The Hunters of Kentucky
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-12-06

Day 263 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

This War of 1812 song about the battle between Jackson & Pakenham was tough for me. I was totally unfamiliar with it and there are too many words in the verses. My daily recording makes perfection even more illusory than normal. —sgg

Sandburg writes: "These verses done in the style of polite poetry were first sung to the air of Miss Daily. They were written by Samuel Woodworth, and published in 1820 by Janies M. Campbell in a book, Melodies, Duets, Trios, Songs, and Ballads. Under the title of "Hunters of Kentucky, or Half Horse and Half Alligator", the song was published in Boston as a broadside. It has been heard among the mountaineers and cowboys; Franz Rickaby found it among lumberjacks, and the air here is from the singing of George M. Hankins of Gordon, Wisconsin, as notated by Rickaby.

"The text is from a broadside in the Congressional Library, Washington, D. C."

ADDITIONAL INFO: Samuel Woodworth's only other noteworthy composition was "The Old Oaken Bucket." His novels and plays are mercifully forgotten. For a Creole account of this battle, see Harold Courlander, Negro Folk Music U.S.A. (1963), pp. 167-168 (an untitled piece which appears to be about the Battle of New Orleans).

It should probably be noted that the Kentucky and Tennessee militia weren't all that great in themselves; in a series of Indian engagements in 1814, they showed a disastrous tendency to fall apart. Some of them, in fact, were routed at New Orleans -- only to be saved when general Pakenham refused to take advantage of the opening. But Andrew Jackson executed some of the deserters, and managed to tighten discipline. (from the Traditional Ballad Index)