LURE AND LORE OF THE MISSISSIPPI
Hesseltine, William B.
Lure And Lore Of The Mississippi STEAMBOATIN' DAYS: Folk Songs of the River Packet Era, by Mary Wheeler. Louisiana State University Press. $2.75. DEEP DELTA COUNTRY, by Harnett T. Kane. Duell,...
...It is a land dominated by the river which alternately brings rich life and violent death to the people...
...There are songs of boats, giving sometimes a complete list of captain, crew, and cargo...
...Mary Wheeler, musicologist, has gathered the stories and fragments of song that survive from the day when the packet boats steamed on the Mississippi and the Ohio...
...Two recent books, centering in different segments of the river system, illustrate the range of lore about the river...
...There are spirituals in their native dress, voicing a mingling of faith and theology, love songs of earthy quality, and the inevitable ballads of lawlessness and violence...
...In this dank land there live in amphibious confusion shrimps and shrimpers, Creole French, Dalmatians, muskrats, Filipinos, Italians, lily growers, Spanish, Irish, octaroons, Chinese, oyster farmers, Portuguese, remede-workers, and the strange loups-garous who assume the shape of animals at will...
...Reviewed by William B. Hesseltine THE Father of Waters is a strange and turbulent stream, and strange and turbulent are the folk who have lived on its waters or lined its banks...
...The reason why I asked you, I want to borrow some...
...AT the far southern end of the river live another strange collection of folk who, like the packet-boat Negroes, kaint let the river alone...
...It is a pleasant book, always interesting and sometimes penetrating in its observations on the ways of life among the human children of the Father of Waters...
...But mostly, the roustabouts sang of the river and the hold it had upon them...
...Author Kane has traced the Delta's story in informal historical outline from the days of the French to the new industrialism of the Second World War...
...She has sought out the old Negroes who worked on the boats in their youth and has recorded the half-remembered songs which they sang...
...Many are work songs, ranging from rhythmic chants to paens for payday: "Oh captain, captain, have the money come...
...Duell, Sloan, and Pearce...
...Ole Man River has just kept rolling along while ships have sought its shifting channel and men have snatched a dangerous livelihood from its depths...
...Out of the strange fascination of the mighty Mississippi have come a^host of myths and legends, of songs and stories...
...Harnett Kane, in Deep Delta Country, tells the story of the two swampy parishes that lie along the river between New Orleans and the Gulf...
...With a wealth of anecdote, and a liberal dose of local color, he has assessed the medley of forces—the various migrations, the Battles of New Orleans, the era of sugar, and rice, and muskrats, and prohibition, and piracy, and pilotage, and politics—that have left their marks upon the land...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 14
