Children's Songs and Rhymes of the Porter Family: Robert Porter, 1828-1910; Ellis K. Porter, 1860-1936 by Kenneth Wiggins Porter
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 54, No. 213/214 (Jul. - Dec., 1941), pp. 167-175
CHILDREN'S SONGS AND RHYMES OF THE PORTER FAMILY: ROBERT PORTER, 1828-I910; ELLIS K. PORTER- 1860-1936 By KENNETH WIGGINS PORTER
KENNETH WIGGINS PORTER Vassar College.
My paternal grandfather was the son of an immigrant from Co. Down and of an Allegheny Co., Pa., woman whose father was from Maryland. At the age of five he was taken to Guernsey Co., Ohio, and in I865 removed with his family to Birmingham, Iowa. His oldest son, my father, was reared in Iowa but, in the early '8os, went to Kansas where he lived the rest of his life. Both men were fond of singing, but the death of my grandfather when I was only five, coupled with the fact that I did not become greatly interested in folksongs until after my father's death, leaves me with the memory of only a few of the many songs which must have once been included in their repertoires. Those which remain, however, contain a considerable proportion of material not found, or rarely found, in printed collections. My aunt, Greta Porter Gosch, Robert Porter's last surviving child, has in some cases assisted my recollections, as has my mother.
"Banjo Sam," or "Julia Glover," was one of my grandfather's songs, though it may have been sung by my father as well. I am under the impression that Miss Glover's unexplained assault on Banjo Sam in the second stanza was the result of unwelcome amatory advances, perhaps mentioned in a stanza omitted out of respect for my tender years.
BANJO SAM: or, JULIA GLOVER- The only previously printed version of the above is in Mrs. Eloise Hubbard Linscott's Folk Songs of Old New England, N. Y., 1939, pp. II-I3, under the title of "Julia Grover," as sung by Mrs. Jennie Hardy Linscott, Waldboro, Me. In the Linscott version the assault by Miss Julia on her (unnamed) escort is instigated by the tipping over of the vehicle-an oxcart; Mrs. Linscott notes as another variation the Africanization of the characters in the Porter version. Stanzas I and 2 in the above are supplied by Greta Porter Gosch; stanza 3 and the chorus are from my own memory.
As I was going to the mill one day
I passed Miss Julia going thatw ay.
She pressed her suit that she might ride.
"O yes, Miss Julia, by my side."
CHORUS: Sit down dar, Julia Glover.
Banjo Sam I am your lover-
Goin' to de mill wid Julia Glover!
Now Jul was a chicken of the old blue hen;
She boxed my ears with a vengeance then.
She boxed my ears and set them ringing,
But I sat there and kept on singing.
CHORUS
Miss Jul she called me a banjo fool.
She boxed my ears and she pulled my wool.
I gave her a kick and sent her over,
And there I left Miss Julia Glover!
CHORUS
My aunt records "one of their party songs, that they danced to," the familiar "Weevily Wheat*," as being sung by her father, who "used to get me on his knee and keep time while singing." She also "liked father to sing Billie Boy and Captain Jinks."
[* Botkin, B. A., The American Play-Party Song, Lincoln, Neb., 1937, pp. 345-35I; Sandburg, Carl, The American Songbag, N. Y., 1927, p. 161; Lomax, John A. and Alan, American Ballads and Folk-Songs, N. Y., 1934, pp. 290-291.]
"Father," according to my aunt, "always had a tune for everything, or said it in a sing song way." One of his favorites-apparently a rhyme to be repeated rather than a song to be sung-was intended for a children's audience of one and was accompanied by illustrative motions.
Johnnie Smith, feller fine,
Can you shoe this horse of mine?
Pick, pick, pick. That I can,
As good as any other man.
Here's a nail and there's a prod.
Now, young man, your horse is shod.
Shoe the horse and shoe the mare,
But let this little colt go bare!*
[* Bolton, Henry Carrington, The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children, London, 1888, p. I16, presents a similar rhyme from Atlanta, Ga.]
To another rhyme about a horse I would listen with intense indignation:
I had a little pony, his name was Dapple Gray.
I lent him to a lady to drive a mile away.*
She whipped him and she lashed him and she drove him through the mire;
I wouldn't lend my pony again for all that lady's hire!
[* Halliwell, J. O., ed., "The Nursery Rhymes of England," in Early English Poetry, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages, IV, Thomas Wright, ed., Percy Society: London,
1842, p. 139.]
Another song, to be sung while riding a child on one's foot, suiting the action to the type of motion suggested by the words, I remember as being sung by my grandfather-though my mother thinks it belongs rather to her mother; there is no reason why two persons of Scots-Irish and Pennsylvania ancestry should not have known the same children's song.
This is the way the ladies ride:
Tree, tree, tree, tree.
This is the way the gentlemen ride:
Trit, trot, trit, trot.
This is the way the farmers ride:
Cadgers an' creels, cadgers an' creels,
Cadgers an' creels an' a'!
What was apparently intended primarily as a counting-out rhyme was repeated by my grandfather purely for purposes of entertainment.
Peter Matrimity was a fine water-man.
He steals hens and puts them in pens.
Some lay eggs and some lay none.
Whitefoot, Specklefoot,
Trip, trap,
And begone,
Old Hen!*
[* Whitney, Anne Weston, and Bullock, Caroline Canfield, Folk Lore from Maryland, N. Y., 1925, nos. 2493-2498, esp. 2493. See also: Bolton, pp. 54-55, 1I7-II8, Yorkshire, "William atrum atrum, Woo a good woiterman;" Brooklyn, N. Y., "William T. Trinity," "Peter McQuainity."
Robert Porter's wife, Mary Stewart, Ohio-born of parents from Virginia, played a game-the only one in which she was ever known to participate -which employed a rhyme beginning the same as the above for the first three lines, changing thereafter to:
Higher, brier, limberlock,
Three geese in a flock;
One flew east, and one flew west,
And one flew over the cuckoo's nest.
O-U-T is out!*
[*A similar rhyme, the hero of which is "William Tremble-toe . . . a good fisherman," appears in Ray Wood, The American Mother Goose, N. Y., 1940, p. 57.]
In playing this game she had her children spread their fingers out on the table and as she repeated the rhyme she would touch their fingers in succession- a finger to a syllable, word, or sometimes cadence, as she preferred. The finger which was touched on the word "Out!" was, of course, then folded up. The game continued until all fingers had been eliminated or, a more likely result, until the players, or the principal player, wearied of the proceedings.
A rhyme which I greatly enjoyed, perhaps because of what I had heard and seen of the predatory habits of the bird concerned, was recited by my grandfather with considerable illustrative action.
Jaybird, jaybird,
Sitin' on a limb-
Draw back, draw back,
Hit him in de shin*
[* See Scarborough, Dorothy, On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, Cambridge, I925, p. 191, for another version.]
My grandfather also had a song, about a couple of other predatory birds.
Said the blackbird to the crow:
"Down to the cornfield we must go.
"Ever since old Adam was born
"You and I been pickin' up corn!"*
*Talley, Thomas W., Negro Folk Rhymes, N. Y., I922, p. 183.
A corn-planting rhyme, in which these two birds also appear, has been familiar to me from early childhood. I recall walking behind some older person-probably my father-with a sack or other container of corn in my left hand; my companion with two or three strokes of his hoe would dig a hollow in the soft plowed loam and hold back the loose dirt with the blade of his implement until I had dropped in four kernels-never more nor less. He would then level off the earth above the seeds and go on to the next future "hill" while I would gently tread down the soil, repeating:
One for the blackbird,
One for the crow,
One for the cut-worm,
And one to grow!*
*Talley, Thomas W., Negro Folk-Rhymes, N. Y., 1922, p. 208.
Whenever I was tardy for any occasion, my grandfather, a former school-teacher, might greet me with:
A diller, a dollar, a ten o'clock scholar, what makes you come so soon?
You used to come at ten o'clock and now you come at noon!*
*Halliwell, p. 134.
I remember the following only as sung by my father, but my aunt informs me that both her father and her mother used to sing it. "In fact that was the only song I remember my mother singing except the Psalms." It belongs to that great family of barnyard-songs of which "Old Mac-Donald Had a Farm" is unfortunately the most conspicuous contemporary member.
THE BANKS OF HOLLAND The nearest thing to the above I have encountered in print is "Sweet Fields of Viola," Pound, Louise, American Ballads and Songs, N. Y., 1922, pp. 238-240.
Come all ye pretty fair maids and come along with me
Along the banks of Holland.
Come all ye pretty fair maids and come along with me
To feed my father's ducks.
A quack-quack here and a quack-quack there,
Here a quack, there a quack, here and there a quack-quack,
A quack-quack here and a quack-quack there,
Here a quack, there a quack, here and there a quack-quack!
Come all ye pretty fair maids and come along with me
Along the banks of Holland.
Come all ye pretty fair maids and come along with me
To feed my father's geese.
A queen-quawn here and a queen-quawn there,
Here a queen, there a quawn, here and there a queen-quawn,
A queen-quawn here and a queen-quawn there,
Here a queen, there a quawn, here and there a queen-quawn,
A quack-quack here and a quack-quack there,
Here a quack, there a quack, here and there a quack-quack,
A quack-quack here and a quack-quack there,
Here a quack, there a quack, here and there a quack-quack!
(Continue with turkeys: gibble-gobble; chickens: cluck-cluck; sheep: baa-baa; etc.)
My grandfather would sing drowsy children to sleep with another brief imitation of animal-noises.
Cackle, cackle, cackle! says the old fat hen;
Gobble, gobble, gobble! says the turkey then.
Baa, baa! says the old black sheep.
Bow, wow, wow! says the dog in his sleep.
One of my father's favorites was "The Farmer's Boy," but only a few of the stanzas became firmly fixed in my memory. This song, which Belden, pp. 272-273, considers to have originated in early eighteenth century England, has been often printed, in many versions. See Pound, pp. 69-71; also JAFL, LII, 37, for a recently published version.
The night was dark, the wind was cold,
Across the wintry moor,
When a wayfaring lad, all weary and sad,
Called at the farmer's do-or,
When a wayfaring lad, all weary and sad,
Ca-alled at the farmer's door.
"Good sir, would you be kind enough
"To give me some employ
"For to plow and to sow, for to reap and to mow,
"And to be a farmer's bo-oy ....?
"My father's dead, my mother's left
"Six children weak and small
(Line missing)
"I'm the oldest of them a-all ...
"But if it be you can't hire me
"One favor I would ask:
"'Tis to shelter me till break of day
"Against the wintry bla-ast...."
"Oh take the lad!" the goodwife said,
"Let him no longer seek!"
"Yes, do!" the daughter cried, while a tear
Ran down her pallid chee-eek...
In course of time the lad grew up
And the good old farmer died
And he left to the lad the land that he had
And his daughter for his bri-ide....
The lad that was a farmer is
And ofttimes smiles with joy
At the happy, happy day that he came that way
For to be a farmer's bo-oy,
For to plow and to sow, for to reap and to mow,
And to be a farmer's boy!
One of my father's songs is evidently one of many ridiculing the ignorance of recently arrived Celtic immigrants and is similar in theme and spirit to the well-known "Love o' God Shave."* It was chanted rather than sung, the last word in each line, and the refrain, being dragged out to almost incredible length.
*Belden, H. M., ed., Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society, Univ. of Mo. Studies, XV, no. I, Jan. I, I940, p. 251.
THE IRISHMAN AND THE MONKEY- Belden, pp. 249-25I. An English stall-ballad, "The Monkey Turned Barber," going back to about I800, and with the original locale in Liverpool.
Paddy went into the barber-shopt o get shaved;
The barber was out and his wife wasn't within.
There was nothing but an ould monkey that sat there so grim.
Trall-dally-dall-day!
"Can ye shave a bould Irishman, fresh from the sod?"
He looked in Pat's face, gave a wink and a nod;
Then out with the lather box, in with his paw,
He struck up a lather and lathered Pat's jaw.
Trall-dally-dall-day!
Then out with the razor he began for to use
And the very first lick he cut off the end of Pat's nose.
He lathered and shaved till he cut a full score;
Like an ox at the stake the poor Paddy did roar.
Trall-dally-dall-day!
Then in came the barber all trembling with fear
To hear the bold Irishman to stomp and to swear.
"What's the matter?" said the barber. "The matter?" quoth he,
"Don't you see how your old grandfather, the rogue, has cut me?"
Trall-dally-dall-day!
"Oh it's not my old grandfather, for long he's been dead!"
"Well then it's your old grandmother with a great ugly head!
"She's gone up into the chimney and she durst not come down;
"By my soul if she does, I'll smash her old crown!"
Trall-dally-dall-day
An influx of Southern Negroes into Iowa in the years immediately after the Civil War gave my father an opportunity, during his childhood, of becoming acquainted with the recently emancipated ex-slaves. In Birmingham, a barn on the outskirts of town was turned over to the Negroes for religious services, which they carried on almost every night in the week until a late hour with tremendous energy and uproar; my father recalls that one huge Negro, with a voice like a bull, could sometimes be heard half a mile away. On one such occasion he was heard to shout, "O Lord, come right down through the roof-an' I'll pay for de shingles!" But, despite these opportunities, only a couple of Negro songs appear in my father's repertory, and one of these smacks of the minstrel-show rather than of the camp-meeting, though it probably had some of its roots in ante-bellum Southern Negro life. Possibly it found its way from the minstrel-stage into folk-repertoire, but though the character of the immortal "missus" may have been popularized among Negroes through presentation by "Negro" minstrels, it is also quite probable that the minstrel version itself had its ultimate origin in various slave-songs, half-satiric, half-surly, on the same theme.
MY OLE MISSUS: or, GWINE TO HAVE A HOME BIMEBY- A minstrel-show version is found in Minstrel Songs, ca. 1881, pp. I60-I6I, Adriance Memorial Library, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., but it is also found, in part, in collections of Negro folk-songs and folk-rhymes. See Talley, p. 25; Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, pp. io6, 223-225; White, Newman I., American Negro Folk-Songs, Cambridge, I928, pp. 134, I52.
Oh my ole missus promised me
(Gwine to have a home bimeby)
Dat when she died she'd set me free
(Gwine to have a home bimeby!)
Oh dat watermelon!
Lan' o' Goodness, we mus' die!
Gwine jine de contraban' chillun,
Gwine to have a home bimeby!
Oh she did live till she was bald! ...
An' den she never died at all! ...
The following, on the other hand, is definitely a spiritual. Mentioned in Odum and Johnson, The Negro and His Songs, pp. 126-I27, and in Scarborough, Negro Folk-Songs, p. 7, though without the cautionary injunction which constitutes the refrain in my father's version.
Paul an' Silas were boun' in jail-
Do dyself-a no harm!
We're all here! We're all here!
Do dyself-a no harm!
We're all herel We're all here!
Do dyself-a no harm!
We're all here! We're all here!
Do dyself-a no harm!
One did watch an' de udder did pray....
As a young-man-about-town (small Kansas town) in the '80s, my father finally completed his repertoire by learning a different type of song-the sort that a small-college quartette might sing as encores: "Old Grimes" [17] and "There Was a Farmer Had Two Sons: or, Josephus and Bohunkus," [18] both sung to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne"; and a pastoral duet, "Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid?" [19] in which he would assume both roles and voices, the masculine and the feminine; but the song of this period which his children best remember, from having heard it sung, at their request, many times during childhood, was, of course, "The Animal Fair." [20]
Over half these songs and rhymes, it will be observed, are about animals, principally of the farmyard and fields. Three, probably sung or recited to the accompaniment of knee-riding, are about horses; another motion rhyme has to do with hens and, in one version, with geese as well; three others concern some of those rascally birds which are so much more fascinating to children than are those distinguished for song; two others have their settings in barnyards and involve animal-imitations; and finally the child is taken to a circus, where he witnesses one of those misfortunes so dear to his innocently sadistic little heart. Three or four other songs, it may be noted, also involve a humorously treated misfortune or disappointment, or a practical joke, enriched in one case by a monkey's being the perpetrator. Three play-party songs probably appealed more by the jaunty swing of their tunes than by their content, which was probably also true of the single Negro spiritual. There is also a success-story song, and a few others unclassifiable. It is not surprising that the setting of only one or two songs can be considered to any extent urban, and this only through mention of a barber-shop or a theatre. Perhaps half a dozen pieces, including three about animals-about a fourth-seem to be to some degree of Negro origin. It is a little surprising, considering the family-background, that only one or two can be considered definitely Scottish; the largest number are probably English. This score and more of songs and rhymes met the test of survival, without benefit of print or manuscript, over parts, at least, of two or three generations, in a single fairly typical Scots-Irish family which, for half a century (1833-1884), was a part of the westward movement from Pennsylvania to Kansas. They indicate what material was sufficiently interesting to such a family to be remembered and passed down to a succeeding generation.
17. Spaeth, Sigmund, Weep Some More, My Lady, N. Y., 1927, p. 150.
18. Spaeth, Read 'Em and Weep, N. Y., 1927, pp. 93-94.
19. Pound, pp. 228-230; Eddy, Mary 0., Ballads and Songs from Ohio, N. Y., 1939, pp. I53-I54; Hudson, Arthur Pullen, Folksongs of Mississippi, Chapel Hill, 1936, pp. 277-278.
20. Spaeth, Weep Some More, p. 79.