280. Who Would Have Tho't Harmon

277-280. Regulator Songs


280

Who Would Have Tho't Harmon

To his brief account of Rednap Howell, Caruthers adds this
footnote : "The following lines written by Rednap Howel, and in
the dialogue form, are here inserted, merely for the representation
which they give of the character and personal appearance of the
two men to whom they refer"; and he quotes the verses. ^^

The "dialogue" would seem to be between "Frank" and "Ned"
and to be concerned with any one of a number of incidents in
which "Harmon" and "Hunter" negotiated with county or provin-
cial officials. "Frank" is probably Francis Nash, County Clerk.
"Ned" is doubtless Edmund Fanning. Of the two men to whom
both the verses and the interlocutor refer, "Harmon" is undoubtedly
Harmon Husband. "Hunter" may be James Hunter, an Orange
county citizen of property and influence. In 1768 he went with
Rednap Howell to deliver a petition to Governor Tryon. He pre-
sented the bold petition to Judge Henderson at the September 1770
term of the Hillsboro court and with others broke up the court.
At the battle of Alamance he was asked to take command but

" Op. cit., p. 130.

'" One of the "two others" has been previously described under 'When
Fanning First to Orange Came,' above.
" Op. cit., pp. 129-30.

 

6S4 NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLORE

refused, saying, "We are all free men, and every man must com-
mand himself. ""^^

Who would have tho't Harmon, that hum drum old fox,
Who looks so bemeaning with his towsled locks,
Would have had resolution to stand to the tack ;
Alas my dear Ned, our case is quite black.
And who would have tho't Hunter, so seemingly mild,
Would have been so gigantic, mischievous and wild,
I tho't him a fool, and I took him for one ;
Alas my dear Frank, our cause is undone.
Like Turkish Bashaws they bear absolute sway ;
Alas my dear Frank, we must all run away.

This little group of spirited pieces about the Regulators is cer-
tainly rare, possibly unique, in American folk song.

It is rare in the earliness of its certain dating. References to
folk song are very scarce in colonial writings. One of the earliest
and most specific occurs in Cotton Mather's diary for September
V, 1713:

I am informed, that the Minds and Manners of many people about the
Countrey are much corrupted by foolish Songs and Ballads, which Hawk-
ers and Peddlars carry into all parts of the Countrey. By way of anti-
dote, I would procure poetical Composures full of Piety, and such as
may have a tendency to advance Truth and Goodness, to be published,
and scattered into all corners of the Land. There may be an extract of
some, from the excellent Watts' Hymns.'"'

It may have been noticed that Mather does not distinguish be-
tween native and imported pieces. That there were plenty of the
latter is attested by hundreds, of English, Scottish, and Irish origin,
many of them brought in as broadsides, present in standard Ameri-
can folk-song collections today, most of them still current. But of
indigenous pieces there is scanty record and scantier survival.
Moses Coit Tyler, writing in 1878, mentions three pre-Revolutionary
historical pieces, apparently unrelated to one another, as still popular
in New England. A fourth "historical ballad composed in America
of which texts are available is LoveivclVs Fight, recording a struggle
with Indians in Maine, 8 May, 1725."^^ Writing in 1922, Louise
Pound stated :

Nothing indigenous lives from colonial times, so far as is known. Nor
does anything live from the Revolutionary War and the days following,
except Yankee Doodle, which is sung to an Irish melody, and a few
patriotic songs. These have an established popularity quite apart from

^^ Colonial Records, vii and vui, passim. (Some of Hunter's letters
appear in the Southern History Collection of the University of North
Carolina Library.)

^'^ Quoted by Louise Pound, "Oral Literature," Cambridge History of
American Literature, ni, 503.

" Ibid., p. 504.

 

NORTH CAROLINA BALLADS 655

the traditional and the oral. They have entered into traditional currency
but are far from dependent on it.'"

So far as we know, the sole surviving traditional ballad from colo-
nial times is 'Springfield Mountain.' "Although the event on
which it is based is of the eighteenth century (the death from snake-
bite of Timothy Myrick of Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1761),"
Phillips Barry found "no evidence that the ballad is of earlier date
than the second quarter of the last century."-*" On the other hand,
the songs of the North Carolina Regulators date certainly between
1765 and 1 77 1. So nmch for their rarity.

Their possible uniqueness is indicated by the absence of any
record anywhere else, known to me or mentioned in anything I have
ever read, of a group of four native American songs, in all prob-
ability of common authorship, certainly with similar marks of style,
having to do with one episode and knov/n to have been sung in a
large community and remembered orally for two or three genera-
tions.