Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/100

 512 Oral Literature This ballad is current through the Middle West, and has been recovered as far southwest as Texas, owing, apparently, no- thing of its circulation to print. Phillips Barry has shown that it was composed at Bensontown, Vermont, as far back as 1835. Another piece which has roamed everywhere is Springfield Mountain, the story of a young man mowing hay who was ' ' bitten by a pizen serpent ' ' and died. W. W. Newell was able to trace the history of this piece to New England composition in the late eighteenth century. Of unknown origin but of equally wide diffusion is Poor Lorella, who was killed by her lover, and lies down under the weeping willow : Down on her knees before him She pleaded for her life ; But deep into her bosom He plunged the fatal knife. This is known also as The Weeping Willow, Poor Floella, Floe Ella, Lurella, Lorla, Loretta, The Jealous Lover, Pearl Bryn, etc. Also of unknown origin and also tragic is The Silver Dagger. Jesse James claims sympathy for its outlaw hero, an American Robin Hood. The Death of Garfield reflects moraliz- ing delight in a criminal's repentance, a stock motive. Fuller and Warren tells of a fatal quarrel between rival lovers ; Casey Jones of a fatal railroad run. From the standpoint of the New World, baUad-making is not a "closed account." Probably there will always be a body of short narrative pieces, their authorship and origin lost, preserved in outlying regions. They will shift in style, for there is a history of taste for folk-poetry as there is for book-poetry ; but they will ever be behind con- temporary song-modes by a generation or more. These are genuine ballads — unless there is insistence on some communal- mystic origin for what may be termed a ballad, or on the pre- servation of a mediaeval song style. The mediaeval song style is the more memorable, because it dated from a time when singing was nearly universal, and when songs were composed for the ear, not for the eye ; but it may not logically be insisted upon as a test of what is genuine balladry and what is not. There have been many helps to diffusion of popular pieces in this country as in England. Fairs or circuses at which broadsides or sheet music were offered for sale have served as