CHAPTER 9 | AMERICAN FOLK SONGS AND THEIR COLLECTORS 221
of song lyrics without music). The song relied from the start on oral tradition,
for it was sung to the tune of “Villikins and His Dinah,” an 1850 British music
hall song in waltz time with a refrain made out of vocables. In setting new
words to a preexisting tune of British origin, “Sweet Betsey from Pike” resem-
bles “The Liberty Song” and other Revolutionary-era songs that had appeared
in broadsides and newspapers. A key difference is the later song’s lack of politi-
cal agenda.
In eleven stanzas, the song offers glimpses of a couple’s trip across the conti-
nent, starting with their traveling party: “Two yoke of cattle, a large yeller dog, /
A tall Shanghai rooster, and a one-spotted hog.” Betsey’s character locates her
outside the world of the 1850s parlor song, where heroines tend to embody Vic-
torian virtue. On the Overland Trail, only her determination, physical tough-
ness, and self-reliant spirit let her survive. Sexual repression is absent from this
song. As an unmarried couple traveling for months across the country, Betsey
and Ike seem to face no barriers to lovemaking. Further, Betsey mocks Victo-
rian norms by falling out of love with Ike, running away from Mormon leader
Brigham Young (who wants to add her to his collection of wives), and responding
with an earthy outburst to a California miner who invites her to dance. Betsey’s
confession that she’s “chock-full of strong alkali”—a desert laxative—is not what
one expects to hear from the belle of the ball.
To sing “Sweet Betsey” a person only needed to know the tune of “Villikins
and His Dinah,” whose many repeated notes fi t the delivery of a comic text,
and whose refrain placed nonsense syllables where a moral message might
have been expected. Appearing in Put’s Golden Songster along with other songs
such as one about sailing to San Francisco to the tune of “Pop Goes the Wea-
sel,” “Sweet Betsey from Pike” fl outed the very idea of elevation. Yet its emphasis
on story recalls the traditional ballad, and like the much older Child ballads,
“Sweet Betsey” entered the oral tradition, where old verses were dropped and
new ones added.
Meanwhile, miners, loggers, homesteaders, Mormons, farmers, and soldiers
all contributed to the large body of song that took shape in the American West. A
particularly rich song repertory was that of cowboys. Some cowboy songs struck
a realistic tone. For example, “The Captain of the Cowboys,” written in 1873 to
the well-known English tune “Captain Jinks,” delivers a stern warning to inex-
perienced cowpokes:If a visit to Blackjack Ranch you pay,
By way of advice, just let me say,
You’d better not come on branding day,
If beauty is your portion;
For what with dust and what with blows
W hat with blows, what with blows,
A dirty face and a broken nose
Will likely change your notion.
A cowboy song by Daniel E. Kelley, however, paints a picture far removed from
dust and broken noses. Idealizing the out-of-doors, “Home on the Range”—the
words and music were fi rst published together in 1905—has come to be the
best known of all western songs. “Home” reverberates through the song as it
does through Bishop and Payne’s “Home, Sweet Home,” to which it surely owes
a debt. The connection of life on the range to a vision of home elevates the“Sweet Betsey from
Pike”cowboy songs“Home on the Range”172028_09_205-230_r3_ko.indd 221 23/01/13 11:29 AM