Subject: Lyr Add: Stewball in the 1860's South
From:
Lighter
Date: 12 Aug 22 - 09:54 AM
John Mason Brown, “Songs of the Slave,” Lippincott’s Magazine (Dec., 1868), p. 622:
Many years ago there originated a negro ballad, founded on the incidents of a famous horse-race, on which large sums were staked. Its popularity among the negroes in the slave-holding States was very great, and it was their nearest approach to an epic. It was generally sung in a chanting style, with marked emphasis and the prolongation of the concluding syllable of each line. The tenor of the narrative indicates that ‘The Gal-li-ant Gray Mar’’ was imported from Virginia to Kentucky to beat the ‘Noble Skewball,’ and the bard is evidently a partisan of the latter. The commencement of the narrative is in approved invocatory style:
Oh, ladies and gentlemen, come one and come all;
Did you ever hear tell of the Noble Skewball?
And the author plunges at once in medias res, and presents to his auditors, regardless of rhyme, a view of the crowded race-course:
When the day was app’inted for Skewball to run,
The horses was ready, the people did come—
Some from old Virginny, some from Tennessee,
Some from Alabama, and from everywhere.
The general reader will probably not feel interested in the preparation for the great race and in the descriptions given of the horses, riders, and owners and the thread of the ballad may be given in short space. The owner of the ‘Noble Skewball’ thus instructs his jockey:
Stick close to your saddle, and don’t be alarmed.
For you shall not be jostled by the Noble Skewball!
and appeals confidently to the umpire—
Squire Marvin, Squire Marvin, just judge my horse well,
For all that I want is to see justice done.
At the signal—
When the horses was saddled and the word was give’, Go!
Skewball shot like a arrow just out o’ a bow!
And during the early part of the race the listener is assured,
If you had a-been there at the first running round,
You’d a-swore by your life that they never totch ground.
The excitement of the spectators, and the lavish betting of the friends of the ‘Noble Skewball’ and the ‘Gal-li-ant Gray Mar’,’ are minutely described, and the listener hurried by a current of incident to the grand climax—the triumph of the ‘Noble Skewball’ and the payment of the stakes. The poetic fire is cooled down gradually through a dozen or more concluding couplets, the last of which proposes
A health to Miss Bradley, that gal-li-ant Gray Mar’,
Likewise to the health of the Noble Skewball!
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