VOL. II., NO. 22.
PINEHURST, N. C" MAR. 24, 1899.
PRICE THREE CENTS.
'AMERICAN HISTORY IN BALLADS."
Interesting Lecture by Rev. Dr. E. E. Hale
Last Friday Evening.
A kir'c audience gathered in the Vil
l;i"c Hall last Friday evening to hear
Rev. Dr. Edward Everett Hale lecture on
"American History in Ballads." The
lecture was very interesting and was
appreciated by all present. During the
evenhn Miss Eugenie Upham rendered
two vocal solos in a very pleasing man
ner. A collection amounting to $28.00
was taken for the benefit of the "Lend a
Hand" society of Boston.
Helow is a portion of the doctor's lec
tore:
"Fletcher I. Saltonn says that if he
might write the ballads of a country
!io does not care who should make the
laws. And this statement of his is often
repeated. It may have been true of
Scotland that the people were governed
by their ballads more than by their laws,
but for one I do not believe that it was
true of Scotland. It certainly was never
true of Xew England.
New England was bom after the last
of the real ballads had been composed, if
one may use that word. For no real
ballad was ever written. The ballad is
the work of an age when very few peo
pie could read and when fewer still could
write, and fewer yet did write. In truth,
the reason why the immortal ballads of
the past ever existed is to be found in
the condition of life which made a class
of men such as their authors were.
Mr. Lowell says, in Ids admirable
lecture on "The Ballads" which has just
now been rediscovered, that the authors
of the English and Scotch ballads had
the-e advantages which are almost un
attainable today.
1. They were not encumbered with
information.
2. They sang well because they never
thought about it.
if. In repeating their poems they had
the magnetism of their hearers' sym
pathy. They saw their faces as they
spoke.
4. They plunge at once into deep
water without preface.
r). They lived when and where there
were no newspapers.
. 6. They state things. They neither
harangue nor describe.
7. The ballads are really folk-songs
ami they are the only true folk-songs.
8. Traveling from place to place as
l,ey did, the ballad singers had that
education for uplifting which comes
f'oin life in the open air and from that
only.
For such reasons, he says, I think they
did stand face to face with life in a way
impossible to us. lie also says what is
Jdso true, tiat the old English ballads
are models of narrative poetry.
Sow it is painfully true that the New
Englander from the hoo-i 11 111 IK)1 li.la a.y
joyed very few of these conditions, and
also that there was never any such audi
ence in Xew England as the ballad sing
ers had. The Uncle lieinus stories o
tta C.,fl. ..r. ii
ouuui ,u e uneu moueis or good nar
rative. But they are only possible
where those to whom they are told could
not read. Now there never was an
tramp in Xew England who went about
telling stories in poetry, because ther
was never any group of people wh
could not read.
These are the reasons why it has bee
said of New Enirland that 'as for ballad?
she has none, and what she has are not
good ballads There are two exceptions
perhaps three or four. But even whei
our best 'makers' have tried their hands
the result as compared with the genuine
ballad has been like a wax rose when
compared with one freshly cut from the
garden. Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier
Lowell hiinseif, have tried their hands
Longfellow and Whittier have best suc
ceeded in throwing over the hamper of
literary training, in plunging into deep
water and swimming for life. But their
best narrative poems are not ballads.
There are, however, some forty or fifty
poems, more or less narrative, which
ought to be read in any thoughtful study
of Xew England history. Perhaps it
will help teachers, or better yet, young
people who have the courage to lay out
their own courses of reading, if we bring
together a few of the forty and indicate
where the rest of them may be found. I
know of no single book which contains
them. I think it is singular that there is
none. Perhaps some clever reader of
this article may take such a book in
hand. If not, I will do it myself, if
there should ever be seventy-two weeks
in a year.
When there were perhaps only nicy
white people in New England, William
Bradford, the governor of Plymouth,
wrote some verses descriptive of Xew
England. That is, perhaps he wrote
borne of them. What I know is that be
fore 1640 and after the 25th of December,
1G20, he had written his versified descrip
tion of Xew England.
w would come in for the readers l
i in .. ino- for Mr. Longfellow's courtship
of Miles Standish and Dr. Holmes'
eferences to Pecksnot and Massasoir,
There are some very tew verses n.u.
n, ,.,vPllors of that sad place called
Merrymount left behind them. But they
ire hardly worth the Hunting mem uP.
Anne Dudley, a nice bright girl of
. . i i.i riioi-lpstmvn in looU
eighteen, laimeu vji.w.
with her father and the rest or mn
nn,;s nartv. She was afterwards
called The Tenth Muse, and there are
verses of hers which 1 cou.a sup intu
...,f th monthlies of today, I think,
IvL. hip flditor was on the lookout for
exaggerated expression. But you have
to read a good many of the Tenth Muses
Po LbeFore you would guess that she
that she knew how to pop corn and to
make hasty pudding, or that she had
ever seen a sachem or a beaver or a blue
jay or a rattlesnake, that she had ever
worn a moccasin or coasted on a tobog
gan. Yes ! the young reader may hunt
up Anne Dudley, afterwards Anne Brad
street, but he will find no New England
narrative and very little Xew England
life.
She died in 1G72. Three years after
Philip's war broke out. 1 think that this
nice bright Anne Dudley must have liked
to hear that nice bright transcendental
Anne Hutchinson when she had her
charming ladies' club in Boston only two
or three miles from her home and when
this nice Tenth Muse was twenty-two
years old. But her father didn't like
Anne Hutchinson's talks and he and his
sort sent her and her husband and her
babies into exile. Here is a so-called
ballad of that exile. The scene of it is
between Wash Pond and the Driftway
that goes to the cut oil' behind Point Jud
ith. ANNK HUTCHINSON'S EXIL.K.
Home, home Where's my baby's home?
Here we seek, there we seek my baby's home to
find.
Come, come, come, my baby, come !
We found her home, we lost her home, and
home is far behind.
Come my baby, come !
Find my baby's home !
The baby clings, the mother sings; the pony
stumbles on;
The father leads the beast along the tangled,
muddy way;
The boys and girls trail on behind, the sun will
soon be gone,
And starlight bright will take again the place of
sunny day.
"Home, home Where's my baby's home?
Here we seek, there we seek, my baby's home
to find.
Come, come, come, my baby, come!
We found her home, we lost her home, and
home is far behind.
Come, my baby, come !
Find my baby's home !
The sun goes down behind the lake; the night
fogs gather chill,
The children's clothes are torn; and the child
ren's feet are sore.
Keep on, my boys, keep on, my girls, till all have
passed the hill ;
Then ho, my girls, and ho, my boys, for fire and
sleeu once more!"
And all the time she sings to the baby on her
breast,
"Home, my darling, sleep, my darling, find a
i iIjicp, for rest;
Who gives the fox his burrow, will give my bird
a nest.
Come, my baby, come!
Find my baby's home!
He lifts the mother from the beast; the hemlock
boughs they spread,
And make the baby's cradle sweet with fern
ion vps and with bays.
The baby and her mother are resting on their
bed;
He strikes the flint, he blows the spark, and
sets the twigs ablaze.
"Sleep, my child; sleep, my child!
Baby, find her rest,
Here beneath the gracious skies, upon her
father's breast;
Who gives the fox his burrow will give my
bird a nest.
Come, come, with her mother, come !
Home, home, find my baby's home!
The guardian stars above the trees their loving
vigil keep;
The cricket sings her lullaby, the whlppoorwill
his cheer.
The father knows his Father's arms aro around
them as they sleep ;
The mother knows that in his arms her darling
need not fear.
"Home, homv, my baby's home Is here
With God we seek, with God we find the
place for baby's rest.
Hist, my child, list, my child; angels guard us
here.
The God of heaven is here to make and keep
my birdie's nest.
Home, home, here's my baby's home!"
Philip's war was a hand-to-hand fight
for their very extstance by the whites.
Philip had 40,000 Indians and whose
warrior knew the whole country, every
thicket and every swamp. They had
good guns and knew how to use them,
and they had plenty of powder and shot.
The whites were not so many in num
ber. Many of them had no training in
woodcraft, and they had not seen war
for nearly forty years. If Anne Brad
street had lived to that time, we might
have had a narrative poem from her.
But no! she had died three years before
the hot summer day when the hurried
message came from Plymouth to Boston
to say that war had begun. The saddest
slaughter of that war was at the Xarra
gansett Fort in Christmas week of 1675.
But 1 do not remember any verses which
describe it. On our side the heaviest
loss was when the 'Flower of Essex
died at Bloody Brook. And here is the
lamentable Ballad of the Bloody Brook.
It does not need a critical eye to see
that it is modern.
BALLAD OK BLOUDY BROOK.
Come listen to the Story of brave Lathrop and
his men,
How they fought, how they died,
When they marched against the Ked Skins In the
Autumn Days, and then
How they fell, In their pride,
By Pocumtuek Side.
"Who will go to Deerfield Meadows and bring
the ripened grain?"
Said old Mosely to his men in Array.
"Take the Wagons and the Horses, and bring it
back again ;
But be sure that no man stray
All the day, on the way.
Then the Flower of Essex started, with Lathrop
at their head,
Wise and brave, bold and true.
He had fought the Fequots long ago, and now to
Mosely said,
"Be there many, be there few,
I will bring the Grain to you.
They gathered all the Harvest, and marched back
on their way
Through the woods which blazed like Fire.
No Soldier left the line of march to wander or to
stay,
Till the Wagons were stalled in the Mire,
And the Beasts began to tire.
The Wagons have all forded the Brook as it
flows,
ttion tliA Kar.Guard stays
To pick the Purple Grapes that are hanging from
the Boughs,
When crack! to their Amaze,
A hundred Fire-locks blaze !
Brave Lathrop, he lay dying; but as he fell cried,
"Each man to his Tree," said he,
"Let no one yield an Inch;" and so the soldiers
died;
ad ever tasted sassarra " '