Review: Devil's Ditties
By Mellinger E. Henry
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 45, No. 176 (Apr. - Jun., 1932), pp. 273-274
DEVIL'S DITTIES. Being stories of the Kentucky Mountain People Told by Jean Thomas. With the Songs They Sing. Harmonizations by Philip Gordon. Drawings by Cyril Mullen. 18o pp. Chicago: W. Wilbur Hatfield. 1931.
If you have ever passed as far into the Kentucky highlands as any mechanical conveyance is able to carry you and then have proceeded farther, perhaps on mule back, by way of winding creek beds, you will be familiar with the background of Miss Thomas's "Devil's Ditties". You will not need to be reminded that these creek beds are as yet the only lines of travel in many sections of the Kentucky highlands. Here the region remains much the same as has been pictured by Miss Murfree and John Fox. For more than two centuries these highlands have preserved the traditions, the folk-lore, to some extent the language, and the folk-songs of their British forefathers. So strong does the ballad tradition remain that not only are the old songs preserved, but new ones are created. As singing among these sequestered folk is almost as common as conversation, the subject matter is wide and varied - songs of knights and ladies in "reeds of peace" or war, kings and queens, returned lovers, departing lovers, forsaken maids, elopements, stealing of a bride, return of the dead, outlaws, feuds, murders, mine accidents, railroad wrecks, riddles, nursery rhymes, etc. Such a fertile field Miss Thomas has tapped and has given us as the result an unusual book - a book unlike any other book of mountain ballads.
It is an intimate study of the ways and folk-songs of the Kentucky mountaineers made by a native apparently of rare intelligence and talent. "Brought up in the edge of the Kentucky mountains, with generations of mountain ancestors behind her", Miss Thomas has in this volume linked their songs with their every-day life and fitted each kind of song into the scenes in which it would naturally be used. In thus reproducing the background of the ballad Miss Thomas has done in some respects what scholars in this field have heretofore largely failed to do. In this regard, therefore, she has added to the scholarship of the subject of folk-songs.
There are a half dozen traditional ballads, including "The Maid Freed from the Gallows", "The Twa Sisters", "Bonny Barbara Allan", "Young Beichan", "James Harris", "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet". One wishes that there might have been more of the Child ballads. Versions of familiar folk-songs appear, among which are "The Dishonest Miller", "Little Mohea", "The Lonesome Dove", "Sourwood Mountain", "Little Sparrow" and the local "Rowan County Trouble". Miss Thomas claims to have established the original authorship of the latter as one James William Day, a cousin of the Day brothers mentioned by Cox as the joint authors. The words of "Oh, Ye Young, Ye Gay, Ye Proud" are taken from Raine's "Land of the Saddle Bags" and inserted in "Devil's Ditties". "Hush, Baby Mine" is a stanza from Isaac Watt's hymn fitted to an air as sung by the mountaineers - not the usual one. It does not seem that hymns, even with the variations that come naturally in folk-singing, should be classed with devil's ditties.
The music is written in large, clear notes. The mere words of a good old ballad or song hardly contain more of the total work of art than a black and white reproduction contains of a masterpiece of painting. In the best examples the melody is implicit in the words, and melody and words are really one in effect. Especially is this true of the best of the mountain ballads, such as Barbara Ellen and Lord Thomas, perhaps the finest in this collection. Their plaintive melodies, generally avoiding the fourth and seventh of the major scale, in a strange way lift the story of some old unhappy far-off thing to a level of universality and clothe it with the dignity of a great drama.
Mr. Philip Gordon in transcribing and harmonizing the tunes, has allowed some sophisticated refinements to creep in. It is a better way to record the melodies without accompaniment, and let each person do his own sophisticating. It is a shock to learn of the author's hope that out of them will come at last American grand opera as a fitting monument to the southern mountaineer!
MELLINGER E. HENRY.