"O Lud Gals!" with Johnny Lloyd at Batteaux and Banjos 2025

Описание: "O Lud Gals!" with Johnny Lloyd at Batteaux and Banjos 2025 (https://hbwhea.wixsite.com/batteaux-a...)

"O Lud Gals" was first published by Dan Emmett of the Virginia Minstrels in 1843. Like much early minstrel music, however, it likely originates in an older Southern, and probably African American, folk song. The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore contains a corn-shucking song from Davidson County, NC entitled "Up Roanoke and Down the River" which appears to be related to "O Lud Gals." Described as "the old corn song of long ago," the lyrics, referring to the Roanoke River which runs through parts of Virginia and North Carolina, bear similarities.

Also in North Carolina, we have a fiddle tune called "Roaring River" collected by the great North Carolina folklorist Bascom Lamer Lunsford in 1898 from fiddler Frank Embler (1851-1914) of Macedonia, North Carolina in Buncombe County. While, at first glance, the tune seems unrelated to Emmett's "O Lud Gals," Lunsford associated the set of lyrics which closely overlap Emmett's song.

Another point of connection is a tune also called "Roaring River" which appears in Solomon Northrup's "Twelve Years a Slave” (1854) where it is described as "A Refrain of the Red River Plantation" in Louisiana. The fact that Northrup's master Edwin Epps came originally from a North Carolina family with deep Virginia roots and was infamously fond of fiddle music and dancing, suggests that this version may also have origins in North Carolina or Virginia despite the strong association with the Mississippi and Arkansas region which we get from the minstrel version. It is equally likely that Epps' slaves also came from his home region. The lyrics given by Northrup are clearly related to "O Lud Gals." Another phenomenon which be at work here and occurred often, is that the minstrel song which was inspired by an actual Southern folk song, has made its way back South and merged again with the folk version a generation later.