The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #50747 Message #1356817
Posted By: Nerd
14-Dec-04 - 01:56 PM
Thread Name: Origin Of John Henry--part TWO
Subject: RE: Origin Of John Henry--part TWO
Ah! I see where the misunderstanding came from. No, I think it is quite likely that the name could be Margaret and that no such name could ever be in the record. But if that were the case then there would by definition be no chain of transmission transforming "Margaret" into "Polly Ann."
In other words, it was your logical process of "deriving" Polly Ann from "Margaret Dabney" that required "Maggie D." to have been in tradition at some point. What I said before was, For your theory about the mutations of these names in tradition to be true, there MUST have been some songs that called her "Maggie D." The logic of this is that, if not, where did Magadee come from, and Mary magdalene? It was your contention that these were derived from "Maggie D." So someone must have heard "Maggie D." at some point, and there would have to have been a song calling her that.
That's not to say that I think there were songs calling her "Maggie D.", just that there must have been for your theory to work. If "Maggie D." were in the record, one could posit some kind of transmission chain beginning with Margaret Dabney and ending with Polly Ann with a shade more validity. Since it's not in the record, any such transmission chain becomes very shaky indeed, which means that all the statistics you give on names and their frequency become irrelevant to the question of whether the original name could have been Margaret.
If no name like "Margaret" or "Maggie D." was ever in the tradition, then it is not an issue of transmission but of the creation of a name from whole cloth for the character of John Henry's wife, which is what I've already said is the most likely scenario to give rise to "Polly Ann." And if that is the case, none of the evidence concerning Polly Ann, Mary Ann, etc, can be used to support OR deny the contention that Margaret was the original name.
So as always, my position is: sure, it could have been Margaret, because it could have been anything and you'd have the same darn "chain of transmission." But the names that do exist in the record provide no evidence that it WAS Margaret.