[510] The Old World songs having on the whole the best chance to survive are those which tell some tragic story, or contain some strongly marked formula. The same is true of parallel indigenous verse. The short song telling a story, in particular a tragic story, has the best chance of vitality. Whatever else drops out, the death, or the immediate event bringing it, lingers in the memory. The moving or the striking in subject matter, and the familiar or conventional in style, are likeliest to persist. Beside the imported romantic and legendary ballads, many songs and song-tales on the themes of broadside balladry of the last two centuries in England have currency in the United States, often in such disguised or modified form that their origin is no longer recognizable. Of this character is The Butcher boy, whose forsaken sweetheart hangs herself—a ballad related to the British A brisk young lover; also The Boston Burglar, or Charlie's Town—related to The Sheffield apprentice. To this same group belongs probably the ‘confessions’ of Young McAffie, who poisoned his wife and her baby. The dying cowboy, despite its name, is ultimately imported. Still older is the ballad of the maidservant Betsy Brown, who is ‘sold to Verginny’ by her mistress. An instructive instance of the migration of a song is offered by The Romish Lady, a story of a Protestant martyr, having considerable currency in the Central West.
There lived a Romish ladyThis is the Elizabethan ballad ‘It was a lady's daughter, of Paris properly,’ introduced into Fletcher's Knight of the burning Pestle. It was reprinted in the reign of Charles II, and is to be found among the Roxburgh ballads.
Brought up in proper array.
Her mother oft times told her
She must the priest obey.
It was a lady's daughter,The American texts show simplification in transmission, but remain strikingly faithful to the original narrative. Most of the later imported pieces show, like the earlier,
of Paris properly;
Her mother her commanded
to Mass that she should hie.
