Folk Songs as Historical Literature for Young People

[Errata]

Western wind, when wilt thou blow,   The small rain down can rain.Christ, that my love were in my arms,   And I in my bed again!

(English, fifteenth century)

American folk songs mirror the experience of people who have been coming to this country and living here for nearly four-hundred years. These songs draw upon music and poetic invention in order to present American reality and to illuminate its meaning; they are history, literature, melody, and art all rolled into one. So many of us teachers have allowed ourselves to be pigeonholed into separate compartments, like literature, history, or music, that we have difficulty in understanding this type of song. But it is precisely because folk songs transcend disciplinary boundaries and deal with human life itself that they provide for young people an inviting introduction to the past.

Today the folk song heritage is an endangered species. For centuries folk songs were created and sung by people who lived either in the countryside or in small towns. The young learned the melodies and lyrics at their mother's knee, and in work and play around the home. This style of music then became the companion of a lifetime, for in times gone by and even until quite recently, the American people were a singing people. Men and women sang in order to lighten the burden of daily work, both by land and by sea, to amuse and instruct themselves in their leisure hours, to worship God, to tell and to celebrate great events, to make love, to lament, to cradle children, to mock, and to protest.

But advancing urbanization in the latter half of the twentieth century threatens to blot out these singing traditions. Songs, as part of the social fabric, wither amid the hustle and din of factory, office, and street. As for the home, the memory of these songs is lost when not only adults, but especially children, become victims of the mass media, converted into passive recipients of canned culture, and doomed to live in the wasteland environment of television.

One example of the decay of the traditional folk song is the ignorance of old cowboy songs by America's young. A version of cowboy "culture," to be sure, has been projected almost to the point of inanity on movie and television screens. If songs were fundamental to the cowboy's life—as indeed they were—it would be logical to expect that by this time the entire nation would be familiar with this wonderful body of music. One might expect that the media, with its immense power to diffuse a message and to instruct people, would have made these songs available to millions. Sadly enough, the great cowboy songs have almost vanished from the public memory during the contemporary period. It is possible to visit school classes in many states of the Union, to sing these songs, and to find that not more than a tiny handful of children recognize them.

What, exactly, do our young people lose when, for example, they have never heard or sung "Colorado Trail"?

Colorado Trail*

Ride all the lonely night   Ride all the day,Keep those herds a-rollin' on,'   Rollin' on their way;Weep all ye little rains,   Wail, winds, wail;All along, along, along   The Colorado Trail.

Eyes like the morning star,   Cheeks like a rose,Laura was a pretty girl,   God Almighty knows;Weep all ye little rains,   Wail, winds, wail;All along, along, along   The Colorado Trail.

Ride through the stormy night,   Dark is the sky,Wish I'd stayed in Abilene,   Nice and warm and dry;Weep all ye little rains,   Wail, winds, wail;All along, along, along   The Colorado Trail.

Eyes like the morning star,   Cheeks like a rose,Laura was a pretty girl,   God Almighty knows;Weep all ye little rains,   Wail, winds, wail;All along, along, along   The Colorado Trail.

Folk songs, and here "Colorado Trail" is typical, are the creations of a given time and place. They are not merely works of art, but also historical documents that provide direct and...