I've been blogging the Smithsonian Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music recently, tune by tune, on my music blog. This is the second installment, and, thematically, it fits with the issues at hand in the White Privilege Working Group. As it looks like that group could use a blog posted its way, I send this off.
Nothing is more American than displaced anger manifesting as gratuitous fear. This is all the more true if the displaced anger comes as a European ancestral inheritance adapted to new circumstances. To win the trifecta, you toss in straight-up misogyny.
In Nelstone's Hawaiian's "Fatal Flower Garden," without doubt one of the best titles you'll come across, we get the Blood Libel, with a gypsy--this choice is really interesting--replacing the Jew. The tune:
Here you go:
It rained, it poured, it rained so hard,
It rained so hard all day,
That all the boys in our school
Came out to toss and play.
They tossed a ball again so high,
Then again, so low;
They tossed it into a flower garden
Where no-one was allowed to go.
Up stepped a gypsy lady,
All dressed in yellow and green;
"Come in, come in, my pretty little boy,
And get your ball again."
"I can't come in, I shan't come in
Without my playmates all;
I'll go to my father and tell him about it,
That'll cause tears to fall."
She first showed him an apple seed,
Then again gold rings,
Then she showed him a diamond,
That enticed him in.
She took him by his lily-white hand,
She led him through the hall;
She put him in an upper room,
Where no-one could hear him call.
"Oh, take these finger rings off my finger,
Smoke them with your breath;
If any of my friends should call for me,
Tell them that I'm at rest.
Bury the bible at my head,
A testament at my feet;
If my dear mother should call for me,
Tell her that I'm asleep.
Bury the bible at my feet,
A testament at my head;
If my dear father should call for me,
Tell him that I am dead."
So what are we to make of this? For facts about performer, I as per what is becoming usual refer you to
Gadaya's notes. This, like "Henry Lee" before it is derived from a
Child Ballad, in this case "
Sir Hugh, or the Jew's Daughter" CB 155. That ancestor is Scottish in this case:
155A.1 FOUR and twenty bonny boys
Were playing at the ba,
And by it came him sweet Sir Hugh,
And he playd oer them a'.
155A.2 He kickd the ba with his right foot,
And catchd it wi his knee,
And throuch-and-thro the Jew's window
He gard the bonny ba flee.
155A.3 He's doen him to the Jew's castell,
And walkd it round about;
And there he saw the Jew's daughter,
At the window looking out.
155A.4 'Throw down the ba, ye Jew's daughter,
Throw down the ba to me!'
'Never a bit,' says the jew's daughter,
'Till up to me come ye.'
155A.5 'How will I come up? How can I come up?
How can I come to thee?
For as ye did to my auld father,
The same ye'll do to me.'
155A.6 She's gane to her father's garden,
And pu'd an apple red and green;
'Twas a' to wyle him sweet Sir Hugh,
And to entice him in.
155A.7 She's led him in through ae dark door,
And sae has she thro nine;
She's laid him on a dressing-table,
And stickit him like a swine.
155A.8 And first came out the thick, thick blood,
And syne came out the thin,
And syne came out the bonny heart's blood;
There was nae mair within.
155A.9 She's rowd him in a cake o lead,
Bade him lie still and sleep;
She's thrown him in Our Lady's draw-well,
Was fifty fathom deep.
155A.10 When bells were rung, and mass was sung,
And a' the bairns came hame,
When every lady gat hame her son,
The Lady Maisry gat nane.
155A.11 She's taen her mantle her about,
Her coffer by the hand,
And she's gane out to seek her son,
And wanderd oer the land.
155A.12 She's doen her to the Jew's castell,
Where a' were fast asleep:
'Gin ye be there, my sweet Sir Hugh,
I pray you to me speak.'
155A.13 She's doen her to the Jew's garden,
Thought he had been gathering fruit:
'Gin ye be there, my sweet Sir Hugh,
I pray you to me speak.'
155A.14 She neard Our Lady's deep draw-well,
Was fifty fathom deep:
'Whareer ye be, my sweet Sir Hugh,
I pray you to me speak.'
155A.15 'Gae hame, gae hame, my mither dear,
Prepare my winding-sheet,
And at the back o merry Lincoln
The morn I will you meet.'
155A.16 Now Lady Maisry is gane hame,
Made him a winding sheet,
And at the back o merry Lincoln
The dead corpse did her meet.
155A.17 And a' the bells of merry Lincoln
Without men's hands were rung,
And a' the books o merry Lincoln
Were read without man's tongue,
And neer was such a burial
Sin Adam's days begun.
Okay! I'll recall my point, made in the
piece about "Henry Lee": these tunes are what was brought by people, Scots-Irish types, who came to
North America with no real property, to be used as labor. We understand their thinking in part by what they chose to bring with them, culturally. So, we want to know what they kept and what they left behind.
Shared ("Sir Hugh" & "Fatal Flower Garden", British Isles & North America)
- Sexist Genesis reference--female temptress with apple
- Threatening outsider
- Child murder
- Insider is a child, outsider an adult
Changed
- Jew becomes Gypsy
- Apples become apple seed
- Diamond entices in North America
- Nobody meets a dead corpse in North America
- Racial identification in North America
I'll state categorically that I have nothing interesting to suggest about why the apples become apple seeds.
On the surface we continue the theme of violence and murder from "Henry Lee," and this is neither unimportant nor un-American. This, these songs are telling us, is a country where people kill people: it's central to the experience. What is probably more interesting, though, are the particular contours of the murder. The insider in the song is the child, to be murdered. Why would people sing a song like this? It's not memorializing anything specifically local, or even national, because it's derived from a European source.
The child follows food in Scotland: "And pu'd an apple red and green; 'Twas a' to wyle him sweet Sir Hugh." In North America, wealth: "Then she showed him a diamond, That enticed him in." The child in North America is a white kid, "lily-white." The white kid is victimized by a Gypsy, mysterious, dark, and female.
There's been much talk in recent years about the disenfranchised white male, either as fantasy (which it is) or fact (i.e., Pat Buchanan, etc.). One would think that this was a new development in the United States, but that's not at all true. This kind of paranoia has been part and parcel of white self-conception, and indeed white male self-conception, since the start. The entire project of a settler colony must predicate itself on a mythology of victimhood in order to act as aggressor.
Why the Gypsy, though? "Sir Hugh" tells of the Blood Libel, which though obviously a horrific myth dealt with people who the Scots who sang this might conceivably have had some direct knowledge of. There were no Gypsies, though, in North America, as they were an ocean away. This is entirely, however, the point. In North America, the white, male hero/victim could not meet his end at the hands of an actually existing non-white, non-male aggressor, because, in a social sense, there weren't any. So, a Gypsy, doubly expedient as racist, paranoid mythology: terrifying, and practically non-existent. Fear only works until one finds out there's nothing to be afraid of.
To be sure, the Scots-Irish had plenty to be afraid of. The vast majority of them lived in abject terror of the rich white people who shafted them on a daily basis, either directly or through intermediaries. The unfortunate historical response was to neither feel nor examine that fear, let alone do anything concrete about it. What were working-class white people going to do about the fact that people, in the terms of the society, like them were in fact their worst enemy? They could have taken rich white people on, but they knew what rich white people did to anything that actually threatened their position. Need to express fear met fear of the consequences of that expression, and they transferred that fear onto, getting back to the Blood Libel, a scapegoat, here represented as everything other: female, dark.
Why a child? Because these were people who, historically, refused to grow up.
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Crossposted at http://loucollins.wordpress.com/