BROWN COLLECTION VOLUME II. NATIVE AMERICAN BALLADS
[This is the section for US ballads. The individual ballads are attached to this page on the left-hand column- click to open.]
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]