Bluegrass Messengers

Fiddler's Farewell: The Legend of the Hanged Fiddler by D. K. Wilgus
Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, T. 7, Fasc. 1/4, The Present Volume Contains the Papers Read at the International Folk Music Council (IFMC) Conference Held in Budapest in August 1964 (1965), pp. 195-209 [Footnotes at end of article]

Fiddler's Farewell: The Legend of the Hanged Fiddler
by D. K. WILGUS Los Angeles

The legend of the hanged fiddler is a part of the larger tradition of "last goodnights", farewell songs ofcondemned men reputedly composed and sung by them. Execution ballads have been fairly common in Western European tradition since the seventeenth century, and in most cases we can assign authorship to professional ballad makers whose productions were printed on broadsides and sold to crowds witnessing the execution. Although we recognize the confession ballad as a convention, we are in no position to state categorically that no criminal ever composed his own "goodnight". The ascription of authorship is, like the legend of the lovers' leap, a saga. But people have a habit of living up to their legends. As lovers may leap off a cliff because they are expected to, so may a criminal compose a "farewell" because he feels it is customary and therefore necessary. I have found attested examples of prisoners who remodelled older songs to fit their experiences. We must, therefore, approach each legend as we approach each folk song, as a study in itself within the larger study of an entire tradition. And the study of the "hanged fiddler" bids fair to become a study of a large part of the entire "goodnight" tradition.

The oldest recorded example of the hanged fiddler tradition--unless we consider it a highly specialized form of a motif in "The Jew among Thorns" (K551.3.1; MB. 592) [1] - is the well-known story of "Mcpherson's Farewell." James Macpherson, a gypsy said to have been an illegitimate son of the Macpherson family of Invernesshire, Scotland, became a freebooter and was executed on November 16, 1700, at the Cross of Banff. Macpherson seems to have been a celebrated fiddler, and tradition has it that, according to the best-known account, "before his execution he played a 'rant' or dirge on his favourite violin, offered the keepsake to anyone in the crowd who would think well of him, and receiving no response, broke and threw it into the open grave by his side" (DNB). One version has it that "he played the tune to which he has bequeathed his name" and offered the fiddle "to anyone of his clan who would undertake to play the tune over his body at the lyke-wake; as none answered, he dashed it to pieces on the executioner's head, and flung himself from the ladder".[2] According to an historian of Banff, Macpherson performed both "the 'Rant' and pibroch of his own composition",[3] and a still more generous version credits Macpherson with the rendition under the gallows tree of three of his own compositions, "Macpherson's Rant," "Macpherson's Pibroch", and "Macpherson's Farewell".[4] There are many other interesting details of the Macpherson, including his betrayal and capture and the advancing of the town clock so that the execution could be accomplished before the arrival of a reprieve,[5] but our interest lies in the story of the fiddle and the attendant textual-melodic traditions.

Of the three musical compositions attributed to Macpherson, only "Macpherson's Farewell" (although it is sometimes titled "Macpherson's Rant") is known, and usually in the rewritten form which Robert Burns sent to Johnson's Musical Museum.[6] Texts now in oral circulation in Scotland[7] seem naturally influenced to some extent by Burns' version, and they also incorporate details not in the broadside "The Last Words of James Macpherson, Murderer", printed apparently in 1701.[8] I can agree with the accepted position that the broadside is the ultimate basis of the present texts, though not with the statement that the broadside is

in part an imitation of the "farewell" of Captain John Johnson, hanged at Tyburn in 1690.[9] Be that as it may, further doubt has been cast on the traditional story of James Macpherson's authorship by the supposedly earlier Irish legend of a Jack Macpherson of Leinster, who, "as he was carried to the gallows.., played a fine tune of his own composition on the bagpipe, which retains the name of Macpherson's tune to this day".[10] William Harrison Ainsworth, who tells the story in his Rookwood, givesas his source The History of the Rapparees, Belfast. He was apparentlyreferring to a chapbook, A History of the Rogues and Raparees, which -according to T. Crofton Croker - was in the early eighteen-twenties "one of the most popular books among the peasantry."" I have beenunable to examine a copy of the chapbook to determine if the Jack Macpherson was a seventeenth-century freebooter, but the reportof the legend does not antedate that of the Scottish Macpherson.[12]

At any rate, confirmation of Ainsworth's report of Irish tradition maybe found in a "Clan March" noted in 1904 from an Irish fiddler in CountyAntrim. Its collector, Herbert Hughes, reported:

Tradition has it that once upon a time, about a hundred years ago, a man was going to be hanged for stealing something - a sheep, maybe. He was asked what it was he would like before he died. So he asked for his pipes, and marched to the gallows playing this - the war-march of his own clan. He was a MacVillain. Some people consider this to be a march of the Macphersons.[13]

The traditional date of 1804 might imply that this is but an Irish reflection of the Scots Macpherson legend, but it is assuredly connected, as the second strain of the "Clan March" is a variant of the second strain of "Macpherson's Farewell." The ballad of "Macpherson's Farewell" was not recovered from tradition in North America until 1961, when a two-stanza fragment was collected in Vermont,[14] but the legend of the hanged fiddler has an interesting if curiously confined history in the United States.

In 1909, Katherine Jackson French on a collecting trip to the east of London, Kentucky, found two boys who "played and sang Callahan's Confession - a local example of the old Goodnights--modelled, unconsciously, after McPherson's Farewell, or Lord Maxwell's Goodnight, which were composed, when existed the fashion of celebrating in historical song..,. the scene at the gallows when an outlaw sang his confession, urging his hearers to live rightly, and broke his fiddle across his knee if no one cared for it as a memorial before he was hanged".[15]

But the first published report seems to be that of E. C. Perrow, who commented in 1912 that "Some years ago an outlaw named Callahan was executed in Kentucky. Just before his execution he sat on his coffin and played and sang a ballad of his own composing, and, when he had finished, broke his musical instrument over his knee. The situation is, of course, the same as that of Burns' "McPherson's Farewell".[16]

Jean Thomas also reported the tradition in 1931,[17] and extensive textual and melodic records were collected by Alan and Elizabeth Lomax in 1937 and 1938.[18] A melody agreeing with those recorded by the Lomaxes and titled "The Last of Callahan" was taken down in August, 1940, from the fiddling of Frank West, Murray County, Oklahoma, by Mrs. Marion Unger:



One of the fullest "Callahan" legends accompanying the tune was given to Alan Lomax by Oscar Parks Deuchars, Indiana, 1938. Parks, who was orginally from Livingston, Kentucky, reported that he learned the tune from an old man by the name of Bob Lehr, in Jackson Co., Kentucky. A John Callahan, as Parks told Lomax, was being hanged for the killing of a man during a feud. While on the gallows, Callahan offered the fiddle to anyone who would mount the scaffold and play the tune. No one would comply, for fear of being shot, and in his last moments Callahan "busted that fiddle all to pieces over that coffin".[19] Parks also recounted Callahan's marriage, while in prison, to a girl named Betsy Larkin who then lived with him in the jail, from four to six months, in Manchester, Clay Co., Kentucky. Parks dated the event between 1898 and 1908. In a later interview, December 30, 1963, [20] Parks told a similar story, but gave as a reason for the killing a fight over the attentions of Betsy Larkin. Parks sang two stanzas to the tune, one in 1938:19
and one in 1963:20

What are you gonna do with the pretty Betsy Larkin,
Whenever John Callahan's dead and gone?
What are you gonna do with the pretty Betsy Larkin?
Oh, fare you well my pretty little one,
Oh, fare you well, my darling.

Figure 2

Identification of the actors in this legend has not proved possible. The reference to a feud would place the action not in Clay, but in Breathitt Co., Kentucky, the centre of the Callahan-Hargis and Callahan-Deaton wars (A change of venue could, of course, account for an execution in Clay Co.) Breathitt Co. Descendants of a noted feildist John Abe Callahan insist that he was shot, not hanged: "None of them ever got hung unless the other side caught them out in the woods somewhere and just wanted to amuse themselves." [21] And the legal hanging of a feuding Callahan would have been a well-marked event. The Betsy Larkin of the legend is also nebulous, but she is remembered in a game song often beginning:

Steal, steal, old Betty Larkin,
Also my dear darling.

This play-party song has been reported in the Southern Appalachians, the Ozarks, and as far west as Oklahoma, with the name sometimes appearing as "Betsy Diner", "Rosa Betsy Lina," etc. [22] Whenever I have encountered it, the tune seems to be a worn down set of the "Callahan" air. One tends to reject the conclusion that Betsy Larkin entered the legend because her name coincidentally occurred in a game song variant of the fiddle tune; it seems more likely that the game song is a survival of the song associated with Callahan, the hanged fiddler, which Oscar Parks recalls his father singing one night when he returned from town. [20]

The instrumental tune titled "Callahan" has a distribution in the United States roughly paralleling that of the game song. (It has been reported by title from the Ozarks.[23]) Alan Lomax did record "Callahan's Reel" at St. James, Beaver Island, Michigan, in 1938 (AAFS 2269B1). This occurrence could be due to the presence of "Callahan" in the repertoire of hillbilly performers on radio and phonograph recordings of the nineteen-twenties. [24]

But Beaver Island is in many ways a "little Ireland", [25] and it is tempting to postulate that an Irish tune called "Callahan's Reel", bearing with it the hanged fiddler tradition, became attached to the Kentucky Callahans noted for their violent behavior. I have been unable to discover a report of a "Callahan" tune in Ireland, but the Beaver Island tune, a version distinct from the southern tunes I have heard, supports the postulation.

Remaining to be noted is an interesting development in the "Callahan" form of the hanged fiddler legend. Mrs. Unger comments on the western incidence of "The Last of Callahan":

... the fiddlers in Arkansas and Oklahoma couple ["The Last of Callahan"] with the demise of a cattle rustler. Sometimes he becomes a horse thief. The story goes that he had been caught by the posse and was unwillingly standing up in a wagon under a tree. A rope had already been passed around his neck and thrown over a limb. When he was asked if he had any "last words" he said he wanted to play the fiddle one last time. In his standing position he played an unnamed tune and then handed the fiddle to one of the bystanders ... and the likeness of his tune became "The Last of Callahan"

The disposition of the fiddle is more specific in the version given to Alan Lomax by the former Kentuckian, Pete Steele, at Hamilton, Ohio, 1938: [26]

He was a violin player . . . an' he killed a man and when they went to hang him why he had his coffin brought and he had his violin with him and he sit down on his coffin and he told 'em, he says, 'I want to play "Callahan", and if there's anyone in the crowd that can play "Callahan", I'm a-gonna give him the fiddle' ... Somebody played it, but I don't remember my daddy said it was, and anyway he give the fiddle to him, and they took him on out and hung him.

Leaving the elusive John Callahan, we are on firmer ground when we consider the case of an earlier malefactor from western Kentucky, Edward Alonzo Pennington. Under a transparent disguise he was celebrated by James Weir in a local novel of 1850, Lonz Powers, or the Regulators. Lonz Pennington's Christian Co., Kentucky, career as a sharp business man, horse thief, slave stealer, passer of counterfeit money, and murderer came to a close in 1845 when, to escape the "regulators", Lonz fled to Texas, where he was recognized a year later by a Kentucky visitor. Now it seems that Pennington was a noted fiddler and was apprehended in Lamar Co., Texas, while playing the fiddle at a camp dance.[27] Although other accounts, including Weir's novel, make no mention of the tradition, Otto A. Rothert in his A History of Muhlenberg County writes: [28]

There is a tradition to the effect that when Lonz stood on the scaffold with the hangman's rope around his neck he asked for his old violin, which was handed to him, and he played a musical composition of his own, entitled "Pennington's Farewell". .. . One version has it that the day Pennington was hanged he not only played "Pennington's Farewell" on his violin but also recited what has ever since been referred to as "Pennington's Lament" :

"Oh, dreadful, dark and dismal day,
How have my joys all passed away!
My sun's gone down, my days are done,
My race on earth has now been run."

This stanza of "Pennington's Lament" not only parallels the standard incipits of seventeenth-century "goodnights", but is a variant of the opening stanza of the ballad of "Frankie Silvers", the "farewell" of a Toe River, North Carolina, murderess hanged July 12, 1833.[29] If "Pennington's Lament" was performed, as one might except, to a form of the "Frankie Silvers" tune, it is not melodically related to any "hanged fiddler" tune known to me.

Collectors have searched in vain for "Pennington's Farewell", the tune he reputedly fiddled from the gallows. Gayle Carver of the Kentucky Library of Western Kentucky State College, Bowling Green, once told me that an old Negro fiddler of Muhlenberg Co. said that he knew it and had played it, but he was unable to perform it for Mr. Carver. However, in 1955 Henry L. Trice of Madisonville, Kentucky, reported to me that his great-aunt, a distant relative of Alonzo Pennington, once played "The Last of Pennington." She was no longer able to fiddle, but she remarked that the tune was really "Blackberry Blossoms." The remark was revealing indeed, for "Blackberry Blossoms" is not only a well known Irish-American tune, but clearly a variant of "Callahan's Reel".[30] Whether or not it was associated with either Mcpherson or Callahan in Scotland or Ireland, "Blackberry Blossoms" seems to carry with it a hanged fiddler tradition.

From legends of eastern and western Kentucky, we now turn to south central Kentucky for the legend of Joe Coleman, the only white man ever hanged in Cumberland Co.- on May 24, 1847. According to The Herald Almanac for 1889 (Burkesville, Ky.), Coleman was accused of killing his wife at Slate Fork, Adair Co.

His wife went to the woods to get some bark, after she had gone he took his shoe knife - he was a shoemaker - and went to the woods also, as he said, to cut a "rock". He came in after awhile with her in his arms, dead, and claimed that he had found her dead and murdered. The shoe-knife was found close to the place of the tragedy with blood stains on it. Upon this and other evidence purely circumstantial he was convicted. His wife's sister lived with them at the time and she was the main witness against him .... Coleman was granted a change of venue from Adair to Cumberland County.

Clarence Rush, a great-grandson of one of the jurors, told me in August, 1956, that Coleman's mother-in-law lived with the Colemans. Joe had smothered her with a pillow and feared his wife knew about his crime. Old John Rush said that Coleman on the witness stand kept repeating that he did not kill his wife but knew who did. And old John Rush said, "Any man who knows who killed his wife and won't tell it ought to have his neck broke." The other jurors apparently agreed. According to Louise Sartin, formerly of Willow Shade, Metcalfe County, "The story goes that around fifty years later, an old lady confessed on her death bed that she had killed Joe Coleman's wife."

In 1959, J. O. Bolton, who had a country store near Coe Ridge in Cumberland Co., told me that he had read in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat about twenty-five years before that a man had confessed to the killing of Coleman's wife. "They hung Joe Coleman fer nothin'." Though the printed account in the Burkesville almanac relates that Coleman's body was taken back to Adair Co. for burial, Clarence Rush had heard that after the execution, Coleman was taken away by relatives, revived, put on a steamboat on the Cumberland River, and taken to Nashville. He later went out west. It may be but coincidence that not only does J. O. Bolton move the legend west, but another account of the confession places it in the mouth of a "woman out west".31 At any rate, Joe Coleman is still remembered in Cumberland Co., Kentucky. But our immediate interest is with the account of his execution. I have accounts from contemporary oral tradition, but here is a continuation of the report in the Herald Almanac.

He was driven from the jail ... on a two wheel ox-cart and sat on his coffin and played "Coleman's March" on the violin as he was taken to the gallows... There was no scaffold and the rope was adjusted and the cart driven from under him and left him dangling .... He met death without a tremor and pled innocence to the last .... Tommie Low beat the drum and Evans Shaw played the fife.

What did Joe Coleman play as he was driven to the gallows? The concensus of opinion in south central Kentucky is that "Coleman's March" is essentially the following tune, which was performed on a commercial "hillbilly" record (Page 501) by the late Finley "Red" Belcher,[32] who probably learned it traditionally in his native Monroe Co. (adjacent to Cumberland) in Kentucky.

Figure 3



I have collected variants of this melody as a fiddle tune, and as a song as well. The following was performed at Bowling Green, Ky., July 6, 1956, by Miss Louise Sartin, who learned it from her grandmother, Polly Jane Sartin of Willow Shade, Ky.:



Intensive field work in south central Kentucky has yielded variants of this stanza and also two more stanzas, indicating that the ballad (for this is a ballad, whatever its length) must have been more extensive:

Joe Coleman, what have you done (Repeat 3X)
That now they say you must be hung.

"I've killed my wife, that's what I've done, (Repeat 3X)
And now they say I must be hung." [33]

Furthermore, the field work confirmed my suspicions that there was more to the Joe Coleman legend than has been related. In August, 1956, Mr. Ernest Coop of the Pea Ridge section of Cumberland Co., Ky., while arguing with his wife over the length of the song, remarked that before Joe Coleman was hanged he offered his fiddle to anyone who could play the tune as well as he. And he added: "So Franz Prewitt stepped up and played the tune, and he give him the fiddle." Franz Prewitt's son, John, who lived near by and was active and alert in spite of his years, knew only that his father had been a fine fiddler. The fiddle John "heired" from his father is now in the possession of John's daughter in Indianapolis, Indiana. But no nember of the family whom I interviewed knew of the legend.

It is obvious that the legend of the hanged fiddler is not tied to a single tune. "Coleman's March is a variant of neither the "Mcpherson's Farewell-Clan March" tune nor the "Pennington-Callahan-Blackberry Blossoms" tune. The tune appears as "Old Hickory" in Ira W. Ford's Traditional Music of America (New York, 1940, p. 116) and as "The Raw Recruit" in The American Veteran Fifer (rev. ed. by Henry Fillmore, Cincinnati, c. 1927). Samuel P. Bayard collected it about 1932-34 as an unnamed instrumental piece in the repertoire of Samuel P. Losch, a seventy-year-old fiddler of Centre Co., Pennsylvania.[34]

The appearance of the tune iri The American Veteran Filer tends to place it in the Civil War period, but the Joe Coleman tradition pushes it back two decades. Mrs. Marion Unger has collected it in Oklahoma, where it is called "Coleman Killed His Wife".[35] Mrs. Unger obtained no legend-but here is another interesting connection of Joe Coleman with "the West". However, another interesting facet of the legend of "Coleman's March" was revealed on April 4, 1960, by Pat Kingery, leader of a hillbilly band in Glasgow, Ky. Mr. Kingery was originally from Nobob, Metcalfe Co., and said that he learned "Coleman's March" from an old time fiddler many years ago. He performed two versions, one containing a "third part", which he could not quite remember. Here is his first version:

Figure 5

After he played the tune, he told the following story:

Well it was written in - this fellow was connected with the spy service some way, and evidently he must've been an officer of some kind. And these men that was detailed to go with him to get whatever information he wanted was killed. And of course they captured him. And of course in those days they didn't bother to shoot you. They made an example of you by hangin' you. So at sunrise or whenever the appointed time was for his execution, y'know, and they were fixin' to march him down to this place where they were goin' to hang him, why this band strikes up this ad lib piece, y'know, and plays it more or less in mockery of him to start with, y'see, and then they said, "All right, we'll just call it 'Coleman's March,'."

That's the tale on it. How true it is remains to be seen. Thus we have not only a tradition that attaches itself to different tunes, but a tune that gathers to itself different traditions, even if Kingery's was but a sudden inspiration. Nor is this the only interesting thing about "Coleman's March". I have naturally asked every old time fiddler that I have recently met if he knows tunes such as "Callahan", "The Last of Pennington", and "Coleman's March" - and if he knows stories about any of them. On April 6, 1961, I asked Gene Conners of Bowling Green, Ky., if he could play "Coleman's March". He could and did:

Figure # 6

This tune called "Coleman's March" is obviously not a variant of the tune associated with Joe Coleman, but related to "The Jaunting Car," best known in the United States as the tune to "The Bonnie Blue Flag". [36] Yet it is the tune known as "Coleman's March" to a number of performers in Warren Co., Ky. Miss Effie Wilson of Marrowbone, Ky., once told me that there was a published "Coleman's March" tune differing from the one associated with Joe Coleman, but I have not discovered it.

My investigation of the "fiddler's farewell" is far from definitive. That the tradition is of Scottish or Irish provenience is open to question, and it may well be that a belief in the magical character of music underlies the legend. The association of five[37] different tunes with the tradition neither supports nor denies the traditional tale of Mcpherson's composition of three melodies. The diffusion of the tradition points to importation from Ireland to Kentucky and diffusion west-but the pattern may testify only to inadequate collecting. My experience has demonstrated that much can be found if one searches for it diligently enough. I must confess that I now suspect the incidence of the "hanged fiddler" behind every American execution ballad. There has been recorded in eastern Kentucky a tune called "The Last of Sizemore",[38] and a collector may yet find an informant whose legendary account of this piece will add another tune to our array of "fiddler's farewells". But the association of tune and legend remains an important field of investigation.

FOOTNOTES:
1. See also MORLEY, S. G.: Spanish Ballads, New York 1911, No. LXVIII

2. CROMEK, R. H.: Select Scottish Historical Songs, London 1810. I, iii.

3. IMLACH, J.: History of Banff, Banff (1868), rpt. 1908, p. 28.

4. New Monthly Magazine, I (1821), 142-3; reprinted in "Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society", III (1892), 190-1.

5. See also The Miscellany of the Spalding Club, III (1846), 175- 91; MACKENZIE, A.: Historical Tales and Legends of the Highlands, Inverness 1878, pp. 25-31; CHAMBERS, R.: Domestic Annals of Scotland, Edinburgh and London 1861, pp. 233-4.

6. JOHNSON, J.: The Scots Musical Museum (rept. from ed. of 1853) Hatboro, Pa., 1962, No. 114. The tune with a title associated with Mcpherson is found in Ms. and print from 1710. See DICK, J. C.: The Songs of Robert Burns (1903) rpt. Hatboro, Pa., 1962 pp. 475--7; CHRISTIE, W.: Traditional Ballad Airs, Edinburgh, 1881, II. 266.

7. Folk Songs from Scotland, collected and edited by Lomax, A. Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, VI, KL 209, 12" LP; Folksongs & Music from the Berryfields of Blair, recorded by HENDERSON, H. produced by Kenneth S. Goldtsein in association with the School of Scottish Studies, Prestige/International 25016, 12" LP; Heather and Glen, collected by LOMAX, A., MCLEAN, C., and HENDERSON, H., Tradition TLP 1047, 12" LP.

8. See MAIDMENT, J.: Scotish Ballads and Songs, Edinburgh, 1859, pp. 29-34. This text closely resembles those of HERD, D.: Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc., Edinburgh, 1776, I. 99-101; and FORD, R.: Vagabond Songs and Ballads of Scotland, Second series, Paisley and London, 1901, pp. 223-6.

9. So the note in The Poetry of Robert Burns, ed. HENLEY, W. T. F., E.--HENDERSON, Edinburgh, 1897, III. 307. The judgment seems influenced by the presence of "Captain Johnson's Last Farewell" in Maidment (pp. 87-91), which the editors consulted for the text of "Mcpherson's Rant." Johnson's "goodnight" is part of a related group beginning at least with "The Lord Russel's Last Farewell to the World" of July, 1683, printed in the Roxborough Ballads, V (ed. EBSWORTH, J. W., Hertford, 1885), 690-1. Among other members of the group are "Rebellion Rewarded with Justice; or The Last Farewell of the Late Duke of Monmouth ... July 15, 1685" (Ibid., V, 692); "The Sorrowful Lamentation of the Widdows of the West" (Ibid., V, 724); "Captain Johnson's Love's Lamentation" (The Pepys Ballads, ed. ROLLINS, H. E., Cambridge, Mass., 1931, V, 281--3); "The Traitor's Trouble", 1690 (Ibid., V, 329-32); ' The Murtherer's Moan; Or the Penitent Lamentation of J. B. Gent. for the Murther of his Wife Elizabeth", 1691 (Ibid., VI, 119-21); "Captain Whitney's Confession", Feb. 1, 1693 (Ibid., VI, 322-3);  "The Notorious Robber's Lamentation; or Whitney's Sorrowful Ditty" (The Bagford Ballads, ed. EBSWORTH, J. W., Hertford, 1878, II, 556-61, where it is dated Dec., 1694; ROLLINS, Pepys, VI, 315n, presents convincing evidence for the earlier date of Whitney's execution); "Francis Winter's Last Farewell", May 17, 1693 (Bagford, I, 230-8); "Fatal Love; or The Young Maiden's Tragedy", (?) 1704 (Ibid., 47-8). In addition to "goodnight" commonplaces, these ballads share (1) a tune and (2) a tendency (with the exception of "Russel's Farewell", "The Widdows of the West", and "Fatal Love") to employ the same half-line (sometimes with slight variation) to close each stanza - a type of refrain - "Rebellion Rewarded with Justice": "to strike the fatal blow"; "The Notorious Robber's Lamentation": "Stout Whitney Lies in hold"; "Captain Johnson's Last Farewell": "The Laws are most severe"; etc. The broadside text of "Mcpherson's Rant" employs, though not consistently, "to hang upon a tree". The tune, known as "Russel's Farewell", appears as "Whitney's Farewell" in PLAYFORD'S, J., The Dancinq Master (London, 1698 et seq.). p. 163. There were certainly later models that "Captain Johnson's Farewell" for the writer of "Mcpherson's Rant" to imitate, and the number of models increases the possibility of composition by Macpherson himself. Maidment's printing of the broadside includes no designation of tune, but "Whitney's Farewell" is not the tune reported in later tradition. "Captain Johnson's Last Farewell" is also found in BUCHAN, P., Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Ireland, Edinburgh, 1828, II, 170-3; Roxborough Ballads, VII (1893), 742-3; Broadside Ballads of the Restoration, ed. FAWCETT, F. B., London 1930, pp. 43-5.

10. AINSWORTH, W. H., Rookwood (London, 2d. ed, 1834?), Book I, Chap. IX, p. 63.

11.  Researches in the South of Ireland (London, 1824), p. 55.

12. The comment in HENLEY and HENDERSON, loc. cit., that the Macpherson "legend may derive from an Irish story" seems to assume the priority groundlessly.

13. Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society, Nos. 2-3 (July-Oct., 1904), p. 51.

14. Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England, compiled and edited by FLANDERS, H. H., III (Philadelphia, 1963), 169. The singer recalled the stanzas from his childhood in Wick, Scotland, and associated them with Child 173, although he sang them to a differing tune (which is not printed).

15. FRENCH, K. J.: A Fortnight in Ballad Country, "Mountain Life and Work", Summer, 1955, pp. 32-3.

16. "Journal of American Folklore", XXV (1912), 153n.

17. "Devil's Ditties", Chicago, p. 54.

18. Partial reports have been published in LOMAX, J. and A. Our Singing Country (New York, 1941), p. 56; and in the notes to LC67, AAFS 9A, Folk Music of the United States, Albums 2 and L2: Anglo-American Shanties, Lyric Songs, Dance Tunes, and Spirituals, ed. LoMAx, A., (Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., 1942). My discussion is based on the original field recordings in the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song: 1503B2, NICHOLSONG, . C., Providence, Laurel Co., Ky., 1937; 1517A3, ASHER, M., Hyden, Ky., 1937; 1527A1, ASHER, B., Hyden, Ky., 1937; 1537B1, STRONG, L., Hazard, Ky., 1937; 1568B2, STEPP, W. M., Salyersville, Ky., 1937; 1593A2, PRATER, W., Salyersville, Ky., 1937; 1707A, STEELE, P., Hamilton, Ohio 1938; 1728A2, PARKs, O., Deuchars, Indiana 1938; BONNER, P., St. James, Beaver Island, Mich., 1938. 19 AAFS 1728A2; cf. Our Singing Country, p. 56.

20. Recorded by DUNFORD, P. and ROSENBAUM, A., I am indebted to Mr. Dunford for a taped copy of the interview.

21. Letter from OWENS, E., May 29, 1959.

22. For variants and references see RANDOLPH, V.: Ozark Folksongs, III, Columbia, Mo., 1949, 362-4; RITCHIE, J.: A Garland of Mountain Song, New York 1953, pp. 38-9 (recorded on Saturday Night and Sunday Too, Riverside RLP 12-620, 1211 LP).

23. RANDOLPH, V.: The Names of Ozark Fiddle Tunes, "Midwest Folklore" IV (1954), 82, 84.

24. Fiddlin' Powers and Family, Callahan's Reel, Victor 19450 (1924); Roane County Ramblers, Callahan Rag, Columbia 15570-D (1930). On January 13, 1930, Fiddlin' Doc Roberts and Asa Martin recorded an apperently unreleased master (16087) for Gennett Records. Identical printings of Callahan are found in MOORE, F. and EMMY's, C.: Chimney Corner Songs (c. John Lair, Chicago, 1936) and Renfro Valley Keepsake (c. 1940, Renfro Valley Enterprises, Ky.).

25. WALTON, I. H.: Folk Singing on Beaver Island, "Midwest Folklore", II (1952), 243/f.

26. AAFS 1707A. STEELE's banjo rendition of Callahan is copied by ROSENBAUM, A., on Folk Banjo Styles, Elektra EKL-217, 12 LP. Steele also tells a tale connected with a Harlan County Farewell Tune in which a banjo picker leaving by train for army service improvises a tune and then gives his banjo awayr. The Harlan County Farewell Tune is copied by ROSENBAUM, A., loc. cit., and Steele's performance and tale are preserved in the collection of KAHN, E., University of California, Los Angeles.

27. PERRIN, W. H.: County of Christian, Kentucky, Chicago and Louisville 1884, pp. 72-81; MEACHAM, C. M.: A History of Christian County, Kentucky, Nashville, Tenn., 1930, pp. 74--7; The Life, Flight, Capture, Trial and Execution of Edward Alonzo Pennington, the Murderer of Simon Davis (Pembroke Review, 1898; reprint of pamphlet issued by Hopkinsville Gazette, 1846).

28. Louisville, 1913, p. 147. A notice of the legend appeared in the syndicated newspaper feature Believe It or Not, April, 1960. (This item was called to my attention by CRAY, E. and HICKERSON, J.)

29. LAWS, JR., G. M.: Native American Balladry, rev. ed., Philadelphia 1964. E12.

30. The Complete Collection of Irisch Music as Noted by George Petrie, ed. STANFORD, C. V., London 1902, No 475; BURCHENAL, E.: Rinnce Na Eirann, New York 1924, p. 54; The Robbins Collection of 200 Jigs, Reels and Country Dances, New York, c. 1933, p. 40; One Thousand Fiddle Tunes, Chicago, c. 1940; QUINN, W. Columbia 3566 (1922); BURNETT and RUTTLEDGE, Columbia 15567-D (1930); QUINN, W. Crown 3403 (1932); MORRISON, E., Ashland, Ky., 1934, AAFS 300A; HUNTER, T., Prestige/International 13026, 12" LP (1961); HIGGINS, U. C.: The 37th Old-Time Fiddlers Convention at Union Grove, N. C., Folkways FA 2434 12" LP (1962). CARPENTER, F. performs the tune under the title "Yew Piney Promotions, Charleston, W. Va., 1964). Mr. Carpenter told me July 25, 1964, that he also performs "Blackberry Blossoms", which he considers another tune.

31. BUCHANAN, N.: Cumberland Co., Ky., September, 1959 (Typescript, Western Kentucky Folklore Archive, University of California, Los Angeles.)

32. See also Red Belcher's Song Book and Picture Album, New York, Dixie Music Publishing Co., c. 1946, p. 21; and an identical printing in Buck Beeman (The Fiddlin' Fool from Kansas) and his Western Pals Northwestern Barn Dance Songs, New York, Dixie Music Publishing Co., c. 1946.

33. MRS. McGEE, N.: Glasgow, Ky., Aug. 3, 1961.

34. The Bayard Ms. Instrumental Music Collection, State College, Pa. I am grateful to Prof. Bayard for this and other favours.

35. Ms. Hunting with Bow and Fiddle, p. 50.

36. RANDOLPH, V.: Ozark Folksong, II (Columbia, No., 1948), 214.

37 While completing this paper I received from DUNFORD, P. a taped performance of "Callahan" he collected recently from a fiddler in Virginia. This tune agrees with none of the five otherwise associated with the hanged fiddler.

38 ASHER, B., Hyden, Ky., 1937, AAFS 1525B1; Luther Strong, Hazard, Ky., 1937, AAFS 1537B2. The tune is known throughout the southern United States as "Green Corn", "Hot Corn" (Cold Corn, Bring Along Your Jimmy-John),  "Sook Pied", etc.