Cambridge History of American Literature: volume 3
Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939., Erskine, John, 1879-1951., Sherman, Stuart Pratt, 1881-1926., Van Doren, Carl, 1885-1950., Ed.

In general, as over against sentimental, romantic, or adventure pieces, ballads dealing with historical events or important movements occupy but a small corer in American popular song. Captain Kidd has retained currency in New England and in the West, and the collector still comes at times upon ballads of the British highwayman, Dick Turpin. Some widely diffused songs, their authorship and origin now lost, which reflect emigrant and frontier life, especially the rush for gold in 1849, are Joe Bowers, Betsy from Pike, and The days of forty-nine. Pretty Maumee possibly echoes relations with the Miami Indians. The dreary Black hills reflects the mining fever of one period of Western history; and there are other sectional satires, like Cheyenne boys, Mississippi girls, or humorous narratives or complaints, like Starving to death on a government claim. The best-known pieces reflecting pioneer or prairie life are O Bury Me not on the Lone Prairie, and The dying cowboy, or The cowboy's lament, both of which are adaptations. The latter especially has roamed very far, as will be seen later, and exists in many varying texts, with changed localizations. These pieces have currency chiefly in the Far West and in the Central West. Nor are political campaign songs long-lived; like historical songs, songs mirroring transient phases of national life are likely to fade early.

Interest in orally preserved verse in the United States has centred hitherto mostly in English and Scottish romantic and legendary narrative pieces, or traditional ballads, emigrants from the Old World. Imported songs of other character and verse stories indigenous to America have had less attention. Here, as in England, the pieces which have been singled out as worthy of recovery and study are chiefly those of the type collected and preserved in Professor Child's English and Scottish popular ballads. They are likely to have the longer history, and, in their Old World form, higher poetical quality; and there is more mystery concerning their origin. Attempts have been made to register the number emigrating to, and surviving in America, to note their geographical distribution, and to watch what has happened to them.

Some narrative poems or songs of the type collected by Professor Child were no doubt brought over in the colonial period by emigrants, or by sailors, or returned travellers, and