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Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) |
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Subject: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: and e Date: 03 Jun 23 - 12:10 PM From: fretless Posted by fretless 28 Sep 2008 to mudcat here: https://mudcat.org/detail_pf.cfm?messages__Message_ID=2451079 Variants and references to follow. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: and e Date: 03 Jun 23 - 12:14 PM "Change the Name of Arkansas" Page 108, Address to the Jury by Col. John Hallum in Self Defense in the Case of the State of Texas Against Him by John Hallum (Col.), 1897. See here: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Address_to_the_Jury_by_Col_John_Hallum_i/F3sjAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=%22change+the+name+of+arkansas%22&dq=%22change+the+name+of+arkansas%22&printsec=frontcover Snippet view only. Does anyone have full access to this document ? |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 03 Jun 23 - 02:19 PM I've ordered the book through interlibrary loan. Will report back. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: GUEST,and e (no cookie) Date: 03 Jun 23 - 02:55 PM Worldcat lists eBooks scans of the 1897 book here: https://worldcat.org/title/988635780 Of course, you have to an actively associated with a college or university that subscribes. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 03 Jun 23 - 03:04 PM The pronunciation (not the name) of Arkansas was settled by the state's General Assembly in 1881. Though often unofficially spelled "Arkansaw," the anglicized pronunciation "Ar-KANZ-us" was also in use. Daily Nebraska Press (June 16, 1873): "When Mr. [Millard] Fillmore was President of the Senate, he varied the pronunciation of Arkansas according to circumstances. [Arkansas] Senator [Ambrose H.] Sevier said Ar-KAN-sas; Senator [Chester] Ashley said ArkanSAW. Mr. Fillmore used to recognize Mr. Sevier as the 'Senator from ArKANsas,' and Ashley as the 'senator [sic] from ArkanSAW.'" Nice story, but Fillmore didn't become Vice President (and President of the U.S. Senate) until 1849, some months after the death of Ashley and the resignation of Sevier. The Arkansas river is pronounced Arkansaw in Arkansas, but in Kansas it's Arkanzis. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 03 Jun 23 - 04:25 PM As a matter of fact, the scan is here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=umn.31951d01368792z&view=1up&seq=112 Much of it is plagiarized or directly adapted from the speech of a raftsman in Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" (1883). That, in turn, was inspired by a fictitious speech of Representative David Crockett in 1883, written in the style of Col. Nimrod Wildfire, protagonist of the stage hit "The Lion of the West" (1831), by James K. Paulding. None of the above texts are remotely bawdy. The 1897 version appears to be reprinted from some untraced source. "State Sen. Cassius M. Johnson" is entirely fictitious. This note, however, from Law Notes (Northport, L.I.) (Apr. 1908) is apposite: "George Washington Williams, one of the most prominent members of the Arkansas bar, died in Little Rock on February 29, at the age of fifty-one. In 1891, while he was a member of the State legislature, he achieved wide fame by reason of a speech on a bill proposing to change the name of Arkansas." Also of interest: The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, N.C.) (June 28, 1904): "To the Editor:--The resolution introduced at the meeting of the United Confederate Veterans to revise and modernize Dixie, calls to mind an incident said to have taken place in Congress several years ago. Some member introduced a bill to change the name of Arkansas, as it was sometimes called Arkansas and sometimes Arkansaw. A big double-jointed member from Arkansas arose and with uplifted hand and a voice vibrating with intense emotion said, 'Change the name of Arkansaw, God Almighty damn!' When I hear people speak of modernizing Dixie, I feel like exclaiming with this gentleman from Arkansas. "[Signed] James Dempsey Bullock, Wilson, N.C., June 25." And earlier still, if only as a one-liner: "Knoxville Daily Tribune" (May 3, 1891), p. 2: “Change the name of Arkansaw? Blankety-blank!” "The Headlight" (Pittsburg, Kans.) (Aug. 11, 1887): “In the language of the gentleman who was asked to vote for the proposition to change the name of Arkansas, Never!!” |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 03 Jun 23 - 04:31 PM The 1897 text is rather incoherent. Twain's "corpse-maker" line, for example, is a brag, not an indictment. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 03 Jun 23 - 05:08 PM Texas folklorist J. Frank Dobie wrote that "in 1919 in officers’ barracks at Bordeaux, France, I heard a lusty individual recite" an unexpurgated version of "this notorious speech." Anearlier record of a possibly bawdy version appears in the 1908 "Lucky Bag" of the U.S. Naval Academy : “Here Welshimer took the floor and delivered a thirty-minute speech against the advisability of changing the name of Arkansas. We regret that we are unable to reproduce this speech in full.” |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: and e Date: 03 Jun 23 - 07:17 PM Well, of course, this actually happened. Transcribed from the LP, Unepurgated Folk Songs of Men. The performer is, reportedly, John Lomax, Jr. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 04 Jun 23 - 11:03 AM Concerning George Washington Williams: Arkansas Gazette (Little Rock) (May 5, 1901) in news of proceedings of the Arkansas House of Representatives: "Mr. Williams, of Pulaski, addressing the house, felt that he had cause to be grateful in that his fellow members had rallied 'round him and had defeated the attempt to change the name of Arkansas. (Laughter and cheers.)" |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 05 Jun 23 - 04:01 PM Saturday Review of Literature (Sept. 6, 1924): "Several Easterners, says the Reader's Guide, have come to the rescue of the reader who asked if anyone ever did try to 'change the name of Arkansas.' They are all hazy as to details, but seem to agree that the phrase comes from a smoking-room story in which the State Legislature in session is addressed by a 'city feller' who proposes to introduce a bill to change the pronunciation from ArkanSAW to ArKANsas...whereupon, says one correspondent, 'a lanky member from the backwoods rises and begins his famous speech in rhyme [sic], 'What! Change the Name of Arkansas?' no one sends the words, one explaining that it is 'quite too profane for print, though full of crude wit and humor.'" The 1897 text of the "speech," of course, is not at all profane. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 05 Jun 23 - 09:32 PM The University of Virginia reproduces online a poem by Emory Pottle about the death in combat of his friend James R. McConnell of the Lafayette Escadrille in 1917. The poem, entitled "Mac," was apparently written shortly after McConnell was killed. It includes the following lines: Good old Mac at a party! A party to us was something to drink, A fire, and no work; Mac reciting: "Change the name of Arkansaw? By God, sir--" It's been conjectured that the author of the bawdy version was Mark Twain. Twain did write a couple of bawdy pieces, but there seems to be no documentation to credit him with "Change the Name of Arkansas?" - the lines lifted from "Life on the Mississippi" notwithstanding. |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: Lighter Date: 06 Jun 23 - 08:24 PM If you have access to a research library or interlibrary loan you can read William F. Thompson's article on "Frontier Tall Talk" in the journal American Speech (Oct., 1934), pp. 187-199. Thompson serves up examples of frontier bombast and braggadocio of the Mark Twain variety going back to the early nineteenth century. None are bawdy, possibly because all are "literary" constructions designed for print. The movie "Lone Survivor" features an even more extravagant current recitation that considerably exceeds the limits of the uncensored "Change the Name?" |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: and e Date: 07 Jun 23 - 09:45 PM "Mr. President---Mr. President---You low-down son-of- Pg 266, The Canfield Collection, [c1927]. See online here: https://archive.org/details/1926canfieldcollection/page/n265/mode/2up |
Subject: RE: Folklore: Change the Name of Arkansas (bawdy) From: cnd Date: 08 Jun 23 - 08:26 AM On the topic of frontier braggadociousness, see: Davy Crocket by Hermes Nye. The bombast of that version can be largely found in "Uncle Sam's Folklore" by Julia Cooley Altrocchi, in College English, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Dec., 1945), pp. 135-142 (8 pages) |
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