A bit about the NPR interview: they were already interviewing my friend Moira Marsh, a folklorist and librarian at Indiana university, and wanted another voice and perspective. We did the interview but—unluckily for me—the story was cut in length, and they didn’t use my voice. It was not all misfortune for me, however. They did quote me on the NPR website, in an article you can read at this link.

As both Moira and I pointed out, dating the exact start of a Friday the 13th belief is tricky, because beliefs in Friday as an unlucky day and in 13 as an unlucky number long predate a specific, well-articulated belief in the unluckiness of Friday the 13th itself. Moreover, both these beliefs are so old it’s hard to determine when or why they started.

The idea of Friday as unlucky may have derived from the biblical tradition that Jesus was crucified on a Friday. This in turn led to Fridays being observed as fasting days throughout the Christian world. Being expected to abstain from your favorite foods and activities could certainly make the day seem unlucky, and in support of this theory, Friday is not unlucky in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, or most other religions, or in most countries where the majority religion is not Christianity.

Many people cite the Bible for the idea that 13 is unlucky too, claiming that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest at the Last Supper. In fact neither the order of the guests’ arrival nor their seating arrangement is mentioned in the Bible, so there’s no obvious sense in which Judas was “13th.” However, the presence of 13 people at the Last Supper could be behind the idea of unlucky 13.

In the NPR article, Moira complicates this story by stating that 13 may have been lucky among some Catholics because of its association with Jesus and the 12 disciples. She concludes that this could have been seen as superstitious by Protestants, and that this was the reason the lucky number became unlucky in Protestant countries. That’s an interesting idea, but from an outside perspective “unlucky 13,” just like “lucky 13,” seems to be a belief unsupported by scripture, and therefore unlikely to be specifically adopted by Christians due to the Reformation. There is, morevoer, some good evidence that 13 was associated with misfortune and death in many Catholic countries before the reformation. In the specialized playing card deck we know as Tarot Cards, for example, the death card was numbered 13. The earliest decks were unnumbered but included magnificent depictions of Death. No Death card survives from the earliest numbered decks in the 15th century, but we’re sure the Death card was numbered 13 by 1565, when its number is mentioned in Francesco Piscina’s Discorso Sopre l’Ordine delle Figure de Tarocchi (Discourse on the Order of the Tarot Trumps). Death has continued to be numbered 13 to this day.

One idea about the unluckiness of 13 is mathematical. Twelve is a number with many divisors, making it both a “superior highly composite number” and a “colossally abundant number.” Because it is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, it is useful for many applications, and we see this in the division of the year into 12 months, the clock face into 12 hours, the day into two periods of 12 hours, the foot into 12 inches, and more. Possibly because of this, twelve tends to signify completion and perfection, and is therefore an important number in many world religions. (See Weinreich’s article “Zwölfgötter” for a broad survey of the subject.)

Skeptical researcher Joe Nickell and others suggest that because of the symbolism of 12 as perfect completion, 13 might represent “the first departure from divine completeness or the initial step towards evil.” Although I suggested a version of this “12+1” explanation in the NPR article, I also have to admit there’s no concrete evidence for it. It’s a plausible explanation, but not a proven one. It is, however, a story some people tell about folk beliefs, and as such an example of metafolklore.

In fact, it’s not the only example of metafolklore associated with unlucky 13. One claim you’ll often see is that the Code of Hammurabi, an ancient Mesopotamian law text, omitted law #13, going straight from 12 to 14. This seems to foreshadow the modern practice of skipping the number 13 when numbering the floors of buildings, and suggests that the belief in unlucky 13 is almost 4000 years old. In truth, however, the laws in the code are unnumbered on the original stone on which they were carved. Any omission of the number 13 in any edition of the code occurred after the code was rediscovered in the 20th century. The story of the code’s connection to a belief in unlucky 13, therefore, is certainly modern folklore.

Another metafolkloric explanation for unlucky 13 involves Norse mythology. Many websites will tell you that there’s a story of twelve gods who were having a dinner party when Loki—the 13th—arrived uninvited and engineered Baldr’s death. The problem with this tale is that neither the poetic nor the prose Edda—the primary sources for the story of the killing of Baldr—feature a dinner party as the context for Baldr’s death, nor do they specify the number of gods present when he was killed. National Geographic paraphrased the “Loki at the dinner party” story from an interview with Donald Dossey back in 2011; where Dossey got it is anyone’s guess (he died in 2016). It seems likely that someone combined the story of Baldr’s death with the idea that unlucky 13 derives from a betrayal committed the “13th guest” at a dinner party (taken in turn from the Last Supper story), thereby creating a new origin tale for unlucky 13. Perhaps this was an attempt to make the tradition seem older than it is. If so, this is creative metafolklore at its best!

It’s hard to determine when the ideas of unlucky 13 and unlucky Friday were combined into a belief that Friday the 13th is unlucky. However, metafolklore has an answer there too. Search the web, and you’ll find lots of sites relating the origin of a belief in unlucky Friday the 13th to the destruction of the Knights Templar, which occurred on Friday, October 13, 1307. This theory was popularized by Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code, but historians have never been convinced. Although the date of the initial attack on the Templars is accurate, no one seems to have connected this historical event to the belief in Friday the 13th until the 20th century. During the Middle Ages, few people would have known the exact date of the decree outlawing the Templars, so the belief would have to date to a time when it became widely known–more likely modern than medieval. To paraphrase my earlier blog on “Ring Around the Rosie” and the plague, today’s scholars want to know: how did the first person who claimed a connection between the events of 1307 and the belief in unlucky Friday the 13th find out about that connection, and why can’t we find whatever evidence they had? Until we see some evidence of a connection dating back to the Middle Ages, this assertion seems more like a modern guess.

This lack of evidence led National Geographic to title an article “Busting the Myth of Friday the 13th and the Knights Templar.” Oddly, though, in that piece Becky Little suggests that “Friday the 13th…wasn’t associated with bad luck until 1907, when a novel titled Friday, the Thirteenth was published.” However, the novel in question, by Thomas W. Lawson, depicts characters who already believe Friday the 13th is unlucky, referring to it as “the Wall Street hoodoo-day, Friday, the thirteenth of the month.” It describes this belief as a “tradition” and features characters describing others who hold the belief: “Why, Barry would not eat to-day for fear the food would get stuck in his windpipe.” It shows Wall Street traders using the belief to manipulate the market on the supposedly unlucky day. Pretty clearly, Lawson, who was himself known as a stock manipulator, wasn’t inventing this belief, but describing it as he had encountered it on the stock market–otherwise the novel wouldn’t have a credible plot. Therefore, the novel is not a plausible origin for the belief.

If you look at the NPR article, you may also note that Moira says we get the belief in Friday the 13th from England, where we have no record of the belief before 1913. Given that Lawson’s novel shows the belief alive and well in America in 1907, though, this can’t be right. As you also may notice in the article, they quote me speaking largely about French literature. That’s because my research convinces me this belief came to America from France rather than Britain, and did so in the mid to late 19th century.

The earliest clear references I’ve found to unlucky Friday the 13th come from French works, the first two from 1834. In an article in the Revue de Paris, the Marquis de Salvo, writing about a Sicilian count who killed his daughter on a Friday the 13th, wrote, “Ce sont toujours ces vendredis et ces nombres, treize qui portent malheur!” (“It is always Fridays and the number 13 that bring bad luck!”) Similarly, an 1834 play called Les Finesses des Gribouilles has a character state, “Je suis né un vendredi, treize décèmbre, 1813, d’où viennent tous mes malheurs!” (“I was born on a Friday, December 13, 1813, from which come all my misfortunes.”) The first of these two references could be to a belief in Friday and 13 individually as unlucky, and the second could refer only to Friday, December 13, but later examples show that by the middle of the 19th century, the idea that any Friday the 13th was unlucky was common in France.  To give just one example, the 1858 play Bloqué! Vaudeville en un acte, by Henri Chivot and Alfred Duru, has a character exclaim, “je n’ai jamais eu de chance de ma vie! Je suis né un vendredi treize!” (“I have never had any luck in my life! I was born on a Friday the 13th!”)  

In the 1870s we find a particularly interesting example of Friday the 13th in French drama; the play is Lélia by Octave Gastineau. In the first speech of the play, the countess Lélia complains:

Oh! non, bien certainement, je ne resterai pas plus longtemps à ce bal maudit! Pourquoi, aussi, Valentine fait-elle danser un vendredi ! un jour d’abstinence ! et un treize! Oh! ces Parisiennes! elles ne respectent rien! pas même les superstitions!”

(“Oh, no, I surely won’t stay much longer at this cursed ball! Also, why is Valentine dancing on a Friday! A fasting day! And the 13th! Oh, these Parisian women respect nothing, not even superstitions!”)

At the end of the play, she and the handsome nobleman Maurice have become acquainted, and are considering traveling together, but she has qualms:

Lélia: Ah!
Maurice: Quoi donc?
Lélia: C’est aujourd’hui vendredi 13
Maurice: C’est-à-dire samedi 14
Lélia, avec joie: Ah ! c’est vrai !

Lélia: Ah!
Maurice: What is it?
Lélia: Today is Friday the 13th
Maurice: You mean Saturday the 14th
Lélia, with joy: Ah! That’s right!

These two passages indicate that Lélia fears the consequences of dancing or embarking on a new relationship on Friday the 13th, so she is joyful to discover that they have talked past midnight and it is already Saturday the 14th.

I called Gastineau’s play a particularly interesting example because in those days of rampant piracy a good play could be republished frequently, and two different English translations came out in 1878 and 1879–one was clearly based on the other, so they differ only slightly. In both, the scene was changed from Paris to London, Countess Valentine became Emily Fielding, and Maurice became an Englishman named Hugh. In the 1878 translation, the first passage about Friday the 13th was rendered as follows:

I won’t stay any longer at this horrid ball! I can’t imagine why Emily will dance on a Friday–a fast-day–the 13th of the month, too! These gay people never respect anything–not even a superstition!

The second, in which the two young people contemplate the possibilities of a new relationship and a trip to Rome, runs:

Lelia: Will it please you?
Hugh: Can you doubt it?
Lelia: Oh! dear!
Hugh: What’s the matter?
Lelia: To-day is Friday the 13th.
Hugh: No, it’s Saturday the 14th.
Lelia [joyfully]: Oh! that’s true!

In the 1879 version, the first passage remained the same, but the second had some additions:

Lelia: Will it please you?
Hugh: Can you doubt it? Have not the pair of us been masquerading to some purpose? Will not the two be soon joined as one?
Lelia: To be sure-and let us hope that our little masquerading frolic will be but the prelude to a happy wedded life! O-h!
Hugh: What’s the matter?
Lelia: To-day is Friday, the 13th. How unlucky!
Hugh: (L.C. ) No, it’s Saturday, the fourteenth!
Lelia: (R.C., joyfully. ) Oh, that’s true!

Clearly, the play has been altered to add wedding plans, suggesting that the publisher was concerned American audiences might prove prudish at the suggestion of unmarried people traveling together! More importantly from our perspective, they have added the phrase “how unlucky” after “Friday the 13th,” which suggests concern some American audiences wouldn’t understand why she was mentioning the date. This in turn suggests that they saw a belief in the bad luck of Friday the 13th as exotic, European, and obscure.

Lélia offers an example of the Friday the 13th belief making the transition from France to America through being translated to English and explained for American audiences. Another text offers an example of the belief’s reception. In the Current Notes section of the Chicago Daily Tribune of May 28, 1886 (pg. 4), I found the following item:

Champoireau in despair resolved to commit suicide. He is about to take his last plunge into the Seine when all at once he reflects: “Today, Friday, the 13th? Never!” said he, recoiling. “It might bring me bad luck!”–French Joke.

This “French Joke” also appeared in other newspapers, and you can see a version of the joke here, in the third column near the top. Of course, it’s a “French Joke” in the sense of a joke making fun of stereotypes about the French. It therefore provides evidence that in the 1880s, the belief in unlucky Friday the 13th was still seen by some Americans as both foolish and typically French.

In the late 1880s and early 1890s, references to a belief in Friday the 13th begin to show up regularly in American newspapers. Although it is often labeled a “superstition,” and sometimes explained as though people might not be familiar with it, it’s rarely anymore labeled French or European. Here are just a few examples:

“Superstitious people looked upon the Syracuse Stars as unlucky. They have thirteen players on the team, thirteen directors to govern its affairs, and the club started on its preliminary trip on Friday, the 13th day of the month. But when Joe Battin spits on the ball, and Bill Higgins gets limbered up, that team will make the fur fly.” (Waterbury Evening Democrat, 1888)

“Although yesterday was a double hoodoo—Friday, the 13th—no casualties occurred in San Antonio which only goes to show that San Antonio is not so unlucky after all.” (San Antonio Daily Light, August 14, 1897)”

“Very Unfortunate
Daisy: My rich old uncle was born on Friday, the 13th of the month, in 1813.
Mazie: Gracious! How unlucky.
Daisy: I should say so. He gets heartier every day!” (Topeka State Journal, March 29, 1898)

“FRIDAY AND THE 13TH
Unlucky Combination Keeps Young People From Applying for Marriage Licenses
A week ago yesterday eight marriage licenses were granted, notwithstanding it was Friday, superstitiously regarded as an unlucky day. It was then said by one of the deputies at the recorder’s office that it was the busiest Friday in marriage licenses on record. Yesterday was Friday, too. But it was also the thirteenth of the month. Only two applied for marriage licenses.” (Kansas City Journal, October 14, 1899)

As we can see, many examples of the belief are discussed as humor, and the words “hoodoo” and “superstition” often come up. This is consistent with a general tendency to take the belief less than seriously. A joke that became common in the 1890s was to note that a baseball game would occur on Friday the 13th and quip that the date surely meant bad news for one of the two teams. You can see an early example leading off the page here. Of course, the joke really pokes fun at the belief itself, since one of the teams was bound to lose anyway. There were even clubs formed to disprove the belief in Friday the 13th and other similar beliefs. The best known was the Thirteen Club of New York, which first met on Friday, January 13, 1882.

This all brings up the point that the Friday the 13th belief in the United States mostly exists as a belief about what others believe. Initially Americans believed that Europeans, especially French people, believed in the unluckiness of Friday the 13th. Then, this was generalized to “superstitious people,” as in the article from 1888 above. Often, articles debunk the belief, and clubs form to disprove it, showing that the writers of the articles and members of the clubs don’t believe it–but they believe others do. Rarely do references to the belief indicate a significant number of self-professed believers.

What we find, then, is that the belief in Friday the 13th is not ancient or medieval, although it does have roots in earlier European beliefs about Friday and the number 13. These beliefs seem to have been combined in France into a specific belief about Friday the 13th in the first half of the 19th century. The idea of the unluckiness of Friday the 13th then migrated to America in the second half of the 19th century in plays like Lélia and other works of art and literature. In the twentieth century, Friday the 13th became part of various pop culture phenomena, starting with Lawson’s popular 1907 novel. It was immortalized in the 1980s in a series of horror movies featuring a deranged killer in a hockey mask. Those films continued until the 2000s; so far there have been 12 horror films in the franchise, but I wouldn’t bet against a 13th! To round things out, the franchise also included books, comics, and other tie-ins, plus a more cerebral and supernatural TV series about cursed objects sold by a sorcerer.

In the late 20th and early 21st century, metafolklore emerged in the stories about the Code of Hammurabi, the Norse gods at the death of Baldr, and the Knights Templar. This last story was given quite a boost by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, making it probably the most popular current explanation for Friday the 13th. But I’m sure there will be others. In fact, I’d wager the belief in bad luck on Friday the 13th will always be with us. Or at least, I’d wager that there will always be some people who believe that other people believe in bad luck on Friday the 13th!

Do you believe? Feel free to leave a comment below!

Betsy Peterson, Director of the American Folklife Center at the time, replied, “Well, you know, that’s what we do.”

“I’m telling you, I had this moment where I might have squealed and cried at the same time, because I thought, this is it!” Julie later recalled.

She was right.

Julie recounted that call for a large audience of dignitaries, activists, cultural workers, and citizens who gathered in the Library of Congress’s Great Hall in 2019 to celebrate an historic collaboration between the National AIDS Memorial and the Library: together, they would steward the collection.

Today, as part of a collaboration with the National AIDS Memorial (NAM), which became the permanent caretaker and steward of the Quilt in 2019, the American Folklife Center is home to more than 200,000 AIDS Memorial Quilt records. These records offer an intimate look at the lives of those who died from AIDS and help humanize and capture the scale of the AIDS pandemic in a singular and public way. The collection documents the evolution of the treatment and social views related to one of the U.S.’s ongoing Civil Rights struggles.

Researchers interested in folk art, memory, grief, social activism, public health, and the international struggle for human rights will find valuable information in this collection. And last week, their research got a lot easier: the bulk of collection, now digitized, went online at https://www.loc.gov/collections/aids-memorial-quilt-records/.

The Quilt itself is stewarded by the National AIDS Memorial in San Francisco, which partners with community-based organizations across the country to display Quilt sections and to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS impacting people today. Our organizations play to each of our strengths, leveraging the preservation and access capacity of the Library and the deep community ties of the National AIDS Memorial to safeguard the memory of the AIDS movement for generations to come.

At AFC, the journey from that first phone call to this month’s launch of the digital collection has been long, but rewarding. It took many dedicated staff members and collaborators outside of the Library to make it happen. Here is a glimpse of that story.

Encountering the collection

At Betsy’s behest, I first visited the NAMES Project headquarters in Atlanta in late 2013 to view the collection in my capacity then as Head of the AFC Archives. I arrived to find a small, friendly, and dedicated staff running the largest grassroots HIV/AIDS-related volunteer organization in the country. They were actively managing the receipt of new panels, the stewardship of 54 tons of fabric honoring 92,000 individuals, and operating active education and Quilt loan programs. I spent lots of time with Julie and Roddy Williams, who managed Quilt operations (he still does in California!), who generously helped me acclimate to the collection and its rich history.

The headquarters had three distinctive work areas: the warehouse, the sewing repair and shipment area, and the front office. The décor was playful and vibrant. Many colorful posters from past Quilt events adorned the walls, along with a bank of 35 donated sewing machines upon which some quilts were created. The most famous sewing machine, “Connie,” was in active use by Quilt Conservator Gert McMullin, one of the Quilt founders, who repairs the Quilt and sews the panels into larger blocks.

What the NAMES Project called the “Document and Media Archive” was organized into two general categories: 1) documentation associated with the Quilt’s decades of display, workshop programs, and other administrative activities, and; 2) records generated by quilt makers that directly relate to persons listed on panels (a.k.a. “panel maker files”).

The panel maker files spanned more than 100 linear feet within fireproof filing cabinets in the sewing repair and shipment room. In the warehouse, event posters and submitted photos were kept in about 40 map case drawers. Nine “blue packs,” large storage containers, held materials associated with the Document and Media Archive, ranging from videos to exhibit publications. The rest of the blue packs held quilt fabric.

The records come to the Library

It would take six years and multiple trips to Atlanta to finalize the gift agreement, prepare the collection for transfer, and plan for its care once at the Library.

By fall of 2019, the Library held a signing ceremony involving Julie from the NAMES Project, and John Cunningham, CEO of the National AIDS Memorial. A couple of months later, the acquisition culminated in a wonderful ceremony in the Library’s Great Hall and a display of the newly arrived items. (More information about that event can be found on Folklife Today.) After the event, a portion of the collection was on display in the Great Hall through World AIDS Day. A special feature was the Quilt panel made by Library of Congress employees commemorating colleagues who died of AIDS.

Just as staff had developed and implemented workflows for processing the unique collection – which is more like 50,000 small collections than one group of manuscripts – a new pandemic struck. I remember in March 2020 sitting at safe distance outdoors with lead processing archivist Charlie Hosale discussing issues involving the digital portion of the collection. The COVID-19 pandemic forced us all into telework, which gave Charlie the chance to prioritize processing of the digital files from the collection, something he could do remotely.

Once back onsite in fall 2020, staff developed new socially distant and asynchronous processing workflows and continued in earnest. Preparing the collection required not only the support of AFC archives staff, but also help from the Conservation Division as we began collection digitization. Preservation specialist Kate Morrison-Danzis was among those who performed stabilization treatments to ensure every item can be safely handled and the information is fully legible during image capture.

By fall 2022, Charlie, archivist Farrah Cundiff, and processing technician Serena Chiu, finished processing the bulk of the “panel maker files” associated with the AIDS Quilt. AFC was already starting to provide researcher access to these records while we finalized an online access agreement with the National AIDS Memorial, the collection rights holders.

A focus on collection access

Even before the recent online publication, the Quilt’s physical collection was being steadily used in the American Folklife Center’s Reading Room. Graduate students, filmmakers, and those whose loved ones are commemorated on the Quilt have made visits to DC to do research. The 2022 Kluge Prize awardee Dr. George Chauncey used AIDS Quilt materials in his program for educators about AIDS and LGBTQ rights activism, a collaboration with the Library’s Teaching with Primary Sources program. This access has been facilitated by AFC staff’s initial digitization of the records, which was funded with a Ford Foundation grant to advance access to the Library’s social justice collections. Afterward, a second round of Ford Foundation funding was dedicated to completing digitization of the collection. The Library’s Digital Collections Management and Services Division coordinated the effort, with Steve Berkley taking the lead on the AFC side.

Displaying the collection 

In June 2024, the “Collecting Memories: Treasures from the Library of Congress” exhibit opened to the public in the new David M. Rubenstein Treasures Gallery in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. It explores how cultures preserve memory, including the role of the Library of Congress in preserving collective memories. The exhibit features materials from Block 1333 of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Featured are materials related to the life of David Keisacker, which were donated by his partner, Steve Horwitz, in 1989. It includes photos of Keisacker, Keisacker’s memorial service program, and Horwitz’s memorial of Keisacker’s life. Keisacker’s materials represent just one of the thousands of lives memorialized in the AIDS Memorial Quilt Records.

The same month, the Quilt and the records were featured during a display for Elton John, winner of the 2024 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Also, Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi had a special viewing of the exhibit and the collection. Pelosi has had a long connection to the Quilt and was instrumental in gaining approval for its iconic display on the National Mall. In her remarks during a 2019 special event to mark a new phase in stewardship of the Quilt, she noted that Librarian “Dr. (Carla) Hayden spoke so beautifully about having the Library of Congress receive, not the Quilt, but all of the memorabilia associated with it. And in doing so it raises the profile of it, the opportunity for others to see it, the visibility of it. But in return all of this information about the NAMES Project brings luster to the Library of Congress as well. This is a beautiful gift to our nation.”

The digital collection launched on World AIDS Day 2024 and coincided with a special display of a portion of the Quilt on the White House lawn. While we celebrate this major milestone, there is more work to be done. In 2025, we plan to process the business records of the NAMES Project and publish a detailed finding aid describing the full collection. We also plan to support the National AIDS Memorial as they work on expanding their online resource to unite the high-resolution panel images they have with the associated digital records at the Library.

As I think of all that has been accomplished since Julie’s first phone call to AFC, I am reminded of the power of collaboration and the power of the people whose stories are at the heart of the collection. She said it best in her 2019 remarks at the Library:

“This morning we’ve come to our nation’s capital once again to announce our plans for the future of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the NAMES Project. And we are here with some of the most powerful ambassadors and envoys to the cause of human rights that we’ve ever known. And they are the panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt. They are our guides. They are our navigators. They are our teachers. They stand ready to remind us all that we are connected one to another. And if we’re connected one to another then indeed we must be responsible one for another. They call on us.”

The American Folklife Center is pleased to welcome Ozarks musicians Mark Bilyeu and Cindy Woolf (The Creek Rocks), to our Folklife Reading Room. The duo are our very first Artists in Resonance, and are here for a week of in-depth research. Mark and Cindy, who live in Springfield, Missouri, were chosen from among 22 applicants to the Center’s brand new Artists in Resonance Fellowship. The fellowship is intended to support artists in creating new musical works inspired by and sourced from collection materials in the Center’s archives.

They’re well regarded as songwriters, singers, and musicians, but archival research is not new to Cindy and Mark. Their first album as The Creek Rocks, Wolf Hunter, contains songs they sourced from two collections: the John Quincy Wolf Collection at Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas (where Cindy was raised) and the Max Hunter Collection at Missouri State University in Springfield (Mark’s hometown and their current home base). Their upcoming album will feature music from Mary Celestia Parler’s collections at the University of Arkansas.

The duo has also delved into AFC’s collections, not least because one of Mark’s relatives, Bill Bilyeu, was an outstanding fiddler from whom Vance Randolph collected 20 fiddle tunes for the Library of Congress in 1943. In 2023, when The Creek Rocks played at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Cindy and Mark extended their trip by a day so they could come and visit us at AFC. We played them recordings from our Ozarks collections, inspiring them to further research. When we announced the new fellowship, they were eager to apply, and they were delighted when they were chosen as the first recipients.

Cindy, who plays banjo and guitar and sings in the duo, says:

“We are so excited that we were chosen from among so many great artists for this opportunity to research documentary materials from the Ozarks. We’re really looking forward to getting back into the recording studio and seeing how we can work with these wonderful old songs to make them our own.”

During their fellowship, Cindy and Mark are focusing on the materials Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded in Missouri in 1936 and 1937 for the Resettlement Administration. Although Robertson Cowell’s recordings from California have been online here at the Library of Congress for decades, and her recordings from Wisconsin have long been available from the University of Wisconsin, these earlier recordings are less well known. According to Mark, the items in the collection from Springfield, despite probably being the earliest audio documents of folk music in and around that city, “seem to be virtually unknown to our local historical memory, save for but a very few figures immersed in the study of the Ozarks and its folklore.” As Cindy suggested, the ultimate goal is to produce a full-length album of songs from the collection in new arrangements by The Creek Rocks.

While Mark and Cindy are here, American Folklife Center reference librarians, archivists, folklorists, and ethnomusicologists are working closely with them to support their research into these precious field recordings. Among other things, we are helping them to discover collection items; obtain rights and permissions; request copies of relevant recordings, manuscripts, and photographs; and determine whether a given song or tune is traditional or under copyright. Of course, we are also allowing them to hear the recordings in the reading room. We even have a guitar and banjo on hand for them to try out arrangement ideas if they get that far along in their process!

Mark, who plays guitar and sings, told us:

“I was most excited to be able to hear what almost certainly are the earliest field recordings made in and around our hometown of Springfield, Missouri. And I was delighted to learn that there is a difference in character between Sidney Robertson Cowell’s recordings and those made a few decades later by Max Hunter… In Robertson’s recordings, it seems like you hear more minor key and modal melodies that you don’t hear as often in later collections.”

As you can see, it sounds like they’re already making interesting discoveries in the archive! Make sure you follow The Creek Rocks online to find out what they do with these great field recordings.

The Artists in Resonance fellowships were created with the generous assistance of the late Mike Rivers (1943-2021). Mike was an internationally known folk musician and a talented electronics, recording, and broadcast engineer. For many years he was a big part of the folk music community in Washington, D.C, as both a banjo and guitar player and a live sound engineer for concerts and festivals. Among other things, Mike was also a member of Pete Seeger’s very first Clearwater Sloop crew, bringing together folk music and environmental activism, and was a member of the resident American folk band at the 1970 World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan. Not only are The Creek Rocks a banjo and guitar duo, they headlined the Isekasi City Festival in Japan in 2018, as ambassadors of Isekasi’s sister city, Springfield. Hosting The Creek Rocks seems a very fine and appropriate way to honor Mike’s life and legacy. Over at our guide to Research Awards, Fellowships and Funded Internships, you can find out more about the goals of the fellowship, the expectations for the fellows, and the requirements for applying. In this previous blog post, you can read more about Mike Rivers and the background to the fellowship.

As we come out of our turkey-and-cranberry-sauce-fueled Thanksgiving lethargy, I felt it was a perfect time to highlight the hard work of the men and women (and, in the 1930s, the children) who wade into the flooded cranberry fields to bring us these delicious and vibrant berries, accompanied by the lyrics to “Cranberry Song.”

You ask me to sing, so I’ll sing you a song
I’ll tell how in the marshes they all get along
Bohemians and Irish and Yankees and Dutch
It’s down in the shanties you’ll find the whole clutch.

Did you ever go to the cranberry bogs?
Some of the houses are hewed out of logs
The walls are of boards, they are sawed out of pine
That grow in this country called Cranberry Mine

It’s now then to Mather their tickets they’ll buy
And to all their people they’ll bid them goodbye
For fun and for frolic their plans are resigned
For three or four weeks in the cranberry clime

The hay is all cut and the wheat is all stacked
Cranberries are ripe so their clothes they will pack
And away to the marshes to rake they will go
And dance to the music of the fiddle and bow

All day in the marshes their rakes they will pull
And feel the most gay when boxes are full
In the evening they’ll dance ‘til they’re all tired out
And wish the cranberries would never play out.

Several lines in the song brought to mind this excerpt from Christine Cartwright’s Pinelands fieldnotes:

“Berry growers tend to have social networks which stretch between townships, often through kinship, since it tends to be a family industry. Quaker families have tended to keep the fertile soils which they claimed as the first inhabitants of the region under English rule, while Methodist and other families took the cranberry bogs and woodland. Italian families, who came as farm labor around the turn of the century, sometimes saved money and bought farmlands, and are now higher up on the social scale; the labouring class is now Puerto Rican, Black, and Cambodian, including labourers who are flown in seasonally from Puerto Rico, and flown home again, because it is cheaper than paying for local labor.”

Even though the song came from Wisconsin and Cartwright was working in another states, we can see the similarities between the experiences of the cranberry harvesters in Mather, Wisconsin and the ones the Center documented in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. 40 years on and in different parts of the United States, and yet harvesters in both locations were traveling in from homes in other places and staying for weeks at a time.

In addition to “Cranberry Song” and collection items from the Pinelands Folklife Project, the Center has a robust subject file related to cranberries, and Wisconsin, Massachusetts and New Jersey are all well represented within it. Among the resources in the subject file are:

A brochure from the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association, which includes photographs of flooded cranberry marshes

and a few cranberry recipes;

A poster “All ‘Bout Cranberries” and a series of cranberry-themed educational activities, produced by the Cape Cod Cranberry Growers’ Association;

and an AFC-produced compilation of cranberry recipes that came from the field survey in the New Jersey Pinelands. (Download an archived pdf of the booklet here!)

The booklet provides a bit of historical context for the importance of cranberries to North American diets:

“Cranberry – a slender, trailing North American shrub, growing in damp ground and bearing tart red berries. Along with blueberries and Concord grapes, cranberries are fruits unique to the North American continent. The use of cranberries as a food staple in the diets of Americans becomes more secure with each generation, but in fact they were established as a popular food long before the arrival of the Pilgrims.

The Wampanoag tribe which inhabited portions of Massachusetts harvested many wild foods, especially berries such as strawberries, blueberries, elderberries, and, in the autumn, the ruby-red wild cranberries. In areas of New Jersey the Lenni-Lenape tribe of Indians called them the “bitter berry” One New Jersey chief, known as Pakimintzen (“cranberry eater”), distributed cranberries at tribal feasts and considered them a symbol of peace.”

Inspired by my Lenape forebears, I decided to distribute cranberries at Thanksgiving by making one of the recipes featured in the Pinelands cranberry booklet. I opted for the cranberry pie recipe, provided by Helen Zimmer.

The ingredient list is relatively short, and I happened to have everything on hand, so I got to chopping, mixing and baking.

One of the things that I have learned over my years of pie-making is that the baking time included on a pie recipe is largely a suggestion. Several things can change how well your pies come together, including your altitude and the relative humidity in your house. Each oven heats a bit different, as well, making baking times a general guide, instead of a hard and fast rule. In my experience, the best metric for telling when a fruit pie is done is to bake it until the juice bubbles up and over the edge of the pie plate, making a mess on the rack below. This is also why I always put a baking liner on the rack below, to catch the drips. Using this method has generally allowed me to avoid that dreaded pie affliction, where the juices run out as soon as you try to lift a slice out.

This is not a completely fool-proof method, as this fool can attest. The cranberry pie did, indeed, bubble over and make a terrible mess all over the liner and the juices all appeared to have congealed. Until, that is, I lifted out the first slice and deep red juice spilled out to fill the empty spot in the pie plate. Thankfully, the pie was still good, it just needed more cornstarch. I have a sneaking suspicion this was largely due to baker error.

The recipe calls for “1 quart cranberries, chopped.” I got one step ahead of myself, however, and started chopping the cranberries before measuring them. This little misstep meant there were more cranberries in the pie than the recipe originally called for, which would have necessitated adding more cornstarch. If you replicate this pie and learn from my mistake (measure out the cranberries first), the amount of cornstarch given should be sufficient to hold everything together.

Even with the soupy first slices, the pie was a resounding success – which the assembled guests seemed a bit surprised about. As they each took their first bites, the dining room filled with exclamations of surprise and appreciation.  Most of them admitted that they were expecting a pie made of only cranberries to be quite bitter. Likewise, the molasses could have been a bit overwhelming, but those two exceptionally strong flavors came together quite well. You still taste both the cranberry and the molasses, but they compliment each other and what you end up with is a sort of fruity caramel flavor. In the end, everyone agreed that the pie recipe was worthy of preservation in an archive.

Further Reading

Check out these posts from the Library’s blogs:

• Railbirds, Cranberries, and Eels: Foods of the New Jersey Pinelands – Stephanie Hall, from Folklife Today
• Cranberry Sauce, with a Side of Social History – guest post, Rachel Gordon from Minerva’s Kaleidoscope: Resources for Kids and Families

View these cranberry related digital collections:

• Photographs of and interviews with cranberry harvesters from the Pinelands Folklife Project (AFC 1991/023)
• Photographs of cranberry bogs from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives Collection

Interested in growing and working with cranberries? Read these digitized publications:

• Cranberry Culture – by Joseph White. 1885
• The Cranberry – published by Bradley Fertilizer Co., circa 1892
• How to Sweeten Cranberries – published by the U.S. Food Administration, Division of home conservation. October 1918

For more on the cranberry’s history, including its use in traditional Indigenous diets, the impact of drought on this year’s harvest, and information about cranberry bog tourism, visit the following websites:

• American Indian Health and Diet Project’s cranberry page
• Travel Wisconsin’s feature, “Four Must-Stops Along the Wisconsin Cranberry Trail”
• An article on the impact of drought conditions on the 2024 Pinelands cranberry harvest, from Burlington County, New Jersey

It’s November, Native American Heritage Month, and we thought we’d feature a story on the podcast about an Indigenous artist using recordings in the American Folklife Center archive to inspire her own creativity.

The American Folklife Center has some 9,000 cylinder recordings of Native American cultural expressions made in the early 20th century by a variety of institutions, along with later recordings of Indigenous American culture in every format since. Of course, we are aware that the recordings are part of a long and challenging history of relations between Native and European-descended Americans, which includes abuse and violence against Native peoples. The American Folklife Center and the Library of Congress are committed to open dialogue about these materials, as well as to addressing issues in co-curation, cultural representation, intellectual access, and preservation that are of critical concern for both Indigenous communities and archival repositories. These recordings preserve the cultural expressions of hundreds of Native communities, and are being used all over the country in revitalization efforts, in which Native communities use their ancestors’ archival recordings preserved here to remember stories, songs, and cultural practices that have been changed or lost over the years.

This episode demonstrates another way in which Indigenous artists have used AFC collections: as inspiration for their own music. The episode features award winning singer-songwriter Thea Hopkins, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard. Hopkins adapted songs from the AFC archive twice, through a program we’ve called the Archive Challenge. On the first occasion she sang a lullaby recorded by ethnomusicologist Willard Rhodes from a young girl named Margaret at the Haskell Residential School in 1943; the song is known as “Margaret’s Song” or “Creek Lullaby,” and according to Creek elders it was created during the Trail of Tears. For her second challenge, Hopkins wrote new lyrics for the song “Red Wing,” which originally contained damaging stereotypes of Native Americans. The new lyrics paid homage to pioneering Native film actress Lilian St. Cyr, who was known as “Red Wing.” In the episode, Thea discusses her process and the meanings of the songs with me, Jennifer Cutting, and fellow Folklife Today blogger Meg Nicholas. The episode features the field recordings of both songs as well as Thea’s new versions. For the occasion, we even replaced our usual theme tune with a fiddle tune by Chippewa fiddler Mary Trotchie. So without further ado….

Get your podcast here!

The Songs in the Podcast: Audio and Video

“Creek Lullaby” or “Margaret’s Song”

An archived version of Margaret singing “Creek Lullaby” for Willard Rhodes can be downloaded at this link.

Watch Thea Hopkins’s version in the player below.

“Red Wing”

Thea Hopkins’s version of Red Wing, for now, is exclusive to the Podcast, which features both a live version at Club Passim and Thea’s studio version. Listen to them in the episode!

For now, Lillian Short’s version of “Red Wing” will also remain exclusive to the podcast. However, there are a lot of other blogs featuring Lillian Short’s singing, at this link.

Hear more versions of “Red Wing,” including the full version by the Haydn Quartet, at this link.

Fiddling by Mary Trotchie

Find photos and recordings of Mary Trotchie at this link.

Collection Guides Behind the Podcast

American Folklife Center Collections: Indigenous Peoples of the Americas is a guide to collections and resources available in the American Folklife Center relevant to the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas.

Archive Challenge: Toolkit from the American Folklife Center is designed to assist organizations with hosting an Archive Challenge — a program created by staff at the American Folklife Center to bring archival collections to life through contemporary musical performances.

Other Resources

Blogs relating to the Archive Challenge

• How to Take the Archive Challenge on your own
• All blogs about the Archive Challenge

Blogs Highlighting Native Collections and Events

Find all our blogs with Indigenous American content at this link.

Online Collections from Native Communities

Omaha Indian Music

Ancestral Voices (Native American Cylinder Recordings)

Maine Acadian Cultural Survey Collection

Native American materials in the Maine Acadian Cultural Survey Collection

Buckaroos in Paradise: Ranching Culture in Northern Nevada, 1945 to 1982

Native American materials in the Buckaroos in Paradise Collection

Montana Folklife Survey Collection

Native American materials in the Montana Folklife Survey Collection

Rhode Island Folklife Survey Collection

Native American materials in the Rhode Island Folklife Survey Collection

Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection

Native American materials in the Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection

Videos Featuring Native Cultures

• Charly Lowry: Lumbee and Tuscarora Singer and Songwriter
• Lakota John and Kin: Blues and Folk from a Lumbee Family
• Nakotah LaRance 1989-2020: Traditional Hoop Dance and Beyond
• Pamyua’s Modern Yup’ik Drumsongs
• Sihasin’s Music from the Diné Navajo Nation
• Roundtable on PBS TV show Native America: Language is Life

Find all AFC’s event videos featuring Indigenous American content at this link.

As always, thanks for reading and thanks for listening!

In case you need that podcast link again…here it is!

Bingo

Bingo is well represented within AFC’s archival collections, including two large gatherings documented in the Lowell Folklife Project collection (AFC 1987/042) and the Italian Americans in the West Project Collection (AFC 1989/022). This version of bingo uses 75 numbered balls and randomized number cards. A caller sits at the front of the room and calls out the numbers over a loudspeaker. The game is easily adapted for family game nights, with several game companies offering at-home bingo sets, complete with cards, markers, numbered balls, and a rotating metal cage to help randomize the numbers.

If you want to create a more authentic feeling for your at-home bingo game, you can pull up this recording of a bingo hall in Lowell, Massachusetts and listen to the chatter as bingo players mill about the room waiting for the game to begin.

When the game finally starts (around the 9:30 timestamp), the noise in the hall dims to a murmur as the assembled crowd begin to pour over their strips of bingo cards. Whenever the crowd begins to get a little louder, the recording is punctuated by exasperated shushing and outbursts of “we won’t be able to hear that microphone!”

In addition to the traditional numbered version played in churches and casinos, there are other versions of the game available. I remember playing car bingo in my childhood, on long drives between Virginia and Ohio, and I’ve even made my own bingo cards for events like the Oscars. I recently saw a version intended for use while watching Hallmark Christmas movies. A few years ago, the Library created its own bingo-like cards for the 20^th annual National Book Festival. The festival was held virtually that year, due to the pandemic, but the Library encouraged parents and kids to participate at home in a “read across the Library” challenge. If bingo sounds like a fun addition to your family game night but you don’t want to purchase or make a 75-ball bingo set, you might consider making your own bingo cards, using the Library’s resources as an example.

Poker and other card games

Several card games can be found across a number of AFC field surveys. Poker is particularly well-represented, as played by the buckaroos of the 96 Ranch in this photograph from the Paradise Valley Folklife Project collection (AFC 1991/021)

and in this photograph of airmen playing poker near Versailles, France from the Joe Thompson Jr. Collection in the Veterans History Project.

The men depicted in the photographs from the Gilroy boccie club (from the Italian Americans in the West Project collection AFC 1989/022) are playing a card game called “Pedro.”

According to Pagat.com – a reference website for over 500 card games, maintained by card game researcher John McLeod – Pedro is a variation of the game “Pitch,” and has spawned a number of its own variants. The US version uses a standard 52-card deck, with the two two-person teams attempting to trick the other on each round. The first team to score 62 points wins.

In December 1996, Lyntha Scott Eiler and another fieldworker staying at Syble’s Bed & Barn were woken up by laughter and talking coming from the boarding house’s common room. Curious about the noise, they went to investigate and discovered several boarders playing a card game called “Pass the Trash.” From what I understand, there are two versions of “Pass the Trash.” One of these is a poker variant of five-card stud. The other is a simpler game where players are dealt a single card. In the recording from Syble’s Bed & Barn, one of the players explains “if you get a king, you flip it over, nobody can pass with you.”

This instruction, paired with the relative brevity of the round, leads me to believe the boarders are playing the one-card version of Pass the Trash. The rules are as follows:

• Each player starts with three quarters. Dealer deals a card to each player.
• Starting with the player to the left of the dealer: look at the card, decide whether to pass/keep.
  • Pass: player passes the card to the left
  • If player has a King, the card is flipped face-up on the table and it cannot be passed
• Play continues around the table with each player. When everyone has played, the dealer can choose to pass by taking another card from the top of the deck
• Everyone turns over their card to reveal the lowest card – player with the lowest card loses and forfeits a quarter

Puzzles
While sifting through the archival boxes that house the manuscript materials of the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project collection (AFC 1982/009), I stumbled across a small box with a handful of carved wooden shapes inside. The pieces are part of a wooden ball puzzle, made by Raymond Nichols and collected by Carl Fleischhauer during the field survey. Carl wrote the following in his fieldnotes:

“Mr. Nichols likes to make things out of wood. He has built sections of his house and furniture in it, including cabinets and a table or two. He and his son are presently rebuilding and converting a log tobacco curing barn into a little 16 ft. square log house on some of his son’s property. […] Mr. Nichols gave us a ball puzzle he makes with a pocketknife. He couldn’t remember exactly where he learned it. ‘Must have seen it somewhere when I was a boy.’”

The ball puzzle had been taken apart for storage, meaning taking a picture of the finished puzzle required me to re-assemble the pieces. I tried to put them together in the reading room but had no luck on that particular afternoon. I did manage to track down a video demonstration on YouTube later that evening, so there is hope that I might be able to piece the puzzle back together the next time I pull it out of storage.

Dominos

In the Asian American Pacific Islander miscellaneous community collection (AFC 2024/001), I found a box of dominos (complete with hand-written labels) and a set of instructions on how to play a Close-Open game called Kiano. The game uses 36 tiles, and includes three different levels of play: elementary, intermediate, and advanced.

Confession time: I am one of those folks who is absolutely terrible at figuring out new games from reading the instructions, and the rules included in this collection were no exception. Despite the game-maker’s assurance that this game is “the first stage for leading to harmony cooperation,” my fledgling attempts at puzzling through the game play were about to lead me away from harmony. I am sure that, given the opportunity, I would be able to figure it out by watching other people, but for now I am going to have to give these instructions a blank stare and hope that anyone reading this is able to figure out the game on their own. If you consider yourself a gaming afficionado and would like to try your hand at this game, I encourage you to schedule a visit to the American Folklife Center reading room to view the instructions.

Children’s Games

Ghost in the Graveyard
Back in June 2024, the Center participated in the Library’s Family Day event. In addition to bringing examples of children’s games and songs found in our archival and reference collections, AFC staff asked visitors to share their favorite schoolyard games. That was my first introduction to a game called “Ghost in the Graveyard,” which seems to be a combination of hide-and-seek and tag. I was excited to find an example of this game in AFC’s “games” subject file.

One player is chosen to be the Ghost and a location is designated as Home Base. The Ghost covers their eyes and begins counting while the other players hide. Once the time is up, the Ghost begins searching for the hidden players. When someone is found, the Ghost yells out “Ghost in the Graveyard” and both the Ghost and discovered player race back to Home Base. If the Ghost makes it back to Home Base first, the other person is now the Ghost.

El Florón
I found this children’s circle game in a printed booklet titled “Juegos De Mi Isla (Games From My Island),” also housed in the games subject file. It requires a blindfold and a small object that can be held in the hand. Players arrange themselves in a circle, shoulder to shoulder. One player is chosen as “It,” and is then blindfolded and positioned in the center of the circle. The children begin singing and pass the small item – the “florón” – from person to person, behind their back. When the song ends, the It removes their blindfold and tries to guess who is holding the florón. If they do not guess correctly, the group challenges them to perform an activity, and they continue to be It for the next round. If they guess correctly, the person holding the florón becomes It.

Socks Game
Another game included in the subject file came from Friends Academy, a Quaker school in Southampton, New York. Players remove their shoes and sit on the ground, where they try to remove socks from other people’s feet. They are allowed to scoot around on their hands, but the instructions do not include any other rules. The last person with a sock on wins. According to Molly McCall, who contributed the game, “at first, people just sat there – and then it got really vicious.”

These three games are only a small sampling of the many children’s games that can be found throughout the Center’s collections. A recent research guide on Children’s Songs and Games provides links to some of these collections, as well as handy tips for finding more. In addition to archival collections, visitors to the AFC Reading Room can also access books in AFC’s reference collection relating to children’s games.  Many of these games – such as the hand-clapping games depicted above – require little to no additional equipment and can be introduced quite easily to your rotation of games.

More Resources
For more blog posts on games and puzzles:

• Kids Explain Their Rhymes, Games, and Songs by Stephanie Hall (June 5, 2020) from Folklife Today
• Folklife, Videogames, Cosplay, and More by John Fenn (May 8, 2024) from Folklife Today
• Sports in the Collections of the American Folklife Center by Doug Peach (August 14, 2023) on Folklife Today.
• Free Puzzles Through Chronicling America: Maze Edition Malea Walker (July 7, 2020) from Headlines & Heros: Newspapers, Comics and More Fine Print
• “Heaps of Fun”: Games, Rhymes, and Riddles in the Library’s Collections by Mara Gregory, reposted on Teaching with the Library: Primary Sources & Ideas for Educators

Visit the following sites for more information on other game-related collections at the American Folklore Center:

• Children’s Songs and Games: Resources in the American Folklife Center – research guide
• The Capital Pool Checkers Club: Tradition, Competition & Community in Washington DC – Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture by Peggy Fleming, alongside Georgetown University historian Maurice Jackson and members of the checkers club

Check out these digital resources from the Library of Congress to learn how to play poker and other card games:

• The game of draw power (published in 1887)
• The gentlemen’s handbook on poker (published 1892)
• Hoyle’s standard games (published 1924) – includes instructions for card games such as hearts, euchre, whist, pinochle, and cribbage, as well as instructions for mah-jongg, chess, checkers, and dominoes.

Browse the Free to Use and Reuse: Games for Fun and Relaxation resources assembled by the Library

On July 31, 2024, the American Folklife Center welcomed the Swanky Kitchen Band to the Library of Congress’ Coolidge Auditorium for a performance and oral history interview. The band hails from the Cayman Islands—a three-island nation in the Caribbean located west of Jamaica and south of Cuba. The Swanky Kitchen Band carries forward the tradition of kitchen band music—a fiddle-based dance music. Many who heard about the Swanky Kitchen Band’s performance asked a similar question: “There’s a fiddle tradition in the Caribbean?” Even the professional folklorists and ethnomusicologists on staff at the American Folklife Center were intrigued when they learned about this new-to-them genre.

For Samuel Rose, Swanky Kitchen Band’s leader and fiddler, the tradition was anything but new—it was directly related to the history of the Cayman Islands, where he was born and raised. Rose describes the tradition as “the music of the first settlers” of the Cayman Islands. As he explains, the music’s fiddle-based elements can be attributed to the British, Irish, and Scottish settlers of the islands, who either arrived in the Cayman Islands via Jamaica or because of shipwreck. Enslaved Africans, forcibly brought to the islands for labor, infused the tradition with drums and dance.

While the Swanky Kitchen Band are bearers of the kitchen music tradition, they are also responsible for reviving and reinventing the tradition, too. Samuel Rose, Nicholas Johnson, and Daniel Augustine (no longer a band member) formed the Swanky Kitchen Band in 2003, to keep the tradition alive. However, starting the group was no easy task. Rose says that there were few resources to get started. He explains, “We didn’t get any of this passed to us. We didn’t sit at the feet of any of the masters to learn. We’ve had to piece it together by listening to recordings that were made of the last great fiddler, Radley Gourzong and the Happy Boys. Without those, I don’t know where we would be today.”

Like the mixing of cultural influences in kitchen band music and the piecing together of the band’s repertory, the group’s name is an homage to the mixture of brown sugar, native sour oranges, and limes—a drink known as “swanky.” For some, swanky may be an adjective describing something that is “posh” or “fancy.” In the Cayman Islands, however, swanky is a traditional drink, served, sometimes with rum, at parties, family gatherings, and for consumption on the islands’ many beaches.

During the band’s hour-long concert, which you can see in the player above, they performed a range of original and traditional songs. Rose humorously says that the group’s songs can be summarized into three themes: eating, beating, and cheating. For example, one of the group’s first songs, titled “Beef in the Cane/Sharpen Your Butcher Knife,” describes how a cow has gotten loose, and died, in the fields, giving locals an unexpected feast. One of the group’s beating songs, “Sammy Beating Susannah,” was composed by Aunt Julia Hydes—famous in the Cayman Islands for playing drums well past her 100th birthday. With respect to cheating, the band performed a beautiful version of “House Not a Home,” composed by band member Karen (KK Alese) Turner. The song, as Turner describes, addresses the modern challenges of living in the Cayman Islands: “Most of you are aware that financial services and tourism are our main industries,” Turner says. “While they have brought immense opportunities to Cayman, development and progress have introduced [their] own challenges, as well.” In the song’s lyrics, Turner describes the “promise” of development as a “brick made of lies and sand.” Cheating, on a societal level, indeed.

Following the performance, Dr. Jon Lohman, director of the Center for Cultural Vibrancy, interviewed band members Nicholas Johnson, Paula Scott, Samuel Rose, and Karen (KK Alese) Turner. Lohman has worked tirelessly to bring the band, and their story, to audiences in the United States. Their conversation touched on the history of their tradition, the roots of the group, and their ambitions for the future. See the interview in the player below.

The attendees to the Swanky Kitchen Band’s performance were a highlight of the day’s activities. Teresa Echenique, Chief Officer in the Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Heritage for the Cayman Islands gave opening remarks at the performance. Afterward, Echenique presented John Fenn, Head of Research and Programs at the American Folklife Center, with books and recordings related to the cultural heritage of the Caribbean nation. Audience members—many of whom were dressed in the colors of the Cayman Islands—waved national flags during the concert and were recording the performance for news outlets back home. Individuals who stewarded the kitchen band tradition, like Henry Muttoo, were also present at the performance. It was clear that the Swanky Kitchen Band’s concert was an important moment for the people and cultural heritage of the Cayman Islands.

The concert was also important for members of the Swanky Kitchen Band. Before the show, Samuel Rose and I stood at the base of the Coolidge Auditorium stage, discussing logistics for the performance. As the conversation shifted to the meaning of the concert, Rose shed a tear, while describing to me the significance of this performance to his fellow musicians and the practitioners of this tradition. Later, while on-stage, Rose expanded upon the sense of gratitude, accomplishment, and pride he felt. He said, “It is truly an honor beyond words – there really are no words for us – to be here today with you at the Library of Congress. We want to say a huge thank you for this invitation to present who we are as a Caymanian people to the world. To have this opportunity to place on the record a little taste of our traditions, our music, our heritage. There is no greater honor for us.”

The honor was ours, Samuel. We thank you, and the Swanky Kitchen Band, for sharing your traditions, your music, and your stories with us.

Collection Connections

The Swanky Kitchen Band’s performance and oral history interview are some of the first collection items from the Cayman Islands in the archives of the American Folklife Center. Below, we share a sample of other Caribbean collections and collections featuring fiddle-based music at the American Folklife Center.

Research Guides

Cuban collections at the American Folklife Center 

Haitian collections at the American Folklife Center

Puerto Rican collections at the American Folklife Center

Fiddle-Based Traditions

Collections related to Galax, VA and the Galax Fiddler’s Convention

Collections related to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

On December 16, 1944, the German army attacked Allied forces—mostly American units—positioned in the Ardennes Forest, a densely forested area along the borders of Belgium and Luxembourg. Following D-Day, the Allies had fought their way through Western Europe on a path toward Germany. Desperate to stop their advance, the Germans launched a surprise offensive attack. Their push “bulged” the Allied line, leading to the battle’s historic moniker—the Battle of the Bulge.

It was a brutal fight, waged in the depth of a bitterly cold winter. It took the Allies a month of fighting before they finally secured victory in mid-January, 1945. Their success came at a great cost: nearly 20,000 Americans killed in action, with almost 50,000 wounded and another 20,000 captured. It was the single bloodiest battle fought by the United States during World War II.

Eighty years later, the Battle of the Bulge looms large in American collective memory of World War II. But while the Bulge is not in any danger of being forgotten, perhaps most worthy of remembrance are the personal stories of those who fought it. The simple dry facts of a battle can’t convey the lived human experience of it. For that, we turn to VHP’s collections, and specifically the narratives contained within the new online exhibit.

The new exhibit spotlights just a handful of the thousands of Bulge survivors who have shared their narratives with the Veterans History Project. Featured are stories as varied as those of Anthony Acevedo, a prisoner of war who survived incarceration in a brutal and inhumane forced labor camp; Katherine M. Nolan, a nurse serving with the 53rd Field Hospital; and Johnnie Stevens, the leader of a tank platoon in the segregated 761^st Tank Battalion.

Another featured story—one that will always stick with me—is that of Eliot Annable. In 1944, twenty-year-old Annable was a radio operator serving with the Army’s 106^th Infantry Division, which had arrived at the Western Front only days before. A replacement unit, the 106^th was “green”—lacking any previous combat experience. On the morning of December 16, the Germans launched an hour-long artillery barrage, the strength of which was “almost enough to knock you on the floor,” as Annable related in his oral history.

What followed were the five most harrowing days of Annable’s time in the military. Dispatched on a communications mission to another unit, Annable and his buddy, Herb Heidepriem became stranded outside the line, and spent the next five days in the Ardennes Forest evading the enemy—without food, shelter, or even appropriate winter clothing. Traveling over 30 miles, they eventually made it safely back to join the remnants of the 106^th.

Meanwhile, listening to the radio back home in Maine, Annable’s parents heard the news of the German Offensive and the destruction of the 106^th. On December 31, Annable’s father wrote to him, describing their shock and anguish at not knowing their son’s fate and emphasizing his enduring love for Annable, come what may. The letter is poignant and heart-wrenching, and coupled with Annable’s oral history, provides an intimate view into one soldier’s—and his family’s—experience during the Battle of the Bulge.

For veterans like Annable, the sights, sounds, and experiences of the Bulge can’t be forgotten. Another veteran featured in the new online exhibit also served with the 106^th—but unlike Annable, was captured by the Germans during the battle. In his oral history, Guy Martin Stephens describes the surreal feeling of combat, his obsession with food while he was incarcerated as a prisoner of war, and the continuing echoes of his experience in the Bulge, decades later:

And it is hard. It’s hard. And it’s something you can’t ever… your mind is just like a video, or camcorder, I guess. You put it in there. You get busy and get married. And you get home, and you get an education, and get a job, and raise your family, and everything like that. And you can kind of gloss it over, or try to push it back, but it’s always there, you know?

 This Veterans Day, we invite you to remember the Bulge by exploring the stories of the battle’s survivors, shared in their own words via oral history interviews, photographs, letters, and even artwork. Once you’ve sampled the narratives in the online feature, you can dive into the larger pool of VHP’s related holdings—thousands of interviews with Bulge veterans, the majority of which are available online.

Listening through the sea shanties, songs,  and sailing lore recorded by collector William Main Doerflinger from retired sailor Patrick Tayluer in 1942, I was struck by Tayluer’s fascination with Australia. He had lived for 20 years in the British colonies that became South Africa; both his parents probably were born in colonial Canada; and sometimes he claimed to have been born in Canada himself. Yet he did not praise any of these colonies the way he rhapsodized about Australia. Moreover, he claimed familiarity with the early history of Australia, from its days as a penal colony through its periods of heavy immigration and into the modern era.

We don’t know for sure when Patrick Tayluer first visited Australia. It seems likely he went there during his first period of activity as a sailor, from 1869 until about 1887. It’s also possible he visited in his second brief period at sea, which lasted from about 1907 to 1914. But so far I’ve seen no proof he was there in either of these time frames.

We know for sure, however, that Tayluer spent about two years in Australia after the end of his official sailing career, arriving in August 1929. While there, he spent most of his time walking. Starting on August 19, he walked from Brisbane to Perth, following a route that took him through Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, a distance of over 5000 Km. He arrived in Perth on April 4, 1930, speaking to the Perth Mirror on his arrival and again a week later. He arrived without possessions or money, and the Mirror reported on April 12:

Now he wants work, and if anyone has a job for this philosophical stranger and walker of the world’s highways, ‘The Mirror’ will be pleased to hear of it.

Tayluer does not seem to have found work, though, and several papers reported on February 20, 1931, that he had continued walking, from Perth to Kalgoorlie, Kalgoorlie to Wiluna, Wiluna to Geraldton, and eventually to Bunbury, adding about another 2500 Km, for a total of about 7500 Km in 18 months.  The 1931 stories also reported that Tayluer was planning to leave Australia for home, and indeed I found him in the crew list of the West Honaker that year, arriving in Oregon in August.

Whether on his previous visits or during his two-year stay, Tayluer developed a love of Australia and its culture. In his long visit there he got to see most of the populous parts of Australia, and must have interacted with hundreds of people. Along the way, he learned several songs from or about Australia, and also knew stories about the songs; in total, 11 selections from Tayluer’s 79 items are on Australian themes.

We’ll hear two of Patrick Tayluer’s Australian songs and their stories in this post. Let’s begin with a song he called “The True-Born Irishman” or “Wandering Through Australia.” Hear the song in the player below, and follow on in my transcription below that.

Now I’m going to tell you and sing to you another immigrant song, and it was very dearly loved by both sailors and by both men ashore in Australia. In fact, it has become a national song in Australia.

So with me bundle on my shoulder and a billycan in my hand
I have traveled through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

Now when I first did land out here I knew no one that I could say
But I’ve found lots of friends in Australia, although I’m a beachcomber today
So with me bundle on my shoulder and a billycan in my hand
I have traveled through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

I have sit on the roadside and cooked my tucker, I’ve laid under the eucalyptus tree.
But if ever I get back to my old home I’ll tell them the story, you see
So with me bundle on my shoulder and a billycan in my hand
I have traveled through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

Now I’ve laid under the eucalyptus tree and the kookaburra how he laughed
Sure I looked up at him and I swore I would be a bold young colonial, you see,
So with me bundle on my shoulder and a billycan in my hand
I have traveled through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

Now, I’ve marched and trekked from here to there, I have worked on farms and on mines.
I worked for the squatter, and God knows whatter, but still I’m an Australian man
So with me bundle on my shoulder and a billycan in my hand
I have traveled through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

Now you may talk about the beachcomber and you may talk about his lore
But he’s the one but found the world for you, he’s the one that found galore.
So with your bundle on your shoulder and a billycan in your hand,
You would travel through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

Now, go east, go west, you’ll always find a sailor has endured.
He left his ship to wander around and through and through
But when he came out to Australia with his bundle on his back
He proved to you that he was the man that found that real old track.

So with your bundle on your shoulder and a billycan in my hand
I have traveled through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

With me bundle on my shoulder and a billycan in my hand
I have traveled through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

Now my name is Johnny Dandy and I’m laying here to die,
With my tucker bag all empty and my water bag quite dry,
But whoever finds this letter, he will always think of me
As the sailor who left the sea and found the gold of liberty.

So with me bundle on my shoulder and a blackthorn in my hand
I did travel through the bushes of Australia like a true born Irishman.

Now that song was sung as a rule by the Australians and by the men of the ships, because it was a very lovely song and was always thought a great deal of by both men on land and men on sea.

And now these ships that I am talking about, these immigrant ships, there were some curious things happened on board of them. I remember one time in taking a ship’s crew, I had to take a double crew, because I was taking 520 women out to Australia. And it was a great undertaking for a ship. It was in a vessel called the Loch Torridon. We were taking these girls out to man a factory for Bell’s Match people.

So when we got out there, the parson came aboard in Sydney at Goat Island, and he asked:

“Well, Captain, how many women have you got on board?”
“Well, just about 520.”
“Any looking for a husband?”
Well, I don’t know. You must find that out for yourselves.”
“All right, Captain, as soon as the customs have been aboard and the doctor, we’ll see what there is. There’s plenty of squatters to be found here. There’s lots of them around the ship right now waiting to come on board.”

Well, as soon as the doctor and the customs had passed the ship, the chief of customs and the doctor stopped on board to act as witnesses to the marriage. The old padre went aft to the booby hatch and the squatters came aboard. The squatter would go to the girl, and he would say to her:

“Well, girl, what have you come to Australia for?”
“Well, to get work, sir!”
“How about taking a job for life with me? It may seem funny, girl, but I am a squatter. I have about half a million sheep away in the back blocks, and I can afford to keep you in every luxury that an Australian girl would get.”
“Well, yes, I might do worse. Yes, I’ll take you for me husband.”
“All right, let’s go along to the hatch.”

So they came along to the hatch. It was read out, and the marriage ceremony was performed. They were made man and wife. I have ofttimes seen as many as 100 to 200 marriages performed in these immigrant ships with one ring. Yet they made the happiest of couples and the finest of children in the world in Australia.

Patrick Tayluer was certainly correct that his song is considered a national song in Australia. It has been published many times there, including by the great collector and poet Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson; it has been recorded from Australian oral tradition by folklorists like John Meredith; and it has been sung by many Australian folk groups, most famously perhaps by the Seekers in 1965. Depending on the version, it’s sometimes known as “With My Swag All on My Shoulder,” and sometimes as “Dennis O’Reilly,” and some books of Australian folksongs (including Paterson’s) include both variants. The version many Australians know today features the lines:

“With me swag all on my shoulder, black billy in my hand
I’ll travel the bush of Australia like a true-born native man.”

A “swag” is a bundle rolled up in a bedroll, and “black billy” refers to a well-used “billycan,” generally a can with a handle attached that’s used for boiling water. Once it’s been over the fire a few times, a billycan is black on the outside with soot. The refrain is therefore very similar in meaning to what Tayluer sang, though the specific vocabulary varies. (“Native” in this case simply means born in Australia, not necessarily Indigenous.)

One more noteworthy difference is that in Australia “the bush” refers to undeveloped wilderness areas, including deserts, scrublands, and forests. “The bush” is an important concept to Australian life, romanticized in folklore and art. Tayluer marks himself (and the Irish narrator of his song) as not fully Australian by referring to traveling through “the bushes of Australia.”

Like many Australian folksongs, “With My Swag All on My Shoulder” and its variants are derived from an English broadside of the late 18th or early 19th century (see a British printing here and a later American printing here) called “The Roving Journeyman,” which often had the lines:

“With my kit all on my shoulder and my stick then in my hand
It’s round the country I will go like a roving journeyman.”

The English Romany singer Danny Brazil’s version had the lines:

“With my bundle on my shoulder, my shillelagh blackthorn in my hand
Sure I bless the day as I sailed away as a rambling Irishman”

Brazil’s version includes the word “bundle,” indicating this was a traditional lyric. Note also that Patrick Tayluer sang “a blackthorn in my hand” in one of his verses; Brazil’s version shows that the blackthorn was likewise traditional in Irish variants of the song. This suggests Tayluer might have known more than one variant at some point–one with “blackthorn” and one with “billycan.”

Maurice Leyden, as part of his 2008 lecture here at the American Folklife Center, sang another Irish version with the lines:

“With my knapsack over my shoulder and my small can in my hand
And it’s down to Derry I will go like a roving journeyman.”

This suggests that the “can,” as an accoutrement of the wanderer, was also already part of the song in the old world before it traveled to Australia.

We don’t know when this song first came to Australia, but it was probably there in various forms by the 1880s. Starting in the 1890s it can be found in collections and newspapers with the protagonist calling himself “a true-born Englishman,” “a true-born Irishman,” and “a true-born native man.”

Tayluer’s verses don’t correspond well to other texts of the song, and they don’t maintain a consistent meter or rhyme scheme. This suggests he was probably improvising some of the verses as he went, tailoring them to the situation, and perhaps importing ideas from other songs–all techniques we have noted in his shanty singing. For example, this is the only version of the “bundle-and-billycan” theme I’ve ever seen where the protagonist is a “beachcomber,” which was Tayluer’s word for a sailor who had given up the sea for some time, as he himself had done for large stretches of his life. Tayluer had another (possibly original) song called “The Beachcomber’s Song” where it becomes clearer what he means by it. Tayluer knew that the collector, Bill Doerflinger, was primarily interested in sailors’ songs, so it seems plausible that making the protagonist a sailor was his innovation. Tayluer’s song also seems to have as one of its themes the redemption of the beachcomber as “the one that found the world for you,” and “the one that found galore;” as a sometime beachcomber himself, Tayluer would naturally espouse this position.

It’s interesting that this song juxtaposes the eucalyptus or gum tree and the laughing cry of the kookaburra. The famous Australian song on that theme was a recent composition that was becoming a global hit among scouts and other youth groups when Tayluer made these recordings. It’s possible a man with an interest in Australian songs would have heard it by 1942, and thus it’s a possible source for those lyrics.

Tayluer’s sense of humor is also on display in the song; the turn of phrase “I worked for the squatter, and God knows whatter” seems to be original. Unlike its typical meanings elsewhere, in Australia the word “squatter” had come to mean a class of wealthy and powerful ranchers who had amassed their fortunes partly by enclosing Crown lands without a legal right to do so. Not all squatters were rich, but as a class  they were considered the upper echelons of rural society, and sometimes known as the Squattocracy. Thus, “working for the squatter” was typically being a station hand (which Americans would call a ranch hand) or related work, and the verse suggests the character had worked on farms, mines, ranches, and “God knows what.”

Also particularly striking is the phrase “the one that found galore.” This is an unusual usage of the word “galore,” which is already an unusual word. “Galore” is one of the few adjectives in English that most commonly follows, rather than precedes, the noun it modifies: we say “abundant apples” and “more than enough apples,” “big apples” and “red apples,” but “apples galore.” This is probably because “galore” comes from Gaelic, where adjectives do often follow the nouns.

There is some evidence that “galore” entered English more than once, from both Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and in Scotland it had additional meanings; it was often used as a noun, meaning “abundance.” A person could be said to be living in “luxury and galore,” or to have “galores of bread and cheese” or to use “galore of raisins” or simply to “have galore.” “Galore” was first included in Webster’s dictionaries in 1864, five years before Patrick Tayluer went to sea, and (perhaps on the basis of this Scottish evidence) it was listed as a noun as well as an adjective. Interestingly, the 1864 editors noted of the noun form: “This word is not now used except in some parts of England, and by sailors.” It therefore seems likely Patrick Tayluer was using a particularly sailorly turn of phrase when he said “he’s the one that found galore.” The triumphant beachcomber in Tayluer’s song had found abundance or wealth of some kind, perhaps in the gold rushes that began in 1851.

On the other hand, there’s another possible meaning. In New South Wales, there is a small town and a nearby hill (now a scenic reserve) called “Galore.” According to the reserve’s brochure:

“Folklore has it that the early settler Henry Osborne is responsible for Galore Hill’s unusual name. It is said that after climbing to the top, Osborne shouted to the world, ‘There’s land enough and galore for me.’ Galore Hill has been known by this name ever since.”

Henry Osborne, interestingly, was an immigrant to Australia from Ireland who acquired land near Galore, which he first spotted while trekking overland between Illawarra and South Australia in about 1840. Did he do so with a bundle on his shoulder and a billycan (and/or blackthorn) in his hand? We can’t be sure, but the song could in theory be recounting the imagined exploits of a true-born Irishman who literally “found Galore.” Given the fact that Osborne was wealthy, however, and didn’t need to mine, farm, or work for the squatter, the first interpretation seems more likely.

What about Patrick Tayluer’s tale of the mass wedding aboard the Loch Torridon? It should probably be taken with a grain of salt, but it does contain interesting details. The Loch Torridon herself was a well-documented ship, in her time one of the fastest clippers under sail, and she did sail frequently between Britain and Australia. She had two known skippers in her time under British colors: Captains Pinder and Pattman.

Although Tayluer puts himself in the role of captain in his story, saying “one time in taking a ship’s crew, I had to take a double crew,” I’ve seen no record of his being her captain. As I’ve said before, I doubt he was ever the captain of any ship; the crew lists I’ve seen from later in his career list him as able seaman or bosun.

Some of the other details of the story could be true. As we’ve seen, Tayluer did sometimes say he was the captain of ships he did not actually command but did sail on, so it’s perfectly likely he sailed on the Loch Torridon. R. Bell & Co., a British match manufacturer, did have factories in Australia making waterproof strike-anywhere friction matches known as “wax vestas.” Moreover, their factories were largely staffed by women, and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries there were government assistance programs to encourage migration from Britain to Australia. At first glance, Tayluer’s story of “taking 520 women out to Australia…to man a factory for Bell’s Match people” seems quite plausible.

On the other hand, according to the sources I’ve read, Bell & Co. and its partner Bryant & May mostly hired women who were already in Australia. They brought over only a few experienced staff members from Britain to train the Australian workers, and considered bringing single women en masse to Australia from Britain “a blunder and a crime.” I’ve also read accounts suggesting that some women hoped to find squatters lined up at the pier to marry new immigrants, but that it didn’t really happen. The squatting era was coming to an end in 1900, and the scenario of squatters lined up at the quay for wives certainly seems like a 19th century phenomenon, but the Bell factory only opened in 1894 after Tayluer was in the army in Africa, so this voyage to Australia would likely be after he was discharged in 1902. Finally, I haven’t found any news stories or other accounts that support Tayluer’s story.

These facts lead me to doubt Tayluer’s story, but he doesn’t give enough detail (especially about dates) to say for sure. Needless to say, any readers who have more information about 520 British women being brought to Australia to work for Bell & Co., or about mass weddings aboard immigrant ships in Australia, are welcome to comment. It would be fascinating to have confirmation of more elements of this tale!

Perhaps Tayluer’s most interesting, if confusing, Australian song is a ballad about an Irish convict who is transported to Australia and becomes an outlaw or bushranger. For most of the song, the central character is called “Jack O’Brien,” but in some places he is called “Jack Donahue,” and at the end “Captain Starlight.”

Now this is a song that was sung by all the seamen pretty well bound out to Australia. When the song was written, I think it was written aboard of the Success, the old convict ship that used to take the prisoners out to Australia, out to Van Dieman’s land, or which is Hobart, Tasmania. And there the boys were put in prison. And if they behaved themselves, after so long, they were allowed to go to the mainland and take up a farm or anything they wanted to do to earn their living. But this boy, instead of taking up the farm work, he became a renegade, as he always swore that he was innocent of the crime that they put him in jail for. But there, as you know, in those days, Australia was so far off from England that they had to do something. So they gave every man time, who was locked up. It didn’t matter whether he was English, Irish, Scotch or Welsh. He got a long time so that they would send him to Australia to do his imprisonment. And that is the reason why today, Australia has such a fine…well, I might say…colony behind her. She is one of the greatest colonies under the face of the sun of Great Britain. Now this is the way the song goes.

Sure I am a wild young Irish boy and from Dublin town I came
Transported out to Van Dieman’s Land; of it I ain’t ashamed
Sure I’ll have you all to know, me boys, that wherever I may be
I’ll die at my post like an Irish lad, or a wild colonial boy

Now, I done my time in Hobart and they sent me over here.
They yoked me to a plough and the fields for me to tier.
But I didn’t understand farming as I had been to sea;
I’d sailed the oceans far and wide, so I a farmer could not be.

But I became a bold young renegade and I traveled far and near.
Oh, I robbed the rich and I gave to the poor; of it I ain’t ashamed,
But I never killed a man that didn’t cause me any pain;
But the troopers knew Jack O’Brien, and they let me ride for gain

Now, one morning in the merry month of May, sure I did find
A wagon bringin’ in gold from the Bendigo find.
“Oh, halt, you boys, and ‘old up your ‘ands!”-when a sergeant did appear
Says he, “Look, Jack O’Brien, me boy, you’ll do this once too near!

“Your time it is over and you sure must fight or die!”
“Then I’ll fight the six of you troopers, and I am only one.
Sure I’ll fight to the end or victory, and I don’t give a damn.
I’ll be at my post like an Irish lad or a wild colonial boy,”

Now, the six troopers fell upon the ground, from their ‘orses off did slide
And the sergeant he cried out to Jack Donohue to abide
“By the law, you’re a prisoner!” “Then take me,” said old Jack.
“But Sergeant, you’ve got some children, and look that I don’t
shoot the track!

“Now, McKenzie, you’re a brave man, and I ‘ate like ‘ell to do,
To take your wife and children’s bread from them for to kill you
So take my advice and ride away, and don’t say what I’ve done.
I’m only takin’ this gold for to buy some pleasin’ place for some.”

Now when I’m far away and the farmers all will buy
Fine horses and fine wagons for their farms to die upon,
Sure you’ll all live to wonder why Jack Donohue would say
That I work for the farmers night and day, and for the rich and
poor I’ve prayed.

I’ve robbed the coaches day and night, but I never robbed the poor.
I have never committed murder, nor have I strayed from fields galore.
I am chased from country to country, from borderline to town
But ne’er can they catch bold Jack again, for O’Brien is far away.

Now at last I’m laying on my bed and God does only know
I haven’t long to live, I know, for I surely must go.
I would love to tell the truth-oh, before I go away,
But I would love for some poor person for to receive that bounty pay!

Sure I’m still a wild old renegade; Starlight is my name.
Oh they’ve looked for me from shore to shore and along the coast for miles
From state to state they’ve chased me, and at last I’m on my bed
If that newsboy would only come in, I’d tell him what to do

Just then the door it opened and the newsboy did come in
“Good mornin’, Captain Starlight. Oh, good morning, sir,” he said.
No answer but a beckon and a little note to say:
“Jack O’Brien is dying and he wants you for to take

“This note unto your mother, and let her do the rest,
And call the doctor first, and the police can come at last.
They can take my body away, and they never will be able to say
That Jack Donahue didn’t die like an Irish lad or a wild colonial boy!”

Now, I’ve traveled through the bushes, oh, both night and day,
With my bundle on my shoulder and a billy-can in my hand;
But I’ve always played the game, as every Australian should,
I’ve died at my post like an Irish lad, or a wild colonial boy.

It’s amusing that Tayluer suggests this song was written aboard the Success, “the old convict ship that used to take the prisoners out to Australia.” In fact, it makes little sense that prisoners being brought to Australia from Ireland would write ballads about the exploits of robbers in Australia, which they had never yet visited. Perhaps because Doerflinger was primarily interested in sea songs, Tayluer sought to make this one sea-related by adding that to his story.

It’s also true that the Success was never a convict ship–she was briefly a prison hulk, which was a very different thing, but she had mostly been a merchant vessel. In 1890 she was converted into a museum of the Australian convict experience, a sort of floating dungeon displaying forms of punishment and torture and offering tales of convict life. After only a few years in Australia she was sailed to Britain and exhibited at various cities there; then in 1911 she sailed to the United States and was shown for a further 30 years here.

According to author R. J. Norgard, during this period the Success was falsely marketed as having been a convict transport “with increasingly greater misrepresentation of her true history.” You can read, for example, an entirely fabricated “History of the British Convict Ship Success and Its Most Notorious Prisoners,” filled with lurid details of things that never happened on the ship (though some did happen elsewhere), and tales of real convicts who never sailed on her. Meanwhile, Norgard tells us, “official representatives for Australia quietly – and unsuccessfully – petitioned the U.S. to have the exhibit stopped” because of its gruesome and inaccurate treatment of Australian history. It seems likely Tayluer, a man keenly interested in both Australia and ships, who spent time in most of the seaports of Britain and America, had visited the Success, and been taken in by some of this false history.

It’s also notable that, just as we saw with his version of “The True-Born Irishman,” Tayluer’s main character in “I Am a Wild Young Irish Boy” is a professional sailor who winds up ashore in Australia. In the ballad it’s his inability to come to terms with farming, since he was trained as a sailor, that sets him on the path of crime. There’s no explanation of why a sailor-turned-convict, having done his time, wouldn’t just return to sea. This makes it seem again as if Tayluer added some of his own biography to the song, either just for fun or because he knew Doerflinger was primarily interested in sailors’ songs.

The ballad itself, disjointed though it is, is fascinating. The identity of “Jack O’Brien” is a mystery to me, but Jack Donahue or Donohoe was a real bushranger who arrived in Australia in 1825 and died in 1830 after a short life of crime. Tayluer’s ballad repeatedly calls its protagonist a “wild colonial boy,” which was both a sobriquet of Donohue himself and the title of a widely sung ballad about him. Tayluer’s song is clearly a cousin of this better known song, “The Wild Colonial Boy,” as well as of another ballad about Donohue, “Bold Jack Donohue.” Donohue’s story has been told in virtually every medium, and was the subject of “The Tragedy of Donohoe,” the first play written, published, and set in Australia. Meanwhile, “Captain Starlight,” another alias of Tayluer’s ballad hero, was the real-life alias of bushranger Frank Pearson, and also a leading character in Rolf Boldrewood’s 1882-1883 novel Robbery Under Arms, which drew on tales of other real outlaws, and which was repeatedly dramatized in plays and films during the early 20th century, any of which Tayluer could have seen during his time in Australia.

Tayluer’s song, then, seems to combine a number of different sources, failing to integrate them fully but nevertheless telling a compelling story. In the ballad, after being transported and serving his time, Jack O’Brien/ Donohue commits many crimes, finally attempting to rob a cargo of gold from Bendigo. (This dates this scene to after the “Bendigo find” in 1851, and thus well after the real Donohue’s death.) He is confonted by Sergeant McKenzie and six troopers. It’s not quite clear whether a fight occurs or is narrowly averted, but it seems O’Brien eventually convinces the sergeant to let him go rather than risk being killed, partly by pointing out that McKenzie’s family would be destitute if the sergeant were killed, and partly by promising to use the gold to buy things for others, including horses and wagons for local farmers.

After describing other exploits, the action moves to the hero lying on his deathbed. The text suggests this scene occurs much later, with the line “I’m still a wild old renegade.” This line naturally contrasts with “I am a wild young Irish boy” from the first line and “I became a bold young renegade” from the third stanza, showing the narrator is now old instead of young. “Starlight is my name” suggests that he has successfully hidden his identity under the alias “Starlight” in the years since the fight with McKenzie, at which time “the troopers knew Jack O’Brien” and indeed called him by name.

The death scene itself emphasizes the outlaw’s kindness. Knowing his death is near, but also knowing there’s a reward for his capture, he tries to think of a way to secure the reward for a poor person. He fixes on the newsboy, and writes a note to the newsboy’s mother explaining how to turn him in and receive the bounty. When the newsboy arrives, O’Brien (known to the newsboy as “Captain Starlight”) gives him the note and waits for the doctor and the authorities, summoned by the newsboy’s mother, to arrive. While waiting he reflects on time he spent “with my bundle on my shoulder and a billy-can in my hand,” and comforts himself by saying “I’ve died at my post like an Irish lad, or a wild colonial boy.”

“I Am a Wild Young Irish Boy” has some phrases from “Bold Jack Donohue,” “The Wild Colonial Boy,” and “The True-Born Irishman,” but it does not closely resemble any of them. After Doerflinger published it in Shantymen and Shantyboys, the scholars G. Malcolm Laws and Steve Roud both numbered it in their indexes (it’s Laws L19 and Roud 1907). Neither Laws nor Roud considers any other collected song to be closely enough related to this one to share its index number, meaning no other version of the same song has been discovered before or since Tayluer was recorded over 80 years ago. This suggests it’s possible that Tayluer composed it himself, drawing on traditional songs, books he had read, or even plays and films he had seen while in Australia; there were in fact such plays and films about Jack Donohue, Captain Starlight, and other bushrangers.

“I Am a Wild Young Irish Boy” remains, then, one of the mysteries of Patrick Tayluer’s repertoire, a song long accepted as “traditional” despite having been known, seemingly, only to one man. Yet it encompasses a lot of Australian lore concerning several real outlaws, the penal system, the Gold Rush, and other aspects of Australian history. Did Patrick Tayluer learn this history from songs, or did he learn it in other ways–from books, plays, films, or conversations–and then insert it into the framework of songs he knew, creating “I Am a Wild Young Irish Boy?” Perhaps we’ll never know.

Let’s give the last word and note to John Thompson, an award-winning Australian folk musician who recorded his own rendition of “I Am a Wild Young Irish Boy” for his blog “An Australian Folk Song a Day.” John was a great singer and musician, and an important force on the Australian folk scene. The AFC team–including me–got to meet John and his wife Nicole Murray, who played as the band Cloudstreet, at the Folk Alliance International meeting some years ago. Sadly, John passed away in 2021. John’s blog suggests he might not have known the source of this song, but his text certainly came ultimately from Doerflinger’s book, as it preserves some of Doerflinger’s idiosyncrasies. That means that the true source was Patrick Tayluer and the field recording presented here. I only wish John had had the chance to hear it. I’d like to dedicate this post to John and Nicole, who are among the many inspiring people I’ve met who bring field recordings like ours to life.  Hear John Thompson’s version of the song at this link!

The story is based on the Bell Witch legend, where the Bell family, living in the Cumberland Mountains of Tennessee, claimed to be haunted by the ghost of a woman named Kate Batts. In her correspondence with the Archive of American Folk Song (the precursor to the American Folklife Center), Ms. Harrison stated that she grew up in the area where the legend began and knew descendants of the Bell family.

The novel, which can only be accessed onsite at the AFC reading room, is a wonderful combination of a ghost legend and a slice of Appalachian folklife, as exhibited in the opening paragraphs:

“She was sorting out the colors on the rack when the chair came rocketing into the room, but her skilled fingers did not stop their work. Blue, a sweet misty blue, green, cream, her eyes did not need the draft lying open on the loom for she had woven Tennessee Trouble too often to follow a guide. She went on setting the spools on the rack, but half turned to frown at the chair which had thumped over the sill and was galloping like mad across the floor. It was quite empty, and was making straight for her loom.

Her practiced eye gaged the chair’s speed; tying the threads deftly she sidestepped and aimed a vigorous kick at its split hickory seat. Though it shied nimbly evading the thrust by a good foot an infuriated shriek that came from the rafters tore the silence.”

The title of the novel is a reference to folk craft, as “Tennessee Trouble” is a coverlet weaving pattern found throughout Tennesee, Kentucky, and North Carolina.

At one end of AFC’s Family Day table, visitors could pose for a selfie with a scarecrow, playfully named James H. Skellington in joking reference to former Librarian of Congress, James H. Billington. AFC Folklife Specialist Stephen Winick based the scarecrow’s look on a similar figure found in the Pinelands Folklife Project (an image of the original scarecrow can be seen on the table to the left of the replica).

While driving along Route 9 in New Jersey, fieldworker Sue Samuelson spotted a Halloween display. She wrote the following in her fieldnotes:

“Last week I had noted a scarecrow type of figure on a porch and wanted to go back and photograph it. In the meantime the porch display had become more elaborate. There was this figure, dressed like a farmer with overalls, shirt, boots, gloves, stuffed with newspaper and with a plastic pumpkin for a head. There was a spider web done in a kind of green florescent string; a ghost with a plastic skull head and draped in a sheet, suspended from the roof of the porch; and little plastic pumpkins hanging from the eaves. Harold Cramer, a 17-year old, does the decorating.” – Sue Samuelson, October 15, 1983

Most of the table was given over to space for making paper fortune-tellers. These fortune-tellers — alternately known by some as “cootie catchers” — are an example of children’s folklife, often found in the hallways and playgrounds of elementary schools. Visitors were invited to create their own fortune-tellers. One young visitor used hers to sort friends and family into Hogwarts houses, and determine which book character they were. Another young visitor filled his fortune-teller out with movie titles, and planned to use it to help choose which movie he and his family would watch that evening. AFC staff members working the table created their own fortune-tellers as helpful teaching tools.

At the opposite end of the table from the scarecrow, AFC Folklife Specialist Nancy Groce worked hard to get passersby to participate in the Center’s engagement question. Examples of popular ghost stories, urban legends, and supernatural creatures were written on a large sheet of paper, and visitors were asked which of the stories they had heard of. Some of the stories and creatures – such as Mothman and the Jersey Devil – were reflective of specific regional stories, while others – such as Bigfoot and UFOs – reflected popularity across broader regions. Stories such as Bloody Mary reflected a gender divide, as most of the people who remembered that story tended to be women who had engaged with the story in their youth, while at sleepovers.

Initially, one of the squares on the sheet was left intentionally blank. If a visitor mentioned a story that wasn’t on the list, they were encouraged to write it down on a card and “feed it to the monster” — dropping it into a nearby bin that looked like Frankenstein’s Monster. We received eight cards with additional stories on them, as well as an emphatic suggestion from a child that the Loch Ness Monster should go into the empty spot on the chart. Some of the cards included references to what the creature was, or its country of origin. In some cases, the visitor did not include these details on the card, but did provide the information verbally to staff at the table. In the case of the latter, this information is provided in italics on the list below. The following stories were submitted by visitors to the AFC table:

• Story of the Chupacabra – Puerto Rico
• De Witte Wieven (“Wise Women”) – Netherlands
• De Bokkem Rijders – Netherlands
• Swamp Man – Florida
• Candy Man
• The Wendigo
• The Vindow Viper
• Kornmuhme (Germany) – A monster that prevents kids from trampling in fields growing cereals (rye, wheat, barley, oats)

I have heard of some of these, such as the chupacabra, swamp man (also known as swamp ape), candy man, wendigo and Vindow Viper. Others, like the Witte Wieven, Bokkem Rijders, and Kornmuhme, were a complete mystery to me and, of course, have piqued my interest. I see a journey through AFC’s rich resources in my future, on the trail of these supernatural stories.

The findings of the engagement question’s main chart reflected the following popularity of stories:

1. Bigfoot – 77
2. UFOs/Area 51 – 73
3. Bloody Mary – 61
4. Razors in Candy – 40
5. La Llorona – 25
6. Mothman – 25
7. Sewer Alligators – 19
8. The Hook Man – 18
9. Killer in the Backseat – 16
10. Vanishing Hitchhiker – 13
11. Jersey Devil – 13
12. Loch Ness Monster – 5

Further Reading

Visit the American Folklife Center Reading Room to view the following relevant collections:

• Read Laurie Harrison’s unpublished novel, Tennessee Trouble (AFC 1978/029)
• Learn more about the Jersey Devil from Stephen Winick’s Botkin lecture, Tales of the Jersey Devil, 2005 August 23 (AFC 2005/037)
• Discover more urban legends, submitted primarily by high school and college students in Texas and Oregon in the Sabine Hilding collection of urban legends, 1991-1994

Check out these other Folklife Today blog posts about some of the popular results from AFC’s engagement question:

• Picante Pero Sabroso: Songs of La Llorona – Stephen Winick
  • This post is part of a series on La Llorona. Find links to the entire series here
• Scary Stories for Halloween 2024 on the Folklife Today Podcast – Stephen Winick
• On the Trail of Bigfoot in the Library of Congress – Meg Nicholas
• “And a fire come out at night”: UFOs, space exploration and folklife – Meg Nicholas