PART IV:

Frank Cowan's "Southwestern Pennsylvania in Song and Story" (Greensburg, Pa., 1878) gives two texts of the ballad. The second is of some interest because Cowan's source, "John F. Beaver, Esq., of Ohio," said he'd received the song from "James McCalla, or Macauley, a popular, pock-marked Irish minstrel who flourished about the year 1808 in the neighborhood of Stoystown, Somerset County, Pennsylvania."

The text clearly comes at some point from an oral performance, because it contains a number of folk-style syllabic ornaments not generally seen on broadsides. The lyrics themselves are not very noteworthy, but here are the indicated "performing features" apparently representative of the U.S. frontier ca1800. Significantly, perhaps, Cowan never suggests that there's anything odd or, much less, ridiculous in such pronunciations:

fo-urth

engag-e-ment

commandi-er

Long Isla-and

St. Mari-ies

attackted

woundi-ed

soldi-er

warri-ors

Virgini-ans