How far is it to the next house?
Stranger, I don’t know. I’ve never been thar.
Well, do you know who lives here?
I do.
As I am so bold, then, what might your name be?
Hit might be Dick an’ it might be Tom, but lacks a damn sight of it.
Sir, will you tell me where this road goes to?
Hit’s never been anywhar since I’ve lived hyar; hit’s always thar when I git up in th’ mornin’.
Well, how far is it to where it forks?
Hit don’t fork atall, but it splits up like th’ devil.
As I’m not likely to get to any other house tonight, can’t you let me sleep in yours? I’ll tie my horse to a tree and do without anything to eat and drink.
My house leaks. Thar’s only one dry spot in hit, an’ me an’ Sal sleeps on hit. An’ that thar tree is th’ ole worman’s pet persimmon. You can’t tie to hit, ’cause she ’low t’ make beer out’n ’um.
Why don’t you finish covering your house and stop the leaks?
Hit’s been rainin’ all day.
Well, why don’t you do it in dry weather?
Hit don’t leak then.
As there seems to be nothing alive about your place but children, how do you do here anyhow?
Putty well, I thank you, how do you do yourself?
I mean what do you do for a living here?
Keep tavern and sell whiskey.
Well, I told you I wanted some whiskey.
Stranger, I bought a bar’l more’n a week ago. You see, me an’ Sal went shares. After we got it hyar, we only had a bit betweenst us an’ Sal she didn’t want t’ use hern fust, nor me mine. You see, I had a spiggin’ in one end an’ she in t’other. So, she takes a drink out’n my end an’ pays me a bit fer it, an’ then I takes un out’n hern, an’ give her th’ bit. Well, we’s gittin’ ’long fust rate till Dick, damn sulkin’ skunk, he bourn a hole in th’ bottom t’ suck at an’ th’ next time I went t’ buy a drink, they wurn’t none thar.
I’m sorry your whiskey’s all gone, but, my friend, why don’t you play the rest of that tune?
Got no rest t’ hit.
I mean you don’t play the whole of it.
Stranger, can you play th’ fiddle?
Yes, a little.
You don’t look like a fiddlur, but if ye think ye can play any more onto that thar tune, ye can git down and try.
In fancy, we see the traveler dismount from his horse, sit down on the stump, and, taking the fiddle, complete the tune the old squatter has been trying to play. Old Joe knows just how to impress this part of the story on his listeners. He puts the bow into vigorous action and the strings emit tones that loosen the shackles of conventional behaviorism. It is easy to picture the squatter’s change of heart as Joe Spears fiddles the rollicking tune. Then again comes the dramatization.
Stranger, take a half dozen cheers an’ sot down. Sal, stir yerself ’round like a six-horse team in a mudhole. Go ’round in th’ holler whar I killed that buck this mornin’, cut off some of th’ best pieces and fotch em an’ cook ’em fer me an’ this gentleman, directly. Raise up th’ board under th’ head of th’ bed an’ git th’ old black jug, I hid frum Dick, an’ give us some whiskey. I know thar’s some left yit. Till, drive Ole Bose out’n th’ bread tray, then climb up in th’ loft an’ git th’ rag that’s got th’ sugar tied in it. Dick, carry th’ gentleman’s hoss ’round under th’ shed, give ’im some fodder an’ corn, as much as he kin eat.
The fiddle moans the melody and we visualize the confusion of the household as each member goes into action. We see Till rushing up to her father with the complaint that “thar hain’t enuff knives to set th’ table.” Then Old Joe resumes his impersonation.
Whar’s big butch, little butch, ole case, cob-handle, granny’s knife, and th’ one I handled yistiddy? That’s ’nuff to sot any gentleman’s table with, without you’ve lost ’em. Damn me, stranger, if ’n ye can’t stay as long as ye please, an’ I’ll give ye plenty t’ eat an’ drink. Will ye have coffee fer supper?
Yes, sir.
I’ll be hanged if ye do, tho! We don’t have nothin’ that way here but Grub Hyson, an’ I reckon hit’s mighty good with sweet’nin’. Play away, stranger, ye kin sleep on th’ dry spot tonight.
Colonel Sanford C. Faulkner is usually credited with the authorship of “The Arkansaw Traveler,” but he never claimed parentage of either the dialogue or the ditty. The scene of the story is thought to be in Pope County, not far from the present site of Russellville—the time, 1840. Perhaps the incident is pure fiction, originated by some versatile funmaker. If so, it has a record of which few legends of recent origin can boast. Both the tune and the dialogue have circled the globe and brought laughs from the masses everywhere. It is the best example of comic legend the state has produced.
The question of which came first, the dialogue or the music, is like considering the age-old riddle of the chicken and the egg. Folklore appears in strange ways and it is not easy to put a finger on origins. The tune may have preceded the dialogue many years but no one knows. Blodgett and Bradford of Buffalo, New York, published the music and a version of the dialogue in 1850. Fred W. Allsopp of the Arkansas Gazette gives us the following information which we quote with his permission:
To trace the history of the Arkansas brand of humor is interesting to the analyst and the antiquarian. The story of the Arkansaw Traveler, which the people of the state are sometimes squeamish about referring to, is supposed to have originated about 1840. It is the best known piece of Arkansas folklore, and its vogue is attested by the fact that innumerable articles have been branded with its name. It has been brought into being by pictures in lithograph and oils, at least two plays, a fiddle tune, and numerous versions of the ridiculously amusing dialogue. Evidencing the wide circulation of the story, Opie Read, in 1882, in his first issue of his Arkansaw Traveler, quotes Archibald Forbes, a war correspondent, as saying that “in England people who live in retired districts know Arkansas only through Colonel Faulkner’s Arkansaw Traveler; in France, everyone has heard of the famous fiddler, as they term Colonel Faulkner, and some of the most ignorant suppose that he was a great violinist, rivaling Ole Bull; along the Rhine, and even among the people who live on the Danube, the Arkansaw Traveler is a familiar name.”
One writer has said that no other region as young as Arkansas has produced as great a mass of comical legend and genuine native genius. Much of the humorous literature connected with the state, however, has been written by outsiders and cannot be considered authentic Arkansas folklore. The author of Three Years in Arkansas trekked in from Oklahoma and squatted in Polk County for a while, but he got out before the reaction to his absurd “classic” set in. Neither did native genius produce that rollicking piece of wit and humor, On a Slow Train Through Arkansaw. Thomas W. Jackson was the furriner who pictured the train, on which he said he rode, as the slowest contraption on wheels. The railroad companies have never appreciated this book, and not long ago its sale was banned on the trains of one of the important lines operating in the state. But I cannot understand why folks should be squeamish about this type of humor. Here is an example of Jackson’s “slow train” pleasantry.
“Conductor, what have we stopped for now?”
“There are some cattle on the track.”
We ran along a little farther, stopped again, and I said, “What’s the matter now?”
He said, “We have caught up with those cattle again.”
We made good time for about two miles. Then one cow got her tail caught in the cowcatcher, and she ran off down the track with the train. The cattle bothered us so much that we had to take the cowcatcher off the engine and put it on the hind end of the train to keep the cattle from jumping into the sleeper.
Opie Read ranks as one of the best writers of Arkansas wit and humor, but he was not a native, and resided outside the state much of the time. He wrote somewhat in the vein of Mark Twain an
d he is not noted for scurrilous remarks about Arkansas.
Ballad Hunting
Ballad hunting is a favorite hobby of mine. Wherever I go along the shady, flower-spiced trails of the backhills, or in the sunny valleys that rim the tortuous streams, I find adventure in capturing folk songs. It may be around the fireplace in the dead of winter, or in a stony field where a singing lad guides a lanky mule to a bull-tongue plow, that the simple music of a people finds its spontaneity most readily. Or perhaps it is in the voice of a tie-hacker in the forest or the chorus of floaters on a tie-raft going to market. Folk music is inspired by emotion and does not have the technique of formal music. It is the product of centuries of isolation and is earmarked with certain stock phrases that distinguish it from modern imitations. It has a naturalness that gives it subtle charm.1
Someone has said that the tests of a folk song are its simplicity of theme, its sincerity, its childishness, its crude sentiment, its distinguishing melody and, most of all, the traditional trappings it has carried with it through the years. Unlike formal music it is seldom touched with literary tradition but it does carry a tone of antiquity in its lines. The real folk songs of the Ozarks have a distinctive Anglo-Saxon tone that harks back to Elizabethan England—to the days of William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
Folk songs may be called the rhythmic idiom of the people. The old ballads match the moods and manners and emotions of the folk. In the Ozarks, there are merry, skipping songs that delight young people at their parties and frolics, pathetic tunes for those who have experienced sorrow, and folly ballads for amusement. Cradle songs have been handed down from generation to generation. Household songs are sung by women doing housework or mending clothes. Men, young and old, whistle ancient tunes as they do the farm chores or follow the plow. There are somber tunes for burials, and swinging melodies, done in shape notes, for community singings. In the category of song we find the hopes and longings, sorrows and disappointments, loves and hates of people who have lived so close to the earth that it has fully seasoned their personalities.
The songs of the Ozarks belong to four distinct classes. First come the old English ballads, or “ballets” as the natives call them. These songs, for the most part, are laden with tragedy and have many different versions or variants due to the fact that they were handed down by word of mouth. Some of the stock phrases of the old ballads are “lily-white hands,” “milk-white steed,” “snow-white bosom,” “red, red rose,” and commands or entreaties—usually at the end of the song—such as, “Go dig my grave both wide and deep” and “Put a turtledove on my breast.” It is interesting to note the frequent reference to the British homeland in these ballads. Kings and king’s daughters and royal scenes and incidents were ever on the lips of the Ozark pioneers, who were the regal vagabonds of the Elizabethan age, spinning a thread of Anglo-Saxon continuity in the deep pockets of the Ozark Mountains.
A second class of songs which permeates Ozarkian life is the more recent ballads which deal with fires, floods, railroad accidents, explosions, tornadoes, shipwrecks, outlawry—calamities of all kinds. Examples of these songs are “Jesse James,” “The Death of Floyd Collins,” “Casey Jones,” and “The Brooklyn Fire.” If the ballad is composed in the Ozarks, it frequently gets a start through local newspapers, or the author may have a leaflet printed to promote distribution. If it is a foreign product, it is introduced through the medium of phonograph records, or over the radio. Jean Thomas, in her Ballad Making in the Mountains of Kentucky, explains how these songs are put before the public in the Blue Ridge Mountains:
Tragic events always bring forth a number of ballads. Some ballad makers, alert to commercial value, hasten to the printer and have their composition struck off forthwith.
A printer in an isolated county seat in the Kentucky mountains, who had only a poor assortment of battered type and a picture frame with which to work, once told me he did “moughty well with the song-ballet of Floyd Collins,” selling them to wandering fiddlers who, in turn, sold their wares to eager listeners who gathered at the court house on Court day.
The improvised ballads follow the plan of the old English songs both in type and tune, but they lack the pedigree of age—and that is a big item with collectors.
Another type of song popular throughout the Ozark region is the gospel tune, set with shape notes and modernized with a touch of swing. These songs have religious sentiment, but they show little kinship to the solemn hymns of camp-meeting days. They are distinguished by the range and tempo of the composition, which give the singers opportunity for elaborate vocalization. Nearly everyone in the rural Ozarks attends singings and it is estimated that at least sixty percent of the people sing, or try to sing, these gospel tunes.
Singing schools of two or three weeks’ duration are held from time to time in almost every community. An enterprising singing teacher visits the neighborhood and “gets up” a class. Young and old attend, spending an hour or two each evening in learning the rudiments of music and practicing singing.
At the first session of the school the instructor explains how to identify the notes. Do looks like the roof of a house wherever it appears on the staff; re has the appearance of a coffee cup with the handle broken off; mi is a diamond; fa looks like a flag; sol resembles a grain of buckwheat; la is rectangular in shape; and ti looks like an ice cream cone.
The teacher spends a few minutes each evening giving instruction in fundamentals, but most of the time is given to singing. On the last night of the school, a special program of solos, duets, quartets, and group singing is presented to the public. It is remarkable how much a person can learn in ten or twelve lessons at a singing school. Some teachers offer to refund the tuition money if a student fails to learn to sing by note during the first five or six lessons. The fee for attending the school is usually a dollar per person, but sometimes the group have a pie supper or cakewalk and pay in a lump sum.2
The itinerant teacher is agent for songbooks and makes a small profit on his sales. Shrewd publishers put out new editions every two or three months, knowing that the singers will want to try the new songs. It keeps two or three publishing houses busy supplying the demand. That the new books receive a hearty welcome is evidenced by the following news item from a country correspondent in the Log Cabin Democrat of Conway, Arkansas: “Remember that next Sunday is our regular singing date and everybody is invited. We have our new books now, so everybody come and let’s mingle our voices together in glad song and sweet praise to Almighty God for having made these wonderful books possible.”
The fourth group of songs includes both the popular and classical types of music that are taking the place of the old ballads and fiddle tunes. But this is art music and has little kinship with the folk songs grandfather sang.
A special technique is required in collecting ballads in the backhills. I have learned by experience that the best way to capture a folk song is to appear unconcerned about it and talk about the weather or foxhunting. As the conversation proceeds, I casually express my dislike for modern jazz and mention a few old favorites of which I am especially fond. This usually gets the song, but sometimes one must go “all the way ’round Robin Hood’s barn” to get it. Vance Randolph, Ozark folklorist, gives a plausible reason for this reticent attitude of hillsmen. He says:
In order to fully appreciate just how seriously the old songs are taken by hillfolks, one must note the reaction of the native audience as well as the behavior of the singer. I have seen tears coursing down many bronzed old cheeks, and have more than once heard sobs and something near to bellowings as the minstrel sang of some more or less pathetic incident, which may have occurred in England three or four hundred years ago. The old song of “Barbara Allen” which Samuel Pepys enjoyed in 1666 is still a moving tragedy in the Ozark hills, and women in Missouri and Arkansas weep today for young Hugh of Lincoln, murdered across the sea in 1255, whose story lives in the ballad of “The Jew’s Garden.”
One of the tarnished echoes of
yesteryears which, if given proper rendition by a native singer, never fails to bring emotional reactions from the audience, is that symbol of tragedy, “The Jealous Lover.” This ballad was popular years ago throughout the Appalachian region as well as in the highlands of Missouri and Arkansas, but it is rarely sung any more. The style and the story are typical of the old English ballad but its pedigree has never been established. Some students of folk song contend that it is founded upon the murder of a girl named Pearl Bryan, who was decapitated by two medical students near Fort Thomas, Kentucky, in 1896, but this is contradicted by old ballad singers who say they heard the song as early as 1870. Some think the song was derived from another old ballad called “The Murder of Betsey Smith,” which was published in England early in the nineteenth century. But whatever may be the facts of its origin, “The Jealous Lover” was certainly known to many Ozark ballad singers at one time and no collection of Ozark folk songs would be complete without it. The version given here was heard in the Big Springs country of the Missouri Ozarks.
Down by yon weeping willow,
Where the violets gently bloom,
There sleeps our young Florilla
So silent in the tomb.
She died not broken-hearted,
Nor from sickness nor from woe,
But in one moment parted
From the one that she loved so.
’Twas on a Sunday evening
When early fell the dew,
Up to her cottage window
Her jealous lover drew.
“Come, Love, and let us ramble
O’er meadows green and gay;
Come, Love, and let us wander
And name our wedding day.”
Deep, deep into the valley,
Ozark Country Page 19
