Alas, I put together my version of this ballad from several others.

Wes Asbury knew 2 verses of this ballad. It was the most unlikely place in all the world to find 2 verses of ANY Robin Hood ballad. This town is on the Rock River--Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.---Wes was an old gent who grew up in a houseboat on the Mississippi River near Battle Hollow. Battle Hollow was where the final battle of the Black Hawk War was fought where the Mississippi and Bad Ax Rivers converge --- in 1832.

Lets jump back some time. This'll be mostly off the top o' my head...

1832--U.S. president Andrew Jackson ordered every tribe of Indians to move west of the Mississippi River. (Among other things--this caused what is known as the Trail Of Tears to occur.) The Sauk and Fox Native-American tribes resided in the Rock River valley of Illinois and Wisconsin. Reluctantly, to say the least, they "relocated" westward to that country which is now the U.S. state called Iowa. To make this shorter, I can say that it wasn't a good place to be. Nothing was familiar and the game wasn't as plentiful as in the Illinois territory. Getting angrier by the day, a Sauk brave named Black Hawk--a leader but not actually a chief--led a band of men and mostly women and children back into their Rock River home lands. Another chief, Keokuk, stayed in Iowa and was seen as a "good Indian" by the government. He got a city in Iowa named after him.

General Henry Atkinson was ordered to chase Black Hawk---and that he did. The Indians always seemed to be able to escape ingeniously after an encounter. It was a very hot and humid summer and the troops became exhausted and short tempered from dealing with the tactics of the Indians. There was a major battle at a place called Wisconsin Heights where the Indians fought quite hard. Then, afterward, they snuck off under cover of night. The campaign went on and there were a few other skirmishes.

Finally, the troops of Henry Atkinson caught up with Black Hawk's band of Indians as they were trying to wade across the Mississippi River. (You could sometimes, in dry years, do that easily in those days before all the 27 locks and dams were built on the upper Mississippi River between Alton, Illinois and Minneapolis/St.Paul. No dams are below Alton and/or Cairo, Illinois.)

The troops of Henry Atkinson, with the help of a gun boat, massacred the Indians there at the BATTLE OF BAD AX as they tried to escape back into Iowa.

Black Hawk himself, escaped. But he was captured by a young American officer named Jefferson Davis. Also fighting in Atkinson's army in the Black Hawk War was young Abraham Lincoln---of New Salem, Illinois... As far as is known, the 2 never met during this war.

BUT I DIGRESS!!! (As I'm certain you've noticed. ;-)

Here he is --- picture this. Wes Asbury is living in a shack on the flood plain of the Rock River being his cantankerous old self. I had known Wes for a long time because I played for almost 12 years at a bar/restaurant folk club called THE GREEN DRAGON INN just about fifty   yards away from Wes' red-painted cabin with a statue of a naked lady in the window. (To see Wes and his cabin and that statue, plus Joe Moore's Green Dragon Inn, see my photo collection at

http://rudegnu.com/art_thieme.html

Anyhow, it was while indulging in extended summertime talks with Wes at his place that I asked him if he knew any old story songs!!??

Wes would never sing for me--I've got to tell you that right off. He said his singin' days were through. But he did know a version of "The Merrimac"---a Civil War song; and also the Lake Michigan ballad "The Wreck Of The Lady Elgin" which I knew of. I sang him a verse and he yelled, "That's it, that's it, but it weren't no WALTZ!" --- So I did it with my banjo in straight time---and lo-and-behold----it turned out to be "Boil Them Cabbage Down"---same tune anyhow. Small world!

I did tape Wes talking some. Thanks to the software Jerry and you Mudcatters sent me, Wes Asbury is now on his own CD. But no songs at all are there. Just B.S.ing talk about his life in Dakota and growing up--and being chief of police of Fort Atkinson for a while............. Then one day he recited these two verses from "Robin Hood's Death" and wanted to know if there was more to it.

This was a long while ago, but I believe the two verses that Wes Asbury recited for me were:

Place my long bow in my hand
And an arrow I'll let flee,
And wherever it does come down to the ground,
There'll my grave digged be.

Lay a sod beneath my head,
And one beneath my feet,
And lay my long bow by my side,
It was my music sweet.

After that I took a bunch of printed and sung versions. I put it all together so that it told the story the best, I thought.

The first two verses were from "The Birth Of Robin Hood" as recited on a Caedmon LP of Robin Hood ballads   by Anthony Quayle. Many of the other verses were from ED McCurdy's LP on Riverside Records of Robin Hood Ballads. Ed McCurdy was accompanied on that whole album by our own Mudcatter, and former Weaver, FRANK HAMILTON!!

Now, the tune!! The one Ed sang, I thought, was too monotonous and didn't fit the great drama of the ballad. Sooooo, I took the great tune from the ballad "GEORDY" that FRANK HAMILTON included on his LP for Folkways Records. I gave it my own feel though. First, I put it on an album I did for ED Denson's Kicking Mule Records in California (late 1970s) called "SONGS OF THE HEARTLAND" When I did the CD for Andrew Calhoun's WATERBUG RECORDS in 1998, I jumped at the chance to include it on a CD. The performance I used was recorded live at the GREEN DRAGON INN, as I said, about 50 yards (give or take a few) from Wes' small house.

And it's absolutely no tall tale and true that, when the water came up, Wes would row his small boat up to his bed and crawl onto an upper bunk. He passed away in 1979 at the age of 89...

The BEER that seems so hard to believe for some of you was as sung by ED McCURDY.

Barry, that's my take on it!

All the best to you all,

Art Thieme