Then I cut the cord that bound me, peered around me, rose uprightly,
Stepped as lightly as a lover on his blessed bridal day;
Swiftly as my need inclined me, kept the bright North Star behind me,
And, ere dawning of the morning, I was twenty miles away.
THE LEWISES.
The Lewis family seem to have occupied a position as prominent, and to have been as much identified with the local history of the Colony of Virginia, as the Schuyler family with New York and New Jersey. The John Lewis who is the hero of the ballad, though less known than Andrew, who overcame Cornstalk at Point Pleasant, and who was thought of before Washington for command of the Continental army, was nevertheless a remarkable man. He was of that Scotch-Irish race which settled the western part of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and spread into North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee, making a people distinct in dialect and character, and preserving a number of North of Ireland customs to this day. John was a famous Indian fighter in his youth. At the time of the defence described in the ballad he had grown quite old. His wife, who came of a fighting family, aided him to drive off the enemy, who would have endured almost any loss to have secured him as a prisoner. They hated him intensely, and with just cause. When red clover was introduced in that section, the savages believed that it was the white clover, dyed in the blood of the Indians killed by the Lewises.
THE FIGHT OF JOHN LEWIS.
I.
To be captain and host in the fortress,
To keep his assailants at bay,