“Silver Jack”
Description
Robert Waite condemns the Bible as fictitious and Jesus as "just a common man." Silver Jack proceeds to beat the "infidel" until he admits the error of his ways.
Notes
John "Silver Jack" Driscoll seems to have been the subject of this ballad; a quarrelsome, fighting man from the Saginaw valley of Michigan, he apparently fought too hard one time, and was sent to prison. To quote T. G. Belanger: "He died with his boots off, in the Ottawa Hotel, in L'Anse, Michigan, April 1, 1895. Beside him ...were found the following: a bottle of cough medicine, $85.00 in bills, and a note: 'This will be enough to bury me.'" - PJS
This particular example of Christian charity and peacefulness is suspected by both Hudson and Lomax (without supporting evidence) of having been originally published in a newspaper. Given its anti-intellectual tone (stanza 1 describes Waite as "Kind of cute and smart and tonguey; Guess he was a graduate"), I am inclined to doubt this. - RBW
I'm not; newspapers could be rabidly anti-intellectual. Read the _Chicago Tribune_ during the McCormick era, or the early Hearst press. - PJS
But would any newspaperman claim that "the spread of infidelity Was checked in camp that day"? - RBW
Cross references
- cf. "Clementine" (tune)
- cf. "Bung Yer Eye" (character)
- cf. "The Protestant Maid" (subject: religious conversion) and references there
References
- Laws C24, "Silver Jack"
- Rickaby 32, "Silver Jack" (1 text)
- Hudson 78, pp. 206-207, "Silver Jack" (1 text)
- Lomax-FSNA 60, "Silver Jack" (1 text, 1 tune)
- Beck 38, "Lumberjack's Revival" (1 text)
- DT 606, SILVRJAK(*)
- ADDITIONAL: Hal Cannon, editor, _Cowboy Poetry: A Gathering_, Giles M. Smith, 1985, pp. 21-23, "Silver Jack" (1 text)
- Roud #705
- BI, LC24