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NOTES |
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in 1860. The singers had no knowledge whatever of its authorship and origin.
61. The Jamestown Flood. Text known to May B. Wimberly of Lincoln, 1917. The subject is plainly the Johnstown flood of 1890, but the title as given by Mrs. Wimberly is retained.
62. The Milwaukee Fire. Text obtained by L. C. Wimberly * about 1916 from M. Boynton, Missouri Valley, Iowa.
63. The Fatal Wedding. Text obtained from Blanche Pope of Red Cloud, Nebraska, about 1914. Still popular in many regions.
64. Jesse James. Text known to Professor Reed Smith (1920) of the University of South Carolina, as current in that region. The second text is from Iowa, and was secured by L. C. Wimberly of the University of Nebraska in 1916. A local ballad which is an adaptation of Jesse James is The Assassination of J. B. Marcum, printed by William Aspinwall Bradley in "Song-Ballets and Devil's Ditties," Harper's Magazine, May, 1915, p. 901. The origin of Jesse James is unknown. It is possible that it is itself an adaptation.
65. (A) Charles Guiteau. Text secured by Professor E. F. Piper of the University of Iowa, from a student who had it from South Dakota. The origin of this song is unknown. Dr. Carl Van Doren says that he often heard it in Illinois during the 90'a from his father.
(B) The Death or Young Bendall. Text from Miss Agnea Andrews of Cambridge, Nebraska. 1918. She writes of the piece as follows: "A young man by the name of Bendall whose parents were supposed to be living in England in wealth came to Canada about the year 1890 and settled near St. Thomas, Ontario. He soon made friends with a young married man by the name of J. J. Bircnell. Birchell, knowing that Bendall carried much gold on his person, enticed him out on a hunting expedition and very coolly shot him. The lines of Young Bendall were composed and set to music by a young school teacher in the neighborhood where the tragedy took place."
A third piece of the same pattern is John T. Williams. A fragment of it from Mrs. E. N. Hardin (1916) of Missouri Valley, Iowa, who had it from a ranchman at Cambridge, Nebraska, who had it from Canada, begins as follows:
My name it is John T. Williams,
My name I'll never deny, I'll leave my dear old parents
To suffer and to die, For murdering .... Upon the scaffold high. Their testimony is to the effect that it was sung in the seventies before the death of Garfield (1881). Other pieces from the same |
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