Bangum the Boar-Slayer and His Weapon
Bangum the Boar-Slayer and His Weapon
by Kenneth Wiggins Porter
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 54, No. 211/212 (Jan. - Jun., 1941), pp. 84-85
BANGUM THE BOAR-SLAYER AND HIS WEAPON: - "Old Bangum," American descendant of "Sir Lionel" (Child, no. 18), a grimly fantastic ballad of a victory over a man-eating wild-boar, is usually weakened in one of its stanzas by the mention of the hero's weapon as a "wooden knife," which introduces an incongruous nursery atmosphere into the grisly narrative.
Dorothy Scarborough's Negro version (A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains, N. Y., I937, P. 192) runs:
There is a wild bo' in these woods,
Eats men's bones an' drinks their blood.
Ole Bangum drew his wooden knife,
An' swore by Jove he'd take his life.
Ole Bangum went to the wild bo's den,
An' found the bones of a thousand men.
Arthur Kyle Davis (Traditional Ballads of Virginia, Cambridge, Mass., 1929, pp. 127, 132) records two similar versions: "Old Bang'em drew his wooden knife/ And swore that he would take his life." And: "Bangum drew his wooden knife." In the Davis collection a sense of the incongruity appears in a version (p. 126) which substitutes the colorless and conventional "trusty" for "wooden." The collector of one of these versions, Nov. 1, I915, was also rendered uneasy by the "wooden knife."
"Miss [Ellen Dana] Conway mentions that she had heard it suggested that the hero's knife was properly 'woodsman's' . . . but put it down as it is sung" (p. I28). No one, however, seems to have considered the probability that "wooden knife" is a corruption of "wood-knife," which The Oxford English Dictionary defines as "A dagger or short sword used by huntsmen for cutting up the game, or generally as a weapon"- eminently adapted, therefore, to the wild boar's destruction. As the term passed out of common use, the singers doubtless interpreted the adjective as having reference to the weapon's (inappropriate) material rather than to the environment in which it was used. This suggestion is re-inforced by another old ballad, "The Boy and the Mantle," in which a wood-knife is employed against a wild boar (Child, no. 29):
The litle boy stoode
looking ouer a dore;
He was ware of a wyld bore,
wold haue werryed a man.
He pulld forth a wood kniffe,
fast thither that he ran;
He brought in the bores head,
and quitted him like a man.
VASSAR COLLEGE, POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y.
KENNETH WIGGINS PORTER