Ohio History Journal

FOLK MUSIC ON THE MIDWESTERN FRONTIER 1788-1825

 

by HARRY R. STEVENS

Duke University

Since the days when Frederic L. Ritter and Oscar G. T. Sonneck

established modern musicology in the United States between 1883

and 1910, two simple but rigid traditions have dominated the writ-

ing of American musical history. One is made up of the lives of

composers and performers, and descriptions of their work. The

second and more important one is the chronicle of musical or-

ganizations, performances, and publishing. In few countries, how-

ever, has the work of the outstanding musicians been of so little

relative importance in shaping the course of musical history; and

the musical organizations that have figured most prominently in

the chronicles often stood apart from the main trend of musical

development-they were peripheral, even exotic, rather than funda-

mental musical activities.

The broader currents of musical history are scarcely mentioned

in most accounts of American music. There are few descriptions

of the social and musical environment in which composers, per-

formers, and audiences passed their lives. Perhaps this is because

such matters seemed so obvious to those who wrote the chronicles

that they thought it unnecessary to explain them, assuming the

reader's familiarity; and subsequent historians have simply copied

their material. The result in any case has been that as personal

knowledge of that fundamental background of social, cultural, and

musical life has died out with the passing of successive generations,

the annals have tended to break into detached fragments and to

lose much of their meaning.¹ The bricks were laid without mortar,

and the structure of musical historiography is in danger now of

crumbling.

In order to repair this and to understand contemporary Amer-

 

1 Frederic Louis Ritter, Music in America (New York, 1883); Oscar George

Theodore Sonneck, Early Concert-life in America (1731-1800) (Leipzig, 1907); Glen

Haydon, Introduction to Musicology (New York, 1941), 247-265, 289-299.

126

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FOLK Music                           127

 

ican musical life historically, it is essential to recover some knowl-

edge of the value of music to its former listeners and performers

and its social role, as well as some knowledge of the popular and

educated tastes and the musical idioms of former times. Among

those matters the ever changing relationship between popular idiom

and the work of creative artists has seldom been explored, perhaps

chiefly because the general character of American musical life in

any region a century or two ago is largely unknown today. Until

that element has been established, it will be difficult to under-

stand the significance of the facts so carefully set down in tradi-

tional music histories. But before that general character can be

described, its components must first be reconstructed, among them

--perhaps the most basic-the story of American folk song.

Generally speaking, the study of folk music has followed the

narrow paths trod out by Cecil J. Sharp and his followers thirty

years ago.²  It has been largely ethnological and folkloristic:  one

may discover, for example, that a certain old woman in the moun-

tains learned some ballad as a child from her grandmother, or

that a famous historic "love-murder" was the basis for another

anonymous tragic song. There has been scarcely any attempt to

represent the scope and nature of folk music as a whole for any

time earlier than the present century.³

Perhaps the deficiency is explained by the point of view that

Ralph L. Rusk expressed twenty years ago. In Rusk's opinion

the history of folk song could scarcely be written because the sub-

stance was ephemeral. Documentary evidence was lacking in most

cases, and at best extended only to the words, not to the tune.⁴ A

few musicologists have already shown that such a dark view is no

longer necessary, and important pioneering work has been done

by Percy Scholes, Phillips Barry, R. W. Gordon, and George P.

 

2 Cecil J. Sharp and Olive Dame Campbell, English Folk Songs from the Southern

Appalachians (New York, 1917).

3 Mellinger E. Henry, ed., Folk-Songs from the Southern Highlands (New York,

1938); Emelyn E. Gardner and Geraldine J. Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern

Michigan (Ann Arbor, 1939); Mary O. Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio (New York,

1939); Eloise H. Linscott, Folk Songs of Old New England (New York, 1939); Paul

G. Brewster, Ballads and Songs of Indiana (Indiana University, Publications, Folklore

Series No. 1, Bloomington, 1940); Ira W. Ford, Traditional Music of America (New

York, 1940); Frank Luther, Americans and Their Songs (New York, 1942).

4 Ralph Leslie Rusk, Literature of the Middle Western Frontier (2 vols., New

York, 1926), I, 303-310.

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128    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Jackson.⁵ But it is possible to go still further and reconstruct, as

Edward J. Dent has recommended,⁶ an entire folk-music culture,

in detail as well as in breadth, and ultimately perhaps to recreate

that full story of public tastes and attitudes which is basic to an

understanding of the course of American musical history.

In starting such a task, it appears that there has never been

any single focus of American musical life concentrating or em-

bracing all its vital elements. To the extent that a region or city

is outstanding, it is often different and unrepresentative. How-

ever, a number of typical features may be found in the cultural

area that has blended so many of the traditions of American music

-the Middle West.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Amer-

ican culture was highly homogeneous. After 200 years of settle-

ment on the continent, before the great tides of later European immi-

gration swept over the country with their transforming impulses,

a clear pattern of life had come into existence. During that period

the Middle West was passing through the frontier stage. Elaborate

and exotic musical institutions were lacking; but a remarkable

wealth of folk music was brought by the people scattering westward

through the mountains; and a study of the process and results

permits a comprehensive and balanced survey that may answer

some of the problems of musical change.

One focus of the early westward migration was at Cincinnati,

midway along the Ohio River. The community was a typical fron-

tier village; and it was, in addition, a gateway to the Middle West,

through which many thousands of pioneers passed on their way to

the back country. It was not dominated by any single cultural

group; and, as it was more stable than towns like Lexington, Ken-

tucky, or New Harmony, Indiana, it was also more representative

than they were. It has the added significance of having been the

scene of Stephen C. Foster's work in the 1840's, when an enduring

and distinctively American music was created.⁷

 

5 Phillips Barry, British Ballads front Maine (New Haven, 1929); Percy Scholes,

The Puritans and Music in England and New England (London, 1934); George Pullen

Jackson, Spiritual Folk-Songs of Early America (New York, 1937).

6 Edward J. Dent, "The Historical Approach to Music," in Musical Quarterly,

XXIII, No. 1 (January, 1937), 13.

7 Raymond Walters, Stephen Foster: Youth's Golden Gleam (Princeton, 1936).

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FOLK Music                              129

 

Cincinnati was established in 1788 by a group of pioneers who

lived at first in caves along the river bank. A log fort was soon

constructed in the wilderness there, and a few rude cabins huddled

in its protecting shadow during the early Indian wars. After the

Indian defeat at Fallen Timbers in 1794 a bucolic period lasted

until 1811. New homes were scattered over the broad hill-rimmed

plain that now    forms the basin of the city.        Frame stores and

churches were built. While the population increased about 2,000,

life moved at an easy pace.⁸

The War of 1812 interrupted the placid existence of the town;

and after 1815 the renewal of westward migration brought a flood

of settlers. The forests vanished from the basin; the spires of

churches and the domes of the courthouse and the college made

an urban silhouette. Steamboats crowded to the public landing,

and an optimistic, energetic atmosphere prevailed. By 1825 Cin-

cinnati numbered 15,000 inhabitants. It had become the foremost

city of the Northwest, and had emerged from the frontier stage.9

Here, then, in Cincinnati between 1788 and 1825 was a community

and a period the study of which may disclose the possibilities of

this new inquiry.

Early settlers of the western country came by boat, and were

largely dependent on the Ohio River for association with the out-

side world.¹⁰ The boatmen themselves were a unique and adventur-

ous group of men, who afford the earliest accounts of local pioneer

music.11 One of them, who had been a rope maker in New Jersey,

entertained his passengers by singing to them "half a day to-

 

8 Jacob Burnet, "Letters," in Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, Trans-

actions, II, Part 2 (Cincinnati, 1839), 151-152; Beverley W. Bond, Jr., The Civilization

of the Old Northwest (New York, 1934), 351-386, 424-464; Beverley W. Bond, Jr.,

The Foundations of Ohio, Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio (6 vols.,

Columbus, 1941-44), I (1941), 295-300; William T. Utter, The Frontier State 1803-

1825, Carl Wittke, ed., The History of the State of Ohio, II (1942).

9 Jacob Burnet, Notes on the Early Settlement of the North-Western Territory

(Cincinnati. 1847), 35-37; Edward D. Mansfield, Memoirs of the Life and Services of

Daniel Drake (Cincinnati, 1855), 16-53, 130-137. Daniel Drake, Natural and Statis-

tical View or Picture of Cincinnati and the Miami Country (Cincinnati, 1815), 26-33,

129-168; Benjamin Drake and Edward D. Mansfield, Cincinnati in 1826 (Cincinnati,

1827), 25-33, 88-91.

10 Western Spy (Cincinnati), June 2, 1815; Emerson Bennett, Mike Fink: A

Legend of the Ohio (Cincinnati, 1848). All newspapers to which references are made

hereafter were published in Cincinnati unless otherwise indicated.

11 Morgan Neville, "The Last of the Boatmen," in James Hall, ed., The Western

Souvenir a Christmas and New Year's Gift for 1829 (Cincinnati, n. d.), 107-122;

Hiram Kaine, "Mike Fink," in Charles Cist, comp., Cincinnati Miscellany; or Antiqui-

ties of the West (2 vols., Cincinnati, 1845-46), I, 31-32; Walter Blair and Franklin J.

Meine, Mike Fink: King of Mississippi Keelboatmen (New York, 1933), 39, 45, 64,

79, 99.

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130     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

gether."12   A  visitor from  New   England remarked that "almost

every boat, while it lies in the harbour, has one or more fiddlers

scraping continually aboard, to which you often see the boatmen

dancing."13

Another early traveler observed:

As the boats were laid to for the night in an eddy, a part of the crew

could give them headway on starting in the morning, while the others struck up

a tune on their fiddles, and commenced their day's work with music to scare

the devil away and secure good luck. The boatmen, as a class, were masters of

the fiddle, and the music, heard through the distance from these boats, was

more sweet and animating than any I have ever heard since. When the boats

stopped for the night at or near a settlement, a dance was got up, if possible,

which all the boatmen would attend.14

The music of the boatmen is not entirely unknown. One

pioneer mentioned "Blue Bells of Scotland" and Virginia reels;15

and another, describing his visit with Thomas Kennedy, the Cin-

cinnati ferryman, wrote: "Before we had finished our breakfast,

Mr. Kennedy drew a fiddle from a box and struck up Rothemurchie's

Rant. He played in the true Highland style and I could not stop

to finish my breakfast, but started up and danced Shantrews."16

The mellow boat horn was a pleasant and familiar sound; but after

thirty years the steamboat sounded the knell of the boatmen, and

the colorful group drifted away from the Ohio Valley.¹⁷

Ballads were known and sung by the pioneers, and western

soldiers made their own ballads on St. Clair's defeat in 1791 and

other incidents.¹⁸ Mothers sang to their children, who in turn

played counting, clapping, skipping, and dancing games with an-

cient music. James Finley, a pioneer western preacher, recollected

that in the 1780's or 1790's his mother had sung to him the war

songs of the century, including "Erin go bragh," "Hail to the

12 Benjamin Van Cleve, "Memoirs" entry for August 1, 1792, in Historical and

Philosophical Society of Ohio, Quarterly Publications, XVII, Nos. 1-2 (January-June,

1922), 40.

13 Timothy Flint Recollections of the Last Ten Years (Boston, 1826), 15.

14 "Western Keelboatmen," in American Pioneer, II (1843), 272-273.

15 Noah Miller Ludlow, Dramatic Life as I Found It (St. Louis, 1880), 35-38, 58,

84-85.

16 John Melish, Travels in the United States of America (2 vols., Philadelphia,

1812), II, 285-288.

17 Morgan Neville, op. cit., 120-122.

18 John B. Dillon, Oddities of Colonial Legislation in America (Indianapolis,

1879), 502-503, 547; Rusk, op. cit., I, 308; Matthew Bunn, The Life and Adven-

tures of Matthew Bunn (Buffalo Historical Society, Publications, VII, Buffalo, 1904),

434-436.



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FOLK MUSIC                           131

 

Chief," "Rule Britannia," and the "Marseillaise."¹⁹    Even the In-

dian music known in Cincinnati has been described by pioneers,

one of whom mentioned two songs, "A yaw whano heigh, how-wa-

yow-wa," and "Ha yaw ki-you-wan-nie, hi yaw nit-ta-koo-pee.^"20

But the savage melodies can scarcely have had much influence on

the songs of white settlers.

Before the end of the eighteenth century at least fifteen tunes

were commonly known in Cincinnati. They were airs to which local

poets set their verses, tunes proposed for toasts, and other songs

heard in the village, or mentioned in some way to indicate general

familiarity: "Jack the Brisk Young Drummer," "The Vicar of

Bray," "Yankee Doodle," "Hark to the Midnight, Hark, Away,"

"Ca ira," "Gilderoy," "God Save the King," "He Comes! He

Comes!," "Banks of the Dee," "Rose Tree," "Rule Britannia," "O

Dear What Can the Matter Be," " Done Over Taylor," "Here's to

Our Noble Selves, Boys," and "Roslin Castle."²1

During the next dozen years, until the outbreak of the War of

1812, a total of eleven commonly known tunes comprised all that

may certainly be included in the folk music of Cincinnati. Two of

them have been mentioned in the preceding list, "Yankee Doodle'

and "God Save the King," and there were nine others not previously

identified in the town:    "Bill Bobstay," "Wherever She Goes,"

"Sweet Solitude," "Maggy Lauder," "Mary's Dream," "Humors of

Glen," "Erin go bragh," "Jolly Mortals," and "Death's Cradle

Hymn."²²

In the dozen years after the commencement of the war 38

more tunes may be identified in Cincinnati. In part this greater

number results from the growing size and diversity of the popula-

tion; in part it is the consequence of more abundant records. These

 

19 W. P. Strickland, ed., Autobiography of Reverend James B. Finley (Cincin-

nati, 1854), 19-20.

20 Oliver M. Spencer, Indian Captivity: A True Narrative of the Capture of Rev.

O. M. Spencer by the Indians, in the Neighbourhood of Cincinnati (New York, 1834),

103, 105.

21 Centinel of the North-Western Territory, August 23, November 22, 1794, July

11, August 22, 1795; Western Spy, July 2, 9, August 27, October 1, November 5, 1799,

January 29, July 30, 1800; Claude M. Newlin, Life and Writings of Hugh Henry

Brackenridge (Princeton, 1932), 256-257.

²² Western Spy, September 23, October 17, 1801, May 22, 1802, June 15, 1803,

May 15, 1805, August 26, October 14, 1806, April 13, August 24, 1807, November

16, 1811.

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132     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

tunes, not all properly folk music, more than double the number

previously known in the village:

Bandy O!                                                      Portuguese Hymn

Lord Lennox                                                Home Sweet Home

Evelyn's Bower                                          Anacreon in Heaven

Mrs. Casey                                                    Geh heim, mein Herz

John Gilpin                                                  Scots O'er the Border

Paddy Snap                                                 Battle of the Baltic

Crazy Jane                                                     Lafayette's Grand March

Louis Gordon                                             Ye Mariners of England

Fly Not Yet                                                 Woo'd and Married and A'

Hail Columbia                                            Let Fame Sound the Trumpet

Daintie Davie                                             How to Gain a Woman's Favor

McDonald's Reel                                       Oh, 'Tis Sweet to Think

Jackson's March                                         March to the Battle Field

Auld Lang Syne                                         Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre

Patriotic Diggers                                       O Fie, Let's A' to the Wedding

Begone, Dull Care                                     I Have Loved Thee, Dearly Loved Thee

Old Oaken Bucket                                     My Lodging's on the Cold Ground

Bright Chanticleer                                     Ye Banks an' Braes o' Bonny Doon

Hail to the Chief                                         When I Was a Boy in My Father's

[House?]²³

The total number of tunes identified in this way is 62.

Many problems of folk-music history are apparent in this list.

About half the songs are recognized today as folk music. "Gilderoy"

and "Banks of the Dee," for example, were old folk songs known in

several versions under various names. But others are of known

authorship. "Patriotic Diggers" was written by Samuel Wood-

worth; "Hail Columbia" was almost certainly written by Philip

Phile, and "Anacreon in Heaven" by John Stafford Smith. Between

those two extremes most of the tunes are of uncertain status. The

tune of "Rose Tree" was taken with its title from an opera by Wil-

liam Shield, but seems to have been known previously in Ireland

as a popular song, "Maureen O'Cullenan."           "Oh, 'Tis Sweet to

Think" seems from its name to be a sentimental drawing-room bal-

 

23 Western Spy, August 1, October 2, 1812, June 5, September 11, 1813, October

4, December 13, 1816, April 11, 1817, December 28, 1820; Liberty Hall, December

6, 1814, July 1, 1816, June 14, 1825; Advertiser, June 23, July 28, 1818, October 26,

1819, September 3, 1822, April 7, July 19, 30, September 13, November 19, 1823,

January 17, February 21, March 13, June 23, July 7, 1824, January 29, May 4, 25,

1825; Gazette, April 27, 1819; Literary Cadet, January 20, 1820; Olio, I, No. 14

(November 24, 1821), 58; I, No. 21 (March 2, 1822), 84; Independent Press, August

8, 1822, September 11, 1823; Emporium, October 28, November 4, 1824.

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FOLK Music                            133

lad. "Bandy O!" and "Paddy Snap" in contrast are recognizably

popular Irish. But all three tunes appeared in Moore's Irish Melo-

dies and were mentioned as "very fashionable" among ladies of the

Atlantic cities, while another from the same source, "Evelyn's

Bower," is identified in Grove's Dictionary of Music as a popular

comic song in Dublin, "The Pretty Girl of Darby, O!," a tune also

known later in Cincinnati as "Landlady of France."²⁴ The closeness

of this intermixture of tunes from "folk" origins with those from

other sources is emphasized by the manner in which they appeared

in Cincinnati. They were all marked by a lack of association with

any individual composer or version, assumptions of a general pub-

lic familiarity with the tunes, and an implication that they were

common property.

Balls, dancing schools, and singing schools provide further

clues to the exploration of folk music. Even in the frontier wilder-

ness, dancing was not forgotten. There was a ball at the log fort

on Washington's birthday, 1791; and the same occasion was cele-

brated by the troops at Greenville, Ohio, with "jocund song" on

February 22, 1796; while "a ball at Head quarters, which the

Ladies of the village honored with their presence, closed the joy-

ous scenes of this day."²⁵ There were many other such events. On

one further occasion Dr. Richard Allison, an army surgeon from

New York, announced a Christmas ball in December 1795 with the

dignity of "a Card" and tickets of admission, thus evidently for the

first time locally placing dances on a pecuniary basis.²⁶

Dancing schools appeared a few years later. Richard Haugh-

ton, a dancing instructor from Pennsylvania and Virginia, informed

the villagers at Cincinnati in November 1799 that he would open a

school to teach "the minuet, cotillion, French and English sets in

all their ornamental branches . . . the most fashionable country

dances, and the city cotillions taught in New York, Philadelphia and

 

24 Many of these tunes may be identified by reference to Grigg's Southern and

Western Songster (Philadelphia, 1840) where titles and texts are printed, and to the

works of Mary O. Eddy, Ira W. Ford, and George P. Jackson cited in note 3, above.

25 Centinel, March 12, 1796; Spencer, Indian Captivity, 29, 35.

26 Centinel, December 26, 1795. Further details of Allison's obscure life may

be found in Burnet, Notes, 34; Emil Klauprecht, Deutsche Chronik in der Geschichte

des Ohio-thales und seiner Hauptstadt Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1864), 138; Western Spy,

November 19, December 3, 24, 1799, June 25, 1800, June 13, 1817; Liberty Hall,

November 15, December 6, 1814, March 25, 1816; Otto Juettner, 1785-1909. Daniel

Drake and his Followers; Historical and Biographical Sketches (Cincinnati, 1909).

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134     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Baltimore," and added, "N.B. Mr. Haughton also teaches some

favorite Scotch reels."²⁷ Haughton reopened his school in the fall

of 1800; but in April 1801 a local resident mourned, "It is melan-

choly to observe the prevailing rage for dancing schools; the nur-

series of idleness, frippery and folly."²⁸

It was five years before another dancing teacher ventured to

advertise locally; but dancing persisted in spite of objections.²⁹

The "infamous" English traveler Thomas Ashe reported in 1806

that "the amusements consist of balls and amateur plays,"³⁰ and in

the same year Garrett Lane opened a dancing school, followed in

1808 by Mr. Coleman.³l Henry G. Pies gave instruction on the

piano forte and violin in addition to "the polite accomplishment"

of dancing in 1811; and two French dancing masters, Colome and

Dusouchet, came in 1812 and 1813 to teach the "Art of Dancing,

according to the rules of the most approved seminaries of Europe.^"32

A crowd of dancing masters followed those pioneers, but they pro-

vide little additional evidence of folk music.

In less fashionable circles dancing was more picturesque and

affords a better view of popular music. Ashe described his experi-

ence of it as he stayed at an inn across the Ohio River in 1806:

I entered the ball-room, which was filled with persons at cards, drinking,

smoking, dancing &c. The music consisted of two bangies, played by negroes

nearly in a state of nudity, and a lute, through which a Chickasaw breathed

with much occasional exertion and violent gesticulations. The dancing ac-

corded with the harmony of these instruments. The clamour of the card

tables was so great, that it almost drowned every other; and the music of

Ethiopa was with difficulty heard.33

On the north bank of the Ohio, a visitor to Cincinnati denounced

the sleighing parties he saw in 1817, which would proceed, unat-

tended by matrons, to some tavern three or four miles from town,

 

27 Western Spy, November 19, December 3, 8, 1799.

28 Western Spy, October 29, 1800, April 22, 1801.

29 Stephen S. L'Hommedieu, "Inaugural Address," in Cincinnati Pioneer, No. 3

(April, 1874), 9-14; Daniel Drake, Notices Concerning Cincinnati (Cincinnati, 1810),

Part II, 31; Daniel Drake, Natural and Statistical View or Picture of Cincinnati and

the Miami Country (Cincinnati, 1815), 167; Liberty Hall, April 1, 1816 (an amusing

review of Drake's book), December 2, 1816; Western Spy, February 11, 25, March

4, 1815.

30 Travels in America Performed in the Year 1806 (London, 1809), 182.

31 Western Spy, August 26, 1806, March 23, April 13, 1807, May 28, 1808.

32 Western Spy, August 3, 1811, March 18, April 4, 1812, September 17, 1813,

March 11, 1815; Liberty Hall, August 14, 1811.

33 Travels in America, 90-91.

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FOLK MUSIC                              135

where they would get out, set the fiddlers to scraping, the girls to

dancing, and the boys to drinking.³⁴      A native wrote a little differ-

ent account of a pirogue-sleigh ride about 1810, "the American flag

flying, two fiddlers, two flute players, and Dr. Stall as captain. They

did not forget to pass the 'old black betty,' filled with good old

peach brandy, among the old pioneers, and wine for the lady pion-

eers.... When the riding ended, both young and old ... wound up

the sport with a ball."³⁵

The singing school, an institution often regarded as an im-

portant feature of frontier life,³6 seems to have had a minor place

in Cincinnati. The first one was held in 1796, and there were others

in 1800, 1801, and 1806; but there were apparently no more until

four were held between 1815 and 1822. They were all inconspic-

uous, and provide little information of folk music.³⁷

A major place in the development of folk music was taken by

religion, and its importance was recognized more than a century

ago. A writer in the North American Review in 1840 observed that

"music in America must be surrendered to the people, must be

domiciled among them, must grow up among them, or it cannot

exist at all.. .. There is more hope, far more hope, that a national

music will grow out of the rude but fervent hymns, with which the

overflowing congregations of Wesleyan Methodists rend the heavens,

than that it will ever be reared by the opera, or the costly concerts

of the nobility."38

There is little evidence of church singing in Cincinnati until

1813, when a band of choristers sang at the First Presbyterian

Church,³⁹ and choirs were not outstanding until after 1819.40 But

 

³⁴ Liberty Hall, February 3, 10, 1817.

35 Joseph Coppin, "Cincinnati Pioneer Association Inaugural Address" (1880),

quoted in Charles T. Greve, Centennial History of Cincinnati and Representative Citi-

zens (4 vols., Chicago, 1904), I, 463.

36 Catharine C. Cleveland, The Great Revival in the West, 1797-1805 (Chicago,

1916), 11.

37 Freeman's Journal, December 17, 1796, cited in Bond, Civilization of the Old

Northwest, 456; Western Spy, December 17, 1800, October 31, 1801, October 14, 21,

1806, October 25 November 1, 1816; Liberty Hall, October 2, 1815, September 1, 4,

1817; Solomon Franklin Smith, Theatrical Management in the West and South for

Thirty Years (New York, 1868), 24-26; Samuel Stitt, "Recollections of Cincinnati Fifty

Years Since," in Cist's Weekly Advertiser, October 5, 1847; "Early Jails, &c.," in Cist,

comp., Cincinnati Miscellany, I, 50-51.

38 "National Music in America," in North American Review, L (1840), 13-15.

39 Liberty Hall, July 6, 1813.

40 Advertiser, January 27, 1823; Liberty Hall, April 2, 1824; Harry R. Stevens,

"The Haydn Society of Cincinnati, 1819-1824," in Ohio State Archaeological and

Historical Quarterly, LII (1943), 118-119.

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136    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

from an early date there was a vigorous controversy over the char-

acter of music to be used in the western churches.

One side was represented in the celebrated and popular Easy

Instructor of William Smith and William Little.⁴1 The hymn book

was sold in Cincinnati in 1811 and for many years afterward,⁴² and

its popularity was admitted by subsequent rivals.⁴3 The Easy In-

structor represented the fuguing school and other late eighteenth

century New England, New York, and Pennsylvania composers,

particularly Daniel Read (1757-1836), Elijah Griswold (fl. 1800-

1807), William Billings (1746-1800), Timothy Swan (1758-1842),

Oliver Holden (1765-1834?), Oliver Brownson (fl. 1783-97),

Morgan, Ward, Edson, Williams, Henry Little, and Nehemiah Shum-

way (fl. 1793).

On the other side were Robert Patterson in Pittsburgh and

Timothy Flint in Cincinnati. Patterson in his Church Music wrote

of his alarm over "the levity and ostentation" of the "light, rapid,

difficult tunes."44  Timothy Flint deplored "our merry American

airs," and regretted that "flighty and fuging music became the com-

mon taste" while "books of another stamp could not be sold. ...

The composuist, it would seem, must have had in memory some

march, or merry air that guides the dance." Flint determined "to

give no quarter to trifling or fuging music," however, and recom-

mended the solemn music of "York," "Quercy," "Old Hundred,"

and "Canterbury." He worked for the restoration of "the great

masters of old time": Luther, Pleyel, Handel, Arne, Boyce, Madan,

and Purcell. His collection, the Columbian Harmonist, favored

particularly Handel, Pleyel, Madan, J. Clark, Arne, and Giardini.45

But many other tunes in his hymn book were the anonymous popu-

lar products of the Reformation, which he praised so highly for its

musical achievement.

 

41 The Easy Instructor, or, a New Method of Teaching Sacred Harmony (Albany,

1807, 1809, etc.).

42 Western Spy, April 27, May 4, 11, 25, 1811.

43 Western Spy, October 23, 1813.

44 Patterson's Church Music, Containing the Plain Tunes Used in Divine Worship,

by the Churches of the Western Country (Pittsburgh, 1813; 2d ed., Cincinnati, 1815).

45 Timothy Flint, The Columbian Harmonist: in Two Parts. To Which is Pre-

fixed a Dissertation upon the True Taste in Church Music (Cincinnati, 1816). This

volume, of which apparently only three copies remain in existence, "contains about 120

tunes, adapted to the churches in the Western country." See pages iii, vii-xi. The

"dissertation" includes a remarkable essay on musical history.

• 11
 

FOLK MUSIC                        137

 

A paradox is thus apparent in this conflict between ancient

hymns based on sixteenth century French or German folk songs,

and those "merry American airs" that have seemed to later histor-

ians so important in the development of American folk music.46

An old stream of European folk music was being suppressed while

a new one came into being from the compositions of a local school

of American composers.

Theatrical music throws still more light on folk song, and

particularly on the means by which it was spread in the early nine-

teenth century. The first theatrical performance in Cincinnati was

a comic opera, The Poor Soldier, written by John O'Keeffe with

music by William Shield. It had been performed in Dublin and

London in 1783 and in New York in 1786. It reached Cincinnati

October 1, 1801, and was repeated in 1802 and 1811.⁴⁷ The first

local production included a musical interlude, consisting of an

original song to the tune "Wherever She Goes." Theatrical produc-

tions followed irregularly from 1802 to 1815, and annually from the

latter year, often including comic operas, musical farces, or other

musical entertainments. The diversions produced with music before

1812 included The Poor Soldier, Peeping Tom of Coventry, The

Agreeable Surprise, The Mock Doctor, The Mountaineers, The Pad-

lock, The Poor Gentleman, Wild Oats, The Old Maid, Love a la

mode, Animal Magnetism, The Wag of Windsor, The Birthday, The

Romp, or a Cure for the Spleen, The Spoil'd Child, and The

Weathercock.

In addition to the music provided for these performances by

the band, there were fancy dances and a variety of sentimental, pa-

triotic, and comic songs and duets. On the stage Mr. Cipriani,

from Sadler's Wells, London, danced hornpipes, and was assisted by

Mrs. Turner in a Polish minuet from Cinderella.⁴⁸ The songs men-

tioned by name in theatrical performances before 1818 were com-

paratively few:

 

46 George Pullen Jackson, White Spirituals from the Southern Uplands (Chapel

Hill, 1933); Henry W. Foote, Three Centuries of American Hymnody (Cambridge,

1940), 171-175; Raymond Morin, "William Billings, Pioneer in American Music," in

New England Quarterly, XIV (1941), 25-33.

47 Western Spy, September 30, October 10, 17, 1801; Cist's Weekly Advertiser,

September 14, 1847.

48 Western Spy, May 25, June 1, 15, 22, 1811; Liberty Hall, May 29, June 5,

12, 1811.

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138    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Madam Fig's Ball                                       Country Club, or the Quizzical Society

The Old Commodore                                 Tid re I [Bainbridge's Tedrei]

Father and I                                                  The Way to Come Over

Decatur's Victory                                       Lady Camblin's Reel

Windsor Waltz                                           How to Please Woman

Turkish Hornpipe                                      Marriage of Miss Kitty Odonophon to

Yankee Doodle                                          Mr. Paddy O'Raffety

Battle of Tippecanoe

In 1813 a traveling Irish musician, Mr. Webster, performed

"an Entertainment, consisting of conversation, anecdote, and song,

called The Harp of Erin at the Assembly Room in the Columbian

Inn," and another entertainment called The Wandering Melodist a

few days later. He presented an interesting mixture of Irish folk

music and popular ballads of the day, and introduced several new

works to his Cincinnati audience:

 

Fair Ellen                                                     The Post Captain

Faithless Emma                                           The Glasses Sparkle

The Willow                                                 Honey and Mustard

The Doldrum                                               Why Does Azure Deck the Sky

Far Far at Sea                                               On This Cold Flinty Rock

Sally Roy                                                     Come Take the Harp

Exile of Erin                                                Paddy in a Pucker

Fly Not Yet                                                 Tell Her I'll Love Her

Just Like Love                                            Sweet Lady Look Not Thus

Kathleen McChree                   Saint Senanus and the Lady

The Harp That Once Through Tara's Halls⁴⁹

A part of the process of folk-music history emerged in the

sequence indicated by Webster's concerts. Old English and Irish

folk songs and favorite tunes by Irish minstrels were collected by

men like Edward Bunting, provided with harmony by John Steven-

son and new words by Tom Moore, lifted to another level of popu-

larity, and scattered across Europe and America by traveling enter-

tainers, to gain new vitality and still greater influence. The stage

seems to have been a significant means of transmitting folk music

from one place to another, and of prolonging its life. The very

process in operation a few years later is confirmed and described

by Richard H. Dana in Two Years before the Mast, under the date

April 24, 1836.

49 Western Spy, October 23, 30, 1813.

• 13
 

FOLK MUSIC                          139

 

After 1818 the information on theatrical music is so abundant

that only a selection of representative songs can be listed:

The Tidy One                           Across the Downs This Morning

Larry O'Gaff                             For Then I Had Not Learnt to Love

Cherry Checked Patty                               The Soldier Slumbering

William Tell                                                 The Bewildered Maid

Bay of Biscay                                               Who Would Not Love

Sandy and Jenny                                         Look, Neighbors, Look

The Beggar Girl                                          Scots Wha Hae wi' Wallace Bled

Garland of Love                                          Money Is Your Friend

Jug, Jug, Jug                                                 Paddy's Christening

The Bag of Nails                                         Barney Leave the Girls Alone

The Great Booby                                        Megin O, O Megin Ee

Pretty Deary                                                Away with This Pouting

All's Well                                                    Adieu My Native Shore

Soldier's Bride                                            And Has She Then Failed

The Plough Boy                                         Mr. Peter Snout Was Invited Out

Eveleen's Bower                                        You Think No Doubt

London Fashions                                      When First I Left Sweet Dublin Town

Minute Gun At Sea                                   Sir Jerry Go Nimble, or Honey and

Mustard⁵⁰

The titles once again indicate a mixture of folk song and formal

composition, and the problem of distinguishing them is complex.

Many composers represented in this list, like Dibdin, Shield, and

Bishop, used a folk song style, or simply adopted common tunes;

but their songs, even those as popular as Shield's "Post Captain,"

usually did not survive. The relation of ballad operas to folk

music, and especially to the standardization of tonality and melodic

structure nevertheless offers many clues to the history of folk song.

The process of selection, rejection, and transmission of folk songs

seems to have been strongly influenced by the education of taste in

the eighteenth century. If it was not a creative period (which there

is some reason to doubt), it was at any rate a time when many

earlier styles of music were discarded.

Military music also took an important role as an expression of

folk song and popular taste on the frontier. Henry Brackenridge, a

western writer, remembered General Wayne's camp near Cincinnati

in 1792 through "the beating of drums, the clangor of trumpets"

 

50 Theatrical advertisements in the local press, too numerous to cite in full, pro-

vide the source of this information.

• 14
 

140     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

and the indistinct movements of horse and foot amid the shadowy

forests.⁵¹ Fort Washington was established at Cincinnati in 1789;

it remained there until 1808, but long after its removal the influence

of military music was strong in the pioneer village.

The army was provided with a drum and bugle in each com-

pany of infantry and artillery, and a cornet and trumpet in each

troop of cavalry.⁵² In 1806 a troop of light dragoons met at Cin-

cinnati "to elect a Cornet in the place of Mr. Stephen Ludlow, re-

tired."⁵³ The old records are full of details of music supplies, the

red uniforms faced with blue that the musicians wore, and the pay

offered drummers and fifers, "$15 per month, and one ration per

day."⁵⁴

But it was not until 1797, when General Wilkinson arrived at

Cincinnati, that military music emerged from obscurity. The new

commander brought an air of gaiety with him, and apparently had a

band of musicians to enliven frontier affairs.⁵⁵        On July 4, 1799,

the toasts of the day were accompanied by martial music and ar-

tillery;56 and at the memorial services held for President Washing-

ton at the fort on February 1, 1800, the music performed a solemn

dirge.⁵⁷  The performances of the military band were described in

detail with the Independence Day celebrations in 1801, 1802, and

1805, and a Republican victory dinner, October 22, 1802.58 The

tunes played on such occasions were often mentioned in reports of

the next twenty years. After the fort was moved from Cincinnati

a band, possibly including some of the former army musicians, was

active for many years. It played at outings, in processions, at

51 Henry Marie Brackenridge, Recollections of Persons and Places in the West

(2d ed., Philadelphia, 1868), 17, 177, 184; Burnet, Notes, 157-158.

52 L. Belle Hamlin, ed., "Selections from the Torrence Papers, VIII," in Histor-

ical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, Quarterly Publications, XIII, No. 3 (July-Sep-

tember, 1918), 83-85, 121, 130.

53 Western Spy, April 8, 1806.

54 Torrence Papers File, 48, fols. 57, 60, 65, in Historical and Philosophical

Society of Ohio, Cincinnati; Western Spy, June 12, 1813, May 7, 1814; Liberty Hall,

March 18, 1816.

55 Lewis H. Garrard, Memoir of Charlotte Chambers (Philadelphia, 1856), 35.

The local story that General Wilkinson's band entertained dinner parties with the music

of Gluck and Haydn seems to have been invented by Klauprecht, op. cit., 123, on

the basis of Brackenridge's recollections of Gallipolis, Ohio. Frank E. Tunison, Prestol

(Cincinnati, 1888), 3-4; Heinrich A. Rattermann, Early Music in Cincinnati, an essay

read before the Literary Club, November 9, 1879; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, May 15,

1880.

56 Western Spy, July 9, 1799.

57 Western Spy, February 5, 1800. This does not confirm the local tradition that

the music was Phile's "President's March." Tunison, Presto!, 3. It may have been

"Handel's Dirge," i.e., the "Dead March" from Saul.

58 Western Spy, July 8, 1801, July 10, 1802, July 10, 1805, October 27, 1802.

• 15
 

FOLK MUSIC                            141

 

memorial services, banquets, formal celebrations in the churches

and at the courthouse, and for special events. Contemporary ac-

counts offer pleasant pictures of the townsfolk retiring with the band

to a beechen shade, where sports and rural pastimes filled the day

until dinner was served, and numberless toasts and songs filled the

night.59

About 100 tunes played by the band in Cincinnati have been

mentioned in surviving records. By far the most popular were

"Hail Columbia," "Yankee Doodle," and "Washington's March,"

with almost twenty performances for each. Not far below them in

popularity were four other tunes, "Anacreon in Heaven" (which

had not yet become the national anthem, although it was played

here as "The Star Spangled Banner" in 1819), "The President's

March" (perhaps a composition of Philip Phile to which the words

of "Hail Columbia" were later written), "Fair American," and

"Come Haste to the Wedding."⁶⁰

In addition to those six or seven tunes there were nineteen

others mentioned with three to five performances each:

 

Reveille                                                         Guardian Angels

Marseillaise                                                  Rural Felicity

Stoney Point                                               (five times each)

Ca ira                                                              Sprig of Shillelah

Erin go bragh                                              Madame You Know My Trade Is War

Jove in His Chair                                        God Speed the Plough

Hail to the Chief                                         French Grenadier's March

Jefferson's March                                         (four times each)

Rogue's March                                            General Harrison's March

Jackson's March                                          Money in Both Pockets

Successful Campaign                                (three times each)

The list may be extended with nineteen tunes that were played at

least twice each by the band during this period:

Dead March                                                 Love in a Village

Friendship                               Flowers of Edinburgh

Soldier's Joy                             Indian Philosopher

59 Western Spy, July 10, 1805.

60 Western Spy, July 8, 1801, July 10, October 27, 1802, July 10, 1805 July

11, 1812, July 11, 1817; Inquisitor, July 7, 1818, July 13, 1819; Advertiser, July 13,

1819, March 19, 1822, March 19, 1823, March 20, 1824, March 19, May 25, August

17, 1825; Independent Press, July 10, 1823; Literary Cadet, July 8, 1824; Liberty

Hall, July 9, 1824.

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142     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

Turk's March                            Volunteer's March

White Cockade                         On the Road to Boston

Roslin Castle                            Life Let Us Cherish

Columbian March                     Will You Come to the Bower

Exile of Erin                            America, Commerce and Freedom

Liberty Tree                             Good Night an' Joy Be With You A'

Soldier's Return

 

The last and most numerous group of band tunes is made up

of the pieces with only a single known performance:

Hill Tops                                  Patriot's Cotillion

Grand Spy                                 Janissaries' March

College Hornpipe                     Battle of Prague

The Jolly Tar                           New President's March

Hearts of Oak                           Soldier's March

Banks of the Dee                      Italian Waltz

Soldier's Adieu                          Masonic Dead March

Tippecanoe                              Lafayette's March

Tars of Columbia                      Sweet Harmony

Monroe's March                       Pleyel's Hymn

Hull's Victory                           Victory of Orleans

Adams and Liberty                   Liberty or Death

Haydn's Fancy                          March in Blue Beard

Echo                                        Miss Ware's March

Liberty March                          Harmonical Society's March

Lawrence's Dirge                      Handel's Dirge

Mechanic's March                    Spanish Patriots

Ode on Science                         City Guards' March

Clinton's March                       Jefferson and Liberty

Hail Liberty                             Fire on the Mountains

The Wounded Hussar               Cincinnati Guards' March

The Dusty Miller                     Governor Tompkins' March

Cease Rude Boreas                   Away with Melancholy

Tune of '76                              The Meeting of the Waters

The General                             Malbrook s'en va t'en guerre

Bunker's Hill                            Columbia, Columbia to Glory Arise

Kentucky Reel                         Scots Wha Hae wi' Wallace Bled

Blythe Sandy                            When Bidden to the Wake or Fair

Assembly

 

Among the 100 band tunes known in Cincinnati a considerable

number, including "Hail Columbia," "Yankee Doodle," "Anacreon

in Heaven," "Ca ira," "Erin go bragh," and "Roslin Castle" were

also familiar through the theater or other institutions. Some of

• 17
 

FOLK MUSIC                           143

 

them were repetitions under various names: "Hail Columbia" seems

to have been "The President's March"; "Anacreon in Heaven" was

also known as "The Star Spangled Banner" and as "Adams and

Liberty"; "Haste to the Wedding" was given the title of "Rural

Felicity" and was also renamed "Perry's Victory" after the naval

triumph on Lake Erie; and the topical names of other songs and

marches suggest old tunes with new labels.

Some of them are certainly not folk music. "America, Com-

merce and Freedom" was written by Alexander Reinagle; "Dead

March" was possibly the march from Handel's Saul; "The Wounded

Hussar" was written by James Hewitt; and "Echo" may have been

Henry Rowley Bishop's "Celebrated Echo Song." "The Battle of

Prague" was probably the composition of Kotzwara mentioned in

a poem by Thomas Hardy. "Haydn's Fancy," "Handel's Dirge,"

"Pleyel's Hymn," and the "March" from Blue Beard are obviously

the works of individual composers. But folk music cannot be re-

stricted to such familiar forms as ballads and reels without exclud-

ing many works of similarly obscure origin--for example, the an-

cient military bugle calls, "Assembly" and "Reveille." The problem

of identifying tunes by name is a difficult one, but not insoluble.

Questions of that sort may often be settled by reference to song

books and to the elaborate tune genealogies that recent folklorists

have established.⁶¹

One of the most interesting features is the extent to which

national characteristics are recognizable in the music or titles. The

"Marseillaise" and "Ca ira" are clearly French, and "Geh heim,

mein Herz" German; Scotch tunes are identifiable in "McDonald's

Reel," "Auld Lang Syne," "Ye Banks and Braes," "Scots O'er the

Border," "Blue Bells of Scotland," "Hail to the Chief," and "Rothe-

murchie's Rant."⁶²

The Irish seem to have made the largest distinctive contribu-

6l See Jackson, Spiritual Folk-Songs; Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio; Brewster,

Ballads and Songs of Indiana; Samuel Preston Bayard, Hill Country Tunes, Instrumental

Folk Music of Southwestern Pennsylvania (American Folklore Society, Memoirs, XXXIX,

Philadelphia, 1944), "Introduction," xi-xxvii.

62 Just after the close of this period a celebration of St. Andrew's Day by the

Scots Society of Cincinnati, December 1, 1828, included many other typical songs:

"Here's to the Land o' Bonnets Blue," "The Kail Brose o' Auld Scotland," "Take Your

Auld Cloak About You," "Up an' Waur Them A' Willie," "Bannockburn," "Thistle

So Green," "Burns' Farewell," "Hail to the Chief," "Bonnets Blue," "Scots Wha

Hae," and "My Mither She Mended My Breeks." Cincinnati Daily Gazette, December

3, 1828.

• 18
 

144     OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

tion of folk tunes. Many Irish tunes were adopted by the com-

munity at large, among them "Haste to the Wedding" and "Sprig of

Shillelah." In addition to those there were over two dozen tunes

that were used in Cincinnati exclusively by the Irish, in connection

with celebrations of St. Patrick's Day before 1825. Four of them

were often repeated:       "St. Patrick's Day," "Granu wale," "Vive

la," and "Carolan's Receipt--for the Making of Whiskey." Twenty-

two other tunes are known to have been used once each by the Irish,

and apparently by no one else in Cincinnati during this period:

Merryman                                                     O for the Sword of Other Times

Cincinnati                                                   Forget Not the Field

Molly Astor                                                Garry onne [Garry Owen]

Coolin                                                           Remember the Glories of Brian the

Brave

Paddy Carey                  The Harp That Once through Tara's

Halls

The Farmer                                                    What Makes the Ladies Like It So

Madison's March                                       Willy Was a Wanton Wag

The Philosopher                                        Universal Emancipation

The Galley Slave                                        Constitution and the Guerrierre

Jessy O'Dumblaine                                    The Banks of the Ohio

Tantararu Rogues All                               O Breathe Not His Name63

It is impressive in looking over the Irish tunes to notice the great

variety of style and form represented by songs from Edward Bunt-

ing's General Collection of Ancient Irish Music (1796), Thomas

Moore and John Stevenson's Selection of Irish Melodies (1807-15),

and   Turlogh    Carolan's    Favorite   Collection   of   Irish  Melodies

(1747?).64

It is evident that in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth

centuries there were at least five levels of folk music assimilation.

 

63 Advertiser, March 19, 1822, March 19, 1823, March 20, 1824, March 19, 1825.

64 William H. Grattan Flood, A History of Irish Music (Dublin, 1927), 227 et.

seq. See also Donal O'Sullivan, "The Petrie Collection of Irish Folk Music," in

Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, V, No. 1 (December 1946), 1-12,

and John Parry, "The Earlier Collections of Traditional Welsh Melodies," in Cylch-

grawn Cymdeithas Alawon Gwerin Cymru, III (No. 9) Part I (1930), 12-18, and III

(No. 10) Part II (1934), 103-108.

Some of Moore's tunes were ancient Irish folk songs; many others that were

equally popular and widespread show evidence of highly individual authorship, such

as "Fly Not Yet," which was Carolan's "Planxty Kelly." The intricate history of Irish

folk music in the eighteenth century has never been disentangled; until it is, little

can be said with certainty about the history of Irish folk tunes in America. The same

is true of Scotch and Welsh folk music. For example, "Roslin Castle," which might

seem from part of its history to be a Scotch tune, was actually composed by the

eighteenth-century Welsh musician Greg Wen, or Garry Owen, who was honored on

St. Patrick's Day by the Irish.

• 19
 

FOLK Music                        145

There were songs now accepted as folk tunes, such as "Lord Lennox"

and "McDonald's Reel" and true folk songs adapted or supplied

with fresh words; recently composed ballads or theater songs based

on folk tunes, from "The Wounded Hussar" and "The Post Cap-

tain" to "Rose Tree" and "Eveleen's Bower"; songs of a definite

"folk" character but with a putative authorship, among them many

Irish and Welsh tunes by Garry Owen and Carolan, given new cir-

culation by Bunting or Moore; songs of apparently recent origin

and individual although unknown authorship, such as "Yankee

Doodle"; and songs whose composers are known, such as "Rule

Britannia" (Thomas Arne), "Anacreon in Heaven" (John Stafford

Smith), and "The President's March" (Philip Phile), which were

as widely current as folk music but markedly individual in style.

It is also apparent that there was by no means a complete

fusion of tunes from various European sources, but that the Eng-

lish and Scotch tunes provided a broad foundation to which others

were added without at first making a fundamental alteration. Words

as well as names were being modified to fit American requirements,

however; English associations were being shed, and a body of folk

music specifically associated with the American scene was already

well established, while the folk elements, especially from Irish

tunes, in the sentimental, comic, and patriotic balladry, point toward

a fusion that was to evolve a new folk style.⁶⁵

A good bit of the nature of folk music in America may be illu-

minated by this fragment of its history. In origin, most of the tunes

current at Cincinnati from 1790 to 1825 bear the characteristics of

the middle eighteenth century. Earlier elements such as the tune

"Coolin" appear incongruous, and stand out in contrast to the other

folk tunes and similar compositions of Arne, Shield, Storace, and

their contemporaries. There are hints that folk music in the British

Isles passed through a revolutionary development between 1640 and

1740, possibly under the influence of obscure musicians of that

century.

It would be hard to distinguish between some of the anonymous

 

⁶⁵ Jackson, Spiritual Folk-Songs; "Stephen Foster's Debt to American Folk-Song,"

in Musical Quarterly, XXII, No. 2 (April 1936), 154-169; Foote, Three Centuries of

American Hymnody, 171-175. An excellent account of the background of Foster's work

is given in Walters, Stephen Foster, 59-68.

• 20
 

146    OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

tunes of the eighteenth century and others whose composers are

known. While there are clear differences between some English,

Irish, Scotch, and Welsh tunes, there are numerous others that can-

not be labeled with national origins.

It would seem from a review of popular music on the Midwest-

ern frontier that folk song was passing through a lively history,

obscure, but none the less real. Efforts to trace tunes to an absolute

primitive germ in the same way that efforts were once made to

isolate pure primitive races or languages have a definite value; but

the representation of the full popular background and the processes

of historic change promise even more toward an understanding of

the nature of folk music and the appreciation of all American mus-

ical history. Three things that seem here to be most significant for

such understanding are the work of the minor composers of the

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the education of popular taste

through church, camp meeting, theater, tavern, song book, military

bands, and other institutions, and the influence of taste on the selec-

tion, transformation, and transmission of folk songs.

• 21