Chapter Nine
“OLDER PEOPLE, YOU
KNOW, USED TO SING”
Robert Shiflett:
I've been away at various times in other states, other cities, but practically all of my life's been in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. And as a young man went to school here, the schoolin' I acquired. Now I've moved back. This is my father's old home place.
Father's name was William R. Shiflett, called him Raz Shiflett. He was born eighteen and seventy on October the tenth. We buried him the Fourth of July last in sixty-two. He was ninety-two years old. Father kept store since I can remember, yes, since I's a little tot. And in various counties -- Allegheny County, Greene County and here in Albemarle County. He had business in diffrent places. I taught him how to write his name and read the Bible and newspaper. My mother had an excellent education for her time and that's how I acquired what education I have, mostly was from her. From my mother and from our missionary schools where I went, but the homework at night is where my mother came in.
The Shifletts originally are supposed to have been brought here by Lafayette from Northern France. The very spellin' of it, it's supposed to be spelled Shiflette -- French, of French origin. And, of course, they came here to fight the Revolutionary War, soldiers of fortune I imagine, but see most of 'em settled around the Blue Ridge Mountains somewhere along this area. `That's the main branch of my family, and then there were Roberts introduced. I carry the Shiflett name for the simple fact that my father was a Shiflett but even he was part Roberts. I think his father was drafted in the Civil War, but for some reason or other, health or sump'n other, he didn't serve through the war, no, but my maternal grandfather, on my mother's side, now he served through the Civil War. And my maternal grandfather, he was a Morris. Now he kept store long before I was born. He had a large store in Greene County.
It's really then English on one side and French. More English you might say than Shiflett. Getting back to my father, he was rather a musical person. He was musically inclined. He could play a violin and a banjo. I learned to play them from him, and then, of course, I went out to the square dances and things like that where there were good musicians, and I practiced along with 'em. I had a little bit of talent for it at the time. I played for square dances. I used to play and sing old folksongs and sometimes the old ballads.
Well, my father knew lots of songs and he knew part of many more but there were many people in our time, especially when I was a boy, that knew a lot of these old ballads, and I was always interested in singing myself. Could sing a little at the time, so what I didn't learn from my father I would pick up at diff'rent homes. Mountain folks visited a lot in those days, you know. Most any time in a group one would sing one ballad, one would sing another. Some knew enough to sing all night. But after the older generation died out, there's very few of the younger ones that had acquired any knowledge of these things to any degree. Well, in my day as now, there would be one maybe in fifty of the younger set that would take a interest in old ballads. I have read a lot in English history about the places and even some of the people that these ballads are wrote about. This was before I learned the ballads. Well, I'd heard the ballads when I was smaller of course, but since I'd been able to read -- and I acquired the ability to read six years old pretty good, and I have read not just one type of literature but all types of literature, and old history always interested me. You know, there were always adventuresome and tragic tales attached to these old songs.
I had three brothers and four sisters, but one of my brothers died when he was young and so left two. Some of them knew these ballads of course. Our father and mother knew 'em and sometimes you'd hear 'em singing whatever struck their fancy -- that's what they would like to sing. I liked 'em all.
My brothers and sisters to some extent could play a banjo. My two brothers never had much to do with the violin. Most people in these mountains to some extent could play a banjo, enough least to sing if they wanted to.
There was quite a bit of music going on in the home. We always kept a violin and banjo of our own in the home, and I played with my father many a time. I played with my brothers, and my sisters could sing and course they knew more hymns. They didn't go in as much for ballads and old songs or folksongs like I liked 'em. 'Course I knew the hymns too, and my mother did sing as well, mostly spiritual -- religious songs. Especially she knew some very beautiful ones -- old time songs, church songs and spiritual songs. Well, now, of course, at times she sang other types of songs; She taught me some of the old ballads that I sing like "The Winds of the Wild Moor". Several I just don't remember right now offhand, but she knew some beautiful songs and she could sing.
Well, some of my cousins, they knew some of these old ballads, and I had a uncle by marriage that married my mother's sister. Now he was a great ballad singer; his name was Henry Bernard Shiflett. He was raised -- born and raised in Greene County, and he was a school teacher for a while and leadin' magistrate for that county for a long time, and that was his hobby, you might say. He knew a lot of these old ballads and songs that I don't even know.
Most people would learn the old ballads and refer to 'em as such. Some would just call 'em plain songs or love songs. Very few were referred to as folksongs. In other words, they just sang 'em and they enjoyed 'em. But they did call 'em ballads. The old timers knew they were ballads. Most of the old ballads came from across the sea. That is, they were sang about a crisis that happened across the sea.
A ballad that everyone calls "The House Carpenter" around here was also known as "James Harris" or "The Demon Lover." The different singers that would sing it, course they had different texts and the stanzas were put in different places, and it was never sung exactly alike by any two singers. Some would call it "The Demon Lover." Some, "James Harris," and some would call it "The House Carpenter." And, of course, there are as many variants of that as there is in most old ballads. Depends on the singer. But these old singers, depends on the locality you heard 'em, that the singer came from, whether it was called by one title or another. It's all one and the same.
And the ballad "Lord Ingram's Wife" and "The Gypsy Laddie" is sometimes called "Gypsy Davey," "Black Davey," and "Gypsy Lover." As I've heard it called by people at different places. I can't say that I sang the ballads exactly like any one singer sings it. As I grew up I have always been, well, not a perfectionist, but had a record for neatness in schoolin' and all that, so lots of the people in these mountains, 'specially the old people, were illiterate and they didn't pronounce words right. Now maybe the same as with pronunciations, I may have improved upon the words in some of 'em, I can't say, because in singing these songs some would sing it one way, some another. And course I could sing these ballads to you maybe three or four different ways that I had heard other people sing. There are so many variants, say, in "Gypsy Davey" or "Lord Ingram's Wife" or "The Gypsy Laddie." It just depends on who sang it and whoever determined the title.
I may have improved the expression to make more sense, of course, but not changing anything in the song. Now I have heard many people sing ballads that would sing a couple lines of a stanza right or what I thought was right, another one would place 'em somewhere else, but in general when you hear enough people sing a song you'll git the gist of it all. I can't say I ever actually changed anything in a song except if I thought a verse didn't belong where it was put. Seems like that a lot of people would have a tendency to put the last thing first sometimes and the next man would put it right again. And then you form your own opinion about where it should be -- of where any of the stanzas should go. Now I'll admit I have tried to determine the most sensible, logical way of the story never changing any of the original wording. I think the way I sing these ballads were more like the original ballads because some people did know the originals. I have heard many people that sometimes they'd forget a line or two, especially old people as they grow older. Now, as I said, there were many illiterate people around these mountains and foothills that knew these ballads but in tryin' to write them down sometimes they would make errors in the text, and of course no ballad in the mountain I'd hardly think you'd find in classical English. I think anything old, whether it's furniture, whether it's songs or anything is better and more valuable as it comes, not to embellish on it or to varnish a piece of old furniture to make it look new. Then if I heard three or four different versions of "The House Carpenter," I would just pick the one that I liked best and stick with the entire version. That's what I have done.
Most people that took interest enough to learn a ballad liked to sing it. Most old timers liked to sing and they weren't ashamed to sing. Now I have asked my mother the texts of some of her songs and she would tell me of course when she didn't really want to sing but outside of that I don't recall ever visiting anyone that could tell you one unless they sang it.
I have wrote them down. I had several ballads wrote down because I wanted my children to be able to know 'em -- I didn't want them to die along with me the way I knew 'em. Course, there's many people know the same ballads that I do, undoubtedly, but I like the way I learn 'em.
Well, the text to "Gypsy Laddie" that I sang for you is what I learned from my father. But of course I haven't heard much variation in that except in the refrain, than at the last of the stanzas'd "laddio-o" or "my lady-o" or sump'n like that. That's the parts that my father left off. But as I sang it, is the way I recall my father singing it. Yes, sir. He learned it from older people. He used to tell me where he learned his songs and there was one old lady in particular that he used to go see; she was older than he, I believe, a little bit. I think it was Wyatt Shiflett's sister that they used to get together in some home and, oh, one sing a ballad, the other sing one. They knew enough to sing all night.
Well, that was a very unusual text. It has that rhyming like "He whistled and he sang 'till the green woods sang." That's really quite unusual. That doesn't happen in ev'ry stanza. Now it could've been improved on by some poet or someone of poetic nature before ever I was around to learn it, you know, as far as I know. It was a version that I chose to sing and appreciate the most because of the rhyming of it. The wording of it. It made more sense than most that I'd heard in general. Now, whether that was like the original or not, I have no way of knowin'. It probably wasn't. All the tunes ever I heard to "Gypsy Laddie" or "The House Carpenter" were practically the same tunes to any variant of the text -- practically the same tune -- but there wouldn't be enough variation in the tune to be noticeable or for 'em to like or dislike for in comparison to the other. Most of these ballads as we are taught to believe that were based on some incident of fact, mostly in tragedy. I have read quite a bit of old English history and have learned about some of these very people that these ballads were wrote about.
Now a ballad that doesn't tell a particular story like "The Hangman," I think, is more based on the times that gold would buy a man's life. You could be hanged back in medieval times for most anything, especially theft, but if a man had gold enough he could buy his life from the gallows. And undoubtedly it had been done, and maybe this did happen to some particular young man at one time or other, but we have no tradition as to who that specific person may have been. So that is based, I'm purty sure, on that old tradition, if not actually on a real happenin' -- it could have really happened. It has happened, in effect.
The song itself wouldn't prove too int'restin' if it were not in the nature of a ballad. If it was of modern day times I never would've troubled to look. If the setting of that story hada been an electric chair I'da never bothered to learn it.
There were other songs and mostly spiritual songs or hymns by the old timers that were really good to listen to, least I loved to hear my mother sing 'em, and my father knew them too. Then there was a old folksong that was also pertainin' to religion, "Wicked Polly." I don't know whether I sang that for you or not. I don't think I did. It's not classed as an old ballad; it was an old folksong based on the sinful activities of a young girl and she came down to die, saw the handwritin' on the wall, so to speak. Not many sang as much as my father. He liked it and would sing anywhere at any time. Why, groups of people when I was a child would gather at homes to sing hymns, and hymns alone were not all they'd sing. A group would know a good old ballad or a good old folksong; they would sing it, men and women together. I mean singing at the same time. . .if they knew the same version. Well, some learned it from the others, and they could sing it together. It was usually just one person that would sing a ballad and another one maybe would sing it his way or sing a diff'rent one. There were some fine tenor, bass singers, and there were many ballads that have got lost as far as these hills are concerned because the younger generation, when the radio came in, they went in altogether for these modern-type songs. The old stuff was out with them. I expect really before I was born the ballads were more prominently sung. I can remember when, back forty-five years ago, when many people knew these ballads and sang them, and some of the young people picked them up, but they didn't seem very much inclined to pay any attention. In my belief, they just couldn't see the value of these old songs. I have run upon people that knew a particular song privately and git 'em to sing it for me. It 'as always easy to remember a song. I could hear it two or three times, and if it wasn't too long I could learn it.
Singing at friend's homes among friends was a very common occurrence. It was a custom in those days. Groups of people would gather. The people in those days, they didn't buy everything they got out of the stores. They would raise fields full of what they called pole beans. They grew on corn. Well, they'd have 'em by bushels and bushels and in the fall when they gathered the corn crop in, they'd have corn huskin's, and they'd have bean hullin's and apple butter boilin's that went on for a day and a half, a night, you know, with dances afterward. People congregated and it was a general good time at these occasions. Work went on, but it went on with merrymakin' and all. The children was always handy. And this is where the singing and the dancing took place.
I have known of such tunes as "The House Carpenter" and "The Seven Sisters" played on a banjo and sang. Banjos mostly, for there were very few guitars in this section when I was a boy and most of the music was a banjo and a fiddle. And course, I've heard songs played on a fiddle but very few people ever sang with a violin. It's mostly with a banjo.
Now this Wyatt Shiflett we was speakin' of while ago, he had a niece. They called her Lee, I believe it was. She played a banjo left-handed and upside down, and she never changed the strings. She just played it upside down,. and she could really play a banjo, and she could sing with it. Then there was Victoria Morris. I haven't heard her sing too many songs in my time. She could always play a banjo enough to sing with it, anyhow. She has played at the White House for Roosevelt and brought away a splinter of the White House as a souvenir, so they say. She told me she had. I have known her most of my life.
And the way I play the violin and play the banjo. I'll say it's a combination of the style of my father and my brother-in-law. My brother- in-law is many years older than me. He married my oldest sister. Well, he was a fine violinist for his time, and although I played with my father since I've been fifteen years old, I played more with my brother-in-law at folk dances, square dances. I played the banjo with him and then sometimes we would change instruments. I would play the violin, he would play the banjo. He was very good at both. And I'll say it was just a combination of the two that I learned from. Well, you very seldom sang a song during a dance, but they did have words. Some of the words I thought sounded silly to some of these songs and therefore I never sang 'em -- but the tunes are light. They were quick and good dancin' tunes, and we had some fine dances around the foothills of the Blue Ridge.
No one actually made any amount of money from playing or singing. I don't remember until maybe fifteen years ago that there was ever any collection of any kind ever taken up of musicians or any paid musicians. 'Course most mountain people learned to play one thing or another, and lots of times it'd be five of six differ'nt musicians, what I mean, at differ'at times. Mostly there'd only be a fiddle and a banjo, maybe two fiddles and a banjo or two banjos and a fiddle.
When one man got tired of playin' and wanted to dance, there'd be someone else was ready to take over for 'em. No paid musicians but in later years they did take up collections sometimes. A certain person though might be well-known for being an especially good musician. He'd be asked to play. He was sought after, yes, any particular good musicians.
Lots of times the figure caller that called the sets would hum the tune of the song you happened to be playin' and call the figures in that time. Some words were nonsense that went along with these old-fashioned tunes. And then some of 'em jovial songs and some were just witty songs but nonsense, you know. If a song struck me as int'restin' I did all I could to learn it and I did learn it if it struck my fancy. I didn't learn all the old ballads I ever heard.
Well, in this area in the later years, there are many colored musicians. Ev'rybody learns to play a little sump'n. But where I was raised there were no Negroes, and we didn't see a Negro once in three years in Greene County where I was born and originally brought up. I used to play and sing "John Henry" on the banjo, but I never did think it would set the world on fire as a song. But I did learn to play all those old tunes since I moved out of Greene County, since I came up here, but I didn't learn those from niggers either. The niggers around here knew the tunes and part of the songs, but very few that I have seen ever knew the complete text of the song. I actually learned 'em from white people. 'Course we have some good Negro musicians now, some, I guess, right here in this cove. There's some real good. And sometimes I've heard 'em play and dance. They were real dancers, too.
I have sang one in particular, "Barbara Allen." I used to know two or three variations of that. Well, now, that song in itself would suggest that the singer sometimes introduces some local character. 'Course Barbara Alien was always the main theme of the song, the main character in the song, and the lovesick lover dying was always the main theme, but that lover's name could be changed by whoever sang the song, and maybe it seems that he may've used some local character, introduce some local character's name into the ballad. But the ballad itself, I think, originally was an old ballad. But the variants of it, as I say, could've been embellished a little bit and differ'nt names introduced into it.
A ballad around here about "One morning in May I heard a married man to a young girl say," I've heard several people sing it. My father knew it. I don't know why it slips away. I went for so many years without any music or a-tryin' to sing or I was out tendin' to business somewhere in another state, stores and maybe a pool room or sump'n, I've worked in various places and never had occasion to remember these things.
Well, I believe it must have originated east of the Blue Ridge for the very text of the song implied it, and it implies a period that may have been maybe a hundred years ago or even seventy-five years ago. The reason I say that I have heard of some escapades of people doing the same thing and the comments made on 'em. And in crossin' the Blue Mountains to the Allegheny you would have to be on the east side of the Blue Ridge to cross 'em to git to the Allegheny. And 'course, now I imagine it was wrote along time before. Father knew the song.
Well, now, I think this happened either in southern Virginia or down in North Carolina. You've heard the song. You've heard about it. It's a folksong, in fact, the nature of a modern ballad, "Ellen Smith." It happened about fifty years ago. Her sweetheart killed her. There was a folksong about it made up on that. I knew all of it. In fact, that was the first song I ever sang. Settin' up three years old I sang "Ellen Smith." Well, it happened more than fifty years ago, maybe seventy-five, but it was sung quite popular. Then speakin' of that -- now, course they weren't from another state, the Thompsons, one of which married one of my sisters, from another county over in Nelson County, they moved up in here, and Elan Thompson and his brother Berne, they knew some old songs and old ballads. Now the one about "Lord Thomas," Elan was the one that I learned that from, what I remembered of it. I've seen Elan since. He's a great church member now where you don't go in for ballad singin' in gen'ral, but he told me he would write it down and send it to me whenever he got around to it. He seems a long time gettin' around to it. I would like to learn the rest of it.
The Morrises knew a lot of songs about the Civil War -- I've heard 'em -- and songs of the Spanish-American War. There were people in this area that served in the Spanish-American War that my father knew, you know. And I've heard war songs, most of 'em tragic from all wars -- Civil War, World War I, Spanish-American War and Mexican War.
Professor Stone was the principal of the Brown's Cove High School here many years ago. He sought after these ballads far and wide from the mountain tops on across. He acquired anything that he could, and he also tried to set it to music. And so one of his books, if I'm not mistaken, may be found in the Crozet school library. Not many complete songs, but many incomplete fragments of ballads sung by differ'nt people that could only remember or maybe never learned more'n one or two stanzas. Very few people ever knew a complete text. I also had some songs in as a child that he collected and some from my father, too.
Mervin Sandridge:
I was born and raised right here in this neighborhood. I got one first cousin. That's all's left of our family on the Sandridge side. I'm kin to all them Waltons down in Shiflett Hollow. From my mother's side.
My mother used to play the banjo, and my daddy, he used to play the fiddle. And when the telephone first come out, they'd go somewhere, you know, and set down and play on the telephone. Let people listen at 'em. Like a party line. Sort of like their own private radio station. That's right. There wasn't a radio, you know. They'd go where somebody had a telephone, and they'd set down and play over the telephone, you know, for 'em to hear it. And ev'rybody along the line would pick up and listen. Well, it was when the first telephones come out, you know. They had these old kind fastened on the wall, you know, stand and ring for hours 'fore you get anybody. You remember them?
Oh, that was back 'fore I was born, I reckon. They used to tell me about it. I'll be 41 next month. They used to sing and play. They sang some of the old songs, too. I don't never remember, 'cause 'bout the time I come along they'd serta quit, you know. You'd hardly ever hear 'em play. Maybe Daddy'd git 'bout drunk sometime, you'd hear him play once in a while. That's about all. I still got the old fiddle. Rats got in it and cut holes in it, and it got damp and busted all up, but I still got it. I learned to play the banjo from my mother originally and then learned later from the radio. Yea. Just listenin' to the radio. I was the first one ever had one, as I can remember. I was just a fellow. I don't know how old I was. But I had one of these little bitty ones. It' as just a little bitty thing -- batt'ry. The first one I'd ever seen had the car batt'ry -- the wet batt'ry. Then this here'n come out, was in a little bitty suitcase and had a dry cell batt'ry. And Lawdy mercy, on Saturday nights you'd go to somebody's house, you know. Then during that week they'd want you to go up to their house next Saturday night. Then you'd go somewhere else next Saturday night. It was just like that, just 'round and 'round. Ev'rybody want you to come on Saturday night and play the Grand Ole Opry, you know. Then before the radio, they used to want you to come around to play, but when the radio came then they wanted to hear the radio.
But I's the only one that had one. There's very few that was around, but most that was around, was in the houses, was played by car batt'ry. I was, oh, 'bout 12 I reckon -- 12 or 13. So in the mid-thirties was when radio come in here. That's the first one I ever knowed of around here. And on the early radio they played a lot of country music. That was all we heard; we didn't hear nothin' else but the regular old hillbilly music. The radio station was for Nashville -- that was the main one if you got music. That was just on Saturday nights. But they used to come on at nine o'clock, stayed on 'til one. During the rest of the week they used to have programs come on early in the mornin'. But it didn't go all day and all night. Just certain times. They'd come on maybe fifteen or thirty minutes in the mornin'. That was it. During the week you didn't hear no music. Only thing you hear was news or these western pictures, you know, like they used to make in stores, you know. People got to playin' less music for themselves and listenin' to more on the radio. They'd just rather listen at the radio and then this television come out. Well, electric first come, then ev'rybody, you know, got radios then. The electric come in here; it was somewhur right around, I would say about '38, '39. The real late thirties. Then that was just through the main line, see. Now you take anybody lived, say, back off of the road, they didn't have it. They just run the one line through and that was it. But the last few years, you know, they run it ev'rywhur, back in the mountains and ev'rywhur else. That really got people out of the old way. Ev'rybody kindly felt 'shamed or sump'n other, and got out of the regular way of livin'. Try to live too high and all that stuff.
Now about that same time, the park came up through here. I don't think the park actually done anything as far as changin' people. It moved a lot of the people out of the mountain out. It did do that. Well, that changed a lot. A lot of people, they moved out and they didn't like it, then they went on other places. Lot of these people back in this edge of the Blue Ridge here -- a lot of them people were younger. Some people got out and went to Pennsylvania and Baltimore and places like that. Then the old people had to git out and they went, too, you know. Then the skyline drive come through. It was like the electric and radio and the park comin' in and the roads comin' through just about one time. I'd say in the late thirties and forties, that's when ev'rything changed right then.
Louis Shiflett:
Rollins Shiflett was my father's name. Rollins M. Shiflett. And my mother's name was Sarah J. Shiflett. Both grandfathers was Shifletts of a different people. I don't know why; don't know just where they come from but they was different Shifletts. They had the same named, but they was different people. My father was born in 1876, no, in 1872, and my mother was born in 1876. Both of them was born in Greene County, I think. Let's see. She used to sing "Mama's sick and gone away, a long time ago." That was a song. "Mama's sick and gone away, a long time ago. Mama's sick and gone away, po' girl I know." That was a song that. . . it's kinda like. . . I don't know. I used to hear her sing, if I could remember, but it's been so long. I'm about to forget all them things 'cause I don't keep it in memory. People used to keep these things in memory by telling them and everything, but since they're not doing that, they're about to pass from me. There are several more songs that I know if I could just think of them. In fact, I can't half recall things really I know, anymore.
Dave Morris:
Older people, you know, used to sing. Some old-time people, mostly. Old man Ben Shiflett used to sing, Hester's daddy and her mother and then differ'nt ones. And I believed there's some ballads here one time. I don't know what ever become of them. Had 'em wrote down, you know. I used to write some. Yea. We have had 'em here. Used to be a lotta songs people used to know, many old-time songs, but the older people died out and they just quit singin' 'em, quit botherin' about it. People'd go to see one another at night, sometimes stay awhile at night and they'd git to singin' for one another, asked 'em to sing pieces, you know. I've sung a many a time down here for these little children of Mac's. Well, then differ'nt ones could sing, you know. They'd sing one piece, and then another'n would sing a piece, them that knowed it. Now for the church work, there'd always be hymns and sometimes they'd git to singin' spiritual songs, you know. They weren't what you might say hymns, but they was spiritual songs.
Now when they got together and had a dance, let's say, when they done that, there weren't much of that kinda singin' goin' on. Just now and then there might be some particular pieces, they might git a man or a woman, whoever knowed it, maybe git 'em to sing it. They'd just git some certain ones and say, "I want you to sing that piece agin for me." Well, they'd stop and sing it. Stop and listen to it. But mostly they sung them pieces when they'd git together at night. Sometimes they'd have a little play or sometimes a butter boilin' and have music. Didn't have much of that singing then. They'd mostly just play then. Fiddle and the banjo. Well, they'd dance flat-footed dancin' and call figures. I used to call figures. Four-handed reel and eight in a set. Grapevine Twist. And then when you call the figures the other ones listened to it. You'd have a fiddler or a banjo player and then you'd have somebody callin' the figures too. Yep, yes sir.
There was a fellow, name's Dean Shiflett. Linkus mighta been his daddy. I don't know whether he was his daddy or his brother. I heard Dean play the fiddle a heap of times. He'd go about and play for the people differ'nt places. He was a good fiddler. He'd just carry it under his arm or carry it in his hand when he went. Didn't put it in a box or nothin'. Yes. I asked him how he went in the night and didn't fall and hurt his fiddle. He said ever' time he seed he's gonna fall he'd throw his fiddle up like that. Save it.
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