Indiana Ballads
by Louise Pound
American Speech, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Apr., 1943), pp. 136-138
INDIANA BALLADS
THE LARGE assemblage of traditional songs from Indiana[1] that Mr. Paul G. Brewster has gathered helps to dispose of the assumption, prevailing for some years, that such songs are alive only, or mainly, in the Southern Mountains or in New England or in remoter regions such as Newfoundland or Nova Scotia. As far back as 1913 I found, without much effort, that about fourteen of the English and Scottish popular ballads were known in Nebraska, though this state did not seem a very promising place for their recovery. Later more such pieces emerged.
Preceding me, Professor H. M. Belden found many in Missouri and stimulated other collectors, of whom I was one, to try neighboring regions. So I am not surprised at Mr. Brewster's abundant results in Indiana. I note, too, that like most academic collectors, he had some of his best returns from interested young students. As time passes and phonograph and radio singing increases, Old World ballads surviving in this country become harder and harder to find, although now and then a song of considerable age seems to be more current here and in a better state of preservation than in its home region. Mr. Brewster deserves credit for his initiative in assembling old songs handed on orally in the Indiana area. He serves them up well, some in superior text form, and with the usual cross references to their appearance in other regions. He adds another to the many collections of ballads and songs made by states, such as Virginia, Mississippi, Maine, or by distinctive regions such as the Southern Appalachians.
In 1916 Leah Wolford Jack printed 'The Play Party in Indiana' in the Indiana Historical Collections, and Mr. Richmond P. Bond and Mr. Brewster have printed folklore collectanea ('Animal Comparisons in Indiana' and 'Indiana Sayings') in American Speech. Mr. Brewster has now made available the corpus of Indiana traditional songs to those interested in ballad wanderings and in their textual and melodic variations.
Some of the headnotes provided for the Indiana texts are not complete or up to date; but which of us can be wholly abreast of the times in entries to be made concerning individual songs? In annotating 'Fair Charlotte,' the narrative of the thinly clad girl who was frozen to death attending a ball, Mr. Brewster repeats Phillips Barry's ascription of it, as far back as 1912, to a blind William Lorenzo Carter of Bensontown, Vermont, sometime before 1835. Mr. Barry conjectured that it grew out of a local event and was taken by Carter over the country when on his way to join the Mormons in Utah (Journal of American Folklore, 15: 156-168).
Later, in the middle 1930's, he discovered that 'Fair Charlotte' was composed by the well-known American humorist Seba Smith (1792-1868), author of the Jack Downing Letters, who printed the song in 1843. Mr. Barry was our keenest investigator into the origin and diffusion of American pieces, and his death in 1937 was a very great loss to students of balladry. In the headnote to the Indiana texts of 'The Frog Who Went A-Courtin'' there might well be added, among the bibliographical references, the thorough study of this piece, with a display of about thirty texts from Texas, that was made by Professor L. W. Paine, Jr., of the
University of Texas (Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, 5: 5-48).
Mr. Brewster has found twenty-seven of the pieces entered in F. J. Child's classic collection of English and Scottish ballads existent in Indiana, nearly as many as have been recovered in Missouri. Some of his pieces, such as a descendant of 'Earl Brand,' have not been found in Missouri or Nebraska, while others such as 'Sir Andrew Barton' ('Anders Bardeen'), 'Young Beichan' ('Lord Bayham'), or a Robin Hood piece have been found in Nebraska but not in Indiana. Mr. Brewster closes
his anthology, as well he may, with the round number ioo. His last entry is 'Fuller and Warren' which seems to have originated in Indiana. He makes a contribution to its history, adding matter to that brought forward by Phillips Barry (Bulletin of the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast, Vols. 8-9).
Indiana with its graduate courses at Indiana University and its summer activities there in 1942, and California with its California Folklore Quarterly established in 1942, now loom as leading centers for folkloristic collection and study. At the helm respectively are such able scholars as Stith Thompson and Archer Taylor, and under their sponsorship valuable results are to be looked for.
LOUISE POUND
University of Nebraska
1. Ballads and Songs from Indiana. Collected and edited by Paul G. Brewster. (Indiana
University Publications, Folklore Series, No. i.) Bloomington, Indiana, 1940.