Folk Song U.S.A.

“It is said that Laz’us (short for Lazarus) worked on the levee camps, in the days when ‘you worked from can to can’t’ (from when you can see in the mornin’ till you can’t see at night) and maybe they paid you and maybe they didn’t.’ Laz’us got tired of finding meat (worms) in his greens, so he decided to walk the table. You had to be really disgusted and really tough to walk the table in a levee camp, tromping right down the middle of the mess table and slapping your big muddy shoes right in everybody’s plates. Po’ Laz’us walked the table that day with a blue-steel revolver in each hand. He knew the white boss would give him a whipping for what he had done, so he decided to go all the way. He walked over to the commissary, introduced himself by poking his pistols in the pay-clerk’s window and then took off with the payroll.

“The ballad takes up the story at this point describing the death of this tough guy with obvious sympathy and in powerfully tragic lines. You cannot fail to know, when you hear a gang of men on the road shouting out this ballad-work-song in rhythm with their picks, that they had often wished to do what Po’ Laz’us had done, never mind the consequences. The song has no end, just as the troubles of the Negro working man have no end. Sometimes, however, when the singers have come to the lines about Laz’us’s death, they pause. The picks fall all together in concert for a few moments. Then they sing:

Captain, did you hear about all your men gonna leave you, Next pay-day, Lawd, Lawd, next pay-day.”

Four Men Suffer the Extreme Penalty for Their Crimes John Hardy Hanged at Welch, McDowell County, for Killing Thomas Drews Last Spring...

WILD E, W. VA., January 19. - John Hardy, for killing Thomas Drews, both colored, was hung at 2:09 p. m. to-day. Three thousand people witnessed his death. His neck was broken and he died in 17 1/2 minutes. He exhibited great nerve, attributed his downfall to whiskey, and said he had made peace with God. His body was cut down at 2:39, placed in a coffin, and given to the proper parties for interment. He was baptised in the river this morning.

Ten drunken and disorderly persons among the spectators were promptly arrested and jailed. Good order was preserved. Hardy killed Drews near Eckman last spring in a disagreement over a game of craps.

BOTH WERE ENAMORED

of the same woman, and the latter proving the more favored lover, incurred Hardy's envy, who seized the pretext of falling out in the game to work vengeance on Drews, who had shown himself equally expert in dice as in love, having won money from Hardy. Hardy drew his pistol, remarking he would kill him unless he refunded the money. Drews paid back part of the money, when Hardy shot, killing him. Hardy was found guilty at the October term.

John Hardy was a desp’rate little man, He carried two guns ev’ry day, He shot a man on the West Virginia line, You oughta seen John Hardy gettin’ away, poor way, You oughta seen John Hardy gettin’ away.

John Henry stood at the gamblin’ table, Didn’t have no int’rest in the game, Up stepped a yellow gal and threw a dollar down, Said, “Deal John Hardy in the game, poor boy, Deal John Hardy in the game.”

John Hardy took that yellow gal’s money, And then he began to play Said, “The man that wins my yellow gal’s dollar, I’ll lay him in his lonesome grave, poor boy, I’ll lay him in his lonesome grave.

John Hardy drew to a four-card straight, And the Chinaman drew to a pair, John failed to catch and the Chinaman won, And he left him sitting dead in his chair, poor boy, And he left him sitting dead in his chair.

John started to catch that East-bound train, So dark he could not see, Up stepped the police and took him by the arm, Said, “Johnny come and go with me, poor boy, Johnny come and go with me.

John Hardy’s father came to him, Come for to go his bail; No bail was allowed for a murderin’ man, So they shoved John Hardy back in jail, poor boy, They shoved John Hardy back in jail.

They took John Hardy to his hangin’ ground, They hung him there to die, And the very last word I heard him say— “My forty gun never told a lie, poor boy, My forty gun never told a lie.

“I’ve been to the East, I’ve been to the West, I’ve travelled this wide world around, I’ve been to the river and I’ve been baptized And now I’m on my hangin’ ground, poor boy, And now I’m on my hangin’ ground.”

John Hardy had a lovin’ little wife, And children she had three, But he cared no more for his wife and his child, Than he did for the rocks in the sea, poor boy, Than he did for the rocks in the sea.

“John Hardy [was] a steel-driver, over six feet tall and two hundred pounds of muscle, ‘black as the kittle of hell.’ (For this and other reasons John Hardy has been often and wrongly confused with John Henry, Negro work hero.) Anyhow, they say that this John Hardy came to the gambling table one night, slapped down his forty-five and said, ‘Now I want you to lay here and the first man who steals my money, I mean to kill him.’ Along toward midnight he began to lose. He accused a Negro (in our version a ‘Chinaman’) of taking twenty-five cents, and, although the man returned his money, he grabbed up his pistol and shot him dead, saying ‘Man, don’t you know I wouldn’t lie to my gun?’

“John Henry hid out in the Negro shanties in mountains until one day they caught him asleep, took his two guns, and slipped the cuffs on him. On his way to the county jail he jumped off the open vestibule of the train, taking the sheriff with him, but the sheriff pistol-whipped him and held him. In jail he watched the men building the scaffold where he was to be hung and he told all the boys, ‘I ain’t never gonna be hung on that scaffold.’ Yes, John Hardy was like the bad man in the song:

In come a man named Billy Gessef, He was so bad till he was scared of hissef.

“But no matter how bad he was, John Hardy knew he had to die. So he called for a preacher, confessed his sins, and spent his last days praying and singing hymns. The white Baptist preacher gave him a new suit of clothes, took him down to the river, and baptized him ‘like a white man.’ On the scaffold he ‘confessed he had done wrong in killing a man under the influence of whiskey and advised all young men to avoid gambling and drink.’”

“The people in passing their songs on by word of mouth through the years, make frequent changes that are especially notable in the texts. Some critics seem to feel when lines are lost, proper names garbled or plot details omitted, that the song has decayed. ‘Changed’ is a fairer term; such alterations can be judged only as they affect the life of a song. In America the old ballads have tended to become lyrics songs. For instance, ‘The Lass of Roch Royal,’ which in the Child volume runs to thirty-five stanzas, has contributed three stanzas only to the broad American tradition. * These stanzas appeared in a couple of ballads, but recently emerged with additional material as the basis of a hillbilly song. One can only say that the people do what they need to with their folklore and have forgetteries as good as their memories. This process of folk editing by simplification has transformed a rather theatrical British come-all-ye into the best and most effective of all American murder ballads. In the British original, sometimes known as ‘The Gosport Tragedy,’ the murderer tries to make his escape on board ship. The ship will not sail and the captain is therefore convinced that a murderer is on board. All the sailors, including the murderer, deny any guilt, and then the ghost of Pretty Polly appears with Willie’s baby in her arms:

Away from his Captain he turn-ed with speed And met his dearest Polly, which made his heart to bleed. She rent him, she stripped him, she tore him all in three: Because he had murdered her and her baby.

“Kentucky mountain singers were not impressed by the sailor’s superstition. They exorcised the ghost, censored the baby, and thus cut the ballad down to a hard-hitting description of a brutal crime. They sing ‘Pretty Polly’ without visible irony or sentimentality, flatvoiced and poker-faced, a swift and rippling banjo accompaniment contrasting with the long somber line of the melody. Sung in this fashion, with real seriousness and objectivity, the ballad acquires the feeling of inevitability and horror common to the great tragic ballads.

“Dreiser based his best-known novel upon a theme essentially the same as that of ‘Pretty Polly,’ calling it An American Tragedy. He might well have called it ‘The American Tragedy,’ if our ballads are a good index to our mores. There are literally scores of local ballads that tell the story of the young man who murders his sweetheart instead of marrying her, when ‘she gets in a family way.’ Such ballads pull no punches, when they come to describe the dirty deed. [...]

“All these songs were sung, according to the many old ladies questioned about the matter, ‘as warnings to young women, how they should beware of men and their false, lying tongues.’ They served, thus, to bulwark the sex mores of frontier America.

* See the ‘Who Will Shoe Your Feet’ stanzas in ‘John Henry.’”

“Ordinarily the conventions of confession ballads have required the condemned man to turn pious, to apologize for his misdeeds, and to point a moral for his audience. […] John McAfee, another of Ohio’s ballad heroes, starts off with a long, pious moan:

Come all men and learn of me My sad and mournful history, And may you ne’er forgetful be Of all this day I tell to thee.

“Then McAfee proceeds with relish to describe just how he did his wife in, offering her poison in the place of medicine.

She gave to me a tender look, Then in her mouth the poison took; Then with her baby on her bed, Down to her last long sleep she laid. But fearing she was not yet dead, Upon her throat my hands I laid And they such deep impression made Her soul soon from her body fled.

“‘Down in the Willow Garden’ is the modern descendant of just such an original, and has to do with a rather strange murder of a young lady named Rose Connelly. The murderer gives Rose Connelly some wine, which is variously described as ‘merkly,’ ‘burglar’s,’ and ‘burgling,’ and apparently was Burgundy. One wonders whether the wine was really poisoned or whether the old-fashioned singers conceived this sinister liquid as poisonous enough, since the young man felt it was necessary to run his dagger or ‘skeever’ through her to finish the job. Because of the wailing melody which rolls the murderer to his final execution, the ballad is still quite popular with ‘hillbilly’ singers on the air and, curiously enough, is one of the songs that young lady folk-singers in New York seem especially to relish.”