Songs & Ballads Of The Maine Lumberjacks

A Collection Of Traditional & Folk Songs of the area with Lyrics & Commentaries -online book

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	Lovewells Fight, I
	This famous American ballad gives a substantially correct account of the battle between Captain John Lovewell and the Indians at Pigwacket (Pequawket), now Fryeburg, Maine, in May, 1725. The earliest text known is that printed by Farmer and Moore in Collections, Historical and Miscellaneous; and Monthly Literary Journal, Concord, New Hampshire, February, 1824, III, 64-66, and entitled "Lovewell's Fight. Song." The editors remark: "The following Song was written about one hundred years since. . . . For many years, it was sung throughout a considerable portion of New-Hampshire and Massachusetts. . . . Through the kindness of a friend, to whom we are also indebted for a copy of the song, we are favored with some notices of Captain Love-weirs family. . . ." It is reprinted (not with minute accuracy) in E. E. Hale's New England History in Ballads (Boston, 1903), pp. 69-75; in G. C. Eggleston's American War Ballads and Lyrics, I, 14-17, and elsewhere. I have reproduced the song exactly as it stands in the Collections, our only authority for the text. It may forestall misapprehension to add that Eggleston is mis­taken in stating (I, 13) that the song "has been preserved in Penhallow's * History of the Wars of New England with the Eastern Indians,' 1726." Penhallow gives a good account of Lovewell's expedition (pp. 112-117), but he neither preserves this song nor in any way alludes to it; in fact, he says nothing about any song or poem on the subject. The error undoubtedly arose from the fact that the ballad (from the Collections) is appended (with an exact indication of source) to the Cincinnati reprint of Penhallow (1859), pp. 129-131. The New-England Courant for May 31,1725, contains the fol­lowing advertisement: "Just Published, and sold by J. Franklin in Union-Street, The Voluntier's March; being a full and true