Who Wrote
"The Harp of a Thousand Strings"?
By GEORGE KUMMER*
OF THE ECCENTRICS who flourished in the
backwoods areas of
America in the first half of the
nineteenth century, the Hardshell
Baptist preachers were among the most
amusing to outsiders. Trav-
elers through the South and West found
diversion in contemplating
the oddities of these sermonizers, who,
unlike the clergy of most
other denominations, made no bones
about chewing tobacco or
drinking whiskey in public.1 Dead
set against reformers who
wished to deprive man of his innocent
worldly comforts like mint
juleps, they were sometimes called
"Ten-Gallon Baptists" or "Whis-
key Baptists." According to Edward
Eggleston, who was both
literary local colorist and social
historian, the travesty of Calvinism
by which they justified their liberal
principles was expressed some-
what as follows: "Ef you're
elected you'll be saved; ef you a'n't
you'll be damned. God'll take keer of his elect. It's
a sin to run
Sunday-schools or Temp'rence s'cities,
or to send missionaries. You
let God's business alone. What is to be
will be, and you can't
hender it."2
Depending for a livelihood on such
secular activities as trading
on the Mississippi and its confluents,
most Hardshell preachers
were only part-time clergymen. As a
rule they were poorly trained
and their sermons were frequently so
fantastic that the temptation
to mimick them was irresistible. Of the
many burlesques which
resulted, perhaps the best known is
"The Harp of a Thousand
Strings." The scene of this
harangue was the reputedly rowdy
* George Kummer is assistant professor
of English at Western Reserve University.
His last contribution to the Quarterly
was "Specimens of Ante-Bellum Buckeye
Humor," published in the October
1955 issue.
1 J. S. Buckingham, The Slave States
of America (London, 1842), 1, 197.
2 Edward Eggleston, The Hoosier
School-Master (New York, 1883), 102.
222
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
village of Waterproof, Louisiana (then
in Mississippi), and the
preacher was an old flatboat captain,
who had brought his broad-
horn there to trade with the gamblers,
river pirates, and other
reckless characters said to infest the
place. As a preacher he may
have been somewhat deficient in
homiletics, but as a businessman
he had a deep understanding of the
great science of advertising.
The subtlety with which he departed
from his text to remark that
speaking of liquor, he had on board
"as good an artikel uv them
kind uv sperits . . . as ever was
fotched down the Mississippi" is
proof that he knew almost as much about
the technique of the
commercial as present-day radio and
television sponsors know.
His sermon enjoyed widespread and
long-drawn-out popularity.
During the late 1850's it appeared in
newspapers in every section
of the Union. Versions of it crossed
two oceans and circulated in
both England and Australia.3 In
1882 Henry Watterson declared
that it was "one of the notable
stories which have gone the rounds
of the American press in the last forty
years, which yet linger on
the stage, appearing and reappearing at
intervals, as if to take a
fresh lease on life, and which are
thoroughly characteristic in
tone, color, and action of the era to
which we owe Simon Suggs
and Sut Lovingood."4 Even
in our own day, oral versions of "The
Harp" are still extant in rural
areas; as recently as the summer of
1946 one folklorist heard it preached
in Moberly, Missouri.5
Authorities disagree as to the
authorship of the sermon. The in-
fluential Literary History of the
United States gives the piece to the
Rev. Henry Taliaferro Lewis, a
Methodist minister from Missis-
sippi;6 but Jay B. Hubbell,
in his careful and accurate The South
in American Literature, 1607-1900, says it is by William Penn
Brannan.7 Though the piece
has been claimed for still other
writers, among them Andrew Harper and
Joshua S. Morris, most of
3 Edward William Cole, comp., Cole's
Fun Doctor: The Funniest Book in the
World (Melbourne and London, 1886), 193-198.
4 Henry Watterson, Oddities in
Southern Life and Character (Boston, 1882), 474.
5 Jack Conroy, Midland Humor:
A Harvest of Fun and Folklore (New York,
1947), 2.
6 Robert E. Spiller and others, eds., Literary
History of the United States (New
York, 1948), II, 741.
7 Jay Broadus Hubbell, The South in American Literature, 1607-1900 (Durham,
N. C., 1954), 661.
WHO WROTE "THE HARP"? 223
the evidence points to either Lewis or
Brannan. The present paper
attempts to show that Brannan, an
itinerant portrait painter and
journalist from Cincinnati, has the
better title.8
Probably the earliest appearance of
"The Harp" in book form
occurred in Thomas Powell's Chit-chat
of Humor, Wit, and
Anecdote in 1857.9 Powell indicated no source, but
William Evans
Burton, who printed the sermon the
following year in his Cyclopae-
dia of Wit and Humor, said that it "first appeared in a New Orleans
paper."10 Both Powell
and Burton seem to have reproduced the
version found in the Spirit of the
Times for September 29, 1855,
which attributes the waif to "a New
Orleans paper." This was
likely the Daily Crescent; at
least "The Harp" appeared there
with no indication of its source on
September 10, 1855. But it had
appeared elsewhere before that. As early
as July 10, 1855, it had
found its way into the Ohio State
Journal, where it was credited to
the Brandon, Mississippi, Register, certainly
an error, as the only
paper published in Brandon at that time
was called the Republican.
No file of the Republican for
1854 or 1855 has survived, but in
1879 Colonel A. J. Frantz, then editor
of that paper, reprinted "The
Harp" there with the following
introduction:
This celebrated Hard-Shell sermon was
first published in the Brandon
Republican in the year 1854--twenty-five years ago. Its authorship
has been
claimed by various persons in all
sections of the country, but it was first
written out in full for the press by
Rev. Henry T. Lewis in our office, and
first made its appearance in the Republican.
Mr. Harper [the editor in
1854] only assisted in "fixing up
the description of the preacher," which
accompanied the publication.11
8 I wish to thank the following persons
for supplying helpful information for
this paper: Professor Walter Blair, Mrs.
H. F. Broyles, Miss Norma Cass, Mr.
H. H. Crisler, Mr. John F. Fierson, Miss
Edna Grauman, Mrs. Alice P. Hook, Mr.
William D. McCain, Mr. Franklin J.
Meine, Mrs. Adlia Morgan, and Mr. W. C.
Morris. Officials at the University of
Kentucky Library, the Louisville Free Public
Library, the Mississippi Department of
Archives and History, and the Western
Reserve Historical Society Library were
especially helpful.
9 Thomas Powell, Chit-chat of Humor,
Wit, and Anecdote (New York, 1857),
190-191.
10 William E. Burton, ed., The
Cyclopaedia of Wit and Humor (New York, 1858),
476.
11 Charles B. Galloway, "Henry T.
Lewis--Humorist, Poet, Preacher, Reformer,"
Quarterly Review of the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, new series,
XV (1894),
375.
224
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
That Colonel Frantz's phrase,
"first written out in full for the
press," implies that oral versions
of "The Harp" were in circulation
before its appearance in the Republican
will, I believe, become clear
in the course of the discussion.
The chief source of information about
the Rev. Henry Taliaferro
Lewis is a small book entitled Harp
of a Thousand Strings, with
Waifs of Wit and Pathos, compiled by Lewis' daughter, Mrs. Anne
Roberts, copyrighted in 1907, but
printed without indication of
place. From this we learn that Lewis
(1823-1870) was not only a
Methodist minister of parts but also a
successful temperance lec-
turer, and that though he "never
provoked a smile" in the pulpit,
he was an irresistible comedian on the
lecture platform (pp. 7-10).
In support of her father's claim to
"The Harp," a version of which
she printed in her volume, Mrs. Roberts
cited the following clip-
ping, which she says appeared in the Louisville
Courier-Journal in
the summer of 1881:
A resident of Frankfort, writes to This
and That: "I am satisfied that
the author of 'The Harp of a Thousand
Strings' sermon, was the Rev.
Henry T. Lewis, formerly living in
Memphis, Tenn., but afterwards a
citizen of Homer, La.
Mr. Lewis was a gentleman of rare
ability; a poet, and a wit and humorist
of the first order. He was also a
Methodist clergyman of the highest stand-
ing; of unimpeachable integrity. He has
hosts of friends, all over the
Southern States and South West; from
Tennessee to the Gulf, and from
Florida to Texas, in many parts of which
region he labored, as lecturer
and preacher. When he resided in
Memphis, a few years before the war,
I heard him repeatedly say (or rather,
admit, in answer to the direct ques-
tion), that he was the author of that
sermon.
In answer to an inquiry of my own, he
made substantially, the following
statement: As a matter of fact, he
supposed that an old Hardshell Baptist
preacher, navigating a trading
broadhorn, or flat boat, down the Mississippi
to New Orleans, away back in the second
or third decade of the Nine-
teenth Century, did tie up one Sunday,
at Waterproof, La., and delivered
[sic] a sermon, something like, or rather having a distant
resemblance to
the one written out by Mr. Lewis, and
published in a Mississippi paper.
At all events, such was the purport of
an anecdote that circulated from
mouth to mouth, for a long time in that
region, previous to any publication.
At last, after having heard the story,
told in a hundred different ways, by a
hundred different people, Mr. Lewis
concluded to write it out and make it
WHO WROTE "THE HARP"? 225
as absurdly humorous as he could. After
having done so, he read it to the
editor of a country paper (Andrew
Harper), of the "Brandon Republican,"
Brandon Miss., 1854, who was living on
the circuit, that he was then
traveling. Finding it such a grand hit,
others claimed its authorship, but
Mr. Lewis cared nothing for this; his
ambition was to do good to his
fellow men and not to win renown as a
humorist." (pp. 19-20)
On the basis of "a resident of
Frankfort's" testimony Professor
Arthur Palmer Hudson in his Humor of
the Old Deep South gave
the sermon to Lewis.12 But
the text of "The Harp" which Professor
Hudson reproduced in this anthology is
from the Spirit of the Times
rather than from Mrs. Roberts' book, a
puzzling inconsistency in
view of the fact that Mrs. Roberts' text
contains several passages
not found in the Spirit of the Times.
Thus at the end of the seventh
paragraph of the sermon as printed by
Professor Hudson,13 Mrs.
Roberts presented the following text:
And then thar's the Presbyterians; they
ar' a high-minded kind uv folks.
They bleeve in edicating their
preachers, and so they remind me uv a
paper kite, fur the stronger the wind
blows the higher the kite flies, until
the string breaks or it loses its tail,
and then it dashes headlong, down,
down, slap dash right into a brier
patch; and that is just the way uv the
Presbyterians, my brethring, fur the
more edication they have the higher
they fly, an' you know a kite has to
have ballast to make it fly level; and,
my dear brethring, that's just the way
uv the Presbyterians, for their
salary is their ballast, and the more
you give 'em the levelar are their heads
an' the higher they fly, an' ef you
lighten their ballast they kick up a dust
and skedaddle away like a wild hoss
running away in harness until they
find some place whar thar's plenty uv
ballast, fur the text says: "He played
on a harp of a thousand strings--sperits
uv just men made perfeck." (p. 18)
Hitherto, the word "skedaddle"
as used in this passage has not
been found in print before 1861, though
it may have existed in the
vocabulary for some time.14 The
passage, therefore, looks like an
accretion. In any event, Professor
Hudson is to be congratulated
on his fine literary taste in choosing
to reproduce the shorter text
12 Arthur Palmer Hudson, Humor of the Old Deep South (New
York, 1936), 234.
13 Ibid., 236-237.
14 See
H. L. Mencken, The American Language, Supplement I (New York, 1945),
239; see also "skedaddle" in
William A. Craigie, ed., A Dictionary of American
English on Historical Principles (Chicago, 1938-44).
226
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
from the Spirit of the Times rather
than the longer and less effec-
tive one given by Mrs. Roberts. Indeed,
there is reason to think that
Professor Hudson may have had some
doubt about Lewis' claim. At
least in commenting on still another
burlesque sermon, "Brother
Crafford's Farewell Sermon," which
he printed under the name of
"Bill Easel," he stated that
in diction, style, and organization,
"Brother Crafford's Farewell"
is so like "The Harp" as "to suggest
the same author for both."15
Like Professor Hudson, Professor Walter
Blair in anthologizing
"The Harp" reproduced under
Lewis' name the version of the
sermon which had been printed
anonymously in the Spirit of the
Times.16 In
a cautionary note, however, he said he doubted Lewis'
authorship, pointing out that Lewis
"showed little of the [same]
skill in his other writings."17
But some influential later books over-
look this warning; B. A. Botkin's A
Treasury of Southern Folklore,
for example, attributes the sermon to
Lewis without caveat.l8
Let us now examine the case for William
Penn Brannan. An
obituary in the Cincinnati
Commercial for August 10, 1866, says
that he was born in 1825 in Cincinnati,
the son of a farmer, and
that he became a self-taught portrait
painter, who devoted his
leisure to literature.l9 As
an itinerant artist, according to the same
source, he traveled up and down the
Mississippi Valley from
Maysville to New Orleans, and it was on
one of these journeys
through the deep South that he wrote
the famous sermon "The
Harp of a Thousand Strings," a
masterpiece of humor, which "will
carry his name to posterity."
Another Cincinnati newspaper, the
Daily Union, on which Brannan had been an associate editor in
1865, said that he was the author not
only of "The Harp" but
also of many other "waifs still
floating on the sea of literature,"
that he had published pieces under
various pen names, and that
some of his best work had been signed
either Van Dyke Brown
or Bill Easel.20
15 Humor of the Old Deep South, 234.
16 Walter Blair, Native American Humor (New York, 1937), 388-389.
17 Ibid., 557.
18 B. A. Botkin, A Treasury of Southern Folklore (New York, 1949),
100.
19 See also William T. Coggeshall, Poets
and Poetry of the West (Columbus,
1860), 186.
20 Daily Union, August
9, 1866.
WHO WROTE "THE HARP"? 227
Now Professor Hudson thinks, as we have
seen, that Bill Easel's
"Brother Crafford's Farewell
Sermon" and "The Harp" are so
alike in diction, style, and
organization as "to suggest the same
author for both." If, then, the
Bill Easel who wrote "Brother
Crafford's Farewell Sermon" and
William Penn Brannan were one
and the same man, Brannan's title to
"The Harp" would seem to
be very strong indeed. Such is the case;
in 1856 Brannan, who was
then living in Louisville, where he had
a studio at the corner of
Fifth and Jefferson streets,21
contributed frequently to the Courier,
sometimes using his own name, sometimes
his pseudonym, "Bill
Easel." On January 10, 1856, under
the name of Easel, he pub-
lished "Brother Crafford's Farewell
Sermon" there; and on January
30, 1856, that paper, apropos of a
parody on "Hiawatha" by
"Easel," noted that
"Easel" was the author of "The Harp":
"Fire Water":--Our
correspondent, "Bill Easel," enables us to present
to the readers of the Courier this
morning by all odds the best thing in the
season. It is entitled
"Fire-Water," is done up in genuine Longfellow
"Hiawatha" fashion, and is
full of capital hits. By the way, our readers
are not probably aware that "Bill
Easel" is the author of the sermon of the
Hard Shell Baptist who "played upon
a harp of a thousand strings, sperits
of just men made perfect." . . .
His "Brother Crafford's Farewell Sermon,"
which appeared in the Courier a
few weeks ago, is going the rounds of the
press, and promises to have a run equal
to the "Harp of a Thousand
Strings."
This claim was challenged by Joshua S.
Morris, editor of the
Port Gibson (Mississippi) Reveille, who claimed the
paternity of
"The Harp" for himself. In
answer to Morris the Louisville Daily
Democrat printed the following letter, July 28, 1856:
"The Harp of A Thousand
Strings"
Messers Editors: As I have seen one or
two paragraphs going the
rounds of the papers lately questioning
the authorship of the "Sermon"
bearing the above title, I desire, with
your permission, to lay a few facts
before your readers, which are well
known, not only to myself, but to every
gentleman of Mr. Brannan's acquaintance,
who resided in the South during
1851, '52, '53. The authorship of the
sermon is, perhaps of no consequence
21 Louisville
Courier, May 27, 1856.
228
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
to Mr. Brannan, as he has written too
many beautiful things to care for so
small a matter; but when this man,
Morris, charges him, through prominent
papers, with being a
"literary" thief and "plagiarist" it is due to himself
and his friends that some correction be
made. On my own part, I have
found Mr. B's writings remarkable for
originality--and I am intimately
acquainted with almost everything he has
written. The "Harp of a Thou-
sand Strings" was written in August
1853. I saw the manuscript. It was first
entitled the "Arkansas
Preacher." It was produced for the benefit of a
few friends and preached on festive
occasions.
When Mr. B. left Mississippi, his
numerous friends wished copies of the
"Sermon," and he gave the
manuscript to Morris for publication, and he
has ever since claimed it as his own.
There is a bit of revenge at the bottom
of the affair, on the part of Morris. He
took offense at some harmless
satires, which occurred in a series of
articles called the "Sharpsburgh
Letters," written by Mr. Brannan
for the Port Gibson Herald in 1851.
In conclusion, we would advise Mr.
Morris to be more sparing of his
delicate epithets in future; and, if he
wishes to lay claim to literary dis-
tinction, to send some of his own
productions forth to the world.
Maulstick.
As I have been unable to find a complete
file of the Port Gibson
Herald for 1851, I cannot substantiate Maulstick's statement
about
the "Sharpsburgh Letters."
Several items in the available numbers
of the newspaper do, however, bear out
Maulstick to the extent of
placing Brannan in the vicinity of Port
Gibson in the summer of
1851.22
Maulstick was not alone in his defense
of Brannan. The Courier
vigorously protested against the
"vain, braggart, and indecent card"
in which Morris had urged his claim and
asserted:
We have the most irrefragable testimony
that Mr. W. P. Brannan, now
of this city, is the author, having
conceived and executed that masterpiece
of humor alone. This is the assurance we
have from a gentleman of the
South and from documentary evidence.
Mr. Brannan appears in our paper this
morning in a card relative to
the matter. He considers it a small affair, and is
disposed to treat it as
22 On
August 1, 1851, the Herald noted that "Mr. William P. Brannan is in
the
vicinity for the summer painting
landscapes and fancy pieces. He expects to return
to New Orleans after the sickly season
passes." The Herald also published "Song
of the Inebriate," a poem by Brannan (June 27,
1851), and "Frank Sommers," a
burlesque novel by Bill Easel (August 15, 1851).
WHO WROTE "THE HARP"? 229
such. It is well, however, to crush out
Morris's pretentions [sic] at once.
Indeed it is wrong that he should aspire
to the production of anything,
having never published a line worthy of
reprint, whereas Mr. Brannan's
effusions form a delightful portion of
our current literature.23
In his own defense, Brannan asked Morris
to produce a list "of
the thousand and one wonderful
productions of his able and witty
pen" and sarcastically thanked him
"for not claiming all the other
writings that have appeared over his
[Brannan's] signature and
nom de plume ('Bill Easel')." Then to show that he could
produce
writings in the same vein as "The
Harp," whereas Morris couldn't,
Brannan added the following letter from
Jabez Flint, the Hardshell
preacher himself:
Peggys holler Injeanar, July 21, 1856
Mr. Branan--Sir: My nabor squire
jinkins, who is a scholar--i never
had no edication--tells me that you and
a man named Mor-ass ar claimin
to be orthors of my great sarmont which
I preached from the tex And he
played on the harp of a thousand
strings--sperits uv just men made perfek.
Squire jinkins is a man of larnin and a
good hard shell baptist. He says
i o it to myself to speak out in meatin
and let the people no that i am
the only orthor of that selybrated
sarmont. When I preached it to the
benighted heathen of Waterproof i didn't
know that you writin chaps was
thar--and it's well for you I didn't; I
wouldn't have left a hold bone in
ure bodies--for i play on the harp of a
thousand strings, sperits uv
just men made perfek.
Sence i quit flatboatin, i have kep a
respectable grocery in peggy's holler,
where hard shell baptists and them as
isn't will find me constantly on hand.
In the first place, i hev a leetle of
the best corn meal, a leetle of the best
bacon, a leetle of the best whisky, and
a leetle of the best saft soap--
made by my wife, betsey--that perhaps
you ever seed--and i play on the
harp of a thousand strings, sperits uv
just men made perfek.
Now don't understand by my keepin'
sperits that i hold any communion
with the whisky baptists. No, sir! The
whisky baptists are a low-flung,
drunken set that like unto the hogs that
wallow in the mire return again
to their vomick. I am no sech a person
as to drink sperits and throw 'em
up to the man who sold 'em--for i play
on the harp of a thousand strings,
sperits of just men made perfek.
Now i want you and that Mor-ass man to
own up that you stole my grate
23 Louisville Courier, July 29,
1856.
230
THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
sarmont, for the commandment expressly
says, render unto ceaser the
things that is ceasers, and they went
and done so likewise--for the time
will cum when u will both go to that
lake where the fire never dies and
the worm is not squenched. Then will i
be rejoicing in the land of Canaan,
playn' on the harp of a thousand strings
world without end.
JABEZ FLINT
hard-shell baptist.
Since Morris was unable to answer
Brannan's challenge by
pointing to other writings of his
comparable to "The Harp," his
claim may--until further evidence is
forthcoming--be disregarded.
As for Lewis' claim, the fact that he
wrote out the sermon in the
office of the Brandon Republican is
no proof of his authorship. "A
resident of Frankfort," the
staunchest witness on Lewis' side, ad-
mits that the story "had
circulated from mouth to mouth for a
long time in that region, previous to
any publication" and that
Lewis had heard it "told in a
hundred different ways by a hundred
different people" before writing
it out for Harper.
If Maulstick is correct about the
sermon's having been circulated
in manuscript after August 1853, Lewis
might well have picked it
up for use in his temperance lectures.
This theory is strengthened
by the fact that "Brother
Crafford's Farewell Sermon" was used in
just that way by another temperance
lecturer, John B. Gough, who,
after altering the title to
"Brother Watkins" and making several
other changes, convulsed large
audiences with Brannan's mutilated
sketch.24
Whether or not this conjecture as to
how Lewis came to know
"The Harp" is correct,
Brannan's claim to the sermon seems much
stronger than Lewis'. Certainly the
testimony of old and generally
trustworthy reference books like Howe's
Historical. Collections of
Ohio and Sabin's A Dictionary of Books Relating to
America,25
both of which attribute the piece to
Brannan, ought to carry as
24 "Brother Watkins" is
printed in Phineas Garrett, ed., One Hundred Choice
Selections, No. 7 (Philadelphia, 1903), 50. The most convenient text of
"Brother
Crafford's Farewell Sermon" is that found in
Hudson, Humor of the Old Deep South,
236.
25 Henry Howe, Historical Collections
of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1900), I, 858; Joseph
Sabin and others, eds., Bibliotheca
Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to
America (New York, 1868-1936), II, 417.
WHO WROTE "THE HARP"? 231
much weight as the clipping cited in
Mrs. Roberts' volume. Further-
more, the text of the sermon in Mrs.
Roberts' book is garbled.
Moreover, in "Brother Crafford's
Farewell Sermon" Brannan pro-
duced a burlesque whose diction, style,
and organization are, as
Professor Hudson has said, so like
those of "The Harp" as "to
suggest the same author for both."
Finally, in his known writings
Lewis shows no skill comparable to that
seen in "The Harp."
Professor Blair's doubt as to Lewis'
title, therefore, seems well-
founded. Indeed, the weight of the
evidence thus far accumulated
points to Brannan's authorship.