The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1897-12-12
FOLKS SONG IN AMERICA.
Second Paper.)

From and after the capture of Vincennes
and the English garrison by General George
Rogers Clark and his gallant men, there
were always a few hardy English-speak-
ing Americans in the country north of the
Ohio but the first settlement of Importance
was made on the Muskingum river at its
junction with the Ohio in 1878 by company
of enterprising New England people, under
the auspices of 1.-The Ohio Company" which
had purchased of the national government
large body of land at that place This
"Ohio Company and its settlement soon in
spired another of similar character and de-
sign, which, securing a cession of land low
er down the Ohio, at the mouth of Mill
creek. laid out the villages Of Losantiville
and Columbia which were, a little later,
swallowed up in the more important town
of Cincinnati. These first settlers" of the
Central West were, however far in advance
of the average pioneer in enlightenment and
culture, and did not therefore, offer a good
asylum for such tragmentary "folk-songs'
and ballads as subsequently came into the
wilderness with the mixed and picturesque
populations that swarmed over the border
from the Southern and Southeastern States
and Territories, as the Indian titles were
extinguished and the fertile lands were
thrown open to entry. 1t is to this latter
variegated population that we must look for
such survivals of a more ancient folklore
as were transplanted into the wilderness,
as well as for many OF the crude songs and
ballads that were wrought out of the try
ing experiences of the first settlers, sur
rounded by savages and subject to the raw
ages of deadly masmas. And here again
we will find constantly recurring that same
note of unspeakable sadness so dominant
in the songs of the French-Canadians. Some
ore has we'll said that folk-songs born
of anxiety and sorrow Thoughts of home
and Of absent or departed friends keep
them ever fresh in the memories of those
who have exiled themselves and taken upon
their shoulders the burdens of new COM
munites in uncultivated regions. These old
songs, ballads and fragments were pre-
served and passed from hand to hand and
from parents to children during the first
half century of settlement and growth, to
large extent in manuscripts, in the cramped
writing and poor spelling of 'lorn lovers
trusting maids and careworn and heart
sick matrons. The most meritorious of
them however seemed to pass from MEM
Org to memory among the better informed
and more intelligent and to have seldom
been favored with any more permanent We
These old manuscript songs were mostly
narratives of events and experiences, the
bereavements caused by war, shipwreck
accident, crime and disease, the partings
of faithful lovers and the late repentance
of hard-hearted parents. Few of them even
approached poetry, but they were the I'M
taught efforts of struggling men and women
far from the homes of their childhood, to
voice their sorrows and unburden their
souls. Laughter and merrment are for the
passing hour, but grief impresses itself upon
the soul as upon tablet of steel, and hence
it is that the songs and ballads most in
favor with those whom some are pleased j
to call "the common people" are in the
wailing minor key that is ever grateful to
the sorrowing heart. Shelley summed it all
up in his ''Skylark' in the single stanza:
I'VE look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our SincereSt laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of |
Saddest thought.
Since the close of the war for the preser- |
walton of the Union the rapid growth of |
printing, the multiplication of newspapers, |
books and magazines, the spread of educa- |
ton, the marvellous advances in musical |
culture everywhere in the country, and the |
rush and push of modern life have almost |
obliterated these old songs from the men, |
cries Of the people. The old, faded manu- |
scripts that preserved them have either |
gone to the paper maker or passed from |
sight under the touch of a warmer flame |
than ever inspired their authors Only here |
and there can one by found hidden away |
among some elderly persons souvenirs of |
1.-The days that no more" Some of the |
songs and ballads that lived in the mem |
cries of the people, as did the old Irish and |
CALIFORNIAN songs of love and valor, were of |
a high order of literary and musical COM
position, and these were often sung by the |
same persons who delighted in the melan-
choly doggerel that was passed from hand |
to hand in manuscript. These were mainly |
of Scotch and English origin, not few of |
them being Jacobite songs, inspired by the |
brief career of the iil-starred pretender,
Royal Charlie" How they found their |
way into the wilderness and were sung by |
people who knew little or nothing of the |
history of the Jacobite infatuation for the |
house of Stuart, and especially for Royal
Charlie" can only be ACCOUNTED for upon
the hypothesis that they had been dear to
the descendants of the Southern Cavaliers
and that the melodies to which they were
set perpetuated them in the memories and
affections of those who came from the South |
into the Western wilderness A wailing mel
ody like that which voiced the Quenchless |
sorrow of the highland heart after the
flight of its idol
"Bonny Charles now ava,
Safely owre the friendly main;
All our hearts would break in twa
Should he nee come back again.
or the wild, lifting enthusiasm Of the rare
Gathering Rout of the McDonalds, the
victorious glee of Clanronad, ETC., when
once heard, were sure to find safe lodging
in the affections of pioneers as expressions
of their own varying moods. No body of
popular song that has been preserved and
handed down to us from the past presents
more sharp contrasts of hope and despair,
the fierce enthusiasm of the onset with the
gloom of defeat, and all the rapidly chang
ing emotions of love, trust, infatuation and
utter ruin peculiar to turbulent times, than
do these Jacobite songs, of which a collec-
ton, made by Gilbert S. Macquoid, and
published by Walter Scott, of London, in
1888, contains no less than 206 different
pieces that rise to the dignity of litera-
ture, and which were inspired by the events
of a comparatively recent time.
Many of the love songs OF Robert Burns.
and especially 'Bonny Doom ITO Mary
in Heaven" Highland Mary" and
Comm Through the Rye" found their