Old Lady Grant- Hathaway (AL-FL) pre1962 Rountree
From: "Old Lady Grant," Another Child Ballad No. 278
by Thomas J. Rountree
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 83, No. 330 (Oct. - Dec., 1970), pp. 458-460
"Old Lady Grant," Another Child Ballad No. 278 One night in 1962, when the late Jere Coley Hathaway was singing and reciting for me songs that he had learned as a child, he remembered one that struck me as a unique variant of the old ballad, "The Farmer's Curst Wife" (Child 278). Since that time but especially in the past year and a half- I have compared it with every printed version that I could bring to hand; and though the number must range between one and two hundred, I found no other variant that told the story entirely from the first-person point of view or that contained or combined certain exact details of the Hathaway song.
Calling it "Old Lady Grant," Mr. Hathaway copied it down for me in the following form:
One one-morning went down to plow-
Too la loo-went down to plow.
Yoked my steer with a darned old cow-
Too la loo--with a darned old cow.
Up stepped the devil, said, "How do you do?"-
Too la loo-how do you do.
One in your family that I must have-
Too la loo-that I must have.
My only son that I could not spare-
Too la loo-that I could not spare.
"The golden wife that I must have"-
Too la loo-that I must have.
He upped with her all on his old back-
Too la loo--all on his old back.
He looked like an angel scared off the rack-
Too la loo--scared off the rack.
He upped with her and started down the road-
Too la loo--and started down the road.
He says, "Old lady, you're a hell of a load"-
Too la loo-you're a hell of a load.
He sat her down for to take a rest-
Too la loo- for to take a rest.
She upped with a fart and she kicked him in the breast-
Too la loo--and she kicked him in the breast.
He carried her on to the gates of hell-
Too la loo- to the gates of hell.
He gave her a shove and in she fell-
Too la loo-and in she fell.
Two little devils with a binding chain-
Too la loo--with a binding chain.
She upped with a mallet and busted out their brains-
Too la loo--and busted out their brains.
Nine little devils peeped over the wall-
Too la loo- peeped over the wall.
Said, "Take her back, Papa; she'll murder us all"-
Too la loo- she'll murder us all.
Next morning, next morning I peeped through a crack-
Too la loo- I peeped through a crack.
Saw the old devil come a-waggin' her back-
Too la loo-come a-waggin' her back.
"Hello, Mr. Devil, why'd you bring her back so soon?"-
Too la loo--why'd you bring her back so soon.
"She swept out hell, she burned my broom"-
Too la loo-she burned my broom.
"Old lady, old lady, and you must be good"-
Too la loo--and you must be good.
"The devil wouldn't have you, and I don't know who would"-
Too la loo--and I don't know who would.
Room in hell is very scant-
Too la loo--is very scant.
The song you sang's of old lady Grant-
Too la loo-of old lady Grant.
In only one other version that I can find does the farmer himself tell the story, but a shift occurs, and at the end he is referred to in third person as "That good old man." One might judge that here also in the concluding stanza the point of view shifts. To me, however, it sounds as if the farmer, knowing that his song will be repeated, makes use of proleps is in order to reveal a final and climactic identification. As such, the ending is still in the farmer's first person point of view. Although the story of the song has a world-wide popularity,[2] the specific details and events of a given version of the ballad generally agree with all or a number of the other extant variants. In addition to a different point of view, however, "Old Lady Grant" incorporates a few peculiarities that are almost exclusively its own. While most renderings make the farmer fearful that the devil has come for his oldest son, I have found only two others that have him fearful of losing his only son.[3] Labeling the wife as golden seems odd under the circumstances of the story, but the adjective is probably a corruption of scolding or olden, descriptions of the wife in the majority of the variants. One detail that appears to be unique is the likening of the devil to "an angel scared off the rack." Many variants compare him to a peddler with his pack, but George Lyman Kittredge has recorded a version in which the devil picked the wife up on his back and "Like an old bald eagle went off in a rack," [4] and H. M. Belden printed another which
says that "off he went like a horse in a rack."[5] Eagle may have been converted here into angel as a mere linguistic slip, and yet a kind of angelic innocence seems in keeping with the humor of the devil's civility and prepares for his and the little devils' inability to cope with the old lady. And Satan, we know, was a fallen angel.
Stanza 6 of "Old Lady Grant" stands apart, both within the poem and among other variants of the ballad, for its scatological presentation. Retroactively the wife's crudity at this point suggests irony in the expression "golden wife," spoken by the devil in stanza 3- It is also in accordance with her robust, virago character in all versions of the song, but it is apparently peculiar to Mr. Hathaway's version. Some other variants have her kick the devil on the way to hell and two or three have her do it after he has paused on the journey and set her down, but not even Robert Burns's rewriting of the ballad reaches the offhand scatological presentation here.
While the statement that the wife swept out hell is a minor deviation from the standard summary of her actions in the nether world, the concluding stanza has no counterpart in any other version that I can find. Many end with the wife casually asking for something that she has left at home like mush or tobacco, or with a deduction about women being worse than men. None specifically identify the wife as is done here. I know of only one that makes passing reference to her as "old scolding Kate,"[6] but a first name that may call to mind Shakespeare'ssh rew sounds more generic than individual. The closest the ballad usually comes to identification is to say that the farmer lived in or near Gloucester, Yorkshire, London, or Sussex. Numerous American renderings say merely that he lived under a hill, whereaso thers are no more topographical than the furrows that the farmer plows. However, the appellation "old lady Grant," along with the terminal emphasis given it, appears to be quite specific and individual.
Since Mr. Hathaway grew up and spent most of his life in Alabama and Florida, I thought that the name reference might be to the wife of Ulysses S. Grant, who as Civil War general and later as Reconstruction president might be a target for ridicule in a
defeated South. After all, in his early years he had helped his father on an Ohio farm and during the last six years of the 1850's he had been a St. Louis farmer himself. In addition to the scandals a ssociated w ith his presidential a dministrations, during his first term in office the international attention given the negotiations and settlement of the "Alabama Claims" could have kept his name pejoratively alive in many deep-South minds. In spite of such speculative data, however, the ballad offers no real clue other than the name, for Grant had three sons rather than an only one as specified of the farmer in stanza 3. Probably the song once referred to some local "old lady Grant" now unknown (as she was unknown to Mr. Hathaway)--unless the surname Grant, like the given name Kate, had at some period a generic currency which is now lost. Although the surname reference may well remain as elusive as it is intriguing, the ballad classification of "Old Lady Grant" is beyond doubt. As a version of "The Farmer's
Curst Wife," its greatest deviations are its first-person point of view and its specific and emphatic naming of the wife-increments that give it notable individuality among the variants.[7]
University of Alabama THOMAS J. ROUNTREE
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Footnotes:
1. Text B in Arthur Palmer Hudson, Folksongs of Mississippi and Their Backgrounds (Chapel Hill, 1936), 125.
2. For instance, see John Jacob Niles, The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles (Boston, I96I), 314.
3. Text A in Hudson, p. I24, and text A in Emelyn Elizabeth Gardner and Geraldine Jencks Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan (Ann Arbor and London, 1939), 374.
4 JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, 30 (1917), 330.
5 Text A in The University of Missouri Studies, 15 (1940), 95.
6 J. Frank Dobie, Tone the Bell Easy (Austin, 1932), 164-165.
7 For assistance in tracing and securing the many printed variants of the ballad, I heartily thank Byron J. Hopkins, student of English, and Mrs. Catherine T. Jones, reference librarian-both of the University of Alabama.