Native American Ballads

BROWN COLLECTION VOLUME II. NATIVE AMERICAN BALLADS

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II. NATIVE AMERICAN BALLADS

FROM A SNAKE bite on a pioneer Yankee farmer's heel to an iceberg splitting an ocean liner and a storm plunging a dirigible's crew to death — in the search for strong situations, one type of American ballads has played the gamut of mishaps and disaster. The oldest traditionally current ballad of American origin in the Frank C. Brown Collection, 'Springfield Mountain,' remembers the "pizen sarpent's" malevolence and a family's grief. It has not, however, maintained its elegiac tone so well as 'Young Charlotte,' a Vermont story about a young girl who froze to death on a sleigh ride one night in the 1830s. Another century-old lament for young people snuffed out by violent death is 'Three Drowned Sisters,' bemoaning an accident that might have occurred almost anywhere but actually took place in rural Pennsylvania, and was still sad enough to stir the emotion of a Caswell county. North Carolina, ballad singer. 'Floyd Collins,' a comparatively recent ballad, is a morbid handling of the pathos of suffering in unusual circumstances:

Oh! how the news did travel!
Oh! how the news did go!
It traveled through the papers
And over the radio!

The enormous diffusion of the piece by phonograph and by the other two media mentioned is one of the phenomena of modern communication which require fresh examination of the criteria of folk song. 'The Jam at Gerry's Rock,' 'Casey Jones,' and 'Wreck of Old Ninety-Seven' are older and better treatments of occupational disasters, making some effort to celebrate heroic courage in danger and death. 'The Ore Knob' is little more than a rude coronach of the mines. More generalized treatment of disasters is found in a number of ballads about wrecks. 'The Ship That Never Returned,' 'The Titanic' (in several versions), and 'Lost on the Lady Elgin' commemorate sea disasters. The 'Train That Never Returned' and 'Wreck of the Royal Palm,' deviating from the pattern of 'Casey Jones' and 'Old Ninety-Seven,' narrate train wrecks without heroes. The willingness of the ballad muse to adapt itself to the air age is exemplified by 'Wreck of the Shenandoah.'

The history of American wars is sporadically glossed by a few ballads in this collection. 'Paul Jones,' once sung in the North Carolina coast country, is a spirited account of a victory won by the Bonhomme Richard off the coast of England in 1778. From the War of 1812 comes 'James Bird,' one of the best and most moving of traditional American historical ballads. Various aspects of the American Civil War are presented in half a dozen pieces. Of these, 'The Cmnberland' is one of the liveliest American naval ballads coming down through tradition. Recovery of an orally surviving text of it on the North Carolina coast, where one would not expect "Yankee ballads" to be long remembered, was a curious piece of luck for the Frank C. Brown Collection. By a similar accident, 'The Dying Fifer,' another broadside, but of inferior quality, was remembered in the same locality. 'The Battle of Shiloh' and 'The Drummer Boy of Shiloh' dwell impartially upon the sadness of death and severed family ties. 'The Last Fierce Charge,' in elaborate and somewhat mannered style, quotes the exchange of life-stories and the farewells of two soldiers, now Yankee, now Confederate (depending upon the version), about to die in battle. 'The Texas Rangers' obscurely chronicles an Indian fight in the West. Another group of songs views the Spanish-American War, with attempted heroics in 'Manila Bay,' with artificial pathos in three pieces about the Maine that hover between ballad and song, and with cynicism in 'That Bloody War.' The latter piece was also adapted to World War I, maintaining its songs-my-mother-never-taught-me tone. And the muse brings herself up to date with 'Just Remember Pearl Harbor,' a Negro recital of atrocities that precipitated World War II.

The outlaw ballad is but sparsely represented in the Frank C. Brown Collection, though this collection enjoys the distinction of recording two North Carolina traditional survivals of famous Robin Hood ballads. The best American example, however, 'Jesse James,' occurs in numerous versions and variants. So, too, does its inferior, 'The Boston Burglar,' which is a slightly Americanized version of an English broadside. 'John Hardy,' from West Virginia, 'Claud Allen,' from just across the line in Virginia, 'Frank Dupree,' probably from Georgia, and 'Kenny Wagner's Surrender,' from Mississippi, are neighborly borrowings of a commodity which, it would seem, the North Carolina ballad-maker has not chosen to manufacture out of local materials.

Not so, however, with murder ballads. Of these, the North Carolina products, to be noted later, are in excess of importations. These latter include, in many variants, the somber 'Charles Guiteau' and the low-life 'Frankie and Albert' (or 'Johnny'), normally present in American collections. 'Florella' ('The Jealous* Lover'), of all American ballads, is most numerously represented in this as in most other American collections. It is one of the few native pieces with harmony of atmosphere, action, and tone, however crude these elements may be. The others with murder as the main core include four pieces about the brutal slaying of little girls — one concerning Mary Phagan, the others concerning Marian Parker.

A few ballads of the Old West found their way into North Carolina favor. Among these is 'Joe Bowers,' a humorous yarn of the hero's hardships and disappointment in the Gold Rush of 1849. To students of American literature it is interesting as perhaps the first of the 'Pike County ballads,' later popularized by John Hay and Bret Harte. Like 'Joe Bowers' in some respects, but with an account of a sea voyage rather than an overland trek, and with a happier denouement, 'Sweet Jane' relates the odyssey of another Gold-Rusher. 'The Dying Cowboy' and 'Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie' — both reworkings of older pieces — have been sung con amore from Manteo to Murphy.

Several other common American ballad types are also represented by single pieces or at most a few. 'Jack Haggerty' is one of the rare raftsman pieces that have floated into North Carolina. A homiletic favorite, 'Wicked Polly,' in the fullest versions, presents the terrors of damnation with a vigor that reminds one of Michael Wigglesworth's 'Day of Doom,' a New England masterpiece of the species. 'The Blue Tail Fly' owes its currency as much to the midnineteenth-century exploitation of it by singing companies and minstrel troupes as to its intrinsic comedy.

Of the comparatively few native American Negro ballads that have established themselves by firmness of structure and memorableness of content, 'John Henry' is easily first, rivaled only by 'The Ballet of the Boll Weevil.' Because of its relation to 'John Hardy' and its epic flavor, we have included it here, while placing 'The Ballet of the Boll Weevil' among the work songs. 'Asheville Junction, Swannanoa Tunnel' is a fragmentation of both 'John Hardy' and 'John Henry.'

The final group of native American ballads is made up of pieces that demand recognition of their existence by sheer weight of popularity, not by intrinsic worth or historic interest: 'The Fatal Wedding,' 'Little Rosewood Casket,' 'Jack and Joe,' and 'They Say It Is Sinful to Flirt' and its sentimental sister 'The Little White Rose.' All of these have traveled far from their music-hall and parlor debuts.

 
CONTENTS

208. Springfield Mountain 489

209. Young Charlotte 492

210. The Three Drowned Sisters 495

211. The Ore Knob 496

212. Floyd Collins 498

213. The Jam at Gerry's Rock 501

214. Lost on the Lady Elgin 506

215. The Ship That Never Returned 507

216. Casey Jones 510

217. The Wreck of the Old Ninety-Seven 512

218. Wreck of the Royal Palm 521

219. Wreck of the Shenandoah 522

220. Paul Jones 523

221. James Bird 525

222. In Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-One 528

223. On the Plains of Manassas 529

224. Old Johnston Thought It Rather Hard 530

225. The Cumberland 530

226. The Merrimac 533

227. The Dying Fifer 533

228. The Dying Soldier to His Mother 534

229. The Battle of Shiloh Hill 535

230. The Drummer Boy of Shiloh 536

231. The Last Fierce Charge 539

232. Kingdom Coming 541

233. Ol' Gen'ral Bragg's a-Mowin' Down de Yankees 543

234. The Texas Ranger 544

235. The Battleship Maine (I) 546

236. The Battleship Maine (II) 547

237. Marching to Cuba 548

238. Manila Bay 549

239. That Bloody War 550

240. Strange Things Wuz Happening 553

241. Just Remember Pearl Harbor 553

242. The Boston Burglar 554

243. Jesse James 557

244. John Hardy 563

245. Kenny Wagner's Surrender 566

246. Claud Allen 567

247. Frank Dupree 570

248. Brady 571

249. Charles Guiteau 572

250. Florella (The Jealous Lover) 578

251. Frankie and Albert 589

252. Sadie 597

253. Little Mary Phagan 598

254. Marian Parker 603

255. The Murder of Marian Parker 604

256. Little Marion Parker 604

257. Edward Hickman 606

258. Joe Bowers 607

259. Sweet Jane 608

260. Jack Haggerty 610

261. The Ocean Burial 611

262. The Lone Prairie 613

263. The Unfortunate Rake 614

264. When the Work Is Done This Fall 618

265. A Jolly Group of Cowboys 619

266. Great Granddad 621

267. The Lily ok the West 622

268. Bill Miller's Trip to the West 622

269. Cheyenne 622

270. John Henry 623

271. Aunt Jemima's Plaster 628

272. The Fatal Wedding 629

273. Little Rosewood Casket 631

274. Jack and Joe 635

275. They Say It is Sinful to Flirt 638

276. The Little White Rose 640

in. NORTH CAROLINA BALLADS 641

277-280. Regulator Songs 645

277. When Fanning First to Orange Came 648

278. From Hillsborough Town the First of May 649

279. Says Frohock to Fanning 652

280. Who Would Have Tho't Harmon 653

281. The Rebel Acts of Hyde 655

282. As I Went Down to Newbern 658

283. Old Billy Dugger 658

284. The Brushy Mountains Freshet 658

285. Man Killed by Falling from a Horse 659

286. The Florence C. McGee 660

287. The Titanic 662

288. The Wreck of the Huron 668

289. The Song of Dailey's Life-Boat 671

290. The Hamlet Wreck 674

291. Edward Lewis 676

292. Manley Pan key 677

293, 294. William S. Shackleford (alias J. P. Davis) 677

293. Last Words of William Shackleford, Executed in Pittsboro, Chatham Co., March 28, 1890. 680

294. William Shackleford's Farewell Song As Sung by Shackleford 682

295. Death of Birchie Potter 683

296. Emma Hartsell 684

297. Gladys Kincaid 687

298. The Lawson Murder 688

299. Lillian Brown 689

300. Poor Naomi (Omie Wise) 690

301. Frankie Silver 699

302-304. Tom Dula and Laura Foster 703

302. The Murder of Laura Foster 707

303. Tom Dula 709

304. Tom Dula's Lament 713

305, 306, Ellen Smith and Peter De Graff 714

305. Ellen Smith 714

306. Poor Little Ellen; or, Ellen Smith 716

307. Nellie Cropsey 717

308. Lillie Shaw 721

309. The Prohibition Boys 722

310. Prohibition Whiskey 724

311. Shu Lady 725

312. 'Tis Now, Young Man. Give Me Attention 728

313. Blockader's Trail 729

314. Blockader Mamma 735
 

[See additional ballads from Volume IV in next section]