Walking the Berkshires

Tuning up the Spring Symphony: This Week's Lakeville Journal Article

I has music in mind when I wrote this week's Nature Notes article for the Lakeville Journal, readable here with free registration.

"... What grace notes are lost if they leave us? Do our woodlands remember the chestnut snows of summer that crowned their canopies with creamy white flowers? Is the drumming ground of the extinct heath hen, or the river without Atlantic salmon, diminished by their absence? Or is this symphony played on a scale far beyond our span of years?  With no one left to hear the sound, to whom will it matter when a tree falls in some future forest?"

"Be on My Side, I'll Be on Your Side": Top 10 Murder Ballads

I'm not altogether sure I want to know what it says about me that on a gorgeous day without a cloud in the sky, I have murder ballads running through my head.  Yesterday's electric folk post may have gotten me started, and the truth is that some very fine music has been made that is steeped in lyric gore.  This is especially true of those traditional songs that come from northern Europe, and those bluidy Scots and Scandis whose folk songs often tell of vengeful revenants and cruel mothers.  Cleaned up and taken out in polite company, such stuff went gold for the Kingston Trio and lauched the modern folk movement.

There are many songs, not strictly in folk ballad form, which could rightly fall in the genre.  Some of them are elevated to exquisite heights by one particular performance.  Others are simply classic no matter who does them. 

Here are my picks for the top Ten Murder Ballads, based on one or the other of these criteria.  No doubt you could add a few of your own, as indeed I struggled mightily over which would make the cut (and cleverly stretched to fit in an eleventh, as you shall see).

"Down By The River"  Neil Young  This one often gets drawn out into an extended jam in live performance. 

Be on my side
I'll be on your side
There is no reason
for you to hide
It's so hard staying
here all alone
You could be taking
me for a ride
She could drag me
over the rainbow
Send me away...

"Hey Joe"  The Jimmi Hendrix Experience made it a classic.

I'm goin' way down south, way down south
Way down to Mexico way, yeah
I'm goin' way down south, way down south, baby
Way down where I can be free

Ain't no one gonna mess with me there, baby
Ain't no hang-man gonna
He ain't gonna put a rope, a rope around me, yeah

"Crazy Man Michael" Dave Swarbrick/Richard Thompson.  Richard wrote the lyrics for a traditional tune that was later replaced by a new one of Dave's composing. 

O where is the raven that I struck down dead
And here did lie on the ground o
I see that my true love with a wound so red
Where her lover’s heart it did pound o

"Matty Groves", traditional, arranged by Fairport Convention:  A lady seduces her servant, and taunts her husband who slays them both:

"A grave, a grave!'' Lord Darnell cried, "to put these lovers in.
But bury my lady at the top for she was of noble kin."

"Pretty Polly"  various.  Joan Baez did a classic rendition, and another by Hilary Burhan was used in the closing credits of an episode of HBO's "Deadwood".  It is related to many older ballads, including Childe #90, and the best melange of these is another arrangement by Broadside Electric entitled Jellon Grame:

"Lie you there, oh father dear
My mother's curse to rue
The place that she lies buried in
Is far too good for you."

"Stagger Lee" various.  Take your pick:  Ma Rainey, Mississippi John Hurt, Duke Ellington, Taj Mahal, the Grateful Dead...

"Tom Dooley "  The Kingston Trio.  The one that got the ball rolling in the late 1950s.  My aunt learned this song while in college around this time and it is a standard at family sing alongs.

"Bruton Town" various artists.  I am partial to the 1972 Sandy Denny version, as wel as that by Broadside Electric on their album "With Teeth":

"Now welcome home, my dear young brothers,
Our serving man, is he behind?"
"We've left him where we've been a-hunting,
"We've left him where no man can find."

"Childe Owlet": Childe #291 performed by Steeleye Span.  This one breaks all the rules.  A man is condemned by false witness to be torn apart by horses because he spurns the advances of his kinsman's wife, who gets away with it.

Lady Erskine sits intae her bower
A-sowing a silken seam
A bonny shirt for Child Owlet
As he goes out and in
His face was fair, long was his hair
She's called him to come near
“Oh, you must cuckold Lord Ronald
For all his lands and gear.”

"Where the Wild Roses Grow"  Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, from an album of nothing but Murder Ballads:

On the third day he took me to the river
He showed me the roses and we kissed
And the last thing I heard was a muttered word
As he stood smiling above me with a rock in his fist

In the News

A alternate version reprise of my recent Quickenings post appears this week in the Lakeville Journal, readable here with free registration. The on-line version omits the opening Wind in the Willows quote that appears in the print article:

"Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing..."

Dark Secrets on Gallows Hill

Gallows Hill lies east of the neighborhood of Lime Rock in the Town of Salisbury Connecticut, overlooking the confluence of Salmon Creek with the Housatonic River and just across the water from Falls Village.  It is a place of high bluffs and twisted stone, a lonely spot with a lonely name.

I have often wondered about how it came by that name, naturally assuming that perhaps it had been a place of execution.  Instead, this eminence seems to have a darker history, for either a suicide or a lynching once took place there, and still remains shrouded in mystery.

An 1883 guide entitled New England: A Handbook for Travellers offers a brief explanation:

"W. of [Falls Village] is the far-viewing Gallows Hill,  where according to the tradition, the corpse of a negro was once found hanging from a tree, and no one ever knew how he came there, or who he was."

Another 1896 text repeats the story, adding that "a strange black man was found hanging, dead, to a tree near its top one morning."   Strange fruit indeed, but by whose hand it came to be there has been left unsolved and the event itself has passed into forgotten local lore.  An 1853 map of the Town of Salisbury contains the name "Gallow's Hill", but an extensive 1898 article in Connecticut Quarterly magazine fails to mention Gallows Hill by this or any other name in its breathless enumeration of the Town's many points of interest. 

The hanging would have taken place sometime in the first century of Salisbury's settlement.  All but the steepest hillsides would have been denuded for charcoal to fuel the iron furnaces that made the region prosper even as they fouled the air.  There would have been trees, though, in the dark hollows and sheer cliffs of Gallow's Hill.  The place lay at the very margin of the community, and like all frontiers held both risks and attractions to those marginalized by society.

In 1756, a Colonial census enumerated just 31 negroes in Litchfield County and none in Salisbury.  Connecticut's slave codes severely restricted the mobility of even free blacks and slavery was not completely abolished until 1848.  The state vigorously prosecuted fugitive slaves.  Even in the first half of the 19th century, a lone black man might have chosen to skirt around a rural Connecticut village rather than pass directly through town. 

Today the place is locally known as Brinton Hill, and indeed Brinton Hill road passes just to the north and about 200' below the summit.  It follows a saddle between the Hill and Falls Mountain, and would have been the logical route for the unknown black man to have taken, either from Falls Village or Lime Rock (in early days simply known as The Hollow), to the spot where he met his end.  Whether by choice or compulsion one can only guess.

Quickenings

"Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said `Bother!' and `O blow!' and also `Hang spring-cleaning!' and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat. Something up above was calling him imperiously, and he made for the steep little tunnel which answered in his case to the gravelled carriage-drive owned by animals whose residences are nearer to the sun and air. So he scraped and scratched and scrabbled and scrooged and then he scrooged again and scrabbled and scratched and scraped, working busily with his little paws and muttering to himself, `Up we go! Up we go!' till at last, pop! his snout came out into the sunlight, and he found himself rolling in the warm grass of a great meadow."

- Kenneth Grahame "Wind in the Willows"

There was a chorus of spring peepers singing praise songs in the twilight when I stepped outside last evening.  Nature's Great Revival is underway.  The maple sap run is over, the salamanders are on the march, and with the first ospreys back in Buzzards Bay, can the herring be far behind?  The finches at the feeder are shedding their olive drab for canary yellow, and redwings rasp in the marshlands.  Our human neighbors emerge from their dens on about the same schedule as the local black bears, shaking off their winter torpor and reclaiming their sometimes overlapping territories from long disuse. 

If the senses of my species were not dulled by progress and evolution, they would quicken with every fresh scent on the warm Spring wind.  They would pulse with the first impossible bloom of skunk cabbage, literary melting its way through the frozen earth through the heat of its cellular respiration.  They would feel the stirring of the aged and tattered mourning cloak, one of the longest lived butterflies, reemerging in senescence to mate with the impulse of youth.   They would thrill with the drone of insects drawn to sticky buds and rank wet earth.

This is the season of quickenings.  The word itself derives from the old English "cwic", meaning living or alive, but its modern usage is also appropriate for a season of accelerations.  The fetus is said to quicken when its movements can be felt in the womb.  The heart quickens with life and vitality.  The poetic language of the Nicene Creed proclaims the second coming "in glory to judge the quick and the dead."  It is no accident that the Christian celebration of Easter falls at this time, when new life is self-evident. 

My birthday is also an early Spring arrival.  In these parts, the daffodils will be in bloom a week afterward, and as a young boy I worked out for myself that the last patch of snow would be gone the week before.  The first of the spring ephemerals are working their way upward in the bare light below the leafless trees.  Dutchman's britches, wild leeks, trout lily and trillium will usher in April's wildflowers, along with the winking yellow eyes of blood root, and clusters of marsh marigolds adding their splash of color to shadowy wetlands. 

All these awakenings take place in a brave, bright time when frogs lay eggs in ice-rimmed pools and early birds battle for prime nesting sites.  Even as the season advances, a fickle rain can blight the apple's bloom just as surely as longer days call forth its flowers.  All around us, nature is striving, seeking, obeying urges as involuntary as breathing.  Spring is a serious business, yet still given over to the domain of the heart.   "Hang spring cleaning" says the industrious Mole, with a spirit that soars on diaphanous wings.  Even a raw wet day like today has a sweet expectancy, like a kite that strains on its tether, ready to take wing.

Uncommon Soldiers

Joseph Plumb Martin was the most influential soldier from the American Revolution that most of us know nothing about.  His 1830 memoir - originally published as "Private Yankee Doodle" - is among the most referenced, 1st person accounts of the war.  With the sole exception of Washington's papers, you would be hard pressed to name a more commonly cited source in either the academic or popular histories of the Revolutionary period, especially those of the past few decades.  Martin has become the Patriot everyman, the subject of a PBS documentary, and his narrative is now available under different title in several print editions. 

Martin's account appeals to readers and writers of Revolutionary history for a number of reasons that together contribute to its ubiquity in the literature.  It is widely acclaimed as the most comprehensive account of the war by a common soldier.  Its wry and accessible style is colorful and self aware, and therefore engages the general reader.  It is full of anecdotes that brings the life of a teen-aged soldier in the ragged Continentals vividly to light, and is thus a major source for the impressions of soldier life depicted by period reenactors.   There are even a few fortuitous 1st-hand accounts that seem to verify the stuff of legend, such as the woman who served a cannon at Monmouth.

All these are reason enough to explain the multitude of historians who draw from Martin's observations, but there is also the fact that it is widely available.  One need not delve into the dusty archives of various rare book collections or have access to academic search engines when a quote of Martin's will serve.  I own the Signet Classic edition, and I must agree that it is an engaging account, though not always for the reasons most cited.  Neither is its mere existence as singular as its publishers would suggest, for there are other accounts by common soldiers, though you have to work a littler harder to find them.

There is, for example, the Military Journal of Jeremiah Greenman, published in an annotated edition as Diary of a Common Soldier in the American Revolution, 1775-1783.  Like Martin, Greenman served for virtually the entire length of the conflict, and while Martin ended his military career with the rank of Sergeant, Greenman's last promotion was to regimental adjutant.   One significant different is that Greenman's journal is a primary record kept during the conflict (though there are places that appear to have been revised at a later date).  Martin, on the other hand, wrote his narrative in his old age, and while many historians assume he based his work on a diary, no such account survives.  As a primary source, Greenman's is therefore closer to the events it describes, and remained unpublished until 1978.  Martin wrote with veiled anonymity, but his narrative was published during his lifetime, and the author's agenda must therefore be taken into account when assessing its value as a primary source.

Perhaps other editions of Martin's narrative benefit from comprehensive annotations, but mine certainly lacks such historical context and in my opinion would have benefited from more of it.  There are many obscure references that are left unexplained.  Greenman's diary is published by an academic press and transcribed as literally and faithfully as possible while preserving legibility.  The archaic prose and irregular spelling remains intact, which may result in a more challenging read for a general reader.  To the historian, though, it is a valuable work that deserved more exposure than it has thus far received.

Martin's is undoubtedly a superior work of literature and is truly unique for its period.  It is not really fair to compare the two texts along these lines, as they are entirely different kinds of writing and written many decades apart.  Martin's narrative is actually much more akin to another work of a later war - Sam Watkins' memoir of his Confederate service "Company Aytch" -  and fulfills much the same role as that frequently cited source does in Civil War history writing.    Martin's prose appeals to me particularly for its memorable anecdotes, such as a cat streaking in flames from a burning building, or a drunken lark on the ice of the frozen Hudson.  I am a bit more skeptical about his recollections of Molly Pitcher, which are often cited as evidence of her existence:

"One little incident happened, during the heat of the cannonade, which I was eye-witness to, and which I think would be unpardonable not to mention.  A woman whose husband belonged to the Artillery, and who was then attached to a piece in the engagement, attended with her husband at the piece the whole time; while in the act of reaching a cartridge and having one of her feet as far before the other as she could step, a cannon shot from the enemy passed directly between her legs without doing any other damage than carrying away all the lower part of her petticoat, - looking at it with apparent unconcern, she observed, that it was lucky it did not pas a little higher, for in that case it might have carries away something else, and ended her and her occupation"

Historian and artist Don Troiani depicted Molly Pitcher with the tattered petticoat described by Martin.  It is a wonderful description, and had it been included in a contemporary diary like Greenman's, rather than a memoir written more than half a century later, I should be blackguarded for not taking him at his word.  As Molly Pitcher's story was then known (and the woman most frequently associated with her still living), one has to wonder whether Martin truly saw what he says he remembers.  Many historians take Martin's statements at face value, but what memoir written in old age is free of embellishment?

I am glad that individuals like Joseph Plumb Martin and Jeremiah Greenman took the time to record their experiences, and so in addition to their hard service made valuable contributions to our understand of those times.  I am grateful that their accounts were though worthy of preserving and subsequent publication.  Each has its strengths and limitations, and each offers something different from the other.  Each needs to be taken on its own terms as well, and if Martin should be read with a grain of salt and Greenman should be more widely read and referenced, that in no way diminishes their importance.  Nor are they the only uncommon voices of common soldiers who left an historical record of their service in the Revolution.  A quick search of Google Books reveals Elijah Fisher's Journal, the Memoir of William Burke, the Diary of David Howe and the  Journal of Soloman Nash.    It would be refreshing if some of their observations found their way intothe next round of Revolutionary War histories.  Martin has seen hard service, and deserves a furlough.

Innocent Innuendo

One of the central truths of advertising is that sex sells.  Another is that words and phrases with perfectly innocent definitions can sound downright pornographic when taken out of context.  Just try saying "kumquat" without blushing.  The fruit itself is actually extremely sour, not at all what the name would suggest.  Accident?  I think not.

Or go to a diner and tell the waitress you take it black, like it over easy, and prefer fresh squeezed.    There is something very earthy about breakfast at a greasy spoon, and when Flo told Mel on Alice to "kiss my grits" we all knew she wasn't talking about hominy.  We can thank the US navy for taking things further downhill with "shit on a shingle" (creamed chipped beef on toast), though the limeys have their own version "on a raft" made with kidneys.  And anyone who made it through Ulysses and all that organ meat that Molly Bloom craves without catching the overt sexual references wasn't paying attention.

Any grease monkey knows how to do a lube job, twist a lug nut and what is going on between the master and the slave cylinders.  As for pistons and crankshafts, it takes a lot of thrust to get the engine going.  I am convinced that the absolutely filthiest song ever to slip past the censors is the Beach Boy's "Little Deuce Coupe", as a sample of the lyrics makes patently obvious:

Just a little deuce coupe with a flat head mill
But she'll walk a thunderbird like (she's) its standin still
Shes ported and relieved and she's stroked and bored.
She'll do a hundred and forty with the top end floored

She's got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar
And if that ain't enough to make you flip your lid
There's one more thing, I got the pink slip daddy

And comin off the line when the light turns green
Well she blows em outta the water like you never seen
I get pushed out of shape and its hard to steer
When I get rubber in all four gears

Much more clever than The Lemon Song, which has all the subtlety of a ball peen hammer. 

Sports metaphors are a slippery slope, especially when inserted in the workplace.  That CEO missed an   opportunity by neglecting to include ice hockey terms in his inappropriate address.  Pressure in the crease, anyone? 

Old School Ads, however, are the cream of the crop.  As one memorable British 60s advert put it: "Unzip a banana"

My, oh my.  What ever happened to Carmen Miranda?  I think I'll go have a Snickers.  I hear tell it satisfies.

"That is So Wrong!" What Else Could be Improved with Zombies?

Associate professors of English the world over are eagerly awaiting the April release of Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's masterwork: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.  Billed as "The Classic Regency Romance - Now With Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!", this is the first time that Ms. Austen, who has been dead herself since 1817, and Mr. Grahame-Smith, whose noted works include How to Survive a Horror Movie and The Big Book of Porn, have combined their literary and exploitative powers.  One can only hope that Sense and Sensibility and Satan is even now slouching toward Bethlehem.

But why stop there?  There must be many other sacred cows of literature that are ripe for shameless subversion!  The publisher of Austen and Grahame-Smith's flesh fresh derivative work cheerfully predicts it will introduce this classic novel "to a new legion of undead fans", so why let them have all the glory? 

Here, then, without regard for copywrite or the bounds of good taste, are my top 10 other beloved works of literature and import that could stand the Grahame-Smith treatment:

"Skate Punk Pooh":  The Hundred Acre Wood is now a housing development, but that doesn't stop the chubby little cubby from hanging with his homeboys and busting out their nups where Christopher Robin plays.  Dag, Pooh gets some sick airfeet with that balloon!

"Wal-Den":  Henry David Thoreau's pondside musings, reinterpreted as a paean to profit.   The must-read manual for business tycoons looking to crush the competition and achieve global dominance.  "Big is Beautiful!"

"The Grapes of Napa": Steinbeck's rags-to-riches epic of the Joad family, who rise above their dustbowl origins to live the good life as owners of a hugely profitable California winery.  They hit it big with "Rose of Sharon Red" when  Wine Spectator calls it the "Mother's Milk of Merlot" and the rest is history.

"Plato's Republican" : The Greeks gave us democracy, but they didn't give us Democrats!  Take a walk on the Supply Side with the Philosoper King, and learn what 300 Spartans have to tell us about the importance of small government and a strong defense.  Never mind tax reform, the G.O.P. needs to lay off the hemlock to be a lock in the next election.

"The Small and the Furry":  Faulkner, with mice.  "Caddy smelled like cheese."

"The Declaration of Co-Dependance":  Sally Hemings' tutu!  Revisionist historians reveal the Founders' feet of clay.  Overcome with repressed guilt over that childhood "cherry tree incident", George Washington can never live up to his father yet becomes the Father of our Country!  John Adams was the kid who always got picked on in school, and now he's gonna make his enemies pay. It's more than a 3/5 compromise with these dysfunctional founders.  Hilarity ensures.

"Mob Edict"  It's mutiny on the Pequod, as Ishmael and the crew pitch Captain Ahab overboard and hoist the Jolly Roger. The wayward whalemen descend into anarchy and the hunter becomes the hunted in an orgy of shipboard slaughter.  Queequeg returns to his cannibal roots and Mr. Starbuck gets dark roasted.  In the end, there can be only one.

"The Getty's Burkha: A Dress": What if Abraham Lincoln had been born a crossdressing Islamic fundamentalist?  Would the South ever rise again?  Inquiring neo-confederates want to know!

"Slaughterhouse None":  Kurt Vonnegut's classic reimagined as a vegan manifesto.  Co-authored with P.E.T.A.

"Happy Thoughts: The Inspirational Poems of Emily Dickinson":  The feel-good poet of all time, Dickinson reminds us that nothing makes life seem so worth living as when we take the time to notice the little things, like the buzzing of a fly.  With a new forward by Norman Vincent Peale.

A Horse of a Different Color

If this book isn't on the shelf alongside My Friend Flicka and Black Beauty at your local library, it is no wonder that Johnny can't read...

Wait, there's more.

"Our Patchwork Heritage."

In a well crafted but sober inaugural address that was symbolic and textured but short on soaring rhetoric, one phase of President Obama's struck me as particularly memorable.

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness."

Pairing "patchwork" with "heritage" is powerfully evocative.  One immediately thinks of American folk art, of quilts made by many hands and scraps brought beautifully together in a unified, useful whole.  Obama is saying that the fabric of our national heritage is not made of whole cloth, yet its very patchwork nature is its strength.  His speech also makes clear that piecing together this diverse heritage has been the hard work of many, and that while government has its own part to play "it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated but more often men and women obscure in their labor, who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom."

The image of a patchwork heritage works as a symbol because of what it signifies to each of us.  Some of these symbolic meanings, like the concept of an "Underground Railroad Quilt Code", persist in memory even if they are not supported by historical evidence.  Michelle Obama's own ancestry is the subject of a story quilt that will appear with otherson display in  a "Quilts for Obama" exhibit at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.

Obama wore his red power tie to deliver what is arguably a powerfully feminine image; the strength of our national character brought forth as if by the skilled hands of the domestic quilting tradition.  Yes, indeed: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

Obama has described himself as a sort of patchwork, most memorably last March in his A More Perfect Union speech on race in the wake of the Reverand Wright scandal:

"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one."

Even with deeply rooted prejudices that predate our founding as a nation, we Americans like nothing better than to celebrate our mongrel origins when it comes to national pride.  We took back the mocking Yankee Doodle, after all, and made it our own.  It is no accident, therefore, that Obama uses the phrase "our patchwork heritage" immediately after his strongest statement against our national enemies - for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you" - and employs it as a bridge to a vision of "our common humanity"  and "a new era of peace."

There is a lot riding on "our patchwork heritage", as there is on this President.  It may not be the line people end up remembering from this inaugeral address, but it seems to be a critical stitch in the quilt of his oratory.

(Top image credit: Carolyn B of Detroit)  

(Center image credit: Beyondbooks.org) 

(Bottom image credit: LivingstonNJ.org)