Shooting Fish in a Barrel: The Child Ballad in America
Shooting Fish in a Barrel: The Child Ballad in America
by D. K. Wilgus
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 280 (Apr. - Jun., 1958), pp. 161-164
SHOOTING FISH IN A BARREL: THE CHILD B ALLAD IN AMERICA: -The art of the traditional ballad has altered in the last hundred years or so-and there is general agreement that it has altered for the worse. Disregarding the nature of the standards to apply, we should certainly try to determine not only how but why the traditional art has altered.
Unfortunately, it is all too easy to approach the problem with The English and Scottish
Popular Ballads (or an abridged edition) in one hand and an American collection in the
other. We can compare the Percy or Motherwell version of "Edward" with a text from
twentieth century Appalachia. We can take an even broader view and list the great
losses suffered by the Child canon in transplantationB. ut this is rather like shooting fish
in a barrel. To reach any just conclusion we need to examine the fullest possible record
of the Child ballad in Great Britain and North America at least. But the task is not easy.
The twentieth century American record is generally available and organized for comparison
with the Child canon; not so the British. Furthermore, there has been a decided difference
between the main collecting traditions of England and America. Ignoring these
problems leads to unsound or at least inadequately supported conclusions.
I hope I may be pardoned for discussing but a single example of what I believe to be faulty method: Stanley Edgar Hyman's recent article, "The Child Ballad in America: Some Aesthetic Criteria."[1] Even if Hyman were but seeking to show the superiority of the British tradition o f the Child ballad to the American c ounterpart, he might have compared the entire tradition of both areas. Failing that, he might have selected variants
comparablei n terms of date and circumstances o f recovery. I nstead he selects the best of
British tradition, the anthology pieces generally recovered from special persons by the
great collectors of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Beside these he places
American texts often dredged up and unscreened by twentieth century scourers of the
by-ways. Furthermore, he sometimes chooses the worst of American texts to prove his
point. Whatever one's judgment of the relative excellence of texts from either tradition,
one can hardly countenance this method of comparison.
But Hyman is doing something other than discussing tradition as "a species of alchemy that convertsg old to lead." He is considering" an Old World configurationw e find in the
Child ballads, and a New World configuration they adapt to here." In other words, he
seeks to demonstratet hat the "inadequaten arrative,a borted d rama,h appy-endingt ragedy, corrupt and meaningless verbiage, and bad poetry in general" of New World texts are, at
least partially, "the effect of the American ethos." Consequently one might expect of his
examples that the deleterious effects he cites should-if they cannot be demonstrated to
have originated in America-at least be absent in British variants of the same ballads.
One can perhaps plead that any comparison of British and American printed texts is a bit
unfair because the American habit of collecting and printing wholesale fragmentary and
corrupted texts will naturally produce less aesthetically pleasing results than a tradition
that often sought deliberatelyt he old and "pure,"l imited and selectede ven the "private"
scholarship of its journals, and usually emended the texts of its "public" collections. But,
for the moment, I shall consider largely the printed record and shall limit myself to those
ballads Hyman adduces to support his argument.[2]
The first illustration of the effects of the "American ethos" is the absence of over one
half of the Child ballads in New World tradition, and, as examples of American rejection,
he cites six of the rarest ballads in twentieth century tradition and on both sides of the
water. "Gil Brenton," "Clerk Saunders," "Young Waters," and "Johnie Armstrong" seem
to be extinct; one six stanza text of "Kempy Kay" is printed in Last Leaves, and Hamish
Henderson has recovered "The Baron of Brackley" from a contemporary Scots singer.[3]
Of the five ballads "of very limited appearance here," only "The Unquiet Grave" seems
to have had much currency in twentieth century British tradition. "The Twa Magicians"
was found by Sharp (JFSS, II (I905), 50-I) and by Greig, but is unreported since. "Child
Maurice" was found only by Greig. "Sir Patrick Spens" and "Johnie Scot" are current in
contemporary Scottish tradition, but apparently not in English. So the "American ethos"
was not alone in rejecting some of these ballads.
Turning to the "curious sea changes" suffered by American versions, we find much
the same situation.N o one can deny that the supernaturails often rationalizedi n American
texts. But in "The Twa Sisters" the death curse and the magic harp are missing in
Child 10 M , N, R, S, T, and Y. The "absurde nding" of Americant exts which punishes
only the miller is present in Child S (from the Kinloch MSS.). And in the text printed in
Last Leaves (representing twelve similar texts), no one is punished. If one notes that an
American broadside of "James Harris" ("The Daemon Lover") ends in a moralized curse
on seafaring men, one is bound to notice that a British broadside (Child 243 A) concludes:
"The children now are fatherless / And left without a guide, / But yet no doubt the
heavenly powers / Will for them well provide."
Now for the treatment of sex, incest, and kin murder. One may, I suppose, reject, on
the grounds of his own aesthetic sensibility, Archer Taylor's considered conclusion that
parricide and the mother's complicity are literary additions to "Edward" (which is not
quite what Taylor said); but can he escape the fact that fratricide is a feature of British
as well as American texts? I regret that I could find no twentieth century British texts of
"Lizie Wan" and have not been able to examine the Henderson text of "The Twa
Brothers" to determine the treatment of the incest motives. If the Americans toned down
these ballads, Britons all but rejected them. And I shall have to point out that any clear
suggestion of incest in "The Cruel Brother" disappeared before its first recovery.
Nor can we blame Americans ingers alone for diminishing the "starknesso f tragedy"
in Child ballads. The lover's cry of vengeance in "Lady Maisry" is missing in two of
Child's British texts (Child 65 G, I). Furthermore, current English tradition has transformed
the ballad into a "Lord Lovel" type (JFSS, I (i899), 43; III (I907), 74-6, (1909),
304-6; V (1915), 135-6). The "fearful punishment" in Child's A text of "Little Musgrave
and Lady Barnard" occurs nowhere else in British tradition, and this story of adultery,
which should have been rejected by the "American ethos," instead seems to have been forgotten
by British singers. In at least three British texts of "The Gypsie Laddie," the lady
chooses "romantic love and freedom" (Child 200 H; Williams, pp. 120-2). And though
the lady returns to her husband in Child E, the gypsies are not executed: Jockie Faw rei
ceives ten guineas from the forgiving husband, and the gypsies cavort merrily as the
couple ride off happily into the sunset. The introduction into Child 200 of "I'll Be Sixteen
Next Sunday" seems to have occurred in America, but in England (Child G), the gypsies
failed to cast their "glamourie owre"-they "called their grandmother over."
The tendency of the Anglo-American ballad to develop into lyric has been ably discussed
by Tristram P. Coffin,[4] but I venture to emphasize that the development is Anglo-
American. (Would it be pertinent to mention that the oldest copy of "Riddles Wisely
Expounded" [Child i A*] has already "lost" most of its narrative?) "Mary Hamilton" is
clearly a case in point. A one stanza version was recorded in Scott's day (Child 173 AA),
and only fragments seem now current in English tradition (JEFDSS, III, 59-62). The
British seem to have aided the lyrical tendencies of "Mary Hamilton" by the addition of
"non-traditional"m aterial.5T he two stanza Virginia variant of "Johno f Hazelgreen"i s
not unique. Kinloch preserved a pair of variants (Child 293 E*) with two double stanzas;
the lone copy in Last Leaves has less than three quatrains.
I must confess that I am not impressed with the examples of the way Child ballads
adapt to the American attitude toward death. The "addition of realistic touches" does
destroy a certain antique patina that appeals to sophisticated ballad lovers; that it so
affected the singers remains to be shown. I somehow fail to see how, to a Kentucky
singer, the death of a lord worried about his towers would be more compelling than the
fate of a young man concerned with the condition of his still. Nor do examples of
"trivialized" ballads seem well chosen. The American "Bangum and the Boar" ballads,
classified as "Sir Lionel," descend not from the "Sir Egrabell" of the Percy MS., but from
an English comic version of i615.6 "The Twa Corbies" has become "Billy Magee Magaw,"
but American tradition, not British tradition, has preserved better versions. And the
"poor little lamb" song is not a proved derivative of Child 26.
It is said of Child 79: "'The Wife of Usher's Well,' a nakedly pagan ballad about
the ironic limits of magical power, becomes the American 'Three Babes' or 'Lady Gay,'
in which Christian prayer returns the children to Usher's Well and higher spiritual responsibility
carries them back to Heaven." This is an accurate description of Child C,
from Shropshire! Or consider the comment that "Sir Hugh" "has lost its serious Christianity,
the power of the Virgin and her holy well producing the miraculous voice of the
corpse out of it, in many American versions, but it has gained a superficial Christian
piety ... in the boy's burial with Bible and prayer book at his head and feet." It seems
to me that the "serious" portion of the ballad is the boy's temptation (into sexual sin?)
and fall. However that may be, British versions omit the miracle and include the Bible
and testament stanza (Child I55 0, S; IFSS, I (1904), 264-5). Apropos of the loss of
serious Christianity, we should consider the following text collected in Somerset, I907
(JFSS, V (1916), 254; cf. Child S). After the Jew's daughter enticed the boy with the
usual objects (symbols?):
She took him to the parlour d oor
And led him throught he kitchen
And there he saw his own mother dear,
She were picking of her chicken.
Down on his bended knee he fell:
"Mother, pardonm e,
For if I live to be a man,
I will give thee gold in three (fee?)."
She placed a prayer-book at his head
And a testament at his feet;
She placed the Bible at his heart
And a pen-knife in so deep.
She wrapped him up in a blanket warm
And tookedh im to a well,Saying,"
Goodbyeg, oodbye,m y pretty little boy,
I hope you are quite well."
Doubtless there is a ritual involved here, but I leave that to the judgment of others.
There is probably little need to dispute the aesthetic value of American texts of Child
ballads, and poets "in quest of a folk tradition" may seek it where they will. But in seeking a pattern of ballad deterioration we must consider all the evidence and not merely
seek a club with which to beat the "American ethos." Hyman's article contains a number
of interestings uggestionsc oncerningt he processo f ballad deteriorationw hich must, however,
be tested by the corpus of Anglo-American-even Continental-balladry before any
sound conclusion can be reached.
NOTES
1 JAF, LXX (I957), 235ff.
2 Collections cited are, in addition to The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 Vols. (New
York, I956), Gavin Greig and Alexander Keith, Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad
Airs (Aberdeen, I925); Journal of the Folk Song Society; Journal of the English Folk Dance and
Song Society; Alfred Williams, Folk Songs of the Upper Thames (London, 1923).
8 For information concerning the contents of the Hamish Henderson collection I am indebted
to Hershel Gower, Vanderbilt University.
4 ( 'Mary Hamilton' and the Anglo-American Ballad as an Art Form," JAF, LXX (1957), 208ff.
5 See Phillips Barry's discussion in British Ballads from Maine (New Haven I929), pp. 259-61.
6Bertrand H. Bronson, "The Interdependence of Ballad Tunes and Texts," CFQ, III (I944),
203.
Western Kentucky State College D. K. WILGUS
Bowling Green, Kentucky