Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/103

 " American Ballads " 515 Betsy from Pike, The Days of Forty-nine, Fuller and Warren are not of cowboy origin but immigrated from other States. I'm a Good Old Rebel is Unreconstructed, the composition of Innes Randolph, who wrote for The Baltimore American. Even the few rough improvisations which seem to have come from the cowboys themselves are largely built on or reminiscent of some well-known model and are fitted to some well-known melody. They are creations in a qualified sense only. For instance, Whoopee-Ti-Yi-Yo, Git along Little Dogies owes its form to The Cowboy's Lament, the origin of which has been men- tioned, and it is sung to the same melody as its Old World original. The influence of Irish ' ' Come-all-ye's ' ' and of death- bed confession pieces is pretty strong on the cowboy songs as a whole. The term "American ballads" is better applied, not to the small, structureless and nearly characterless group of cowboy songs which may be genuinely of cowboy improvisation, but to ballads of the type exemplified by Springfield Mountain, Young Charlotte, Poor Florella, The Young Man who Wouldn't Hoe Corn, Jesse James. It is these which form the truer analogues of the oral legendary and romantic song-tales of England and Scotland. Still another type of orally preserved verse appears in ring games, on the grass or in the parlour, "Play-party " songs, so-called, and in the singing games of children. The latter are now assuming a certain degree of stability or uniformity, owing to the printing of traditional songs for children in books of games, from which they are taught to pupils in the primary grades at school. ' ' Play-party ' ' games of young people are not yet quite extinct, though they are becoming so. They are typi- cally dances, except that the participants move to the rhythm of singing, not to the accompaniment of some musical instrument. The words of the texts are more unstable, and the songs more structureless than in songs and ballads proper, and they are even more sub j ect to local changes and improvisations. Game- songs with strong formulae of some kind are likeliest to retain vitality, because most easily remembered ; the formula remains constant if nothing more. Collection of such songs has been made by W. W. Newell for New England, and by many col- lectors for the Central West. Some well-known examples of