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Young Strongbow
anonymous American ballad
(Words in parentheses are alternate lyrics suggested by other extant versions of the song.)
To Dartmouth’s scientific hall
__In olden times there came
A sprightly Red Boy from the woods,
__And Strongbow was his name.
Much had he heard of Dartmouth’s skill,
__The White Boy’s pride and boast:
His ardent wish, this skill to gain
__His honest mind and ghost. (engrossed?)
He soon did learn the White Boy’s tongue
__To read and write and speak,
And soon by diligence was learned
__In Latin, Low, and Greek. (Latin law? Latin lore?)
In Liberal Arts and Sciences
__With White Boy he kept pace,
And few there were that ridiculed
__The color of his face.
But there was one New England youth—
__Proud, overbearing, rude—
Who oft times on poor Strongbow’s peace
__Did wantingly intrude. (wantonly?)
Once, when o’er sailed thy threatening face, (Once, when assailed with treatment base?)
__The Red Boy simply said,
“The time may yet arrive when you
__Will kneel and ask my aid.”
When steady years had rolled around
__On the rapid wheels of time,
The Red Boy to his nation went,
__To a far and distant clime.
The White Boy to his parents went,
__Out near the Atlantic shore,
And little thought that he would see
__His tawny classmate more.
And when to sturdy manhood grown
__A captain he became,
When the loud trump of war was sound,
__Then kindled was his fame. (And Kendall was in fame?)
Great Britain’s proud and sailors came
__Against the Freemen’s rights,
Engaged the Red Men on their side
__And armed them for the fight.
A battle long and fierce was fought
__Between the Whites and Reds,
And many a hero was laid low
__Upon a gory bed.
The Red Men gained a victory;
__The captain a prisoner seized,
With many a torturing threat
__and impartiality.
A council long they did convene,
__Their prisoner’s case to try,
And to atone for warriors slain,
__They sentenced him to die.
Then quickly to a sturdy tree
__With torturing cords they bound,
And pitchy faggots around him placed,
__And firebrands gleamed around.
When Death announced the captain’s doom,
__The braves around him sang,
When suddenly stepped a chieftain forth
__to the center of the ring.
“Do you know me, kind sir?” said he.
__“View carefully this face.”
“I know you not,” was the reply,
__“But I kneel and ask your aid.”
“You knew me once,” the chief rejoined,
__“And you shall know again:
I am Strongbow, whom cruelly
__You so oft inflicted pain.”
“Strongbow, brave chieftain, I confess
__With shame, you speak the truth.
But, ah! you know, it was the fault
__Of an unreflected youth.”
“Captain, you know those Indians well:
__They never can forget
A favor or an injury
__When friends or foes are met.”
“Strongbow, brave chieftain, I’ll submit—
__But for my loving wife,
My parents, and my children dear,
__I humbly beg for life.”
“Although they never can forget,
__Those Indians can forgive.
The White Man set at liberty:
__Brave comrades, let him live.”
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Transcribed by Jack DesBois from audio item no. D33A09-10 of the Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection: Edwin Larkin of Chelsea, Vt., singing “Young Strongbow,” recorded by Helen Flanders on July 21, 1942..
Jack DesBois is a 2017 recipient of the Flanders Award for Traditional Vermont Music. He has researched the work and legacy of songcatcher Helen Hartness Flanders and sung many of the songs in her collection of mid-20th century field recordings, including “Young Strongbow.” To learn about and listen to more songs from the Flanders Ballad Collection, see Jack’s multimedia article “Prospecting for Literature” here.
Interesting ballad. This is how history should be taught, it would be more memorable this way. Thank you Jack for enriching my life once again.
You’re welcome, Yael — thank you for reading! Perhaps we should revive the practice of passing down history through oral balladry. Nobody else is going to do it….
Actually, that’s sort of what Andrew Benson Brown is doing with his Legends of Liberty epic, albeit on a much larger scale.
Very interesting, Jack. Thank you!
You’re welcome, JD. One of the things that interests me most about the ballads in the Flanders Collection is they way they treat subject matter that today’s culture would consider completely off-limits. But before the American monoculture set in, people weren’t concerned so much with defining the limits of storytelling as they were with telling stories.
Jack, you are quite right that earlier Americans had immense interest in stories, without current restrictions on how to tell them. I am glad to know of this collection project, and I loved your performance of The Alphabet Song. It is certainly worthwhile for our creativity as poets to be inspired by the past. Those of us who translate, and others who remind us of almost forgotten writers and singers, all identify with your work. Keep passing on the posies!
I’ve been musing on the similarities between translation and transcription since reading your post, Margaret. I’m not multilingual, but I think there probably is something about transferring a work of art from oral to written language that resembles the work of the translator.
As you delightfully illustrated with Charles D’Orleans’ spring poem, translation can engender many offspring from one original. In my case, there are often many “originals,” none of which is necessarily authoritative. I tried to give a sense of that challenge in pinning down one written text from an oral tradition here by including a few alternate texts. In the case of “Young Strongbow,” my guess is that it started life in written form before entering oral tradition, where it has gained perhaps a century’s worth of oral variation. Much older songs have much wider variation, to the point where folklorists start speaking of “song families” rather than discrete songs.
In the same way a translated poem bears the mark of its translator, a balladeer picks and chooses those aspects of extant versions of a song, and makes those novel adjustments, that suit him or her. You make it very clear that the work of a translator of poetry is creative, unlike a Google Translator algorithm; likewise, a singer’s rendition of a song is a creative act that has really nothing in common with a MIDI electronic playback.
Jack, it may be that what the balladeer and the translator have in common is the conveyance of a story. Even the Orleans spring lyric works with the infinitely fertile story of Spring’s recurrence. And love stories are all about love, but each little aspect of each tale of love is “original.” In some of my longer poems, I have story material from poets who actually lived as knights sworn to defend ladies and protect the poor and fight off pagan terrorists. As Americans, we can recognize this as good material for stories, but we don’t identify with it until one narrative or situation or individual grabs our attention. Same with your ballads, which are either unknown or known only vaguely. You have the important job first of selecting a song, and then of making decisions about text and music. You hope, I imagine, that people will enjoy the stories, become more interested in them, make the songs their own, and perhaps go on to exercise creativity in giving new life to what exists, and in creating more. It’s great work!
Now please go back to my essay and pick which version of that little story you like best. The few responses so far have been surprising, and I’m looking forward to learning much more about how different readers respond to translation.