japanese in Hawaii,” The Hawaii Herald, February 2, 1973, pp. 4–5. Lunas are the plantation foremen.

Appendix: Songs Excluded

Some states have too great an abundance of traditional folk songs to permit comprehensive inclusion in a work of this limited scope. For interested readers, the most important excluded songs are listed in this appendix. For each, one or two brief references will provide direction to sources for texts and /or tunes. For titles used for more than one song, the opening line or phrase is quoted. For most historical events, a date is also given. Complete bibliographic or discographic citations can be found in the bibliography. Throughout, “Roud” refers to the electronic folk song database maintained by Steve Roud.

NEW ENGLAND Maine Guy Reed [G. Malcolm Laws Jr., Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus, rev ed. (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964), C 9 ( NAB)] Waterville Tragedy, or the Death of Edward Mathews [Olive Woolley Burt, American Murder Ballads and Their Stories ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1958), 83; broadside at Brown University Hay Library (BUHL)] John Roberts [1852; Fannie Hardy Eckstorm and Mary Winslow Smyth, Minstrelsy of Maine: FolkSongs and Ballads of the Woods and the Coast ( New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927), 47] Murder of Robbins [1855; BUHL HB 8774] Wild River tragedy! . . . Charles Freeman, of Gilead, Maine, murdered himself and wife . . . [1851; broadside at BUHL] Tom Cray [1935; Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast 9: 21] Edward Mathews (Waterville, Maine, 1847; see Burt, American Murder, 83; from New York Public Library (NYPL); BUHL] Sandy Stream Song [1875 near Mt Katahdin; Eckstorm and Smyth, Minstrelsy, 51]

700

APPENDIX

New Hampshire Murder of Peter Downe by Elisha Thomas [1788; Burt, American Murder, 237] Lines Composed on the Shocking Murder of Jonas L. Parker of Manchester N.H. [broadside online at NYPL] Murder of Miss Mack Coy [1813; broadside at American Antiquarian Society (AAS)] Sawmill Song [Eloise Hubbard Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England (Hamden, CT: Archon, 1962), 280] Abduction and Cruel Murder of Miss Sarah Furber [Burt, American Murder, 38; broadside online at NYPL] Henry and Servilla, or the Death Bridal [1854; Burt, American Murder, 45] Vermont Marlboro Medley [1787; recordings by Margaret MacArthur on CD Vermont Ballads and Broadsides] Green Mountain Boys Adieu [1813; broadside by Coverly at AAS] Incidents in the History of Vermont [1840; recording by MacArthur, Vermont Ballads and Broadsides] Pucker Street Song [1825; recording by MacArthur, Vermont Ballads and Broadsides] West Rutland Marble Bawn [1850s?; recording by MacArthur, Vermont Ballads and Broadsides] Central Vermont Railroad Tragedy [recording by MacArthur on On the Mountains High] Calais Disaster [1873; New Green Mountain Songster (NGMS), p. 215; Roud 4654; perhaps only as poem] Charming Young Widow I Met on the Train [fictional; see Norm Cohen, Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong, 2nd ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000) (LSR); Roud 3754] Massachusetts Giles Corey and Goodwyfe Corey—A Ballad of 1692 [Burt, American Murder, 105; John and Lucy Allison LP, Folkways FH 5211] Phoebe, Mark and Phillis, Servants of John Codman [Charlestown, 1755; Burt, American Murder, 154] The Life and Humble Confession of Richardson the Informer [1760s; Burt, American Murder, 179] Unhappy Boston [Allison 78 rpm album, Ballads of the American Revolution and War of 1812 (Victor P-11)] Ballad of the Tea Party (“Tea ships near to Boston lying . . .”) [Allison 78 rpm album Keynote K-102 Early American Ballads; Rufus Griswold, Curiosities of American Literature, in Curiosities of Literature, ed. I. C. D’Israeli (New York: World Publishing House, 1876), 30] The Death of Warren [Allison, Ballads of the American Revolution and War of 1812] Lamentation over Boston [1778; NGMS, p. 183] Ballad of Bunker Hill (“The soldiers from town to the foot of the hill . . .”) [Allison 78 rpm album, Ballad of the American Revolution and War of 1812 (Victor P-11)] Burning of Charlestown [Griswold, Curiosities, 29] Charlestown Fire [1829; broadsides available online at NYPL] The Embargo (“Attention pay you bonny lads”) [recording by Paul Clayton on Smithsonian/Folkways FW0 2106 Bay State Ballads] Boston in Ashes [1870s; broadside at Center for Popular Music, Middle Tennessee State University at Murfreesboro (CPM)] Gloucester Witch [Allison, Folkways LP FH 5211] Isaac Orcutt Ballad [Robert W. Gordon letter no. 3324] Escape of Old John Webb (and Tenor) [1730?; Allison, Keynote album K-102] Lines Written on the Execution of John Boies: Who Was Executed at Dedham, Mass. on July 9th 1829 . . . [broadside at BUHL] The East Boston Tragedy. By A. W. Harmon [broadside at BUHL]

APPENDIX

701

Death of Joseph White [Salem, 1830; Burt, American Murder, 87f ] Crowninshield, the Salem Murderer [Burt, American Murder, 87ff ] Rhode Island Wicked Polly [NAB, H 6] Rhode Island Volunteer [broadside at Library Company of Philadelphia (LCP)] Connecticut Moses Paul and Rev. Occom [1772; Burt, American Murder, 152] William Beadle [1782 in Wethersfield; see Burt, American Murder, 5] Courting in Connecticut [broadside at LCP]

MIDLAND (NORTH ATLANTIC) New York On Gen. Wayne’s Taking Stoney Point [1779; Vera Brodsky Lawrence, Music for Patriots, Politicians, and Presidents: Harmonies and Discords of the First 100 Years (New York: Macmillan, 1975), 82] The North Campaign (Ballad of Saratoga) [Griswold, Curiosities, 32; Allison, Keynote album K-102] Siege of Plattsburgh or Backside Albany [Roud 15541] The Capture of Major Andre [Allison, Ballads of the American Revolution and War of 1812] A Life on the Raging Canal [Golden Eagle String Band, Body, Boots and Britches: Folksongs of New York State, Smithsonian Folkways LP FTS 32317] The Buffalo Whore [ Ivan H. Walton and Joe Grimm, Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002), 114; Roud 19840] The Patriotic Diggers [1814; recording by Wallace House on Smithsonian / Folkways FW05002 Ballads of the War of 1812, 1791–1836 ] New York Fireman [Forget-Me-Not Songster (FMNS), Nafis and Cornish edition, 211] Miss Catharine Berringer, Who Was Poisoned by Her Lover [1820?; Burt, American Murder, 36] The Murdered Pedlar (Warren Wood and Hiram Williams) [1853; Burt, American Murder, 78; Saugerties Bard, 1855 Almanac] Burning of Steamer Henry Clay [near Yonkers, 1852; Saugerties Bard, 1855 Almanac] Thayer Boys and John Love [1824; Burt, American Murder, 76] Baptist Preacher or the Drowned Woman and Child [1853; Saugerties Bard, 1855 Almanac] Powder Mill Explosion [1854; Saugerties Bard, 1855 Almanac] 30th Street Murder [1858; broadside at LCP] Murdered Policeman Eugene Anderson [1857; broadside at LCP] New York Apprentice Boy [1860; broadside at LCP] Noble Lads of Brooklyn [broadside at LCP] The D & H Canal [Norman Cazden, Herbert Haufrecht, and Norman Studer, Folksongs of the Catskills (Albany: State University of New York, 1982), 622] Tebo/Thibault [NAB, C 6] Boys of the Bowery Pit [broadside at LCP] Lydia Sherman and Edward Struck [1864; Burt, American Murder, 4 –5] Awful Gen. Slocum Fire [1904; broadside at CPM] Comic Parody (“Tis of a rich Dutchman in New Yorck did live”) [broadside at LCP] Coney Island [broadside at LCP] Dead Rabbits’ Fight with the Bowery Boys [1857; broadside at LCP]

702

APPENDIX

Five Points! or the Butcher and Drover . . . [broadside online at NYPL] The Albany Jail [Thompson, Body Boots and Britches, 229] Murder at Cohoes [1887; Robert W. Gordon papers, University of Oregon] New Jersey Hall Mills Case [1922; Meade et al., Country Music Sources (CMS) (Chapel Hill, NC: Southern Folklofe Collection, The University of North Carolina, and John Edwards Memorial Forum, 2002), 93] Isabella . . . or the Barber’s Daughter of Weehawken [broadside at LCP] Trenton and Princeton [1777; Frank Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania in Song and Story (Greensburg, PA: 1878), 343] Battle of Princeton [1777; Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania, 344] Young Gal from New Jers-a [1860s?; Wehman broadside at LCP] Lamentation for J P Donnelly [1858; two broadsides at LCP] Washington Crossing the Delaware [broadside, see Lawrence, Music, 67] Pennsylvania Wyoming Massacre [1778; Burt, American Murder, 129] The Pennsylvania Song [recording by Wallace House on Smithsonian/Folkways FW05001 Ballads of the American Revolution, 1767–1781] Susanna Cox [1809; Don Yoder, The Pennsylvania German Broadside: A History and Guide (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 46f; two broadsides at LCP] Polly Goold/Wicked Polly [1806?; Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 52ff; two broadsides at LCP] Joseph Miller [1822; Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 52; German broadside from LCP] James Quin [1827; Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 55; German broadside from LCP] Carl Getter [1833; Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 55; German broadside from LCP] North Pennsylvania Railroad Accident of 1856 [two broadsides; LSR, 176 –77] Philip Beppel [1785; Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 49ff; German broadside at LCP] Tambour Jockel [18th c.; Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 51f ] Coal Oil Tommy [Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 12; Auner broadside at LCP] Oh, Conemaugh (about Johnstown flood) [Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 12; broadside at LCP] Philadelphia Fireman [FMNS ] Banks of Brandywine [NAB, H 28] Peter Gray [ Meade, CMS, 60] Muff Lawler, the Squealer [NAB, E 25; George Korson, Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949), 328] Miner’s Fate [NAB, G 10; WPA coll. Va.] Wyoming or Twin Shaft Disaster [1896; broadside at CPM] Battle of the Monongahela [1755] Kingston Volunteers [1812; Cazden et al., Folksongs, 67] Three Girls Drowned [1849; NAB, G 23; Meade, CMS, 50] Song of the Great Conflagration [1865, Philadelphia?; broadside at LCP] Three Ballads of the Donora Smog [Hoffman, New York Folklore Quarterly 5 (Spring 1949): 51–59] The Kensington Tragedy (Philadelphia riots of 1844) [Fisher and Bro., American Sailor’s Songster, 38– 44] The Southwark Riot and Murders (Philadelphia riots of 1844) [Fisher and Bro., American Sailor] Maryland There’s a Girl in the Heart of Maryland [Roud 9571; M. C. Dean, Flying Cloud and One Hundred and Fifty Other Old Time Songs (Norwood, PA: Norwood, 1973[1922]), 88–89; by Ballard Macdonald and Harry Carroll, 1913]

APPENDIX

703

Battle of North Point [Baltimore, 1812; Lawrence, Music, 209; from American Sailor’s Songster (Fisher and Brother, n.d.[late 1840s?]), 223] We’ll Be Free in Maryland [W. L. Fagan, Southern War Songs: Campfire, Patriotic and Sentimental (New York: M.T. Richardson and Co., 1890), 49] Remember Baltimore [Civil War; broadside at LCP] The Slain at Baltimore [Civil War; broadside at LCP] Maryland Resolves [recording on Wallace House, Smithsonian Folkways LP 5001 Ballads of the Revolution, 1767–1781] The Baltimore Girls [broadside online at NYPL]

UPPER SOUTH Virginia Moore’s Lamentation / Massacre of the Moore Family [1786; Cowan, Southwestern Pennsylvania, 357– 61] Ellsworth’s Body etc; Assassination of Ellsworth [1861; broadsides at CPM and LCP] Drummer Boy of Vicksburg [broadside at LCP] Richmond Has Fallen [1865; Lawrence, Music, 424] Rallying Song of the Virginians [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 26] Bull Run. A Parody [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 38] Battle of Cedar Creek [1864; broadside at CPM] Our Braves in Virginia [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 56] Richmond on the James [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 266] Richmond Is a Hard Road to Travel [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 268] Capture of Richmond and Petersburg [broadside at LCP] Fate of Dewey Lee [1931; Meade, CMS, 96] Fate of Talmadge Osborne [ca. 1927; Meade, CMS, 81] Wreck of the N & W Cannonball [1903; LSR, 272] Wreck of the 1256 [1925; LSR] West Virginia C & O Wreck at Guyandotte [1913; NAB, G 4] Wreck of C & O #5 [1920; LSR, p. 236 –39] Wreck of the 1256 [LSR, p. 240– 42] Hatfield-McCoy feud songs [Jean Thomas, Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky (New York: Oak, 1964), 15– 40; Meade, CMS ] Elk River Boys [NAB, dF 55] Fright of Old Virginia (Harper’s Ferry) [broadside at LCP] Wreck of the C & O Sportsman [see LSR, p. 264 – 66] North Carolina Wreck of the Huron [1877; Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore 2 (NCF), p. 668] William Shackleford [1890; NCF, pp. 677ff ] Nellie Cropsey [1901; NCF, p. 717] Marion Strike [John Greenway, American Folksongs of Protest (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1960), 132 (AFP)] Gastonia Strike [AFP, p. 135] Up in Old Loray [AFP, p. 135] Otto Wood [78 rpm recording by Walter Smith] Triplett Tragedy [recording by Doc Watson on Smithsonian Folkways CD SF 40012 The Doc Watson Family]

704

APPENDIX

North Carolina’s War Song [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 80] North Carolina Call to Arms [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 237] Kentucky Assassination of Gov. Goebel [Thomas, The Singing Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow (New York: E.P. Duttom, 1938), 192] Death of Lura Parsons [1920; Bruce A. Rosenberg, Folksongs of Virginia, no. 285] Edward Hawkins [Roud 17595] Buford Overton [1895; Roud 6391] Mary Vickery [1926; 78 rpm recording by Dalhart] Murder of Lottie Yates [NAB, dF 53; Roud 4123] Lula Viers [1918; NAB, F 10; Roud 1933] Tennessee Brave Tennessee Boys [LC AFS 2988 A1] Braswell Boys [1875; Burt, American Murder, 203] Munroe Bynum [Lowe, “The Murder of Munroe Bynem,” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 20 (1954): 9–13] Battle of Stone River [Brewster, Ballads and Songs of Indiana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1940), 180] A Ballad of Shiloh [broadside at LCP] Battle of Lookout Mountain [Civil War; broadside at LCP] Song of the War—Battle of Lookout Mountain [broadside at LCP] Gen. Grant’s Victory at Chattanooga [ broadside at LCP] Willis Mayberry/ Hills of Roane County [ Patricia Barclay Kirkeminde, “The Confessions of Willis Mayberry,” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 30 (1964): 7–21] Battle of Shiloh Hill [ Fagan, Southern War Songs, 326] Drummer Boy of Nashville [ broadside at LCP] Wreck of No. 3 [1909; LSR, Appendix I] Song of the Robbers [ca. 1915; Burt, American Murder, 207] Davidson-Wilder Blues [1933; AFP, p. 160] Roane City Strike at Harriman, Tenn. [LC AFS 3176 B1] Tragedy of Spring City [1955; Tenn. Folklore Soc. LP 105 Historical Ballads of the Tennessee Valley] TVA Song [1930s; TFS LP 105] Kirby Cole [1921; TFS LP 105] Big Bend Tragedy [ca. 1930, TFS LP 105] Old Cumberland Land [TFS LP 105] My ( Little) Home in Tennessee [two Carter Family songs; also R. Browne, Alabama Folk Lyric: A Study in Origins and Media of Dissemination ( Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1979), 276—all different] Jim Bobo’s Fatal Ride [1894; Roud 11024] Memphis Flu [1929; 78 rpm recording by Elder Curry and Cong.] The Miner Boys [Cold Creek, 1911 explosion; M Henry, Songs Sung in the Southern Appalachians (London: Mitre Press, 1934)]

DEEP SOUTH AND THE OZARKS South Carolina South Carolina Gentleman [ broadsides at Library of Congress (LC) and LCP] I’m Off for Charleston [ broadside at LCP]

APPENDIX

705

South Carolina—A Patriotic Ode [broadside at LCP] Fort Sumpter [Civil War; broadside at LCP] Fall of Charleston [broadside at LCP] Carolina [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 124] Palmetto State Song [1861; Lawrence, Music, 346] Cleveland School House Fire [1923; Meade, 82] Rafe King Murder [1929; Meade, 95] Georgia I’m Going to Georgia [ broadside at LC] Andersonville Prison [Vance Randolph, Ozark Folk Songs (Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1948), 2: no. 237 (OFS )] Longest Train I Ever Saw [LSR, p. 491–502; Roud 17291] Jones and Bloodworth [1925; Meade, CMS, 93] Roy Dixon [ Meade, 427] 13 Years in Kilbie Prison [Meade, 427] Moonshiner’s Dream [ NCF, vol. 3, p. 420; 78 rpm recording by Riley Puckett; Fulton County Jail] Sherman’s March to the Sea [Delaney Songbook no. 48, p. 24; Howe—same?] Frank Dupree [NAB, E 24] Florida Tallahassee Woman [78 rpm blues recording by Louis Washington] Give Me a Ranch Down in Florida [AFS 3897 A1] Miami Storm [1926; Meade, 84; see also Morris, Folk Songs of Florida ( New York: Folklorica, 1981[1950]), 101 (FSF )] Miami Hurricane [see FSF, p. 103; NAB, dI 28] Tampa Bound [78 rpm blues recording by Blind Blake] Tampa Bay Jail [Roud 822] Alabama Alabama Flood Song [1929; Meade, CMS, 87] Alabama Bound [Roud 10017] Fate of Elba Alabama [1929; Meade, CMS, 88] Alabama (“Alabama, your beautiful sunlight”) [Roud 10080] Alabama Cottage [broadside at LC] Alabama Again [broadside at LC] Alabama Gals (Buffalo Gals) [Roud 738] Oh Susannah [LC broadside—different words] She’s a Flower from the Fields of Alabama [Meade, CMS, 217] Alabama Jubilee [Roud 17600] Ye Men of Alabama [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 17] Alabama (“Over vale and over mountain . . .”) [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 170] Mississippi Vicksburg Song [ Fagan, Southern War Songs, 126] Do They Miss Me in the Trenches? A Vicksburg Song [ Fagan, Southern War Songs, 129] Our Glorious Flag. A Vicksburg Song [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 159] My Heart’s in Mississippi [ Fagan, Southern War Songs, 211] Battle of Vicksburg [ Fagan, Southern War Songs, 343] Back Water Blues [78 rpm recording by Bessie Smith; Roud 21061] The Flood Blues [78 rpm recording by Sippie Wallace]

706

APPENDIX

Eaton Clan Song [1931; AFS 2675; see Tom Freeland and Chris Smith, “That Dry Creek Eaton Clan: A North Mississippi Murder Balad of the 1930s,” in Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From: Lyrics and History, ed. Robert Springer (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), 126 –50] Strayhorn Mob [1905; AFS 6671; Freeland and Smith, “That Dry Creek Eaton Clan,” 140– 42] Natchez Fire Songs [1940; see Luigi Monge, “Death By Fire: African American Popular Music on the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire,” in Springer, Nobody Knows, 76 –101] Louisiana The Battle of New Orleans (“Hail to the hero, the pride of his country . . .”) [Rough and Ready Songster, 119–21] In the Louisiana Lowlands [ broadside at LCP] The Battle of New Orleans [NAB, A 7] Arkansas Nonsense Saw (“I love the girl from Arkansaw . . .”) [Fred W. Allsopp, Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, Vol. II (s.l.: Grolier Society, 1931), 195] There Are Mean Things Happening in This Land [1936; AFP, p. 218] When Carnal First Came to Arkansas [ localization of Child 200; T. Garrison, 23] Benton County, Arkansas [OFS, vol. 3, p. 19; Roud 10436] Missouri St. Louis Cyclone Blues [78 rpm recording by Lonnie Johnson] Missouri (“O Missouri . . . the news has reached my ears”) [Louise Pound, Folk-Song of Nebraska and the Central West: A Syllabus (Lincoln: Nebraska Academy of Sciences, n.d.), 60] A Soldier from Missouri [NAB, A 16] West Plains Explosion [1928; Meade, CMS, 83] Missouri [ McCarthy] [ Fagan, Southern War Songs, 308] Lee Mills [ Hanging, 1898; Garrison, “Forty-Five Songs Collected from Searcy County,” MidAmerica Folklore (Fall 2002): 171–75]

GREAT LAKES Ohio Banks of Ohio [FMNS, 174] Sorrow Song /Trauer Lied [1840; Yoder, Pennsylvania German, 57; German broadside from LCP] Logan’s Lament [Mary O. Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio, p. 254; Anne Grimes, Ohio State Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5217] Girls of Ohio [Grimes LP FH 5217] Underground Railroad [Grimes LP FH 5217] Ohio Guards [Grimes LP FH 5217] Rarden Wreck [1893; Bruce Buckley, Smithsonian Folkways LP 23-2 Ohio Valley Ballads] Michigan Jam at Gerry’s Rock [location uncertain; NAB, C 1] The Bigler’s Crew [NAB, D 8] The Flying Cloud [G. Malcolm Laws, American Balladry from British Broadsides: A Guide for Students and Collectors of Traditional Song (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1957), K 22 (ABBB); Roud 1802]

APPENDIX

707

Harry Dunn [Canadian?; NAB, C 14] Red Iron Ore [NAB, D 9] 1913 Massacre at Calumet [by Woody Guthrie; AFP, p. 157] Prisoner’s Dream [Roud 17966] Come All Bold Canadians [1812; Brock (England) defeats Hull in Sandwich Town, north of Detroit; Wallace House, Ballads of the Revolution, 1767–1781 Smithsonian Folkways LP FP 5001] Illinois Dear Old Illinois [Garry and Burgess, Dear Old Illinois no. 61] Murder of Andrew Smothers [1913; Dear Old Illinois no. 213] New Made Graves of Centralia [1947; Brambus Records CD 199924-2; Don’t Want Your Millions] Ballad of the Chicago Steel Massacre [1937; by Earl Robinson; AFP, p. 232] Jackson County [David S. McIntosh, Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974), 22] Illinois Gals (“Come on Illinois gals and listen to my noise”) [McIntosh, Folk Songs, 26] County of Saline [McIntosh, Folk Songs, 30] Death of Carl Shelton [1947] Cairo Blues—Henry Spaulding [78 rpm recording, reissued on CD, Folksongs of Illinois vol. 1] Down by the Embarras [recording by Art Thieme on Folksongs of Illinois vol. 1] Goin’ Down to Cairo [recording by Sons of the Never Wrong on Folksongs of Illinois vol. 3] Way Down in Shawneetown [recording by Chris Vallillo on Folksongs of Illinois vol. 3]

MIDWEST PLAINS Nebraska The Bum from Omaha [Robert W. Gordon letter no. 3382 from Millicent Lawler, n.d.; Roud 18050] Kansas El Corrido de Kiansis [recording by Los Palomares de Ojinaga, Arhoolie 480 The Devil’s Swing: Corridos from Big Bend Country] Kansas Jayhawker Song (“I’m a jayhawker girl from a jayhawker state”) [Roud 4898] The Kansas Line [NAB, B 16; Roud 838] Oh They Told Me out in Kansas [Roud 15497]

SOUTHWEST Oklahoma Cap’n I Got a Home in Oklahoma [Roud 18702] Texas Flag of Texas [Rough and Ready Songster in New Songs for the Million ( New York: Richard Marsh, n.d.[1840s?]), 52] Fair Land of Texas [Rough and Ready, 61] Freedom and Texas [Rough and Ready, 183] Texan Marseillaise [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 100] Awake! To Arms in Texas [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 166] Baylor’s Partisan Rangers [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 178] Horse Marines at Galveston [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 180] Battle of Galveston [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 185]

708

APPENDIX

Bombardment and Battles of Galveston [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 191] Song of the Texas Rangers [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 287] Navasota Volunteers [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 294] Capture of 17 of Company H, 4th Texas Cavalry [Fagan, Southern War Songs, 168] Graham Barnett [1930s; Anderson, “The Ballad of Graham Barnett, Badman of the Big Bend in Texas,” Western Folklore 24 (1965): 77–85] Gatesville Murder [1889; Anderson, “The Gatesville Murder: The Origin and Evolution of a Ballad,” in Hunters and Healers: Folklore Types and Topics, ed. Wilson M. Hudson. Publication of the Texas Folklore Society (Austin: Encino Press, 1971), 73–81] New London School Tragedy [1937; McNeill, “The New London, Texas, School Tragedy: The History of a Disaster and Its Songs,” Mid-America Folklore 15 (Fall 1987): 22–38] Waterman Train Wreck [1910s; Minton, “The Waterman Train Wreck: Tracking a Folksong in Deep East Texas,” Journal of Folklore Research 28 (1991): 179–219] Cowboy’s Christmas Ball [N. Howard “Jack” Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys (Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, n.d.), 33–36; Roud 4634] New Mexico Zebra Dun/Educated Fellow [NAB, B 16; Roud 3237] Santa Fe Trail [Jules Allen, Cowboy Lore (San Antonio, TX: Naylor, 1950), 143– 45; Roud 5096] Arizona (Someone’s Opinion of ) Arizona [variant of Hell in Texas; Roud 5104] Arizona Boys and Girls [Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys, 1–2; Roud 4868] Strawberry Roan [NAB, B 18]

MOUNTAIN REGION Montana Montana Plains [also Texas; Patsy Montana, Rounder 1029 Banjo Pickin’ Girl; Roud 11562] The Miner Boy Powder River Let ’er Buck [Roud 11524] Powder River [Fife and Alta, Cowboy and Western Songs (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1969), 167 (CWS ); Roud 11076] Wyoming Wyoming Nester (“Here’s luck to all you homesteaders”) [Roud 5095] Cattle Kate [1889; Burt, American Murder, 171] Cheyenne [1906 pop song; NCF, p. 622] Idaho On the Trail to Idaho [NAB, dB 32; Roud 4039] Trip to Rapid River [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 124] Verse of a Pioneer Song (“My mother and father were very poor people”) [Idaho Lore (Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1939), 233] Farewell to Old Elm (“Farewell to old Elm, I no longer can stay . . .”) [Idaho Lore, 229] Off to Boise City [J. Barre Toelken, “Northwest Traditional Ballads: A Collector’s Dilemma,” Northwest Review 5 (Winter 1962): 9–18]

APPENDIX

709

Colorado

Take Me Back to Colorado for to Stay [Meade, CMS, 406; LC AFS 550 B1] Utah Brigham Young [Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 210–11; Roud 8055] Utah Carroll [NAB, B 4; Roud 1929] Root, Hog, or Die [NAB, B 21; Roud 3242]

FAR WEST California Oh California [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 26 –27; Roud 8824] Goat Island Ballad [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 69–71] California as It Is [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 100–102] California Joe [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 104 –5; Roud 4645] Fools of ’49 [Stone, Put’s Original California Songster (San Francisco: D. E. Appleton & Co., 1854), 7] Lousy Miner [Black and Robertson, Gold Rush Song Book (San Francisco: Colt Press, 1940), 24 –25] San Francisco Ragpicker [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 517–18] Bound for San Diego [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 548– 49] Breaking of the St. Francis Dam [ Meade, CMS, 87] The Gold Digger’s Lament [ broadside online at NYPL] Oregon A Trip to Salmon [poss. Oregon; Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 118–19] Ship Out [ Lingenfelter et al., Songs of the American West, 519] Archie Brown [Jan Harold Brunvand, “Folk Song Studies in Idaho,” Western Folklore 24 (October 1965): 242– 43; Roud 19474] The Oregon Trail [ Roud 9619] Washington Wesley Everest [Archie Green, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, and Salvatore Salerno, eds., The Big Red Songbook (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007), 225] Alaska Cheechako [1930s; on Folkways LP FS 34032]

Bibliography

Print Works Abel, E. Lawrence. Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861–1865. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2000. Aceves, Peter C. “The Hillsville Tragedy in Court Record, Mass Media, and Folk Balladry: A Problem in Historical Documentation.” Keystone Folklore Quarterly 16 (1971): 1–38. Adams, James Taylor. Death in the Dark: A Collection of Factual Ballads of American Mine Disasters. Big Laurel, VA: Adams-Mullins Press, 1941. Allan, Francis D. Allan’s Lone Star Ballads: A Collection of Southern Patriotic Songs Made during Confederate Times. 1874. Reprint, New York: Burt Franklin, 1970. Allen, Jules Verne. Cowboy Lore. San Antonio, TX: Naylor, 1950. Allen, Linda. Washington Songs and Lore. Sponsored by the 1989 Washington Centennial Commission. Spokane, WA: Melior, 1988. Allen, William Francis, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison, eds. Slave Songs of the United States. 1867. Reprint, New York: Oak, 1965. Allsopp, Fred W. Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, Vol. II. s.l.: Grolier Society, 1931. American Sailor’s Songster. Philadelphia: Fisher and Brother, n.d. [late 1840s?]. The American Vocalist, A Choice Collection of the Most Popular and Admired Sentimental, Patriotic, Comic, Irish, Negro, and Other Songs. New York: C. P. Huestis, 1847. Anthony, Ted. Chasing the Rising Sun: The Journey of an American Song. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007. Aristides [William Simons Jr.?]. Strictures on the Case of Ephraim K. Avery, Originally Published in the Republican Herald, Providence, R. I. Providence, RI: William Simons Jr. Herald Office, 1833. Armstrong, David, and Elizabeth Metzger Armstrong. The Great American Medicine Show: Being an Illustrated History of Hucksters, Healers, Health Evangelists, and Heroes from Plymouth Rock to the Present. New York: Prentice Hall, 1991.

712

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Austin, William W. “Susanna,” “Jeanie,” and “The Old Folks at Home”: The Songs of Stephen C. Foster. New York: Macmillan, 1975. Barry, Phillips, ed. The Maine Woods Songster. Cambridge: Powell, 1939. Behn, Noel. Lindbergh: The Crime. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1994. Belden, H. M. Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk–Lore Society. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 1940. Belden, Henry M., and Arthur Palmer Hudson, eds. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore. Vol. 2, Folk Ballads from North Carolina. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1952. Black, Elanora, and Sidney Robertson. The Gold Rush Songbook: Comprising a Group of TwentyFive Authentic Ballads as they were Sung by the Men who Dug Gold in california During the Period of the Great Gold Rush of 1849. San Francisco: Colt Press, 1940. Boyer, Walter E., Albert F. Buffington, and Don Yoder. Songs along the Mahantongo. Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1964. Brandon, Craig. Murder in the Adirondacks: An American Tragedy Revisited. Utica, NY: North Country Books, 1966. Brewster, Paul G. Ballads and Songs of Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1940. Broehl, Wayne G., Jr. The Molly Maguires. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965. Brooks, Juanita. The Mountain Meadows Massacre. New ed. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970. [Brown, Grace]. Grace Brown’s Love Letters. Herkimer, NY: Citizen, 1906. Reprint, Surry, NH: Surry Cottage Books, 2006. Brown, Parker B. “ ‘Crawford’s Defeat’: A Ballad.” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 64 (October 1981): 311–28. Browne, C. A., revised by Willard A. Heaps. The Story of Our National Ballads. 1919. Reprint, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1960. Browne, Ray B. Alabama Folk Lyric: A Study in Origins and Media of Dissemination. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1979. Brownell, Joseph W., and Patricia Wawrzaszek Enos. Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case of 1906. Interlaken, NY: Heart of the Lakes, 1986. Brucker, Roger W., and Robert K. Murray. Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins. Rev. ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983. Brunvand, Jan Harold. “Folk Song Studies in Idaho.” Western Folklore 24 (October 1965): 231– 48. Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast. Cambridge, MA: 1930 –1937. Reprint, Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1960. Burt, Olive Woolley. American Murder Ballads and Their Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. ———. “The Minstrelsy of Murder.” Western Folklore 17 (1958): 263–72. Cable, George Washington. “The Dance Place in Congo.” Century Magazine 31 (February 1886): 517–32. Reprinted in Bruce Jackson, ed., The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals. Publications of the American Folklore Society, Bibliographical and Special Series 18. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1967. Cable, Mary. Avery’s Knot. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1981. Cazden, Norman, Herbert Haufrecht, and Norman Studer. Folk Songs of the Catskills. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982. Chappell, Louis W. Folk-Songs of Roanoke and the Albemarle. Morgantown, WV: Ballad Press, 1939. Cheney, Thomas E. Mormon Songs from the Rocky Mountains. Publications of the American Folklore Society 53. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968. Clark, Harry Hayden, ed. Poems of Freneau. New York: Hafner, 1929. Cohen, Norm. Folk Music: A Regional Exploration. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. ———. “ ‘Henry Clay Beattie’—Once a Folksong.” JEMF Quarterly 9 (Autumn 1973): 97–101. ———. Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

713

———. “Scopes and Evolution in Hillbilly Songs.” JEMF Quarterly 6 (Winter 1970): 174–81. Cole, Fay-Cooper. “A Witness at the Scopes Trial.” Scientific American, January 1959, 120 –30. Combs, Josiah H. Folk-Songs of the Southern United States. Edited by D. K. Wilgus. Translated from 1925 edition. Austin: University of Texas Press for the American Folklore Society, 1967. “Communications.” Topic [Lenoir, NC], March 24, 1886. Comstocker [Duncan Emrich]. Who Shot Maggie in the Freckle? and Other Ballads of Virginia City, Nevada. Virginia City, NV: Bucket of Blood Saloon, 1940. Cornelius, R. M. “Their Stage Drew All the World: A New Look at the Scopes Evolution Trial.” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 40 (Summer 1981): 129– 43. Cowan, Frank. Southwestern Pennsylvania in Song and Story. With Notes and Illustrations. With an Appendix: The Battle Ballads and Other Poems of Southwestern Pennsylvania. Greensburg, PA: printed by the author, 1878. Cox, John Harrington. Folk-Songs of the South Collected under the Auspices of the West Virginia Folk-Lore Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925. Crampton, Frank A. Deep Enough a Working Stiff in the Western Mine Camps. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1956. Craven, Braxton. Naomi Wise, or the Wrongs of a Beautiful Girl. A True Story, Enacted in North Carolina 80 Years Ago. n.p.: M. Penn, 1884. Cray, Ed. The Erotic Muse. 2nd ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992. ———. Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie. New York: W. W. Norton, 2004. Cutting, Edith E. Lore of an Adirondack County. Cornell Studies in American History, Literature, and Folklore 1. Elizabethtown, NY: Denton, 1944. Damon, S. Foster. Series of Old American Songs. Providence, RI: Brown University Library, 1936. Davidson, Levette Jay. Poems of the Old West. Denver: University of Denver Press, 1951. ———. “Songs of the Rocky Mountain Frontier.” California Folklore Quarterly 2 (April 1943): 89–112. Dean, Michael Cassius. Flying Clous and One Hundred and Fifty Other Old Time Songs. Norwood, PA: Norwood, 1973[1922]. DeSimone, Russell J., and Daniel C. Schofield. The Broadsides of the Dorr Rebellion. Providence: Rhode Island Supreme Court Historical Society, 1992. Doerflinger, William Main. Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman. New York: Macmillan, 1951. Dorr, Julia C. R. Poems. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1872. Douglas, Jim. Contentment, or, the Compleat Nutmeg-State Songster. Sturbridge, MA: Pedlar Press, 1987. Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy, and Mary Winslow Smyth. Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-Songs and Ballads of the Woods and the Coast. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1927. Elbert, Samuel H., and Noelani Mahoe, collectors, Na Mele o Hawai’i Nei: 101 Hawaiian Songs. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1970. Elsensohn, Sister M. Alfreda. Pioneer Days in Idaho County. Vol. 2. Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1951. Emerson, Ken. Doo-Dah! Stephen Foster and the Rise of American Popular Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997. Emrich, Duncan. Casey Jones and Other Ballads of the Mining West. Denver: W. H. Kistler, 1942. ———. “Mining Songs.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 6 (June 1942): 103–6. ———. “Songs of the Western Miners.” California Folklore Quarterly 1 (July 1942): 213–32. Encarta. Microsoft Encarta, c. 1993–2004. Version 14.0.0.0603. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corp. Evanson, Jacob A. “Folk Songs of an Industrial City.” In Pennsylvania Songs and Legends, edited by George Korson, 437–38. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949. Fagan, W. L. Southern War Songs: Campfire, Patriotic, and Sentimental. New York: M. T. Richardson and Co., 1890. Reprint Kessler Publishing, s.l., n.d. Fife, Austin E., and Alta, S. Cowboy and Western Songs. New York: Clarkson Potter, 1969. Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

714

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fisher, Jim. The Ghosts of Hopewell: Setting the Record Straight in the Lindbergh Case. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. Flanders, Helen Hartness, ed. A Garland of Green Mountain Song. Northfield: Vermont Commission on Country Life, 1934. Flanders, Helen Hartness, Elizabeth F. Ballard, G. Brown, and Phillips Barry. The New Green Mountain Songster: Traditional Folksongs of Vermont. 1939. Reprint, Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966. Flanders, Helen Hartness, and George Brown. Vermont Folk Songs and Ballads. 1931. Reprint, Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1968. Folk Songs of Old Vincennes. Introduction and notes by Joseph Medard Carriere. French texts collected by Anna C. O’Flynn and J. M. Carriere. Melodies collected and harmonized by Cecilia Ray Berry. Chicago: H. T. Fitzsimons, 1946. The Forget Me Not Songster, Containing a Choice Collection of Old Ballad Songs, as Sung by Our Grandmothers. Philadelphia and New York: Turner and Fisher, n.d. [1840s]. The Forget Me Not Songster, Containing a Choice Collection of Old Ballad Songs, as Sung by Our Grandmothers. New York, St. Louis and Philadelphia: Nafis and Cornish, n.d. [1840s]. Freeland, Tom, and Chris Smith. “That Dry Creek Eaton Clan: A North Mississippi Murder Ballad of the 1930s.” In Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From: Lyrics and History, ed. Robert Springer. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2006. Fuld, James J. The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular and Folk. 5th ed. New York: Dover, 2000. Furlong, Charles Wellington. Let ‘Er Buck: A Story of the Passing of the Old West. 1921. Reprint, New York: Overlook Press, 2007. Fuson, Harvey H. Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands. London: Mitre Press, 1931. Gainer, Patrick W. Folk Songs from the West Virginia Hills. Grantsville, WV: Seneca Books, 1975. Gard, Wayne. “Retracing the Chisholm Trail.” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 60 (July 1956): 53–68. Gardner, Lloyd C. The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004. Garrison, Theodore. “Forty-Five Folk Songs Collected from Searcy County.” Mid-America Folklore 30(Fall 2002): 17–215. Granger, Byrd H. Will C. Barnes’ Arizona Place Names. Rev. and enlarged ed. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1960. Gray, Roland Palmer. Songs and Ballads of the Maine Lumberjacks with Other Songs from Maine. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1925. Green, Archie. “Homestead’s Strike Songs.” In Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes: Laborlore Explorations, 229–74. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. ———. Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal-Mining Songs. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972. Green, Archie, David Roediger, Franklin Rosemont, and Salvatore Salerno, eds. The Big Red Songbook. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 2007. Greenway, John. American Folksongs of Protest. 1953. Reprint, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1960. ———. “Songs of the Ludlow Massacre.” United Mine Workers Journal, April 15, 1955. Griswold, Rufus. Curiosities of American Literature. 1841. Published with I. C. D’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature. New York: World Publishing House, 1876. Grover, Carrie B. A Heritage of Songs. 1953. Reprint, Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1973. Halpert, Herbert. “Some Ballads and Folk Songs from New Jersey.” Journal of American Folk-Lore 52 (January–March 1939): 52–69. Hand, Wayland D., Charles Cutts, Robert C. Wylder, and Betty Wylder. “Songs of the Butte Miners.” Western Folklore 9 (January 1950): 1– 49. Harbin, E. O. Phunology: A Collection of Tried and Proved Plans for Play, Fellowship, and Profit. Rev. ed. Nashville, TN: Cokesbury Press, 1923.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

715

Harrison, Garry, and Jo Burgess, eds. Dear Old Illinois: Traditional Music of Downstate Illinois. Bloomington, IN: Pick Away Press, 2007. Hempel, Kathleen M. “Ballad of Hardin Town.” Annals of Iowa 31 (July 1951): 62–63. Henry, Mellinger E. Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands. New York: J. J. Augustin, 1938. ———. “More Songs from the Southern Highlands.” Journal of American Folklore 44 (January– March 1931): 61–115. Henry, Mellinger E. Songs Sung in the Southern Appalachians. London: Mitre Press, 1934. Hoffman, Dan G. “Three Ballads of the Donora Smog.” New York Folklore Quarterly 5(Spring 1949): 51–59. Homsher, Lola M., ed. South Pass, 1868: James Chisholm’s Journal of the Wyoming Gold Rush. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960. Howe, Henry. Historical Collections of Ohio. Vol. 2. n.p.: C. J. Krehbiel, 1904. Hubbard, Lester A. Ballads and Songs from Utah. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961. Hudson, Arthur Palmer. “Songs of the North Carolina Regulators.” William and Mary Quarterly, Series 3 4 (October 1947): 470 –85. Hull, Myra. “Cowboy Ballads.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 8 (February 1939): 35–60. Huntington, Gale. Songs the Whalemen Sang. Barre, MA: Barre, 1964. Hutchinson Family’s Book of Words. New York: Baker, Godwin, 1851. Idaho Lore. American Guide Series. Prepared by the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Projects Administration, Vardis Fisher, State Director. Caldwell, ID: Caxton, 1939. Ives, Edward D. “ ‘Ben Deane’ and Joe Scott: A Ballad and Its Probable Author.” Journal of American Folklore 72 (January–March 1959): 53–66. ———. Joe Scott: The Woodsman-Songmaker. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979. Jessett, Thomas E. “The Ilwaco Railroad.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 58 (June 1957). Reprinted with additions and corrections as “Clamshell Railroad”: America’s Westernmost Line, 1888– 1930. 3rd ed. Ilwaco, WA: Pacific, 1988. Jones, Louis C. “The Berlin Murder Case in Folklore and Ballad.” Proceedings of the New York State Historical Association 34, New York History 17 (1936): 192–205. Jones, M. Bruce, with Trudy J. Smith. White Christmas Bloody Christmas. Trinity, NC: UpWords, 1990. Kallsen, Loren J., ed. The Kentucky Tragedy: A Problem in Romantic Attitudes. Includes the Confession of Jereboam O. Beauchamp, Who Was Executed at Frankfurt, Ky. . . . (Bloomfield, Ky: 1826); Along with Ann Cook’s Letters, the Trial Transcript, and a Vindication of Sharp Written by His Brother. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963. Kasserman, David Richard. Fall River Outrage: Life, Murder, and Justice in Early Industrial New England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986. Keeler, Rev. S. C. The Murdered Maiden Student: A Tribute to the Memory of Miss Josie A. Langmaid. Pembroke, NH: Suncook, 1878. Kemp, David. “ ‘The Dreary Black Hills’: A 19th Century Western Mining Ballad.” JEMF Quarterly 14 (Winter 1978): 181–86. Kemp, Father. Old Folks’ Concert Tunes. Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1889. Kincaid, Bradley. My Favorite Mountain Ballads and Old-Time Songs. Vol. 4. 1931. Kornbluh, Joyce L., ed. Rebel Voices: An I.W.W. Anthology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1964. Korson, George. Coal Dust on the Fiddle: Songs and Stories of the Bituminous Industry. 1943. Reprint, Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1965. ———. Minstrels of the Mine Patch: Songs and Stories of the Anthracite Industry. 1938. Reprint, Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1964. ———. Pennsylvania Songs and Legends. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1949. ———. Songs and Ballads of the Anthracite Miner. New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1927. Kreitzer, Jack, and Susan Braunstein, eds. A Living Tradition: South Dakota Songwriters Songbook. Vol. 1. Sioux Falls, SD: George B. German Music Archives, 1983.

716

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Krelove, Harold. “The Battle of the Kegs.” In Two Penny Ballads and Four Dollar Whiskey, edited by Kenneth S. Goldstein and Robert H. Byington, 61–70. Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1966. Laws, G. Malcolm, Jr. American Balladry from British Broadsides: A Guide for Students and Collectors of Traditional Song. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1957. ———. Native American Balladry: A Descriptive Study and a Bibliographical Syllabus. Rev. ed. Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964. Layer, Robert G. Earnings of Cotton Mill Operatives, 1825–1914. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, n.d. Lee, Powder River Jack, and Katie Lee. Songs of the Range: Cowboy Wails of Cattle Trails. Chicago: Chart Music, 1937. Lemay, J. A. Leo. “The American Origins of ‘Yankee Doodle.’ ” William and Mary Quarterly, Series 3 33 (July 1976): 435–64. ———. “New England’s Annoyances”: America’s First Folk Song. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985. Lightfoot, William E. “The Ballad ‘Talt Hall’ in Regional Context.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 42 (1978): 361–73. Lingenfelter, Richard E., Richard A. Dwyer, and David Cohen. Songs of the American West. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Linscott, Eloise Hubbard. Folk Songs of Old New England. 1939. Reprint, Hamden, CT: Archon, 1962. Logsdon, Guy. “Woody Guthrie and His Oklahoma Hills.” Mid-America Folklore 19 (1991): 57–73. Lomax, John A. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. 1910. Reprint, London: T. Fischer Unwin, 1911. ———. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. 1916. Reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1931. Lomax, John A., and Alan Lomax. American Ballads and Folk Songs. New York: Macmillan, 1934. ———. Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads. Rev. and enlarged ed. New York: Macmillan, 1938. ———. Folk Song: USA. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947. Also published under the title Best Loved American Folk Songs. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1954. Long-Wilgus, Eleanor R. Naomi Wise: Creation, Re-Creation, and Continuity in an American Ballad Tradition. Chapel Hill, NC: Chapel Hill Press, 2003. Lynch, Timothy P. Strike Songs of the Depression. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001. Mackenzie, W. R. Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia. 1928. Reprint, Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1963. Mainer, J. E. Songs as Sung by J. E. Mainer and His Mountaineers. Concord, NC: J. E. Mainer, n.d., ca. 1968. Malone, Henry H. “Folksongs and Ballads, Part I.” In Kansas Folklore, edited by S. J. Sackett and William E. Koch, 138–60. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961. Marston, Burton W., comp. The Little Brown Song Book for Wyoming (Songs for Wyoming). Laramie: Agricultural Extension Service, University of Wyoming, 1932. Meade, Gutherie, T. Jr., with Dick Spottswood and Dougles S. Meade. Country Music Sources: A Biblio-Discography of Commercially Recorded Traditional Music. Chapel Hill: Southern Folklife Collection, The University of North Carolina and John Edwards Memorial Forum, 2002. McCrumb, Sharyn. The Ballad of Frankie Silver. New York: Dutton, 1998. McDade, Thomas M. The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961. McIntosh, David S. Folk Songs and Singing Games of the Illinois Ozarks. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974. McNeill, W. K. Southern Folk Ballads, Vol. 2. Little Rock: August House, 1988. McPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Mechem, Kirke. “ ‘Home on the Range.’ ” Kansas Historical Quarterly 17 ( November 1949): 313–39. Reprinted with an introduction by Neil Byer, ed., “That a State Might Sing.” Heritage of Kansas 2 (1958): 11–39.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

717

Milburn, George. Hobo’s Hornbook: A Repertory for a Gutter Jongleur. New York: Ives Washburn, 1930. Monge, Luigi. “Death By Fire: African American Popular Music on the Natchez Rhythm Club Fire.” In Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From: Lyrics and History, ed. Robert Springer. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2006. Moore, Frank. Songs and Ballads of the American Revolution. 1855. Reprint, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1964. Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Oxford History of the American People. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Morris, Alton C. Folksongs of Florida. New York: Folklorica, 1981[1950]. Nash, Tom, and Twilo Scofield. The Well-Traveled Casket: Oregon Folklore. Eugene, OR: Meadowlark Press, 1999. Nelson, Donald Lee. “The Crime at Quiet Dell.” JEMF Quarterly 8 (Winter 1972): 203–10. ———. “The Death of J. B. Marcum.” JEMF Quarterly 11 (Spring 1975): 7–22. ———. “The Lawson Family Murder.” JEMF Quarterly 9 (Winter 1973): 170 –73. ———. “The Ohio Prison Fire.” JEMF Quarterly 9 (Summer 1973): 42– 45. Nevada Federation of Women’s Clubs. Book of Nevada Poems. Reno, NV: Reno, 1927. New Songs for Butte Mining Camp. Butte, MT: Century, n.d., ca. 1918. Oster, Harry. A Garland of Iowa Songs. Iowa City: Meadow Press, 1977. Pankake, Marcia, and Jon Pankake. Joe’s Got a Head Like a Ping-Pong Ball: A Prairie Home Companion Folk Song Book. New York: Penguin, 1990. Parler, Mary Celestia. An Arkansas Ballet Book. 1963. Reprint, Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1976. Patterson, Daniel W. A Tree Accurst: Bobby McMillon and Stories of Frankie Silver. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Paul, Raymond. The Tragedy at Tiverton: An Historical Novel of Murder. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984. “Percent Distribution of the White Population, by Nationality: 1790.” In Historical Abstract of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, 1961. Perdue, Charles L., Jr. “ ‘Gruver Meadows’: Anatomy of a Murder Ballad.” Folklore and Folklife in Virginia 4 (1988): 59–65. Perrow, E. C. “Songs and Rhymes from the South.” Journal of American Folklore 28 (April–June 1915): 129–90. Peters, Harry B., ed. Folk Songs Out of Wisconsin. Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1977. Phillips, James W. Washington State Place Names. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976. Pound, Louise. Folk-Song of Nebraska and the Central West: A Syllabus. Nebraska Academy of Sciences Publications 9. From reports given before the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Sciences 1913–1915. Lincoln: Nebraska Academy of Sciences, n.d., ca. 1915. Raine, James Watt. The Land of Saddle-bags. New York: Council of Women for Home Missions and Missionary Education Movement of the United States and Canada, 1924. Ramella, Richard. “John Hardy: The Man and the Song.” Goldenseal 18 (Spring 1992): 47–51. Randall, James Ryder. Maryland, My Maryland and Other Poems by James Ryder Randall. Baltimore: John Murphy, 1909. Randolph, Vance. Ozark Folksongs. Vols. 2– 4. Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1948–1950. Riddle, Almeda. A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle’s Book of Ballads. Edited by Roger D. Abrahams. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970. Roseland, Paul. Alaska Sourdough Ballads and Folk Songs. Spenard, AK: Alaska Folk Music, 1969. Rosenberg, Bruce. The Folksongs of Virginia, a Checklist of the WPA Holdings of Alderman Library, University of Virginia. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1969. “Rough and Ready Songster.” In New Songs for the Million. New York: Richard Marsh, n.d. [1840s?]. Russel, John. “The Chisholm Trail.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 5 (February 1936): 3–14.

718

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Samuels, Charles. Death Was the Bridegroom. New York: Fawcett, 1955. Sandburg, Carl. The American Songbag. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1927. [Saugerties Bard.] Ulster County Almanac for 1855. Saugerties, NY: William Hill Printer, 1855. Schlesinger, Arthur M. “A Note on Songs as Patriot Propaganda, 1765–1776.” William and Mary Quarterly, Series 3 11 (January 1954): 78–88. Shay, Frank. An American Sailor’s Treasury: Sea Songs, Chanteys, Legends and Lore. New York: Southmark, 1991. Formerly published as American Sea Songs and Chanteys, 1948. Shearin, Hubert G., and Josiah H. Combs. A Syllabus of Kentucky Folk-Songs. Lexington, KY: Transylvania, 1911. Reprint, Pileaville, KY: Twin Commonwealth, 2005. Sherwin, Sterling, and F. Henri Klickman. Songs of the Roundup. New York: Robbins, 1934. Shoemaker, Henry W. Mountain Minstrelsy of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: Newman F. McGirr, 1931. Sonneck, Oscar. Report on “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia,” “America,” and “Yankee Doodle.” Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1972. Springer, Robert, ed. Nobody Knows Where the Blues Come From: Lyrics and History. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2006. Stebbins, Rufus P. An Historical Address, Delivered at the Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Wilbraham, June 15, 1863. Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1864. Stephens, Frank. Some Songs. Arden, DE: Arden Press, 1935. Stone, William L. Ballads and Poems Relating to the Burgoyne Campaign. 1893. Reprint, Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970. Sturholm, Larry, and John Howard. All for Nothing: The True Story of the Last Great American Train Robbery. Portland, OR: BLS, 1976. Sutherland, Elihu Jasper. “Vance’s Song.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 4 (1940): 251–54. Sweterlitsch, Richard. “Ballads and a Mississippi Badman.” Midwest Folklore Record 12 (1978): 47–57. Thomas, Jean. Ballad Makin’ in the Mountains of Kentucky. 1939. Reprint, New York: Oak, 1964. ———. The Singin’ Fiddler of Lost Hope Hollow. New York. E.P. Dutton, 1938. Thompson, Harold W. Body, Boots and Britches: Folktales, Ballads and Speech from Country New York. New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1939. Thorp, N. Howard “Jack.” Songs of the Cowboys. 1908. Reprint, Bedford, MA: Applewood Books, n.d. ———. Songs of the Cowboys. 1921. Reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Tinsley, Jim Bob. He Was Singin’ This Song. Orlando: University Presses of Florida, University of Central Florida, 1981. Toelken, J. Barre. “Northwest Traditional Ballads: A Collector’s Dilemma.” Northwest Review 5 (Winter 1962): 9–18. Tolman, Albert H., and Mary O. Eddy. “Traditional Texts and Tunes.” Journal of American FolkLore 35 (October–December 1922): 335– 432. The United States Songster, a Choice Selection of about One Hundred and Seventy of the Most Popular Songs, Including Nearly All the Songs Contained in the American Songster. Cincinnati: U. P. James, 1836. Utley, Robert M. Lone Star Justice: The First Century of the Texas Rangers. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Van Stone, Mary R. Spanish Folk Songs of New Mexico. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1926. Reprinted, with additions by Katharine Van Stone Mayer, as Spanish Folk Songs of the Southwest. Fresno, CA: Academy Guild Press, 1963. Vermont Sings. Delaware, OH: Cooperative Recreation Service, 1959. Vincent, Leopold, comp. The Alliance and Labor Songster: A Collection of Labor and Comic Songs, for the Use of Alliances, Grange Debating Clubs and Political Gatherings. Indianapolis, IN: Vincent Bros., 1981. Reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1975. Walton, Ivan H., and Joe Grimm. Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2002.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

719

Ward, John William. Andrew Jackson: Symbol for an Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1962. Warner, Frank M. Folk Songs and Ballads of the Eastern Seaboard—from a Collector’s Notebook. Macon, GA: Southern Press, 1963. Webber, Bert, and Margie Webber. Oregon’s Great Train Holdup: Bandits Murder 4—Didn’t Get a Dime. Medford, OR: Webber Research Group, 1988. West, John Foster. The Ballad of Tom Dula: The Documented Story behind the Murder of Laura Foster and the Trials and Execution of Tom Dula. Durham, NC: Moore, n.d., ca. 1970. West, John Foster. Lift Up Your Head, Tom Dooley: The True Story of the Appalachian Murder That Inspired One of America’s Most Popular Ballads. Asheboro, NC: Down Home Press, 1993. [Whittier, John G.]. The Complete Poetical Works of Whittier. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, l894. Wilgus, D. K. “ ‘Arch and Gordon.’ ” Kentucky Folklore Record 6 (April–June 1960): 51–56. ———. “Ten Broeck and Mollie: A Race and a Ballad.” Kentucky Folklore Record 2 (July–September 1956): 77–89. Williams, Burton J. “Erastus D. Ladd’s Description of the Lawrence Massacre.” Kansas Historical Quarterly 29 (Summer 1963): 113–21. Winslow, Ola Elizabeth. American Broadside Verse from Imprints of the 17th and 18th Centuries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930. Wolfe, Richard J. Secular Music in America, 1801–1825: A Bibliography. New York: New York Public Library, 1964. Woodworth, Samuel. Melodies, Duets, Trios, Songs, and Ballads, Pastoral, Amatory, Sentimental, Patriotic Religious, and Miscellaneous; Together with Metrical Epistles, Tales and Recitations. 3rd ed. New York: J. M. Campbell, 1826. Yoder, Don. The Pennsylvania German Broadside: A HIstory and Guide. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005. Zane, Nancy E. “The Legend of the White Rocks.” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 42 (1976): 186–94. Recordings All recordings are compact discs (CDs), except those noted to be long-playing albums (LPs) or cassette tapes. Albertson, Jim. Down Jersey: Songs and Stories of Southern New Jersey. Smithsonian Folkways LP FS 5203; cassette 05203 (1985). Allison, John. Witches and War-Whoops: Early New England Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5211 (1962); cassette/CD 05211 (1991). Allison, John, and Lucy. Early American Ballads. Keynote 78 rpm album K-102 [194-?]. American History in Ballad and Song. Vol. 1. Prepared by Albert Berouh and Theodore O. Oron. Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5801 (1960); cassette/CD F-5801 (1960). Anthology of American Folk Music. 6-CD box set. Smithsonian Folkways (1997). Authentic Cowboys and Their Western Folksongs. RCA Victor LP LPV-522 (1965). Bolick, Bill, and Earl Bolick [Blue Sky Boys]. Within the Circle/Who Wouldn’t Be Lonely. Blue Tone Records BSR CD 1003/4 (n.d.). Brave Boys: New England Traditions in Folk Music. New World Records CD 80239 (1995). Buckley, Bruce. Ohio Valley Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways LP 23-2 (1955); cassette/CD 02025 (1992). Byrd, John, and Walter Taylor. John Byrd and Walter Taylor 1929–1931: Complete Recordings in Chronological Order. Story of Blues CD 3517-2 (1987). Calicanto Singers. Days of Gold! Songs of the California Gold Rush. Calicanto Associates (1999). ———. They Came Singing: Songs from California’s History. Calicanto Associates (1995). Carter Family. In the Shadow of Clinch Mountain. 12-CD set. Bear Family BCD 12865 KL (2000). Classic Maritime Music. Smithsonian Folkways CD SFW 40053 (2004).

720

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clayton, Paul. Bay State Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways LP FP 47/2 (1956); cassette/CD 02106 (1992). ———. Cumberland Mountain Folksongs. Smithsonian Folkways LP FP 2007 (1957); cassette/CD 02007 (1992). Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls from Texas. Library of Congress LP AAFS L28 (1952). Reissued as Cowboy Songs, Ballads, and Cattle Calls from Texas. Rounder CD 1512 (1999). Darby and Tarlton: Complete Recordings. Bear Family BCD 15764 (1995). First Recordings of Historic Mexican-American Ballads (1928–37): Corridos and Tragedias de la Frontera. Arhoolie/Folklyric 7019/7020 (1994). Folk Music from Wisconsin. Rounder CD 1521 (2001). Reissue of Library of Congress LP AFS L55 (1960). Folk Music in America: Songs of Death and Tragedy. Library of Congress LP LBC 9 (1978). Folk Music in America: Songs of Local History and Events. Library of Congress LP LBC 12 (1978). Folk Music in America: Songs of Migration and Immigration. Library of Congress LP LBC 6 (1977). Folksongs of Illinois. Vol. 1. Illinois Humanities Council CD ILHC07-01 (2007). Folksongs of Illinois. Vol. 3. Illinois Humanities Council CD ILHC07-03 (2007). Folksongs of the Ozarks. Rounder CD 1108 (2001). Glazer, Joe. Songs for Woodworkers. Collector LP 1929 (1977). Golden Eagle String Band. Body, Boots and Britches: Folksongs of New York State. Smithsonian Folkways LP FTS 32317 (1982); cassette/CD 32317 (1992). Grayson, G. B., and Henry Whitter. The Recordings of Grayson and Whitter. County CD 3517 (1998). Grimes, Anne. Ohio State Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5217 (1957); cassette/CD 05217 (1992). Halker, Bucky. Don’t Want Your Millions. Brambus Records CD 199924-2 (2000). Halker, Bucky, and the Complete Unknowns. Welcome to Labor Land. Revolting Records CD RR2002-6 (2002). Hammons Family. The Hammons Family: A Study of a West Virginia Family’s Traditions. Library of Congress LP L65-66 (1973). Reissued as The Hammons Family. Rounder CD 1504/05 (1998). Hard Times Come Again No More. Vol. 2. Yazoo CD 2037 (1998). Harrell, Kelly. Kelly Harrell: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order. Vol. 1, 1925–1926. Document DOCD 8026 (1998). Harvey, Roy. Roy Harvey: Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order. Vol. 2 (1928–1929). Document DOCD 8051 (1999). Hilton, Lalovi M. Mormon Folk Songs. Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2036 (1952); cassette/CD 02036 (1991). Hinton, Sam. The Wandering Folksong. Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2401 (1966). Historical Ballads of the Tennessee Valley. Tennessee Folklore Society LP TFS-105 (1982). Hopkins, Al. The Hillbillies/Al Hopkins and His Bucklebusters. Vol. 3, Complete Recorded Works in Chronological Order. Document DOCD 8041 (1999). Hopkins, Doc. Doc Hopkins. Birch LP 1945 (1971). House, Wallace. Ballads of the Revolution, 1767–1781. Smithsonian Folkways LP FP 5001 (1953); cassette/CD 5001 (1991). ———. Ballads of the War of 1812, 1791–1836. Smithsonian Folkways LP FW 05002 (1954); cassette/CD 5002 (1991). Huntington, E. G. Folksongs from Martha’s Vineyard. Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2032 (1958); cassette/CD 02032 (1991). Hurt, “Mississippi” John. Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 OKeh Recordings. Columbia / Legacy CK 64986 (1996). Ives, Sandy. Folksongs of Maine. Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5323 (1959); cassette/CD 05323 (1991). Jole Blon: 23 Artists, One Theme. Bear Family BCD 16618 AJ (2002). Kentucky Mountain Music: Classic Recordings of the 1920s and 1930s. 7-CD set. Yazoo CD 2200 (2003).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

721

LaFarge, Peter. On the Warpath /As Long as the Grass Shall Grow. Bear Family BCD 15626 (1992). MacArthur, Margaret. An Almanac of New England Farm Songs. Green Linnet LP SIF 1039 (1982). ———. On the Mountains High. Living Folk Records LP F-LFR-100 (1971). ———. Vermont Ballads and Broadsides. Whetstone Records CD 01 (1989). The Music of Kentucky: Early American Rural Classics 1927–37. Vol. 2. Yazoo CD 2014 (1995). New Sierra Nevada Rangers. The Miner’s Dream: Songs of the California Gold Rush. Gold West Music (n.d., ca. 1998). Old-Time Mountain Ballads. County CD 3504 (1995). Paramount Old Time Recordings: Ballads and Blues. JSP CD 7774B (2006). Poole, Charlie. Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers. Vol. 2, Old Time Songs Recorded from 1926 to 1930. County CD 3502 (1996). Ransom, Stan “the Connecticut Peddler.” Songs on Lake Champlain. The Battle of Plattsburg: Music from the War of 1812. (2001). ———. I Love Long Island: Traditional Music of Long Island. (1997). Rare Country Blues. Document DOCD 5170 (1994). Reed, Alfred. Blind Alfred Reed, 1927–1929. Document DOCD 8022 (1998). Richman, Vivien. Folk Songs of West Pennsylvania. Smithsonian Folkways LP FG 3568 (1959). Riddle, Almeda. Almeda Riddle. Vanguard LP VRS 9158 (1964). Robertson, Walt. American Northwest Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2046 (1955); cassette/ CD 02046 (1992). Robison, Carson, and Frank Luther. Bud and Joe Billings: Singing Pals from Kansas. Cattle CCD 207 (1998). Sabatella, Matthew. Ballad of America. Vol. 1, Over a Wide and Fruitful Land. Slipstream Productions (2004?). Seeger, Mike. Tipple, Loom and Rail: Songs of the Industrialization of the South. Smithsonian Folkways LP/cassette FH 5273 (1966). Seeger, Pete. Frontier Ballads. Smithsonian Folkways LP FA 2175 (1954). Songs of the Great Lakes. Smithsonian Folkways LP FM 4018 (1964). Songs of the Mormons and Songs of the West from the Archive of Folk Song. Library of Congress LP AFS L30 (1952). Reissued as Songs of the Mormons and Songs of the West. Rounder CD 1520 (2002). Southeast Alaska Folk Tradition. Vol. 1, Exploration and Discovery, 1786–1897. Smithsonian Folkways LP/cassette 34031 (1992). Southeast Alaska Folk Tradition. Vol. 2, Stampede and Settlement, 1898–1941. Smithsonian Folkways LP/cassette 34032 (1993). Sprague, Carl T. Classic Cowboy Songs. Bear Family BCD 15456 (1988). ———. Cowtrails, Longhorns and Tight Saddles. Bear Family BCD 15979 AH (2003). Train 45: Railroad Songs of the Early 1900s. Rounder CD 1143 (1998). A Treasury of Library of Congress Recordings. Rounder CD 1500 (1997). 200 Years of American Heritage in Song. CD box set. CMH Records 1776 (n.d.). Virginia Traditions: Native Virginia Ballads. Blue Ridge Institute LP BRI 004 (1981). Reissued as Global Village Music CD 1994 (1995). Welch, Roger, with Terry Schmitt. Sweet Nebraska Land. Smithsonian Folkways LP FH 5337 (1965); cassette/CD 05337 (1992). Videos The Ballad of Frankie Silver. Featuring traditional storyteller Bobby McMillon Davenport. Delaplane, VA: Films for the University of North Carolina Curriculum in Folklore.

Song Index

“Laws” refers to the syllabi by G. Malcolm Laws, Native American Balladry (1964; alphanumeric codes A– I) and American Balladry from British Broadsides (1957; alphanumeric codes J– Q); “Roud” refers to the electronic folk song database maintained by Steve Roud. Aaron Hart [Laws dG 48; Roud 4146]

Florida

Deep South / Ozarks

Ah Vienen los Yankees

California

Far West / Pacific

Ain’t God Good to Iowa?

Iowa

Midwest Plains

Alan Bane [Roud 2974]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Alaska, or Hell of the Yukon [Roud 5104]

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

All Are Talking of Utah [Roud 10849]

Utah

Mountain Region

Acres of Clams (See Old Settler, The)

Alliance Song

Nebraska

Midwest Plains

Aloha Oe

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

Along the Kansas Line [Laws A 16; Roud 2206]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Alsea Girls (See Come All You Alsea Girls) Altoona Freight Wreck [Laws dG 38; Roud 7128]

Pennsylvania

Midland

And There Is No Night in Creede

Colorado

Mountain Region

Andrew Jackson’s Raid [Roud 7954]

Alabama

Deep South / Ozarks

Anna Sweeney

South Dakota

Midwest Plains

Arcade Building Moan [Roud 4907]

Tennessee

Upper South

Arch and Gordon [Laws dF 61; Roud 4130]

Kentucky

Upper South

724

SONG INDEX

Are You a Hood-a-lum

Nevada

Mountain Region

Arkansas Sheik [Roud 4275]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

Arkansas Song, The [Roud 3131]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

Arkansas Traveler, The [Roud 3756]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

Aroostook War Song

Maine

New England

As I Went Down to Newbern [Roud 6641]

North Carolina

Upper South

Arkansas Traveller (See My Name Is John Johanna)

Ashland Tragedy, The [Laws F 25–27; Roud 2263]

Kentucky

Upper South

Avalon Blues

Mississippi

Deep South / Ozarks

Avondale Disaster [Laws G 6; Roud 698]

Pennsylvania

Midland

Away Down East [Roud 3726]

Maine

New England

Bald Knobbers [Roud 5486]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Baldy Green

Nevada

Mountain Region

Ballad of Bloody Thursday

California

Far West / Pacific

Ballad of Grace Brown and Chester Gillette, The [Laws F 7; Roud 2256]

New York

Midland

Ballad of Hardin Town

Iowa

Midwest Plains

Ballad of Pearl Bryan . . . , The [Laws F 2; Roud 2212]

Indiana

Great Lakes

Ballad of Talmadge, The

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Ballad of the Tea Party

Massachusetts

New England

Ballad of the Territorial Road

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Baltimore Fire [Roud 12392]

Maryland

Midland

Banks of Schuylkill, The [Roud 2045]

Pennsylvania

Midland

Banks of the Little Eau Pleine [Laws C 2; Roud 706]

Wisconsin

Great Lakes

Baranov Song

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Battle at Charleston Harbor, The

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Battle of Baltimore, The [Roud 13958]

Maryland

Midland

Battle of Bull Run (See Manassa Junction) Battle of Bunker Hill

Massachusetts

New England

Battle of Elkhorn Tavern [Laws A 12; Roud 2201]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

Battle of Fort Sumpter

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Battle of King’s Mountain [Laws L 4; Roud 17]

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Battle of Lake Erie, The [Roud 2826].

Ohio

Great Lakes

Battle of Mill Springs, The [Laws A 13; Roud 627]

Kentucky

Upper South

Battle of Pea Ridge [Laws A 12; Roud 2201]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

Battle of Fredericksburg (See Last Fierce Charge, The)

Battle of Little Bighorn (See Custer’s Last Charge)

Battle of Plattsburgh (See Noble Lads of Canada) Battle of Point Pleasant

West Virginia

Upper South

Battle of Schenectady, The

New York

Midland

Battle of Shiloh, The [Laws A 11; Roud 2200]

Tennessee

Upper South

SONG INDEX

725

Battle of Stonington

Connecticut

New England

Battle of the Kegs, The

Pennsylvania

Midland

Battle of the Wilderness, The

Delaware

Midland

Battle of Trenton

New Jersey

Midland

Battle of Vicksburg, The [Roud 4500]

Mississippi

Deep South / Ozarks

Beale Street Blues

Tennessee

Upper South

Been on the Job Too Long [Laws I 9; Roud 4711]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Belle Gunness, Lady Bluebeard

Indiana

Great Lakes

Belleville Convent Fire [Roud 4342]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Beaver Island Boys (See Lost on Lake Michigan)

Beloved Hawaii

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

Ben Deane [Laws F 32; Roud 2271]

New Hampshire

New England

Ben Dewberry’s Final Run [Roud 14015]

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Big Diamond Mine, The

Montana

Mountain Region

Bili Boi

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

Billy Richardson’s Last Ride [Roud 10440]

West Virginia

Upper South

Billy the Kid [Roud 5097]

New Mexico

Southwest

Birmingham Jail [Roud 943]

Alabama

Deep South / Ozarks

Birmingham Town

Alabama

Deep South / Ozarks

Bisbee

Arizona

Southwest

Bishop Zack the Mormon Engineer [Roud 4761]

Utah

Mountain Region

Blood Stained Diary

Wyoming

Mountain Region

Blue Mountain [Roud 10861]

Utah

Mountain Region

Blue Velvet Band [Roud 3764]

California

Far West / Pacific

Bluefield Murder [Roud 21294]

West Virginia

Upper South

Bombardment of Bristol

Rhode Island

New England

Boston Burglar, The [Laws L 16a; Roud 261]

Massachusetts

New England

Boston Tea Tax

Massachusetts

New England

Bottle Alley Song, The

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Boys of Ohio.

Ohio

Great Lakes

Bridge Was Burned at Chatsworth, The [Laws G 30; Roud 2198]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Brigham the Prophet

Utah

Mountain Region

Bright-Eyed Little Nel of Narragansett Bay [Roud 3274]

Rhode Island

New England

Brookfield Murder [Laws F 8; Roud 2257]

New Hampshire

New England

Brush Creek Wreck [Laws dG 37; Roud 4137]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Buffalo Skinners [Laws B 10; Roud 634]

Texas

Southwest

Burning of Henry Robinson’s Camp . . . [Laws dC 46; Roud 4067]

Maine

New England

Burning of the Granite Mill, The [Laws G 13; Roud 1823]

Massachusetts

New England

Canaday-I-O [Laws C 17; Roud 640]

Maine

New England

726

SONG INDEX

Cape Cod Girls [Roud 325]

Massachusetts

New England

Capture of New Orleans

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Capture of William Wood by Blackfoot Indians

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Carmack Song, The

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Carry Me Back to Old Virginny [Roud 15431]

Virginia

Upper South

Casey Jones [Laws G 1; Roud 3247]

Mississippi

Deep South / Ozarks

Casey Jones the Miner

Montana

Mountain Region

Charles Gibbs [Roud 16892]

Rhode Island

New England

Charleston Earthquake

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Charleston Gals [Roud 12046]

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Cheechako’s Lament

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Centralia Massacre (See Tragedy of Sunset Land)

Cherry Creek Emigrant’s Song

Colorado

Mountain Region

Cheyenne Boys [Roud 4275]

Wyoming

Mountain Region

Chief Aderholt

North Carolina

Upper South

Claude Allen [Laws E 6; Roud 2245]

Virginia

Upper South

Clayton Boone [Child 200; Roud 1]

New Mexico

Southwest

Clementine [Roud 9611]

California

Far West / Pacific

Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker

Texas

Southwest

Coal Creek Troubles

Tennessee

Upper South

Cole Younger [Laws E 3; Roud 2243]

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Colonel Sharp [Laws dF 38; Roud 4110]

Kentucky

Upper South

Columbus Stockade Blues [Roud 7480]

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Come All You Alsea Girls [Roud 4275]

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Colorado Home (See Oh Give Me the Hills)

Come All You Missouri Boys (See Arkansas Sheik) (Come All You) West Virginia Gals [Roud 4275]

West Virginia

Upper South

Comin’ Back to Kansas [Roud 4890]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Comstocker Died in Virginia, The

Nevada

Mountain Region

Connecticut

Connecticut

New England

Connecticut Pedlar, The [Roud 15533]

Connecticut

New England

Copper River Song

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Corrido al Mineral de Bisbee

Arizona

Southwest

Corrido de Joaquin Murieta

California

Far West / Pacific

Corrido de Nogales, El

Arizona

Southwest

Corrido de quemazon de Bisbee

Arizona

Southwest

Counties of Arkansas [Roud 7541]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

County Song, The

Iowa

Midwest Plains

Cove Cherry Fair

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Cowboys’ New Years Dance [Roud 12501]

New Mexico

Southwest

Cranberry Song [Roud 5412]

Wisconsin

Great Lakes

SONG INDEX

727

Crime at Quiet Dell, The [Laws dF 64]

West Virginia

Upper South

Crime of the D’Autremont Brothers

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Crooked Trail to Holbrook [Laws dB 30; Roud 4037]

Arizona

Southwest

Crow Wing Drive [Roud 8893]

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Cucuracha, La

New Mexico

Southwest

Cumberland Gap [Roud 3413]

Kentucky

Upper South

Cumberland’s Crew, The [Laws A 18; Roud 707]

Virginia

Upper South

Custer’s Last Charge [cf. Laws A 17; Roud 629]

Montana

Mountain Region

Cyclone at Rye Cove [Roud 7116]

Virginia

Upper South

Indiana

Great Lakes

Dakota Land (See Sweet Dakota Land) Daniel Martin (See Battle of Pea Ridge) Dans Les Chantiers Nous Hivernerons Voyager Song Danse de Mardi Gras, La

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Days of ’49 [Roud 2803]

California

Far West / Pacific

De Free Nigger

Virginia

Upper South

Dear Prairie Home

Nebraska

Midwest Plains

Death of Ellenton, The

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Death of Floyd Collins [Laws G 22; Roud 1940]

Kentucky

Upper South

Death of Harry Bradford, The [Laws C 12; Roud 2218]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Death of Huey P. Long

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Death of Kathy Fiscus [Roud 18065]

California

Far West / Pacific

Daytona Race (See Fate of Lee Bible, The)

Deep Elem Blues [Roud 15518]

Texas

Southwest

Delia Holmes [Laws I 5; Roud 3264]

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Don’t Come to Michigan [Roud 6524]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Down by the Wild Mustard River [Laws C 5; Roud 637]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Down in Arkansas [Roud 7626]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

Down in Old Franklin County [Roud 14054]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Down in Southern Illinois [Roud 14053]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Down in the Lehigh Valley [Roud 9389]

Pennsylvania

Midland

Utah

Mountain Region

Down in the Valley (See Birmingham Jail) Down in Utah [Roud 10858] Down on the Corner (of Dock and Holly)

Washington

Far West / Pacific

Down-Trodden Maryland

Maryland

Midland

Dreary Black Hills [Roud 3604]

South Dakota

Midwest Plains

Drummer Boy of Shiloh, The [Laws A 15; Roud 773]

Tennessee

Upper South

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Dutch Lullaby, The

New York

Midland

Dying Californian, The [Roud 2283]

California

Far West / Pacific

Eagle Rock

Idaho

Mountain Region

Duncan and Brady (See Been on the Job Too Long) Dupree Blues [Laws I 11; Roud 4179]

728

SONG INDEX

Echo Canyon [Roud 4749]

Utah

Mountain Region

Elanoy

Illinois

Great Lakes

Ella Speed [Laws I 6; Roud 4175]

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Ellie Rhee [Roud 7248]

Tennessee

Upper South

Erie Canal, The [Roud 6599]

New York

Midland

Eureka [Roud 4760]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

Emigrant’s Song (See Wisconsin Emigrant’s Song)

Evans and Sontag (See Story—Evans and Sontag, A) Everett County Jail

Washington

Far West / Pacific

Explosion in the Fairmount Mines, The [Roud 17619]

West Virginia

Upper South

Factory Girl, The [Roud 19465]

New Hampshire

New England

Fall of Charleston (See Battle at Charleston Harbor) Farmer’s Union Song

Montana

Mountain Region

Farmington Canal Song [Roud 3730]

Connecticut

New England

Fatal Ride, The

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Fate of Ellen Smith, The [Laws F 11; Roud 448]

North Carolina

Upper South

Fate of John Burgoyne, The

New York

Midland

Fate of Lee Bible, The [Laws dG 46; Roud 4144]

Florida

Deep South / Ozarks

Father Was Killed by the Pinkerton Men

Pennsylvania

Midland

Fifty Thousand Lumberjacks

Idaho

Mountain Region

Floating Down the Delaware

Delaware

Midland

Fond du Lac Jail [Roud 822]

Wisconsin

Great Lakes

Frankie [Laws I 3; Roud 254]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Frankie Silvers [Laws E 13; Roud 783]

North Carolina

Upper South

Freeda Bolt [Roud 12196]

Virginia

Upper South

Freighting from Wilcox to Globe [Roud 8016]

Arizona

Southwest

Fuller and Warren [Laws F 16; Roud 694]

Indiana

Great Lakes

George Washington’s Birthday

New Mexico

Southwest

Girl I Loved in Sunny Tennessee, The [Roud 4290]

Tennessee

Upper South

Golden Gate Firmly Locked

California

Far West / Pacific

Goodbye, Old Paint [Roud 915]

Wyoming

Mountain Region

Governor Al Smith (for President) [Roud 17521]

New York

Midland

Grand Idaho

Idaho

Mountain Region

Green Mountain Boys, The [Laws C 19; Roud 641]

Vermont

New England

Frankie and Albert (See Frankie) Frankie and Johnny (See Frankie)

Gregorio Cortez

Texas

Southwest

Gruver Meadows [Laws dF 63]

Virginia

Upper South

Gunpowder Tea [Roud 11622]

Massachusetts

New England

Hamlet Wreck, The [Roud 6634]

North Carolina

Upper South

Handcart Song, The [Roud 4748]

Utah

Mountain Region

SONG INDEX

729

Hanging of Charles Birger, The

Illinois

Great Lakes

Hanging of Eva Dugan, The

Arizona

Southwest

Hanging of Sam Archer, The

Indiana

Great Lakes

Hangtown Gals

California

Far West / Pacific

Harco Mine Tragedy

Illinois

Great Lakes

Hard Rock Dann

Nevada

Mountain Region

Harry Bahel (Bale) [Laws C 13; Roud 2217]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Hayseed, The [Roud 12497]

Nebraska

Midwest Plains

Hell in Texas [Roud 5104]

Texas

Southwest

Hennessy Murder [Laws dF 58]

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Henry Clay Beattie [Roud 13147]

Virginia

Upper South

Henry Green of Troy [Laws F 14; Roud 693]

New York

Midland

Henry K. Sawyer [Laws G 5; Roud 3249]

Maine

New England

Herlong’s Train [Roud 5017]

Florida

Deep South / Ozarks

Haymarket Affair (See Price of Freedom, The)

Hickman’s Boys (See Tennessee Boys, The) Highgrader, The

Nevada

Mountain Region

Hills of (New) Mexico [Laws B 10; Roud 634]

New Mexico

Southwest

Hilo March

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

Ho for California (Banks of Sacramento) [Roud 319]

California

Far West / Pacific

Hobo’s Convention

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Hoboken Fire, The

New Jersey

Midland

Pennsylvania

Midland

Kentucky

Upper South

Home on the Range (See Western Home) Homestead Strike [Roud 7744] House of the Rising Sun (See Rounder’s Luck) Hunters of Kentucky [Laws A 25; Roud 2211] I Lie in the American Land (Slovakian)

Pennsylvania

Midland

I’m a Roaring Son of the Comstock

Nevada

Mountain Region

I’m Glad I Live in Wyoming

Wyoming

Mountain Region

I’m Going Back to North Carolina [Roud 789]

North Carolina

Upper South

I’m Off for California

California

Far West / Pacific

I’m Sold and Going to Georgia

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

I’s Trabling Back to Georgia

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Ida Ho

Idaho

Mountain Region

Immigration Song

Kansas

Midwest Plains

In Kansas [Roud 4455]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

In Selma, Alabama

Alabama

Deep South / Ozarks

In the Summer of Sixty [Roud 4978]

Colorado

Mountain Region

In the Tunnel

Maine

New England

In Those Oklahoma Hills

Oklahoma

Southwest

Invasion Song, The [Laws dB 40]

Wyoming

Mountain Region

730

SONG INDEX

Iron Mountain Baby [Laws dH 43; Roud 4162]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

J. B. Marcum [Laws E 19; Roud 692]

Kentucky

Upper South

Jack Rock Song

West Virginia

Upper South

Jackson County Jail [Roud 9063]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Jackson’s Victory

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

James Bird [Laws A 5; Roud 2204]

Pennsylvania

Midland

Japanese Work Song

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

Jay Legg [Roud 7030]

West Virginia

Upper South

Jesse James [Laws E 1; Roud 2240]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Jim Fisk Song [Laws F 18; Roud 2215]

New York

Midland

Joaquin the Horse Thief

California

Far West / Pacific

Joe Bowers [Laws B 14; Roud 2806]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Joel Baker [Roud 4656]

New Hampshire

New England

John Brown’s Body [Roud 771]

West Virginia

Upper South

John Funston [Laws F 23; Roud 2261]

Ohio

Great Lakes

John Hardy [Laws I 2; Roud 3262]

West Virginia

Upper South

John Henry Blues [Laws I 1; Roud 790]

Alabama

Deep South / Ozarks

John T. Scopes Trial, The [Roud 7126]

Tennessee

Upper South

Johnstown Flood, The [Laws G 14; Roud 3254]

Pennsylvania

Midland

Judge Martin Duffy [Roud 4806]

Idaho

Mountain Region

Just before the Drawing, Sweetheart

South Dakota

Midwest Plains

Just from Dawson [Roud 15540]

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Kansas Emigrant’s Song

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Jolie Blonde (See Ma Blonde est Partie)

Kansas Farmer’s Lament

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Kansas Fool [Roud 4899]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Kansas Land [Roud 4899]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Kenny Wagner [Laws E 7; Roud 978]

Mississippi

Deep South / Ozarks

Kenny Wagner’s Surrender [Laws E 8; Roud 979]

Mississippi

Deep South / Ozarks

Kincaider’s Song [Roud 4982]

Nebraska

Midwest Plains

Klondiker’s Return

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Kitty Ging and Harry Hayward (See Fatal Ride, The) Lake of Ponchartrain, The [Laws H 9; Roud 1836]

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Lamentation of James Rodgers

New York

Midland

Lane County Bachelor [Roud 799]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Last Fierce Charge, The [Laws A 17; Roud 629]

Virginia

Upper South

Laws of Jersey State, The

New Jersey

Midland

Lawson Family Murder, The [Laws F 35; Roud 697]

North Carolina

Upper South

Lay of the Vigilantes

Colorado

Mountain Region

Leavenworth Blues

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Little Brown Bulls, The [Laws C 16; Roud 2224]

Wisconsin

Great Lakes

SONG INDEX

731

Little Marian Parker [Laws F 33; Roud 781]

California

Far West / Pacific

Little Mary Phagan [Laws F 20; Roud 696]

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Little Old Sod Shanty [Roud 4368]

South Dakota

Midwest Plains

Logger’s Boast [Roud 7088]

Maine

New England

Longing for the Spring

West Virginia

Upper South

Lord Franklin [Laws K 9; Roud 487]

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Lost Boys of East Bay [Laws dD 38; Roud 4083]

Florida

Deep South / Ozarks

Lost on Lake Michigan [Laws D 17; Roud 2238]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Little Nel of Narragansett Bay (See Bright-Eyed Little Nel . . . )

Louisiana Earthquake [Roud 18656]

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Lovewell’s Fight [Laws dA 27; Roud 4026]

Maine

New England

Ludlow Massacre [Roud 17650]

Colorado

Mountain Region

Ma Blonde est Partie

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

MacAfee’s Confession [Laws F 13; Roud 449]

Ohio

Great Lakes

Maid of Prairie du Chien, The [Roud 7947]

Wisconsin

Great Lakes

Manassa Junction [Laws A 9; Roud 2209]

Virginia

Upper South

Maple Sweet, or Vermont Sugar Maker’s Song [Roud 3737]

Vermont

New England

Marching Song of Sherman’s Army on the Way to the Sea, The

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Marching through Georgia [Roud 9596]

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Margaret Grey: A Legend of Vermont [Roud 5440]

Vermont

New England

Marion Massacre, The

North Carolina

Upper South

Maryland Battle Cry, The

Maryland

Midland

Maryland Martyrs, The

Maryland

Midland

Maryland, My Home

Maryland

Midland

Maryland, My Maryland

Maryland

Midland

Maud Wreck, The [Roud 3518]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Maxwell’s Doom [Laws E 12; Roud 890]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

McKinley [Roud 787]

New York

Midland

Meeks Murder [Laws F 30; Roud 2268]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Michael Row the Boat Ashore [Roud 11975]

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Michigan-i-a [Roud 4745]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Michigan-I-O [Laws C 17; Roud 640]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Midnight Special [Roud 6364]

Texas

Southwest

Mighty Mt St Helens

Washington

Far West / Pacific

Milwaukee Fire, The [Laws G 15; Roud 3255]

Wisconsin

Great Lakes

Miner, The

Montana

Mountain Region

Miners’ Parody on When You and I Were Young, Maggie

Montana

Mountain Region

Minnie Quay [Laws G 20; Roud 8850]

Michigan

Great Lakes

732

SONG INDEX

Mister Banjo

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Monitor and Merrimac

Virginia

Upper South

Moore and Jacoby

New Jersey

Midland

Mormon Army Song [Roud 10840 / 1?]

Utah

Mountain Region

Morro Castle Disaster

New Jersey

Midland

Mount Holly Jail

New Jersey

Midland

Mountain Meadows Massacre [Laws B 19; Roud 3240]

Utah

Mountain Region

Mr. Pierce’s Experience

Massachusetts

New England

Mt. Vernon Cyclone

Illinois

Great Lakes

Murder of Laura Foster (See Tom Dooley) My Children Are Seven in Number

Tennessee

Upper South

My Delaware

Delaware

Midland

My Happy Little Home in Arkansas [Roud 7537]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

My Heart Goes Back to Dear Old Pendleton

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

My Heart’s Tonight in Texas [Laws B 23; Roud 635]

Texas

Southwest

My Name is Edward Broderick [Roud 14069]

Iowa

Midwest Plains

My Name is John Johanna [Laws H 1; Roud 257]

Arkansas

Deep South / Ozarks

My Old Kentucky Home [Roud 9564]

Kentucky

Upper South

My Old Pennsylvania Home (Pennsylvania Dutch)

Pennsylvania

Midland

Mystery of the Dunbar Child

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Naptown Blues

Indiana

Great Lakes

Nebraska Blues

Nebraska

Midwest Plains

Naomi Wise (See Poor Naomi)

Nebraska Land (See Sweet Nebraska Land) New England’s Annoyances

Massachusetts

New England

New Jers-A

New Jersey

Midland

New Market Wreck, The [Roud 4904]

Tennessee

Upper South

New Song Called the Gaspee, A

Rhode Island

New England

New York

Midland

Newhall House Fire (See Milwaukee Fire, The) Noble Lads of Canada [Roud 2827] North Carolina Hills, The [Roud 11757]

North Carolina

Upper South

Northern Tragedy, A

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Oh Give Me the Hills

Colorado

Mountain Region

Ohio Prison Fire, The

Ohio

Great Lakes

Oklahoma [Roud 16028]

Oklahoma

Southwest

Old Arizona Again

Arizona

Southwest

Old Chisholm Trail [Roud 3438]

Oklahoma

Southwest

Old Folks at Home (Swanee River) [Roud 13880]

Florida

Deep South / Ozarks

Old Granite State, The

New Hampshire

New England

Old Settler, The [Roud 4746]

Washington

Far West / Pacific

Olban (See White Captive, The)

SONG INDEX

733

Ole from Norway [Roud 8867]

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Oli

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

On the Banks of the Wabash [Roud 9595]

Indiana

Great Lakes

Oregon and Texas

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Oregon Gypsy Girl [Laws O 4; Roud 229]

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Oregon Question, The

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Orphan Child

Oklahoma

Southwest

Parody on Girl I Left Behind Me

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Paterson Fire, The

New Jersey

Midland

Paul Bunyan’s Manistee [Roud 6522]

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Oysterboat Song (See Moore and Jacoby) Pancho Villa (See Cucuracha, La)

Peddler and His Wife, The [Laws F 24; Roud 2262]

Kentucky

Upper South

Peninsula Pike, The

Washington

Far West / Pacific

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Philadelphia Riots, The

Pennsylvania

Midland

Plains of Illinois, The [Roud 4605]

Illinois

Great Lakes

Plantonio, Pride of the Plains [Laws B 12]

New Mexico

Southwest

Pleasant Ohio

Ohio

Great Lakes

Polly Williams [Roud 4111]

Pennsylvania

Midland

Poor Goins [Laws F 22; Roud 2260]

Virginia

Upper South

Poor Naomi (Wise) [Laws F 4; Roud 447]

North Carolina

Upper South

Perry’s Victory (See Battle of Lake Erie, The) Pete Orman Philadelphia Lawyer (See Reno Blues)

Portland County Jail [Roud 9858]

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

Potatoes They Grow Small (in Kansas) [Roud 4455]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Price of Freedom, The

Illinois

Great Lakes

Pullman Strike, The

Illinois

Great Lakes

Quantrill’s Raid on Lawrence [Laws dE 33; Roud 4094]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

Quincyland, My Quincyland

Washington

Far West / Pacific

Railroad Accident at Richmond Switch, The

Rhode Island

New England

Railroad Bill [Laws I 13; Roud 4181]

Alabama

Deep South / Ozarks

Railroad Cars, They’re Coming, The [Roud 10812]

Utah

Mountain Region

Ramsey County Jail [Roud 9063]

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Red River Valley [Roud 756]

Oklahoma

Southwest

Red Rock Canyon Fight

Wyoming

Mountain Region

Remember the Alamo

Texas

Southwest

Reno Blues [Roud 21368]

Nevada

Mountain Region

Revolutionary Tea [Laws A 24; Roud 1934]

Massachusetts

New England

Vermont

New England

Riding Down from Bangor (See In the Tunnel) Rifleman’s Song at Bennington

734

Roll on Columbia, Roll On [Roud 17660]

SONG INDEX

Washington

Far West

Rolling Stone (See Wisconsin Emigrant’s Song) Rose of Alabama, The

Alabama

Deep South / Ozarks

Rounder’s Luck [Roud 6393]

Louisiana

Deep South / Ozarks

Rowan County Crew, The [Laws E 20; Roud 465]

Kentucky

Upper South

Sam Bass [Laws E 4; Roud 2244]

Indiana

Great Lakes

San Francisco Earthquake, The

California

Far West / Pacific

Santa Barbara Earthquake [Laws dG 45; Roud 4752]

California

Far West / Pacific

Santa Fe Trail, The [Roud 4096]

New Mexico

Southwest

Sarah Maria Cornell [Roud 2044]

Rhode Island

New England

Save de Union

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Seven Devil Mines, The

Idaho

Mountain Region

Shall Dorr Be Freed

Rhode Island

New England

Shawneetown Flood [Roud 4343]

Illinois

Great Lakes

She Sleeps beneath the Norris Dam [Roud 4911]

Tennessee

Upper South

Shut up in Coal Creek Mine [Laws G 9; Roud 844]

Tennessee

Upper South

Sidney Allen [Laws E 5; Roud 612]

Virginia

Upper South

Sierry Petes [Laws B 17; Roud 3238]

Arizona

Southwest

Sinclair’s Defeat (8th of November)

Ohio

Great Lakes

Sing Ha Come from China

New York

Midland

Sioux Indians, The [Laws B 11; Roud 3235]

Nebraska

Midwest Plains

Smugglers of Buffalo, The

New York

Midland

Snake River Massacre

Idaho

Mountain Region

Solidarity Forever

Montana

Mountain Region

Song for the Hula Ala’A-Papa

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

Song of Emma Hartsell [Laws F 34; Roud 2272]

North Carolina

Upper South

Song of Harry Orchard, The [Laws dE 48]

Idaho

Mountain Region

Song of the Alaskero

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Song of the Death Valley Prospectors

California

Far West / Pacific

Song of the Nantucket Ladies, A [Roud 2048]

Massachusetts

New England

Song of the Times

Colorado

Mountain Region

Song of the Vermonters [Roud 4670]

Vermont

New England

Song, Called Crawford’s Defeat . . . , A

Ohio

Great Lakes

Sons of New Jersey, The

New Jersey

Midland

South Carolina: A Patriotic Ode

South Carolina

Deep South / Ozarks

Springfield Mountain [Laws G 16; Roud 431]

Connecticut

New England

Stagolee [Laws I 15; Roud 4183]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Star of Bannack, The

Montana

Mountain Region

Story of George Mann [Laws dE 38; Roud 4098]

Ohio

Great Lakes

Story of Gerald Chapman, The

Connecticut

New England

Story of Gustave Ohr [Laws dE 39; Roud 4099]

Ohio

Great Lakes

SONG INDEX

735

Story of the Knoxville Girl [Laws K 35; Roud 263]

Tennessee

Upper South

Story—Evans and Sontag, A

California

Far West / Pacific

Stratton Mountain Tragedy, The [Roud 1939]

Vermont

New England

Streets of Hamtramck

Michigan

Great Lakes

Streets of Laredo [Laws B 1; Roud 2]

Texas

Southwest

Suncook Town Tragedy [Laws F 21; Roud 2259]

New Hampshire

New England

Swede from North Dakota, The [Roud 9845]

North Dakota

Midwest Plains

Sweet Betsey from Pike [Laws B 9; Roud 3234]

California

Far West / Pacific

Sweet Dakota Land [Roud 4899]

North Dakota

Midwest Plains

Sweet Nebraska Land [Roud 4899]

Nebraska

Midwest Plains

Swimming in the Delaware

Delaware

Midland

Take Me Back to Old Montana

Montana

Mountain Region

Talt Hall [Laws dE 42; Roud 4102]

Virginia

Upper South

Ten Broeck and Molly [Laws H 27; Roud 2190]

Kentucky

Upper South

10 Years We Have Already Lived Here in Corbin

Minnesota

Great Lakes

Tennessee Boys, The [Roud 4902]

Tennessee

Upper South

Texas Ranger, The [Laws A 8; Roud 480]

Texas

Southwest

They Are Taking Us Beyond Miami

Florida

Deep South / Ozarks

Thomas Duffy [Laws dE 32; Roud 4093]

Pennsylvania

Midland

Thomas E. Watson

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Tom Dooley [Roud 4192]

North Carolina

Upper South

Tough Utah Boy [Roud 10906]

Utah

Mountain Region

Tragedy of Sunset Land

Washington

Far West / Pacific

Trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, The

New Jersey

Midland

Two Orphans, The; or, The Brooklyn Fire [Laws G 27; Roud 3258]

New York

Midland

(Utah) Iron Horse, The [Roud 8597]

Utah

Mountain Region

Vance Song, The [Laws F 17; Roud 2216]

Virginia

Upper South

Vermont Farmer’s Song [Roud 4659]

Vermont

New England

Veteran’s Song

Michigan

Great Lakes

Virginian Maid’s Lament, The

Virginia

Upper South

Virginian Strike of ’23, The

West Virginia

Upper South

Wandering Willie

South Dakota

Midwest Plains

Wanted—My Darling Papa

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

Swanee River (See Old Folks at Home)

Tea Tax (See Boston Tea Tax)

Tying Knots in the Devil’s Tail (See Sierry Petes)

736

SONG INDEX

War in Missouri in ’61 [Roud 3698]

Missouri

Deep South / Ozarks

Water of Kane, The

Hawaii

Far West / Pacific

Way Out in Idaho [Roud 16409]

Idaho

Mountain Region

We, the Boys of Sanpete County [Laws B 26; Roud 3245]

Wyoming

Mountain Region

We’re Coming Idaho [Roud 4760]

Idaho

Mountain Region

Webfoot Land [Roud 4899]

Oregon

Far West / Pacific

West Palm Beach Storm [Laws dG 47; Roud 4145]

Florida

Deep South / Ozarks

West Virginia Farmer [Roud 5422]

West Virginia

Upper South

West Virginia Lad [Roud 18827]

West Virginia

Upper South

Western Home [Roud 3599]

Kansas

Midwest Plains

What Did Delaware?

Delaware

Midland

When Fanning First to Orange Came

North Carolina

Upper South

Which Side Are You On? [Roud 15159]

Kentucky

Upper South

White Captive, The [Laws H 15; Roud 657]

Vermont

New England

Wild Montana Boy [Law dE 45, L 20; Roud 677]

Montana

Mountain Region

Wilkes Lovell [Laws E 9; Roud 2247]

Vermont

New England

Will Rogers and Wiley Post

Alaska

Far West / Pacific

William Ross and Thomas Walsh

North Dakota

Midwest Plains

Wisconsin Emigrant’s Song [Laws B 25; Roud 710]

Wisconsin

Great Lakes

Woodstock Bridge Disaster (Hartford Wreck) [Laws dG 36; Roud 4136]

Vermont

New England

Wreck of Number Four and the Death of John Dailey, The

Kentucky

Upper South

Wreck of Tennessee Gravy Train [Roud 17535]

Tennessee

Upper South

Wreck of the Old 97, The [Laws G 2; Roud 777]

Virginia

Upper South

Wreck of the Royal Palm, The [Laws dG 51; Roud 4149]

Georgia

Deep South / Ozarks

Wreck of the Virginian No. 3 [Roud 14019]

West Virginia

Upper South

Wreck on the C & O, The [Laws G 3; Roud 255]

Virginia

Upper South

Wyoming Song [Roud 4979]

Wyoming

Mountain Region

Yankees Return from Camp [Roud 4501]

Connecticut

New England

Yellow Rose of Texas [Roud 2800]

Texas

Southwest

You Pretty Girls of Michigan [Roud 7921]

Michigan

Great Lakes

Young Charlotte [Laws G 17; Roud 260]

New York

Midland

Index

Note: This index omits the songs listed in the preceding Song Index (and references to names and places occurring within the song texts) but includes references to other song titles mentioned in both volumes. “Acres of Clams,” 621 Adams, James Taylor, 199, 274 Adams, Samuel, 51 Alamo, The, 515, 516 Albertson, Jim, 127, 128 Allen, Linda, 628 Allen, William (“Shan. T. Boy”), 434 Altgeld, Governor John Peter, 447, 452 Animals, The, 349 “Annie Laurie,” 446 Aristides, 68 Ashley, Clarence, 349 Attlesey Brothers (Shelton Brothers), 530 Avery, Rev. Ephraim K., 65–68 Avril, Charles, 627 Bailey, Green, 274, 275 Baker, Frankie, 376 Barry, Phillips, 32, 82, 83 Barter, George, 599

Battle of New Orleans, 245, 342, 346 “Battle of New Orleans, The,” 342 “Battle of Plattsburgh,” 102, 179 n.8 Bayard, Samuel, 139 Bayly, Thomas H., 604 Beauchamp, Jereboam O., 248, 249 Beck, Earl Clifton, 408, 412, 413, 414 Bee-Hive Songster, 602 Belden, Henry Marvin, 326, 369, 374 “Beulah Land,” 499, 500, 583, 624, 637 Bierce, Ambrose, 663 Bigbee, Jeanie, 630 Binford, Beulah, 205, 206 “Bingen on the Rhine,” 15, 253, 495, 611, 675 Bishop, Henry B., 604 “Black Velvet Band,” 651 Blackwell, Scrapper, 428 Bland, James Allen, 199, 200, 323 Blose, Mildred, 211

738

Blues ballad, 256, 312, 313, 376 Bonney, William H. (Billy the Kid), 552 Boone, Daniel, 244, 252, 289 n.104 Boston and Lowell Railroad, 56 Boston Manufacturing Company (Waltham Company), 18 Boston Tea Party, 41, 51, 54, 165 Bottle Alley, 117, 301 Bowen, Al, 453 “Bowery Gals,” 297 Braisted, Harry, 272 Braley, Ephraim, 521 Breaux, Amedee, 351 Breaux, Cleoma, 351 Brewster, Paul, 424 “Bright Mohawk Valley, The,” 513 Broady, Joseph A., 204 Brooks, Robert Hugh, 277 Brown, Dick (“Deadwood Dick”), 482 Brown, Richard “Rabbit,” 353, 354 Bryan, William Jennings, 279, 280 Buchan, Peter, 187 “Buena Vista Battlefield,” 335 “Buffalo Gals,” 297 “Buffalo Skinners,” 409, 419, 522, 549, 584 Burgoyne, General John, 51, 99–102 Burt, Olive Woolley, 224, 479, 560, 577, 579, 592 Buzzell, Joseph, 21 Cajun music, 340, 350, 351 “Caledonia,” 6 Callahan, Homer, 349 “Camptown Races, De” (“Gwine to Run All Night”), 656 “Canaday-I-O,” 521, 594 Canals, 7, 87, 88, 103, 104, 143, 148 “Captain Kidd,” 696 Card, Ken, 685 Carleton, Will, 440 Carlisle, Cliff, 651 Carr, Leroy, 428 “Carry Me Back to Tennessee,” 266, 268 Carson, Fiddlin’ John, 315, 318 Carson, Rosa Lee, 315 Carter, M. L., 638

INDEX

Carter, Stanley, 272 Carter family, 210, 212 “Casey at the Bat,” 661 “Casey Jones,” parodies of, 465, 567, 638 Cash, Johnny, 312 Cattle drives, 511, 549, 642 Cave, Thomas, 479 Cazden, Norman, 430 Chaplin, Ralph, 566 Chappell, Louis, 329 “Charles Guiteau,” 211, 374 Chavez, Francisco, 537 Cheney, Thomas, 605 Chicago fire, 112, 114 Chisholm, James, 603, 604 Chisholm, Jesse, 511 Chittenden, Larry, 554 Clayton, Paul, 670 Cleveland, President Grover, 452 Coffee, O. L., 242 Collins, Sam, 529 “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” 487 Connor, Babe, 376 Cook, Charles, 21 Cope Brothers, 283 Coverly, Nathaniel, 49, 103 Cowan, Frank, 394 “Cowboys’ Christmas Ball, The,” 554 “Cowboy’s Lament, The,” 417, 523 Cox, Billy, 685 Cox, John Harrington, 255 Crampton, Frank, 665 Craven, Braxton, 233, 234 “Crawford’s Defeat,” 393 Creek Indian war, 325, 326 Criminal’s last goodnight ballads, 63, 67, 153, 235 Critchlow, Slim, 533 “Croppy Boy, The,” 674 Cumberland, The, 195 Cumberland Gap, 185, 243, 252, 253, 264 Cutright, Margaret, 353 Czolgosz, Leon, 119 Dalhart, Vernon, 204, 221, 223, 280, 313, 318, 339 Damon, S. Foster, 246

INDEX

Darby, Tom, 309, 332, 333 Darrow, Clarence, 279 Davis, John, 602 Day, James William “Blind Bill” (aka “Jilson Setters”), 258, 272 Dean, John A., 492 “Dearest Mae,” 652 Debs, Eugene, 451, 452 Delaney, William (“Willie Wildwave”), 129, 130, 158 Deming, Leonard, 46, 48, 53, 85, 101, 142, 342 Derby, George Horatio (“Squibob”), 367 Dichter, Harry, 247 Dodge pension strike, 417 Dolph, Edward, 534 Dorr, Julia C. R., 41 Dorr, Thomas Wilson, 59, 69, 70, 71 “Down by the River Lived a Maiden,” 658 Down East Yankees, 2, 3, 35 “Down in Black Bottom,” 530 “Dream of the Miner’s Child,” 221 Dreiser, Theodore, 121, 426, 427 Dresser, Paul, 426 Driftwood, Jimmie, 342 Dula, Thomas C., 236 Dutch settlement, 96 “Dying Girl’s Lament, The,” 523 Dylan, Bob, 312, 349, 655 Eckstorm, Fannie Hardy, 4, 32 Eddy, Mary O., 403 Elbert, Samuel H., 692 “Ella Rhee,” 266, 268 Emerson, Nathaniel B., 687, 688, 689 Emrich, Duncan, 564, 612, 613 Erie Railroad, 114 “Eureka,” 581 Evanson, Jacob, 156, 157 Everest, Wesley, 627 “Face on the Barroom Floor, The,” 661 Farmer, Silas, 407 “Farmer and the Cowman, The,” 503 Fields, G. B., 451 Fiske, Rev. Perrin B., 26 Fletcher, John, 445

739

“Floating Scow of Old Virginia, The,” 652 “Flood of Shawneetown, or Broken Hearts and Homes,” 451 Floyd County Ramblers, 210 Forget Me Not Songster, 6, 67 “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow,” 578 Foster, Laura, 236 Foster, Morrison, 320, 321 Foster, Stephen C., 160, 250, 251, 320, 321, 589, 652, 653, 656 Fowke, Edith, 513 “Frankie and Johnny,” 235, 311, 348, 379 “Frankie Baker,” 379 Franklin, Benjamin, 4, 429 Franklin, James, 4 Franklin, Sir John, 673, 674 Fraterville mine explosion, 274, 275 Freeberg, Stan, 516 “Free Nigger, De” 573, 636 French, Frank, 580, 581 French Huguenots, 2, 292, 293 Freneau, Philip Morin, 87 Furlong, Charles Wellington, 642 Fuson, Harvey, 252, 261 Gainer, Patrick, 222 Gant, Charley L., 625 Garcia, Victoria, 540 Gardner Gail I., 536 Garfield, President James A., 119 Garst, John, 329 General Motors, 416 “Gentle Maiden, The,” 623 “Georgia Black Bottom,” 530 Georgia Crackers, 530 Georgia Sea Islands, 303 Ging, Catherine “Kitty” M., 464 “Girl I Left Behind Me, The,” 631 Girty, Simon, 392, 393 Gordon, Robert Winslow, 344, 349 Gottschalk, Louis Moreau, 343 Gould, Jay, 113, 114, 181 Gould, William Moses, 381 Gray, Roland Palmer, 4 Grayson, G. B., 232, 236, 275 Green, Archie, 565 Green, Delia (Delia Holmes), 309, 312

740

Green Mountain Songster, The, 13 Grover, Carrie B., 429 Gulick, Joe A., 177 Guthrie, Woody, 284 n.8, 349, 514, 615, 623, 628 Haglund, Ivar, 623 Hague, Eleanor, 645 “Hand Me Down My Walking Cane,” 323 Handy, William Christopher, 278 Hanson, Susan, 21 “Hard Times Come Again No More,” 589 Hargis-Cockrell feud, 260 Harmon, Abner Warren, 57, 58, 459, 461 Harrell, Kelly, 206, 242, 363 Harte, Bret, 76 Harvey, Roy, 224, 226 Haymarket Square riots, 447 Hays, Will S., 270, 271, 367 “Hell in Texas,” 683 Henry, Francis D., 622 Hickman, William Edward, 668 Higley, Dr. Brewster, VI, 497, 498 Hill, James J., 624 Hill, Joe, 626, 627 Hillbilly music, 132, 159, 178, 191, 204, 206, 214, 227, 266, 272, 309, 317, 328, 330, 333, 355, 377 Hobo’s Hornbook, The, 641, 661 “Ho for California” (“Banks of the Sacramento”), 590 “Home, Dearie, Home,” 533 “Home on the Range,” 592 Hopkins, Al, and his Bucklebusters, 214 Hopkinson, Francis, 137, 138 Horton, Johnny, 342 “House of the Rising Sun,” 349 Houston, Sam, 515, 516 Howe, Henry, 213, 271, 308 “How Firm a Foundation,” 236 Hurt, “Mississippi” John, 339, 378 Hutchinson family, 8, 15, 34, 253 “I’m a Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech,” 465, 613 “I’m on My Way to Reno,” 614 Immigration and immigrants: German, 2, 160, 292; Norwegian and Swedish,

INDEX

2, 463, 477, 478; Scots-Irish, 95, 134 “Indian Lass, The,” 343 Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W., “Wobblies”), 539, 626 “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” 567 Ives, Edward “Sandy,” 24 Jackson, General/President Andrew, 35, 245–47, 296, 319, 325, 326, 372 Jail songs, 444, 465, 470 n.83 James, Jesse, 371, 372 “Jealous Lover, The,” 426, 615 Jenkins, Rev. Andrew (Blind Andy), 211, 221, 313, 315, 316, 317, 318, 325, 339 Jennings, Waylon, 312 Jerome, William, 614 “Jesse James,” 332 Johnson, Charles and Paul, 643, 644 Johnson, Edward, 43 Johnson, Guy B., 315, 329 Johnson, Hannibal F., 582 Johnson family, 302 “Jolie Blonde,” 351 Jubilee, 304 “Just Before the Battle, Mother,” 461, 486, 571 Kansas-Nebraska Act, 366 Kerrigan, James J., 513 Key, Francis Scott, 168 Kincaid, Moses P., 490 “Kingdom Coming” (“Year of Jubilo”), 485 Kingston Trio, 236 Kittredge, George Lyman, 650 “Klondike Miner, The,” 675 Korson, George, 152 Kovaly, Andrew, 156 Lake Champlain, 25, 101, 102 “Lamentable Death of Polly, The,” 424 “Lamentation of James Rodgers, The,” 374 Langmaid, Josie A., 22 Lapage (also LePage or LaPagette), Joseph, 22 Laughead, W. B., 459 Lavake, Larry, 129, 130

INDEX

Ledbetter, Huddie (Leadbelly), 349, 529 Lee, Powder River Jack, 568 Let ‘Er Buck, 642 Lewey, Fred Jackson, 204 Lewis, Jonathan, 233, 234 “Lightning Express, The,” 685 “Lillibulero,” 596 Lincoln, President Abraham, 15, 172, 293, 298, 303, 304, 308, 355 Lindbergh, Col. Charles, 132, 133 Linscott, Eloise Hubbard, 21, 87 Little, Frank, 627 Little Red Songbook, 566, 627 Lomax, Alan, 236, 312, 349 Lomax, John A., 236, 349 “Lord Randall,” 691 Lovewell, Capt., 4, 22 Lowell, Francis Cabot, 18 Lowell, Mass., textile mills, 18, 19, 20 Ludlow, Noah Miller, 246 Lumbering, lumber industry, lumbermen, 2, 6, 8, 9, 11, 30, 212, 220 Lyons, Rev. Lorenzo, 690 Macon, Uncle Dave, 280 Maddox, Rose, and the Maddox Brothers, 615 “Mademoiselle from Armentiers,” 696 Mahoe, Noelani, 692 Mainer, J. E., 238 Malloy, Dan, 411 Manning, Leola, 281 “Marching through Georgia,” 596, 602 Mardi Gras, 350, 351 “Marseillaise,” 447 “Mary Blane,” 652 Maynard, Francis Henry, 523 McClintock, Harry “Haywire Mac,” 422 McGhee, John, 405 McIntire, Rufus, 4, 5 McIntosh, David S., 446 McMichen, Clayton, 362 McPhail, “Black Bottom,” 530 Mechem, Kirke, 497 Meeks, Cleburne C., 223 Melton, Ann Foster, 236 Merrimac(k), 195, 196 Milburn, George, 148, 641, 661

741

Miller, Bob, 132, 134, 224, 405, 685 Miller, Mitch, 516 Mills, Randall V., 639 “Milwaukee Fire,” 300 Miner, Charles, 140, 141 Minstrel stage, minstrel music, 72, 148, 190, 200, 296, 305, 320, 382 n.7 Missouri Compromise, 365 “Mistletoe Bough, The,” 604 Molly Maguires, 153 Monger, Nina, 211 Monitor, 196 Monroe, Bill, 254, 651 Montez, Lola, 647 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 124 Mormons, 439, 594 – 604, 606 Morris, Jess, 572, 573 “Murder of Laura Foster, The,” 236 Murray, Billy, 614 Murray, Jean, 677 “My Maryland,” 490 Myrick, Timothy, 82–83 Nelson, Scott, 329 New Amsterdam, 76, 95, 160 New Green Mountain Songster, 7 Newhouse, John, 565 “New York Gals,” 657 Norton, Lady Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan, 253, 495, 611, 675 Oaks, Charlie, 261, 277, 280 Odum, Howard W., 315 “Oh, Susanna,” 652 “Old Dan Tucker,” 652 “Old Montana,” 569 “[Old] Rosin the Beau.” See “Rosin the Beau” Oregon Short Line, 584 Osborne, Jimmie, 670 Osborne, Louis Shreve, 10 “Our Mabel,” 513 Owens, Suzanne, 427 Parker, Maggie Hammons, 220 Pelham, R. W. “Dick,” 190 Pennsylvania Dutch (German), 134, 160 Petrie, Mr., 246, 247

742

“Philadelphia Lawyer, The,” 615 Philadelphia Nativist Riots, 147 Pinkerton Agency, 153, 157, 158, 315 Piper, Edwin Ford, 477 Poole, Charlie, 178, 226 Pound, Louise, 574 Powers, Harry, 228 Proffitt, Frank, 236 Puckett, Riley, 119, 362 Purkey, Elaine, 230 “Put on Your Old Gray Bonnet,” 638 Queen Liliuokalani, 690 Rabb, Kate Milner, 420 Randall, James Ryder, 170 –73 Randolph, Vance, 356 “Red River Valley,” tune used, 355 Reece, Florence, 263 Reed, Alfred, 221, 227 Regulators, 231 “Reuben and Rachel,” 478 Revolutionary War, 13, 18, 48, 59, 71, 99, 102, 124, 192, 194, 293, 319 Reynolds, Barney, 435 Rhoades, Charley (pseudonym for Charles Bensell), 609, 654, 655 Rice, Dan, 632 Rice, William, 298 Rickaby, Franz, 465 Roberts, Loren, 627 Robison, Carson J., 159, 223, 280, 339 Rodgers, Jimmie, 313 Rojo, Trinidad A., 684 Root, George W. (G. Friedrich Wurzel), 72, 73, 461, 486, 571, 626 “Root Hog or Die,” 533 “Rosin the Beau,” 490, 623 Sandburg, Carl, 104, 455, 513, 641 San Francisco longshoremen’s strike, 669, 670 Santa Anna, Antonio López de, 515, 516 Saxe, John Godfrey, 36 Scanlon, William J., 114 Schwartz, Jean, 614 Scioto Company, 395

INDEX

Scoggins, C. H., 627 Scott, Joe, 24 Scott, Kuppy, 417 Seeger, Pete, 312 Seminole Indians, relocation of, 320 Shank, D. M., 210 Shelton Brothers, 530 Sherman, General William T., 303, 308, 335 Slater, Morris (“Railroad Bill”), 330 Slave songs, 303, 343 Smith, Alfred E., 122 Smith, Hyrum, 438, 604 Smith, Joseph, 438, 604 Smith, Seba, 34, 35, 106 Smith, Walter “Kid,” 241 Spaeth, Sigmund, 15, 379 Spivey, Victoria, 492 “Star Spangled Banner, The,” 67, 68, 166, 167 “State of Arkansas,” 409 Stebbins, Rufus, 82 Stephens, Frank, 164 Steunenberg, Frank, 586 Stevens, James, 459 “Stewball,” 254 Stites, Edgar Page, 499 Stokes, Edward S., 114 Stone, John A. (“Old Put”), 367, 647, 651, 695 n.56 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 251 Swain, William, 81 “Swede from North Dakota, The,” 628 “Sweet Marie,” 679 Tait-Douglas, Fred, 159 Talmadge, Herman, 319 Tarlton, Jimmie, 309, 332, 333 Taylor, William W., 484, 485 Texas Rangers, 422, 520 Thomas, Jean, 258, 272 Thompson, Ernest, 379 Thompson, Henry K., 11 Thomson, Samuel, and Thomsonianism, 81 Thorp, Jack, 422, 522, 525, 534 Titanic disaster, 239, 281

INDEX

Tobacco Tags, The, 614 Toelken, J. Barre, 585 Tolliver-Martin feud, 258 Trail of Tears, 509, 510 “Tramp Miner’s Song,” 564 “Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the Boys are Marching,” 626 Treaty of Paris, 2, 213, 265, 293, 325, 333 “Turkey in the Straw,” 297 Twain, Mark, 367 “Unfortunate Miss Bailey,” 246, 247, 289 n.100 “Unfortunate Rake, The,” 523 Upham, Rev. Thomas C., 32 Van Ronk, Dave, 349 Villa, Francisco “Pancho,” 542, 545, 557 n.58 “Villikins and His Dinah,” 651 Vincent, Leopold, 492 Warman, Cy, 593, 678, 679 Warner, Frank, 96, 236 War of 1812, 18, 42, 48, 51, 53, 80, 86, 102, 142, 143, 168, 192, 246, 326, 342 Warren, Joseph, 48, 49 Warren, Robert Penn, 249 Webb, Uriah N., 199 Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, 5

743

Wehman, Henry J., 44, 154, 249, 269 West, Emily, 516 West, Mae, 379 Westendorf, Thomas P., 449 “We Won’t Go Home Til Morning,” 578 “When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” 564 “Where the Silvery Colorado Wends Its Way,” 627 White, Josh, 312 Whitecotton, Moses, 420, 421 Whitley, Ray, 685 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 27, 29, 498 Wiggins, Ella May, 242 “Wild Colonial Boy, The,” 563 Wilgus, D. K., 256 “William and Dinah,” 651 Winner, Septimus, 169, 173, 266, 267, 268 “Wonderful Song of ‘Over There,’ The,” 696 Woodward, John, 367 Woodworth, Samuel, 246, 247 Work, Henry Clay, 204, 308, 485 “Yankee Doodle,” 78, 79, 138, 195 Young, Brigham, 438, 571, 594, 595, 599, 602, 606, 651 Younger, Cole, 456 –57 “Zip Coon,” 343 Zydeco music, 340

About the Author NORM COHEN is the author of Folk Music: A Regional Exploration (2005), Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong (2nd edn., 2001), Traditional Anglo-American Folk Music: An Annotated Discography of Published Recordings (1994), and other volumes. He has edited and/or annotated more than three dozen albums of folk and country music, has written numerous articles, book chapters, and book reviews on various aspects of folk, country, and popular music; has been recordings review editor for Journal of American Folklore (1968– 69, 1986 –90) and Western Folklore (1970 –75); and was editor of the JEMF Quarterly (1966 –88). In 1996 he received the Dena Epstein Award for Archival and Library Research in American Music, administered by the Music Library Association, for the study of 19th-century American pocket songsters. He is a retired physical chemist and currently teaches chemistry at Portland Community College.