Wing says he never stays in any place more than three weeks, “leastwise never mo’ ’n fo’.” Sometimes he walks, sometimes he rides the rods, sometimes when money is plentiful he rides in the cars. He has had his tragic and his comic experiences. The spirit of the road is irrevocably fixed in him and he can think in no other terms. Some day a Negro artist will paint him, a Negro story teller will tell his story, a “high she’ff” will arrest him, a “jedge” will sentence him, a “cap’n” will “cuss” him, he will “row here few days longer,” then he’ll be gone.
CHAPTER XIII
JOHN HENRY: EPIC OF THE NEGRO WORKINGMAN
Left Wing Gordon was and is a very real person, “traveling man” de luxe in the flesh and blood. Not so John Henry, who was most probably a mythical character. Whatever other studies may report, no Negro whom we have questioned in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia has ever seen or known of John Henry personally or known any one who has, although it is well understood that he was “mos’ fore-handed steel-drivin’ man in the world.” Still he is none the less real as a vivid picture and example of the good man hero of the race.
Although, like the story of Left Wing, the John Henry ballad carries its own intrinsic merit, this song of the black Paul Bunyan of the Negro workingman is significant for other reasons. It is, first of all, a rare creation of considerable originality, dignity and interest. It provides an excellent study in diffusion, and, as soon as the settings, variations, comparisons, and adaptations have been completed, will deserve a special brochure. For the purposes of this volume, however, we shall present simply the John Henry ballad in the forms and versions heard within the regions of this collection, with some comparative evidence of the workingman’s varied mirror of his hero. John Henry is still growing in reputation and in stature and in favor with the Negro singer, ranging in repute from the ordinary fore-handed steel-driving man to a martyred president of the United States struck down, with the hammer in his hand, by some race assassin. One youth reminiscent of all that he had heard, and minded to make his version complete, set down this:
When John Henry was on his popper’s knee,
The dress he wore it was red;
And the las’ word he said,
“I gonna die with the hammer in my hand.”
We have found a few Negroes who were not clear in their minds about Booker T. Washington, but we have found none in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia who had not heard something some time about John Henry. In other places, however, in Mississippi and Maryland, for instance, we understand he is not so well known. To trace the story of the ballad to its origin[89] is a difficult task and one awaiting the folk-lorist; but to gather these samples of this sort of nomad ballad is a comparatively easy and always delightful task.
[89] Prof. J. H. Cox traces John Henry to a real person, John Hardy, a Negro who had a reputation in West Virginia as a steel driver and who was hanged for murder in 1894. We are inclined to believe that John Henry was of separate origin and has become mixed with the John Hardy story in West Virginia. We have never found a Negro who knew the song as John Hardy, and we have no versions which mention the circumstance of the murder and execution. For Cox’s discussion and several versions of John Hardy, see his Folk-Songs of The South, pp. 175-188; also Journal of American Folk-Lore, vol. 32, p. 505 et seq. Bibliographies will be found in these references.