American Ballads and Songs
by Louise Pound- 1922
[I've divided the ballads and songs up by chapters as presented by Pound. The chapters are attached to this page on the left hand column (click to open). When I have time, I will do individual songs attached to the chapters. This book is Pound's primary contribution of folk lyrics. This is a collection of texts only. See Pound's 1921 book, Poetic Origins and the Ballad and she is included in my Song Collection section where you can read articles she has written and reviews of her work.
Of particular importance to me are two song texts that are early versions of what would become the song/ballad "Banks of the Ohio" which has become a popular bluegrass standard.
This page has Title Page, Preface, Contents, Introduction and Index. The Song Notes have been added to the individual songs and are found at teh end of each chapter. R. Matteson 2011]
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[Title Page]
AMERICAN DIVISION
V. AMERICAN BALLADS AND SONGS
THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY
EACH VOLUME EDITED BY A LEADING AMERICAN AUTHORITY
This series is composed of such works as are conspicuous in the province of literature for their enduring influence. Every volume is recognized as essential to a liberal education and will tend to infuse a love for true literature and an appreciation of the qualities which cause it to endure.
A descriptive list of the volumes published in this series appears in the last pages of this volume
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
AMERICAN DIVISION
AMERICAN BALLADS AND SONGS
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY LOUISE POUND
PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS: NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON
TO
H. M. BELDEN
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PREFACE
This anthology is intended to present to lovers of traditional song such selections as shall illustrate the main classes and types having currency in Englishspeaking North America. The interest attaching to them is partly literary, partly historical, and partly the interest of folk-lore.
The choice of pieces has not been made on the ground of poetical quality, although this has been taken into account. The aim is rather to display the typical songs and ballads liked by the people and lingering among them. The arrangement is neither chronological nor regional but is based upon type of material. Some of the texts are printed for the first time while others have appeared in various places. Occasionally variant texts have been introduced, to illustrate the multiple forms which may be assumed by a single ballad. In a few instances, where it seemed to have interest, a manuscript version is reproduced literatim. The provenience of the ballad included is entered in the notes, and—where this can be determined—the history of the ballad is sketched. But an effort has been made not to burden the notes with great detail or abundant comment, since the purpose of the anthology is literary and illustrative rather than scholarly and critical.
The collection is addressed to students of poetry and lovers of folk-song and to those who care for traditional pieces as social documents which reflect the life and traditions of those who preserve them.
The editor wishes to make grateful acknowledgment to Professors H. M. Belden, Lowry. C. Wimberly, Edwin F. Piper, Reed Smith and others, who have assisted her in various ways, especially by sending her desirable texts. Thanks are due to the Macmillan Publishing Company for permission to reprint four or five texts from the Cowboy Songs of John A. Lomax, to the H. W. Gray Company for permission to print a text from Miss Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway's Lonesome Tunes, to Boosey and Company for two texts from Miss Josephine McGill's Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, to the Princeton University Press for a text from W. Roy Mackenzie's The Quest of the Ballad, and to G. P. Putnam's Sons for the reprinting of several texts from Mrs. Campbell's and Cecil J. Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. The editor is indebted for the suggestion that she make an anthology of American folk-song to Mr. Carl Van Doren.
Louise Pound
University of Nebraska
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CONTENTS
PAGE
ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH BALLADS IN AMERICA
1. Johnny Randall 3
2. Lord Lovel 4
3. Barbara Allen 7
4. The Two Sisters 11
5. The Jewish Lady 13
6. The Wife Wrapt In Wether's Skin .... 16
7. Children's Song 18
8. The Cruel Brother 21
9. Edward 23
10. The Lowlands Low 24
11. Three Sailor Boys 26
12. Lord Thomas 27
13. The Hangman's Song 31
14. Lord Bayham 33
15. Little Matthy Groves 37
16. Sweet William 40
17. The House Carpenter 43
18. Two Little Boys 45
19. The Cherry Tree Carol 47
20. The False Knight 48
OTHER IMPORTED BALLADS AND SONGS
21. The Drowsy Sleeper 51
22. The Bamboo Briars 53
23. The Boston Burglar 57
24. The Butcher's Boy 60
25. The Death Op A Romish Lady 63
26. Johnny And Betsy 66
27. The Soldier 68
28. The Farmer's Boy 69
29. The Rich Young Farmer 71
30. The Lover's Return 73
31. 'the Prentice Boy 74
32. The Constant Farmer's Son 76
33. Mollie Bond 78
34. My Father's Gray Mare 80
35. Mary O' The Wild Moor 81
36. Father Grumble 82
37. Gut Fawkes 84
38. William Reilly's Courtship 86
39. Jack Riley 89
NATIVE BALLADS AND SONGS
40. The Battle Of Point Pleasant 93
41. James Bird 93
42. Springfield Mountain 97
43. The Jealous Lover 101
44. Young Charlotte 103
45. The Old Shawnee 108
46. The Man That Wouldn't Hoe Corn . . . .110
47. Wicked Polly 111
48. Johnny Sands 114
49. Fuller And Warren 116
50. Poor Goins 118
51. Pooromie 119
52. Silver Dagger 121
53. The Aged Indian 124
54. Calomel 126
55. The Creole Girl 127
56. The Blue And The Gray 129
57. The Gambler 130
58. The Baggage Coach Ahead 131
59. Casey Jones 133
60. The Lady Elgin 134
61. The Jamestown Flood 135
62. The Milwaukee Fire 138
63. The Fatal Wedding 140
BALLADS OF CRIMINALS AND OUTLAWS
64. Jesse James 145
65. Charles Guiteau 146
66. Sam Bass 149
67. Jack Williams 152
68. Young Mcfee 153
69. My Bonny Black Bess 155
70. Turpin And The Lawyer 157
71. Jack Donahoo 158
72. Captain Kidd 160
WESTERN BALLADS AND SONGS
73. The Texas Rangers 163
74. The Little Old Sod Shanty On The Claim . . 165
75. Cowboy Song 166
76. The Old Chisholm Trail 167
77. The Dying Cowboy 170
78. O Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie . . .171
79. I Want To Be A Cowboy 173
80. Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Alono Little Doqies . 174
81. Cheyenne Boys 175
82. Breaking In A Tenderfoot 176
83. Starving To Death On A Government Claim . . 178
84. The Buffalo Skinners 181
85. The Kinkaiders' Song 184
86. Dakota Land 185
87. The Dreary Black Hills ........ 185
88. Joe Bowers 186
89. In The Summer Of Sixty 189
90. The Dying Californian 191
MISCELLANEOUS BALLADS AND SONGS
91. The Pretty Mohea 197
92. Katie's Secret 198
93. Mary And Willie 200
94. Kitty Wells 202
95. Pastoral Elegy 203
96. The Courtship Of Billy Grimes 205
97. Fair Fanny Moore 206
98. I Wish I Was Single Again 207
99. I'll Not Marry At All 208
100. Rosen The Bow 209
101. Evalina 211
102. My Blue-eyed Boy 212
103. The Old Gray Mule 213
104. I Will Tell You Of A Fellow 214
105. The Preacher's Legacy 216
106. The Spanish Cabineer 218
107. The Two Drummers 218
DIALOGUE, NURSERY AND GAME SONGS
108. The Quaker's Courtship 223
109. Dutchman, Dutchman, Won't You Marry Me? 224
110. What Will You Give Me If I Get Up? . . .225
111. Paper Of Pins 226
112. The Milkmaid 228
113. Billy Boy 231
114. Poor Robin 232
115. Babes In The Woods 233
116. In Good Old Colony Times 234
117. Let's Go To The Woods 235
118. I Bought Me A Wife 236
119. We'll All Go Down To Rowser's 237
120. Sweet Fields Of Violo 238
INDEX 241
NOTES 247
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INTRODUCTION
I. The pieces in the following collection depend for their vitality upon oral, not upon written, transmission. They have a subliterate existence, as apart from verse preserved in a form fixed by the printed page. They are to be distinguished from folk-songs like Yankee Doodle, John Brown, Hail Columbia, although these well-known songs belong even more properly to the "people as a whole" than do the songs in this anthology. Those included here are known to singers in scattered places; they have circulation in certain regions, among certain groups; and some of them find very large currency indeed. But other regions of America and other classes of people do not know them at all. Patriotic songs like America, and those named above, have nation-wide popularity. They are the property, not of the folk in certain sections and groups, but of the people of the United States. Their currency is not sporadic but universal. The real distinction, however, between folk-songs of the one type and of the other does not hinge upon their degree of currency among the people; it is something quite different. Songs handed on by the printed page are static; traditional pieces, handed on orally from mouth to mouth, are in a state of flux. This is the most valid distinction which can be made for folk-song proper as differentiated from book or semi-literary verse or from popular song in general. Traditional songs, or genuine oral songs or folk-songs, have no existence fixed by print. They have no standard form but are continually changing.
Other characteristics of genuine folk-songs are that they have retained their vitality through a fair period of time and that all sense of their authorship and provemence"has been lost by their singers. Criteria of origin for the genuineness of folk-song have no dependability. A body of folk-song is increased by pieces of many origins; especially by the adaptation of old pieces, and by the absorption and metamorphosis into the stream of oral tradition of popular verse of many book or literary types. The only valid tests of genuine folk-song are not based on manner of origin but are the three just named. Genuine folk-songs are not static but are in a state of flux; they have been handed*down through a fair period of time; and all sense of their authorship and origin has been lost.
The songs included in the following volume are for the most part simple in type, and they have been gathered in many parts of the United States. They come from scattered sources and from the tongues of many kinds of singers. Both songs telling a story, or ballads proper, and purely lyrical pieces have been included. The dividing line is sometimes hard to draw; for ballads often lose their thread of story and become pure lyrics. The reverse process, namely, that songs in oral tradition gradually assume a narrative element and become ballads, appears rarely if at all. Inferior pieces are included liberally in the volume as well as those of better quality. Whatever types have appealed to the folk-consciousness sufficiently to win preservation for themselves have been held to deserve representation.
Some delimitations have been observed, however. Songs of the following types are well known to many singers who have never seen them in print, but they have not been given representation in these pages: patriotic pieces, like America, Yankee Doodle, or national songs like John Brown, A Hot Time; popular religious songs, like Onward Christian Soldiers; pseudonegro songs, like Sewanee River, My Old Kentucky Home; sentimental songs, like Juanita, Lorena, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. For one thing, such songs are very familiar. They are easily accessible in print and there are no fascinating mysteries connected with their history. But of more importance is the fact that they have-not been dependent upon oral Traditioji^f~Tneir irerpetuation. Turther, little representation is given in these pages to children's songs and game songs and nursery rhymes. These form a separate subject; and so, for the most part, do negro and pseudo-negro songs. The most genuine American oral literature of all, that of the American Indian, assuredly forms a separate and wholly distinct subject. It needs treatment by itself. It bulks large and is part of the social history of America; but it has been without influence on the native traditional song in the English tongue.
II. The oral versions of folk-song are practically innumerable. A book of the size of the present volume I could be filled by the variant versions of half a dozen I of the pieces included in it. But it should be borne jin mind that the variations of the folk are instinctive and unconscious, not deliberate. There are countless shiftings and omissions or additions in the mouths of varying singers, but they are unintentional. Alteration arises through slips of memory, local adaptations (as the substitution of names), and through the omissions and the insertions of individual singers. Many are due to confusion with other ballads or to personal tastes or prejudices Nor is it always the fortunate changes which persist, though some scholars seem to think this. Stupid or garrulous changes persist also. Crossings with other ballads may disorder a song until it remains merely a heap of confused materials. Another song may glide onward from generation to generation keeping the situation—generally.a tragic situation—which is its soul; but transforming its phrases and stanzas. Sometimes very old narratives, despite their multiform transformations, have in most variants not yet lost their thread of story or become transformed beyond recognition. This is the case in the well-known ballads Lord Randal[1] and The Two Sisters.[2]
On the whole, the influence of folk-transmission is a levelling influence. It conventionalizes according to its traditions. The total effect of its alterations, contributions, and curtailments is to bring homogeneity in style and manner of narration. Imported songs, I once of totally different character, accommodate; themselves to the regional modes and characteristics of their new home. Some effective incident or story, presented in a simple memorable way, commends itself to the folk-consciousness. Gradually it transforms itself in agreement with the tastes and traditions of the localities where it becomes domesticated, and sometimes it ends as something quite different from what it was when it began.
It is usual to look upon ballads with some degree of indulgence as verse of a singularly "artless" kind. For that reason those who are in reaction from book verse find in it peculiar pleasure. The truth is, however, that the antithesis should be drawn between poetry of the folk and poetry of culture, not poetry of "art." Art is not the same thing as culture and is not dependent upon it. The most primitive people may have its own kind of art. Ballads are often themselves relics of culture poetry, and they have their own art, traditions, and etiquette. These may be naive, but it would never occur to the singers to wish for innovations, or for something more elaborate. From the art, traditions, and etiquette that it knows, the folk never wavers. Departure from them, within the limits of a period or place, is out of the question. It is always surprising that such variety may appear in the handling of stock material, yet so little inventiveness be exhibited, or novelty in technique.
III. Ballad singing was once a dignified means of entertaining a company. There was singing at social gatherings and at the games and dances of young folks, as well as on occasions of more impromptu character. Singing of this type is now much restricted, but it lingers in out-of-the-way places, as in the chimney nooks of farm houses, or by the stove in the cross-roads store. Ballad singing is not often to be heard from beggars and cripples, as once so typically in the Old World, nor on village greens; but casual knots of listeners may still be entertained by them in the cabin, in the cornfield, or by the creek. Occasionally they are heard in village parlors, or here and there in the drawing rooms of cities. Bits of picturesque old songs may sometimes be heard from children, who learned them from neighboring families or picked them up in the street. Ballads are most alive in the mountainous regions of the Southeast and on Western ranches. The more isolated the region, the better the .chance for the survival of old songs. They may be sung to the fiddle or accordion, the mouth-harp, or occasionally to a cabinet organ. In the Cumberland mountains they are still sung to the banjo or to the "dulcimore," a three-stringed instrument plucked with the fingers, descending from Elizabethan days.
It is often a difficult matter to secure songs from the singers with good voices and retentive memories who know them best. Every collector has had experience with those whose modesty or perversity or fear of ridicule makes them unwilling to sing, for purposes of notation, the pieces in their repertory.
Even in the older and more isolated regions the influx I of modern music has replaced traditional pieces by those in contemporary vogue. And the lessening of illiteracy has made remote communities less dependent, for entertainment on what has been handed down. The prestige has diminished of singers with large repertories for whom, as for their audiences, the printed page means nothing. The broad-sheets containing older songs have been destroyed with the passing of the taste for them. In some communities, religious motives have lain behind the discarding of traditional pieces. They were thought to be "ungodly" by their singers. As time goes on, the popularity of the vicarious music of the phonograph (with the possibilities of variety and novelty afforded by its records) and the introduction of other forms of amusement have lessened the amount of singing for entertainment. It is not to be expected that singing will die out. Probably there will always be circulation of older songs apart from the printed page, in outlying regions where growth and change come slowly; but traditional song will not play the same role as formerly, and the songs entering into oral currency will be fewer and shorter lived. At the present time, the very multiplicity of new pieces lessens the chance that many will survive. When rural folk were thrown back almost solely upon song for diversion, it loomed larger and was more likely to retain vitality.
As regards regional distribution, traditional songs of the character of those included in this volume are found most abundantly in New England and in the Southern Appalachian region, in the Southwest, and in the Middle West. At least these are the regions which have been canvassed with the best results by collectors. Canada also has yielded material. Nearly any kind of piece may be found in any region; but, on the whole, English and Scottish pieces of the romantic and legendary type have been best preserved in New England /and in the South. As they have roamed westward 'they have lost their archaic flavor and many of their distinguishing touches. Pieces of all types which have reached the West, even when ultimately from the Old World, have lost their former associations, and are likely to sound as though they sprang up in the loeality which preserves them.
IV. The characters and manners of the American ballads betray their varying origins and the divergent' social groups among which they have lingered. In the imported romantic and legendary ballads highborn personages sometimes retain their titles of nobility and their aristocratic adventures are not lost. More often, if such pieces have been long in the New World, the characters, localities, and stories are accommodated to a New World setting. There is loss of romantic features and disappearance of many archaic literary touches in expression. Manners remain elemental. The preservation of the bare stories gives no chance for explanation or for subtleties. Evil stands out stark and goodness is equally unqualified. The "true love" is simple and devoted, the parents stern or harsh; lovers are eternally attached, or faithless and murderous. Favorite characters in the imported pieces are knights and ladies, apprentices from London, lovers back from wars, highwaymen, criminals, and thieves. On the whole, the Western songs are those which reflect most faithfully local conditions and characters. They tell of privations on government claims, of mining fevers, of cattle and "bosses" and the adventures of cowboys, of shooting affrays, and of the confessions of criminals and rovers. The occasional theme of death for love, appearing in American ballads, reflects the survival in folk-literature of what was once a widespread literary convention. In the "complaints" of the troubadours and of their lyric successors, as the sonneteers, death from Jove was the inevitable prospect held out as in store for himself by the singer or the poet, if the object of his adoration did not prove kind. Verse of this type lasted into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Dying for love is the theme of Barbara Allen's Cruelty, and it helps to fix the period from which this ballad must have emerged. But death from love as a central motive has passed from present-day song as it did long ago from book verse; though sentimental song in general plays as large a role as ever in popular literature. So has the murderous lover, who was once so conspicuous a figure, passed from contemporary verse, though he lingers in folk-song. There is little violence in song of the present day and there are fewer striking stories. Serious or tragic stories hardly play any part in the song of our own time. Nor is it probable that much popular contemporary song will win foothold or prove to be long-lived. A favorite like Tipperary will not persist as did Willie Reilly, for example, which has a clear-cut and popular story and which gained its currency through coming into use as a campaign song. In general, themes and modes which have long been given up in the circles that knew them first remain alive in out-of-the-way places. Folk literature reflects the tastes in themes, the characters, manners, and stories of book or semi-literary verse of earlier generations. A considerable section of it carries into the present the wreckage of the culture poetry of the past. [3]
V. The type of traditional songs first to claim the interest and attention of American lovers of balladry is imported, namely, English and Scottish popular ballads surviving in the United States. Something of Old World legend and romance is echoed in these immigrants from the British Isles which have found a home in a new land. Next in interest comes the group of American songs which is in strongest contrast, namely, frontier, pioneer, or cowboy pieces: songs of emigrants westward, of frontier conditions, and frontier characters, or of outlaws and criminals and rovers. Both varieties of song, the imported and the Western, are shrinking in bulk, the one with the fading of such song at its Oid World sources, hence in its importation by immigrants, the other with the advance of population into Western outposts. A third important group of American traditional songs consists of love pieces of various kinds, which, whether inherited or indigenous, mostly conform to Old World patterns. Such are songs of the constant or the inconstant lover, of the reunion of parted lovers, of the murderous lover, or of lovers thwarted. The forsaken girl is the theme of many ballads and songs, and many pieces hinge upon the attitude of harsh parents. Such songs are famttiar and abundant on both sides of the Atlantic, and they need little illustration. Beside songs from older and from later British sources there are many which show derivation from, or reference to, Ireland. There are some American pieces which retain supernatural elements, or make allusion to the supernatural; but on the whole ballads of the supernatural play a shrunken role in the New World.
A rough classification of the remaining types of American song would include a few songs of shipwreck or of the lost at sea, some Indian or pseudo-Indian songs like The Pretty Mohea or The Aged Indian, many humorous songs or song-stories—often finding their chief hold upon the memory in some single line—like I Wish I was Single Again or I'll Not Marry at All, songs of highwaymen like the British Dick Turpin, the Australian Jack Donahoo, the American Jesse James, or of the pirate Captain Kidd. There are also many death-bed confession pieces and somewhat ephemeral songs of local murders, assassinations, and disasters. There are moralities and religious songs, temperance songs, pathetic songs of orphans and infants, songs of occupational pursuits like farm and ranch life and railway songs; and, lastly, traditional game and dance and nursery songs of American children. These last need a volume to themselves and have been given little space in these pages.
The colonists who came to this country from England in the seventeenth century undoubtedly brought with them folk-songs of many types then popular in England. The ungodly songs censored by Cotton Mather were probably street songs, amatory or ribald, which he wished to see replaced by those of more pious character. Among them may have been some of the traditional English and Scottish ballads. It is quite possible that a few Old World ballads have been recovered in this country in an earlier form than that which survives in England. This may be true for Barbara Allen's Cruelty, some texts of which—as pointed out by Professor C. Alphonso Smith[3]—supply a hiatus in the narrative of British texts; and it may be true for The Maid Freed from the Gallows. The song of Betsy Brown, when Professor Firth's text[4] is compared with some of those found in this country, seems to have retained integrity better in its New World form. The Romish Lady, dating from the era of Protestant martyrs, remains very close in its American derivatives to the broadside text of the time of Charles II, which is the earliest text of it preserved in England. It seems to play little or no r61e in later British traditional song but has found a good deal of currency on this side of the Atlantic. Since colonial times, folk-songs have been brought over by nearly every influx of newcomers. Immigrants from Ireland especially have brought over /many songs. One "classic" from this source, much adapted and disguised, is The Dying Cowboy.
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 the traditional and the oral. They have entered into traditional currency but are far from dependent on it. A still recognizable indigenous piece from the eighteenth century is Springfield Mountain, which has had astonishing vitality in view of its inferior quality. From the War of 1812 remain a few fragments like the children's game song "We're Marching on to Old Quebec" and a song concerning the British ship, the Boxer. The Civil War left us John Brown, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, Marching through Georgia, etc., but these, like America and Hail, Columbia, though they are usually called "American folk-songs," are not dependent for perpetuation upon oral tradition. Some battle and campaign songs, songs of special events, and elegiac pieces have survived from the Civil War. A number hro&e been salvaged in Missouri by Professor H. M. Belden, and in the Cumberland Mountains by Professor H. G. Shearin. But songs of this type have little interest and fade early. Many sentimental songs from the middle decades of the nineteenth century are still current, notably Mrs. Norton's Juanita and H. D. L. Webster's Lorena. These are favorite songs among ranchmen, cowboys, and others, who are utterly unconscious of their provenience. But the great legacy for American song from the period of the Civil War is the legacy of negro song, plantation songs, and the pseudo-negro songs of composers like Stephen C. Foster, Henry C. Work, Will S. Hays. Owing to their distinctive qualities and peculiar appeal, a striking number of these pieces remain in popular currency, and they constitute an attractive portion of our song. Some of the comic negro songs, like Jim Crow, Zip Coon, Settin' on a Rail, which are still alive in traditional circulation, date from a period earlier than the Civil War; but all types of negro songs gained impetus during the war period and they owe to the feeling and the interests which were bound up with it much of their diffusion and persistence. The Cuban War, later in the century, bequeathed There'll Be a Hoi Time in the Old Town Tonight to folk-song, and the recent European war will probably leave its quota of favorites, though it is yet too early to predict which of them will find longest life.
VI. Traditional songs differ in their origin, history, and the impetus for their diffusion. To some pieces dates can be affixed and their development followed. Others come from an uncertain past. They seem to, issue from nowhere in particular and to roam unaccountably from region to region. The chances of time have made it impossible to determine the year or the locality of their emergence, or to be certain of their original form. To most lovers of traditional verse, however, the source of a song seems a negligible matter.
The problem of its origin is of little interest except to the specialist. The fact of popular transmission and the circumstance that generations of singers have contributed to its modification, curtailment, or expansion, lend it its attraction. It is always surprising to learn how soon the memory of the history and authorship of popular songs is lost.
For indigenous ballads, a few generalizations may safely be made. A percentage reflect real events; but in general there is little connection with history, or the connection is of slight importance. A few had their genesis in local happenings chronicled by local I poets. Some, like the ballads of the Meeks murder examined by Professor H. M. Belden,[5] have found but little diffusion. Others, like Springfield Mountain, wandered far from their starting point. Young Charlotte seems to have been carried widely over the United States by the peregrinations of its author. As a general thing, local ballads, made by some local bard, or improvised by individual contributors, are the most ephemeral of all ballads. They rarely survive except in chance fragments.. A considerable proportion of the pieces current in American folk-song were floated by singers in traveling troupes, especially by the old-time "entertainers" and minstrel troupes of various types; or they were carried over the country, in later days, through the agency of plays into which they were introduced. Since Elizabethan times this has been a notable source of impetus. Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle mentions many popular songs of the day. One is Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard, which is still alive in this country, whether or not it is ) in England, and another is The Romish Lady, which is also yet alive. The early popularity in London circles ofother songs now part of traditional folk-song is attested by their incorporation into or mention in other dramas. Certainly many American songs owe their circulation to their introduction into plays (like After the Ball which was taken about the country in Hoyt's farce A Trip to Chinatown), or to their being taken through many states by bands of wandering singers. Many songs gained wide popularity through the agency of colored minstrel troupes. Johnny Sands was floated by itinerant bands like the Continental Vocalists and the Hutchinson Family, in the earlier half of the nineteenth century. In the Baggage Coach Ahead got its currency by being thrown on a curtain, with colored slides, in vaudeville programs.
There were, however, many other modes of diffusion and helps to vitality. Important were the "popular songsters," or small song books of various types, and the "broadsides," in sheet music form or containing the words alone, which were sold by itinerant vendors of patent medicine, or peddlers, or at booths established at fairs, or in the wake of circuses or of wandering entertainers. Many songs learned from singers in childhood at the schoolhouse linger in the memory when those of newer acquisition have been forgotten. Popular pieces of a religious or moralizing nature gained circulation at the camp meetings of revivalists, and many songs found their impetus at temperance gatherings. Western songs were sometimes handed on or launched at old settlers' picnics, or were sung at social gatherings at farms or ranches, or at the "play parties" and dances of young people. One of the most important sources of preservation and one which has afforded to collectors many of their best texts is the manuscript book, handed on from generation to generation, into which songs have been transcribed from oral and other sources. Some newspapers have conducted columns in which "old favorites" are reprinted for readers, or texts are called for by those who have forgotten them, or the search is stimulated for the complete texts of songs recalled in fragments. Many scrap-books have been made and handed on into which clippings from newspapers of old favorites have been pasted. Most of these sources of circulation are now declining, and some of them are no longer existent. For that matter, the handing on of songs by oral tradition has become more and more curtailed. It is far from extinct, and it is not to be expected that it will ever completely die out from the human race; but with the spread of literacy, the increasing circulation of printed matter, the introduction of phonographs, and the removal of old-time isolation, through the agency of railroads, automobiles, and (in these days) of airplanes, the singing of traditional songs plays a lessened role.
American folk-song as a whole has been imported from the Old World. This is becoming less true, but it still holds. Folk-songs are still brought across the Atlantic by newcomers; and a large percentage of the most striking and persistent pieces current in America are derived from Old World originals, English, Scottish, or Irish. Many survive which were brought over long ago, or they enter in new form with some shipload of immigrants. Songs recently imported still win foothold and then wander from community to community.
VII. Sometimes collectors of ballads and folk-songs preserve the music to which the texts are sung, but more often the words only are recorded. The salvage of melodies is desirable; for folk-music, like folk-literature, has its interest and its distinctive ways. Generally the melody and the words are so associated in the minds of the singers that the one cannot be recalled without the other. The song is the life of the words; the two are not to be separated. Nevertheless the recording of the tune along with the words is less important for throwing light on the history of the song than might be thought. The words have more stability than the music. A piece retains its identity by its story, or its situations, or its characters; not by its melody. For example, innumerable varying airs have been recorded for Barbara Allen, Lord Randal, The Dying Cowboy,
to determine which melody is nearest to the original. Many texts of many kinds may be sung to one air, and many different airs may be employed for one text. There is even greater fluctuation on the musical than on the textual side of folk-song. Indeed, here is a prolific source of crossings in ballads, of amalgamations, and of exchange of refrains. Pieces sung to a familiar air may assume some of the associations of that air. Possibly some of the older English ballads have been preserved to us in comparative integrity because they were chanted or recited rather than sung. Professor Child suggests for some of the old English ballads that they sound as though they were recited, and The Complaint of Scotland (1549) testifies to the recital rather than the singing of certain Robin Hood pieces. But it is through singing that folk-songs are handed down. In America at least, pieces do not seem to be continued in tradition through recital or chanting. They persist because they are sung. It is the music, however it fluctuate, which keeps them alive.
VIII. The ballads of Old World collectors seem often to have been touched by skilful hands. Sir Walter Scott rests under the suspicion of having enhanced the poetical quality and vigor of many pieces, and so do other collectors, from Bishop Percy onward. Nothing of the kind has been true in America. The songs gathered by native collectors have been left as they were and American texts can be accepted without qualification. Taken as a whole, they testify that, though ballads may both gain and lose by transmission, the latter is the more usual process. It is a mistake
ito affirm that traditional preservation ensures improvement, though it may help for a time. It shortens a long or diffuse piece, drops out non-essentials, and preserves dramatic scenes, bits of dialogue, and the situation which is the soul of the story. Salient passages come to stand out, old introductions are lost, while the critical features of the narrative, the dialogue and the turning points, remain. The "nobler wildflower sort of poetry" may have become such by virtue of the sifting hands through which it has passed, or by virtue of the selective processes of the folk-memory. But in the majority of cases a folk-song deteriorates in oral tradition, developing incompleteness, incoherence, and sometimes garrulous protraction. An instance in point is the ballad of Springfield Mountain which originated in the eighteenth century and has survived only in oral form. The process of folktransmission has not evolved it into a good ballad or improved it. It had little poetical merit at the beginning and its twentieth century derivatives have not remedied the weaknesses of the original. Another instance is the fine old song of Barbara Allen's Cruelty which emerges from the seventeenth century. In many later forms it has wholly lost its dignity and appeal. Even those songs which have been improved by the processes of folk-transmission in the end fall themselves into decay.
As to stylistic characteristics, some American songs are rough, frank, spirited, others picturesque and pathetic. The diction tends to be rugged, the meter crude, the tone unsophisticated. Though sometimes highly colored by emotion, the language of American oral song is plain. Finery and elegance are lost if they were ever present. The folk-memory is intent on story and situation and it cares little for coherence or ornament. The conventional epithets of the Old World ballads do not appear in American ballads and, except when inherited, as in Johnny Randall, or Edward, or The Cruel Brother, the legacy motive and the sequence mannerism of the English and Scottish ballads are wanting. Common, however, is the "Come all ye" formula of invitation at the opening. This is characteristic of later British and Irish ballads, and has been domesticated in America from immigrant song
IX. Conscious interest in the traditional balladry of the people arose in England in the eighteenth century. In the latter half of that century the effort to recover and make public pieces of especial interest was made by many collectors. The impulse took on added momentum in the nineteenth century and has maintained itself, gaining rather than losing, into the twentieth. American enthusiasm for ballads came a hundred years later. The latter half of the nineteenth century brought the first important attempts to gather and preserve songs in traditional currency. The names of historic collectors for America are those of Professor Francis James Child (1825-1896) of Harvard, whose interest in English and Scottish ballads led to his preservation of many such pieces in their New World form, William Wells Newell (1839-1907), a founder of the American Folk-Lore Society and a collector of the games and songs of American children, and Professor G. L. Kittredge, upon whom fell the mantle of Professor Child at Harvard. Professor Kittredge has interested himself in all kinds of American traditional pieces, not only in English and Scottish ballads in America; and he has done much to stimulate collection and study in many parts of the country. Something in the way of preservation has also been contributed by historians, though the pieces having chief interest for historians are, from the nature of things, transient. They are likely to be of the political or chxonicle type, rather than of general human interest.
On the whole, the wish to gather and preserve popular song may be viewed as accompanying or growing out of the trend toward democracy. It parallels for literary history the change taking place in the history of society in general. Since the eighteenth century the attention of political thinkers has descended through the various strata of society until the lowest strata are now in the foreground of interest. It has often been pointed out that contemporary historians endeavor to chronicle the common man as well as the hero. The lowly may now serve as central characters in fiction and drama which were once concerned solely with patricians. Similarly, the interest of literary historians and of students and readers has extended downward from the masterpiece till it embraces the humble and unrecorded literature of the folk.
Texts of oral literature in America have been available hitherto mostly in scattered places. Perhaps the widest ranging and completest available repository of such songs and ballads is Mrs. Campbell's and Cecil J. Sharp's English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1917). Tunes as well as texts are entered in this collection, and the same is true of the smaller Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains (1917) of Josephine McGill, and Lonesome Tunes by Loraine Wyman and Howard Brockway (1916). Western cowboy songs, both oral verse and book verse, were collected and published in two volumes by John A. Lomax, Cowboy Songs (1914) and Songs of the Cow Camp and the Cattle Trail (1919). N. Howard Thorp's Songs of the Cowboys, with an introduction by Alice Corbin Henderson, appeared in 1921. W. Roy Mackenzie has printed a number of texts salvaged in Nova Scotia in The Quest of the Ballad (1919).
Many interesting texts have been published in the Journal of American Folk-Lore by such scholars as G. L. Kittredge, H. M. Belden, Phillips Barry, E. C. Perrow, A. H. Tolman, and Arthur Beatty. The late Professor H. G Shearin listed and analyzed the folk-songs of the Cumberland region in Kentucky; Phillips Barry has done the same thing for the North Atlantic states, and H. M. Belden for Missouri. Professor C. Alphonso Smith, as archivist of the Virginia Folk-Lore Society, has^one much to preserve the oral verse of Virginia, an^kofessor John H. Cox has collected the traditional verse%f West Virginia. The game and nursery songs of American children constitute a part of oral literature in America. The pioneer collector and editor of them is W. W. Newell, whose Games and Songs of American Children (1883) is a credit to American scholarship. Of late years his work has been supplemented by the studies of others in various volumes of The Journal of American Folk-Lore. A few ballad texts have been preserved in articles in popular periodicals. The general subject of balladry in America has been treated in the present writer's chapter on "Oral Literature in America," published in the Cambridge History of American Literature, Volume IV (1921), and in several sections of her Poetic Origins and the Ballad (1921). Professor H. M. Belden has written of balladry in America and of the relation of balladry to folk-lore in inaugural addresses as president of the American Folk-Lore Society. And Mr. Phillips Barry has written upon many special subjects connected with American folk-song in the same periodical (The Journal of American Folk-Lore) which contains the addresses of Professor Belden.
X. Among the most characteristically American of our folk-songs are slave-songs, and plantation songs, and negro or pseude-negro songs, comic or pathetic. These constitute a separate subject and they deserve treatment in a separate anthology of Afro-American song. Besides these, as characteristically American in flavor, should come Western and frontier pieces, as Starving to Death on a Government Claim, or The Dreary Black Hills, and American humorous songs, like Joe Bowers or Johnny Sands. Apart from these two groups, most of our American traditional songs have upon them the stamp of the Old World and fall into Old World patterns. Prevailingly they are^Agic pieces. Their "strong situations" keep thenr^mve and they derive from or are parallel to British songs. Usually they have exaggerated plots and often they [have exaggerated morals. There are confessions of murder, like Young McFee, and there are many confession and death-bed pieces in general. The Butcher's Boy is one of the most widely circulated oral ballads in the language. It is known from Nova Scotia to Texas. The Boston Burglar has equally wide currency. Both are serious pieces and both are of British adaptation. The murder ballad is a type which still springs up occasionally, like the ballads of the Meeks murder in Missouri chronicled by Professor H. M. Belden. Professor W. R. Mackenzie has recorded some murder ballads from Nova Scotia, and Professor H. G. Shearin found a number in the Cumberland mountains. But, like all ballads which chronicle local events, this type is likely to be short-lived. In general the gloomy themes, especially the songs of domestic crime, which pleased earlier centuries did not give the same pleasure
in the late nineteenth century, and they do not please the earlier twentieth century. The sentimental songs of the present do not show the elegiac or "complaint" turn of the older songs but tend to be humorous or happier. On the whole, the emotional pitch of American pieces is low, especially when they are placed in comparison with their European analogues. This is true both for earlier pieces and for songs of the present day.
It is of interest to trace the waves of popularity which arise and fade for types of popular song as they do for verse which is to be read. The types of leading interest to be noted for the nineteenth century include the slave songs, comic songs, and general negro songs which were popularized by troupes of negro singers andjjw' the old-time "minstrel" troupes of whites. This was a wave of temperance songs of which a few pieces remain, like Don't Go out Tonight, Dear Father, The Drunkard's Lone Child, The Teetotallers are Coming. Ballads and songs of the drunkard, and especially of the drunkard's child, once played a considerable r61e. There were many campaign and camp songs of the Civil War period, but they have nearly disappeared. Still rememberable is the rise to popularity of "coon" songs, one of which, Ta-ra-ra-ra boom de ay, found its way into European circulation. "Coon" songs proved, however, so slight in text and so indefinite in structure that they retained little foothold in traditional song. Nor are the succeeding "rag-time" songs or "jazz" songs likely to leave much of a legacy. There is little in their texts which is distinctive enough to lodge in the memory. No clear-cut story holds them together, and the taste to which they appeal is transitory. Some contribution to folk-tradition should be made by the songs which were universalized in the days of the World War; but it is yet too early to predict which, if any of them, will endure. A characteristic which distinguishes the serious songs of our own day, in contrast with those popular earlier, is their "glad" note, their optimistic endeavor to look on the bright side of things; this is evidenced by such songs as Smile, Smile, Smile, or Pack up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag. There was a stronger military note in the songs emerging from earlier American wars; and the zest for fighting which was characteristic of the songs of mediaeval wars is somewhat conspicuously wanting in the songs popularized by the war which has passed.
XI. When set over against Old-World texts brought '* together by collectors, the American texts of the same songs seem noticeable for their brevity. Possibly the same curtailment might be apparent for British^Krts of the present, when compared with their earliei^Ppnterparts; but it is certain that existing American variants show marked abridgment alongside the versions current across the Atlantic. Even when an immigrant piece has not been shortened as to the number of its stanzas or lines, there is likely to be loss in the details of narration. That there is no shrinkage in length may be the result merely of garrulous protraction or repetition, arising as essential features are lost. The American tendency toward brevity may be viewed as the result of the decaying influence of time and migration; or it may be looked upon as part of the general trend toward shortening seen in the drama, the essay, and prose fiction, as well as in verse narratives. Neither twentieth century singers nor twentieth century audiences have the patience and the sustained interest which were characteristic of days less hurried and eager for variety. When everything else has been shortened or is in the process of shortening, it should not be surprising that folk-songs have shortened too.
XI. The interest in floating pieces that linger from generation to generation in popular song is partly literary and partly sociological. They have no salient historic value but they convey clear impressions of a state of society. On the surface there is difference for different generations and for different regions, in song modes, types of plots, types of characters, and social views. Below the surface appears the same round of simpler feelings, jealousies, ambitions, disappointments, characteristic of human nature in all periods. Impressive stories or situations are set forth in simple types of verse. Occasionally the interest of the student of literature lies in flashes of poetic value or suggestions of wistful beauty. He comes upon passages of unexpected charm. More often it is the unconsciousness and frankness of the narrative, the total suppression of comment and of superfluous matter, that appeals to the reader, by virtue of the contrast which it affords with book verse. This frank unconscious note which is the chief source of their appeal belongs par excellence to the middle period of a ballad's history. Sometimes the earliest texts are complex, then simplification appears, dramatic situations are brought into the foreground, superfluous details are lopped off, and links drop from sight. Only the simpler and more impressive stanzas are preserved. Some instances in point are Jemmy and Nancy (Pretty Nancy of Yarmouth) and The Babes in the Wood. The original text of Pretty Nancy, with its references to "The Barbados Lady," is semi-literary and has as many as 288 tines. Its derivative from the Appalachian region telling of "the perbadus lady";[7] is on its way toward incoherent trash. Bishop Percy's text of The Babes in the Wood
has twenty-two stanzas and shows completeness and literary finish. Most current versions of this song have no more than three or four stanzas. When ballads are in their decadence they sink to the fragmentary, vulgarized, garrulous, or inconsequent, or they die away in burlesque. The appeal has gone and the text is of interest chiefly as exhibiting the last stage of a process. But the frank unconscious note of popular song is not to be thought of as the especial property of mediaeval peasant throngs or minstrels. It is recurrent for traditional songs of all ages and all regions. It may be found in many of the songs in the following pages as well as in the older ballads of England and Scotland.
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Footnotes to Introduction
1 Johnny Randall (No. 1) in this collection.
2. No. 4.
3. "Ballads Surviving in the United States," The Musical Quarterly, January, 1916.
4. An American Garland (1915), p. 69.
5. "A Study in Contemporary Balladry," The Mid-West Quarterly, vol. I, pp. 162-172.
6. Babes in the Woods.
7. Campbell and Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, No. 53.
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INDEX
Aged Indian, The. No. 53.
Allen, Barbara. No. 3.
Apprentice Boy, The. No. 22.
Babes in the Woods, The. No. 115.
Babes, The Three. No. 7.
Baggage Coach Ahead, In the. No. 58.
Ballad of the Three, The. No. 116.
Bamboo Briars, The. No. 22.
Banks of the Old Pedee, The. No. 45.
Bass, Sam. No. 66.
Battle of Point Pleasant, The.No. 40.
Bayham, Lord. No. 14.
Barbara Allen. No. 3.
Bendall, The Death of. No. 65.
Bess, My Bonny Black. No. 69.
Betsy, Johnny and. No. 26.
Billy Boy. No. 113.
Billy Grimes' Courtship. No. 96.
Bird, James. No. 41.
Black Hills, The Dreary. No. 87.
Blue-Eyed Boy, My. No. 102.
Bond, Molly. No. 33.
Bonny Black Bess. No. 69.
Boston Burglar, The. No. 23.
Bowers, Joe. No. 88.
Bow, Rosen the. No. 100.
Breaking in a Tenderfoot. No. 82.
Brother, The Cruel. No. 8.
Boy, The Apprentice. No. 22.
Boy, Billy. No. 113.
Boy, The Butcher's. No. 24.
Boy, The Farmer's. No. 28.
Boy, My Blue-Eyed. No. 102.
Boy, The Prentice. No. 31.
Boys, Cheyenne. No. 81.
Boys, Two Little. No. 18.
Briars, The Bamboo. No. 22.
Buffalo Skinners, The. No. 84.
Burglar, The Boston. No. 23.
Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie. No. 77.
Butcher's Boy, The. No. 24.
Cabineer, The Spanish. No. 106.
Californian, The Dying. No. 90.
Calomel. No. 54.
Captain Kidd. No. 72.
Carpenter, The House. No. 17.
Carol, The Cherry Tree. No. 19.
Casey Jones. No. 59.
Charlotte, Young. No. 44.
Charles Guiteau. No. 65.
Charlestown. No. 23..
Cherry Tree Carol, The. No. 19.
Cheyenne Boys, The. No. 81.
Children's Song. No. 7.
Claim, The Little Old Sod Shanty on My. No. 74.
Colony Times, In Good Old. No. 116.
Common Will. No. 104.
Constant Farmer's Son, The. No. 32.
Coolen Bawn, My. No. 38.
Corn, The Man Who Wouldn't Hoe. No. 46.
Courtship of Billy Grimes, The. No. 96.
Courtship, The Quaker's. No. 108.
Courtship, William Reilly's. No. 38.
Cowboy, The Dying. No. 77.
Cowboy, I Want To Be a. No. 79.
Cowboy Song. No. 75.
Creole Girl, The. No. 55.
Cruel Brother, The. No. 8.
Dagger, The Silver. No. 52.
Dakota Land. No. 86.
Dandoo. No. 6.
Death of Bendall, The. No. 65.
Death of Garfield. No. 65.
Death of a Romish Lady, The. No. 25.
Donahoo, Jack. No. 71.
Dieary Black Hills, The. No. 87.
Drowsy Sleeper, The. No. 21.
Drummers, The Two. No. 107.
Dutchman, Dutchman, Won't You Marry Me? No. 109.
Dying Californian, The. No. 90.
Dying Cowboy, The. No. 77.
Edward. No. 9.
Elgin, The Wreck of the Lady. No. 60.
Elegy, Pastoral. No. 95.
Evalina. No. 101.
False Knight, The. No. 20.
Fair Fanny Moore. No. 97.
Farmer's Boy, The. No. 28.
Farmer, The Rich Young. No. 29.
Fatal Wedding, The. No. 63.
Father Grumble. No. 36.
Fawkes, Guy. No. 37.
Fields of Violo, The. No. 120.
Fire, The Milwaukee. No. 62.
Flood, The Jamestown. No. 61.
Fuller and Warren. No. 49.
Gambler, The. No. 57.
Garfield, The Death of. No. 65.
Girl, The Creole, No. 55.
Goins, Poor. No. 50.
Government Claim, Starving to Death on a. No. 83.
Gray, The Blue and the. No. 56.
Gray Mare, My Father's. No. 34.
Gray Mule, The Old. No. 103.
Groves, Little Matthy. No. 15.
Grumble, Father. No. 36.
Guiteau, Charles. No. 65.
Guy Fawkes. No. 37.
Hangman's Song, The. No. 13.
Hawthorne Tree, The. No. 92-
Hills, The Dreary Black. No. 87.
Hoe Corn, The Man That Wouldn't. No. 46.
Horse-Wrangler, The. No. 82.
House Carpenter, The. No. 17.
I Bought Me a Wife. No. 118.
I'll Not Marry at All. No. 99.
Indian, The Aged. No. 53.
In Good Old Colony Times. No. 116.
In the Baggage Coach Ahead. No. 58.
In Springfield Mountain. No. 42.
In the Summer of Sixty. No. 89.
I Want to Be a Cowboy. No. 79.
I Will Tell You of a Fellow. No. 104.
I Wish I Was Single Again. No.98.
Jack Donahoo. No. 71.
Jack Williams. No. 67.
James Bird. No. 41.
James, Jesse. No. 64.
Jamestown Flood, The. No. 61.
Jealous Lover, The. No. 43.
Jesse James. No. 64.
Jewish Lady, The. No. 5.
Jew Lady, The. No. 5.
Jimmy Randolph. No. 1.
Johnny and Betsy. No. 26.
Johnny Randall. No. 1.
Johnny Sands. No. 48.
Jones, Casey. No. 59.
Katie's Secret. No. 92.
Kidd, Captain. No. 72.
Kinkaider's Song, The. No. 86.
Kitty Wells. No. 94.
Knight, The False. No. 20.
Lazy Mary. No. 110.
Lady Elgin, The. No. 60.
Lady, The Jewish. No. 5.
Lady, The Jew. No. 5.
Lady, The Death of the Romish. No. 25.
Land, Dakota. No. 86.
Lawyer, Turpin and the. No. 70.
Legacy, The Preacher's. No. 105.
Let's Go to the Woods. No. 117.
Little Matthy Groves. No. 15.
Little Old Sod Shanty on My Claim, The. No. 74.
Lone Piairie, The. No. 78.
Lord Bayham. No. 14.
Lorella, Poor. No. 43.
Lord Thomas. No. 12.
Lovel, Lord. No. 2.
Lover, The Jealous. No. 43.
Lover, Lord. No. 2.
Lover's Return, The. No. 30.
Lowlands Low, The. No. 10.
Man That Wouldn't Hoe Corn, The. No. 46.
Mare, My Father's Gray. No. 34.
Mary, Lazy. No. 110.
Mary and Willie. No. 21.
Mary and Willie. No. 93.
Mary o' the Wild Moor. No. 35.
Matthy Groves, Little. No. 15.
McFee, Young. No. 68.
Milkmaid, The. No. 112.
Milwaukee Fire, The. No. 62.
Mohea, The Pretty. No. 91.
Molly Bond. No. 33.
Moore, Fair Fannie. No. 97.
My Blue-Eyed Boy. No. 102.
My Bonny Black Bess. No. 69.
My Father's Gray Mare. No. 34.
Mule, The Old Gray. No. 103.
North Countree, The Old Man of the. No. 4.
O Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie. No. 78.
O Johnny Dear, Why Did You Go? No. 42.
Old Chisholm Trail, The. No. 76.
Old Gray Mule, The. No. 103.
Old Man of the North Countree, The. No. 4.
Old Pedee, On the Banks of the. No. 45.
Old Shawnee, The. No. 45.
Omie, Poor. No. 51.
Paper of Pins, A. No. 111.
Pastoral Elegy. No. 95.
Pedee, On the Banks of the Old. No. 45.
Pins, A Paper of. No. 111.
Point Pleasant, The Battle of. No. 40.
Polly, Wicked. No. 47.
Ponchartrain, The Lakes of. No. 55.
Poor Ghana. No. 50.
Poor Lorella. No. 43.
Poor Omie. No. 51.
Poor Robin. No. 114.
Preacher's Legacy, The. No. 105.
Prentice Boy, The. No. 31.
Quaker's Courtship, The. No. 108.
Rangers, The Texas. No. 73.
Randall, Johnny. No. 1.
Randolph, Jimmy. No. 1.
Return, The Lover's. No. 30.
Rich Young Farmer, The. No. 29.
Robin, Bobin, Richard, and John. No. 117.
Robin, Poor. No. 114.
Romish Lady, The Death of a. No. 25.
Rosen the Bow. No. 100.
Rowser's, We'll All Go Down to. No. 119.
Sam Bass. No. 66.
Sailor Boys, The Three. No. 11.
Sands, Johnny. No. 48.
Secret, Katie's. No. 92.
Shawnee, On the Banks of the Old. No. 45.
Silver Dagger, The. No. 52.
Sisters, The Two. No. 4.
Sixty, In the Summer of. No. 89.
Skinners, The Buffalo. No. 84.
Sleeper, The Drowsy. No. 21.
Sod Shanty, The Little Old. No. 74.
Soldier, The. No. 27.
Song, The Children's. No. 7.
Song, The Cowboy's. No. 74.
Song, The Hangman's. No. 13.
Song, The Kinkaider's. No. 85.
Son, The Constant Farmer's. No. 32.
Spanish Cabineer, The. No. 104.
Springfield Mountain. No. 42.
Starving to Death on a Government Claim. No. 83.
Summer of Sixty, In the. No. 89.
Sweet Fields of Violo. No. 120.
Sweet William. No. 16.
Tavern in the Town, There's a. No. 24.
Tenderfoot, Breaking in a. No. 82.
Texas Rangers, The. No. 73.
The Aged Indian. No. 53.
The Apprentice Boy. No. 22.
The Babes in the Wood. No. 115.
The Baggage Coach Ahead. No. 58.
The Bamboo Briars. No. 22.
The Banks of the Old Pedee. No. 45.
The Battle of Point Pleasant. No. 40.
The Blue and the Gray. No. 56.
The Blue-Eyed Boy. No. 102.
The Boston Burglar. No. 24.
The Buffalo Skinners. No. 84.
The Butcher's Boy. No. 24.
The Cherry Tree Carol. No. 19.
The Constant Farmer's Son. No. 32.
The Courtship of Billy Grimes. No. 96.
The Cruel Brother. No. 8.
The Death of Bendall. No. 65.
The Death of Garfield. No. 65.
The Death of a Romish Lady. No. 25.
The Dreary Black Hills. No. 87.
The Drowsy Sleeper. No. 21.
The Dying Californian. No. 90.
The Dying Cowboy. No. 77.
The False Knight. No. 21.
The Farmer's Boy. No. 29.
The Fatal Wedding. No. 63.
The Gambler. No. 57.
The Hangman's Song. No. 13.
The Hawthorn Tree. No. 92.
The Horse Wrangler. No. 82.
The House Carpenter. No. 17.
The Jamestown Flood. No. 61.
The Jealous Lover. No. 43.
The Jewish Lady. No. 5.
The Jew Lady. No. 5.
The Kinkaider's Song. No. 85.
The Lady Elgin. No. 60.
The Lakes of Ponchartrain. No. 55.
The Lazy Man. No. 46.
The Little Old Sod Shanty. No. 74.
The Lone Prairie. No. 78.
The Lover's Return. No. 30.
The Lowlands Low. No. 10.
The Man That Wouldn't Hoe Corn. No. 46.
The Milkmaid. No. 112.
The Milwaukee Fire. No. 62.
The Old Chisholm Trail. No. 76.
The Old Gray Mule. No. 103.
The Old Man in the North Coun-tree. No. 4.
The Preacher's Legacy. No. 105.
The Prentice Boy. No. 31.
The Pretty Milkmaid. No. 112.
The Pretty Mohea. No. 91.
The Quaker's Courtship. No. 108.
The Rich Young Farmer. No. 30.
The Silver Dagger. No. 52.
The Spanish Cabineer. No. 106.
The Soldier. No. 27.
The Sweet Fields of Violo. No. 120.
The Texas Rangers. No. 73.
The Three Babes. No. 7.
The Three, Ballad of the. No. No. 116.
The Three Sailor Boys. No. 11.
The Two Drummers. No. 107.
The Two Sisters. No. 4.
The Weeping Willow. No. 43.
The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin. No. 6.
The Wreck of the Lady Elgin. No. 60.
The Wren Shooting. No. 117.
There is a Tavern in the Town. No. 24.
Thomas, lord. No. 12.
Three, Ballad of the. No. 116.
Three Babes, The. No. 7.
Three Sailor Boys, The. No. 11.
Trail, The Old Chisholm. No. 76.
Tree, The Hawthorn. No. 92.
Two Little Boys. No. 18.
Two Drummers, The. No. 107.
Two Sisters, The. No. 4.
Turpin and the Lawyer. No. 70.
Uncle Tohido. No. 53.
Violo, Sweet Fields of. No. 120.
Warren, Fuller and. No. 49.
Wedding, The Fatal. No. 63.
Weeping Willow, The. No. 43.
We'll All Go Down to Rowser's. No. 119.
Wells, Kitty. No. 94.
Wether's Skin, The Wife Wrapt In. No. 6.
What Will You Give Me If I Get Up? No. 110.
Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies. No. 80.
Wicked Polly. No. 47.
Wife, I Bought Me a. No. 118.
Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin, The. No. 6.
Wild Moor, Mary o' the. No. 35.
Will, Common. No. 104.
Williams, Jack. No. 67.
Willie, Mary and. No. 21.
Willie, Mary and. No. 93.
William Reilly's Courtship. No. 38.
William, Sweet. No. 16.
Willow, The Weeping. No. 43.
Wreck of the Lady Elgin, The. No. 60.
Woods, The Babes in the. No. 115.
Woods, Let's Go to the. No. 117.
Woodville Mound. No. 42.
Wren Shooting, The. No. 117.
Young Charlotte. No. 44.
Young McFee. No. 68.