In folk music there has always been a tradition of memorializing sensational events such as mining disasters, murders, and train wrecks in song, and the April 14-15, 1912 wreck of SS TITANIC was no exception. Within a few years of the tragedy, songwriters were making up and singing lyrics about it.

According to Newman I. White's 1928 publication AMERICAN NEGRO FOLKSONGS, the earliest lyrics about TITANIC were sung as early as 1915 or 1916 by black singers living in the Hackleburg, Alabama area. A later writer, Jeff Place, would comment in notes he contributed to THE AMERICAN ANTHOLOGY OF FOLK MUSIC that African Americans found it "noteworthy and ironic" that company policies of the White Star Line, the owners of TITANIC, kept people of color from sailing aboard her, and some attributed her sinking to divine retribution in consequence. This may account for these lyrics, some variant of which may be found in most versions: "But the Lord's almighty hand said this ship would never land/Oh it was sad when the great ship went down!"

The great North Carolina folklorist Frank C. Brown collected a variant in the mountains around 1920. However, the next fairly well-known version of the song was written, according to his Wikipedia biography, by Ernest V. "Pop" Stoneman (1893-1968) in 1924. Pop Stoneman is better remembered nowadays as the father of fourteen children, some of whom became professional musicians themselves (the most famous being banjo-playing Roni, a member of the cast of HEE HAW for many years), but he was in his day quite a well-known singer and songwriter and arranger. Pop recorded his original version of "The Sinking of the TITANIC" for Edison Recordings in 1928. In the Wikipedia article, this song is said to be country music's first million selling record--a matter of some dispute, since the same is said of 1924's "The Prisoner's Song", recorded by light opera singer Marion Try Slaughter under the pseudonym Vernon Dalhart. Dalhart himself recorded a version of one TITANIC variant in the 1920s, under the title "The TITANIC (It Was Sad When that Great Ship Went Down)".

That line "it was sad when that great ship went down" appears in nearly all variants of the ballad. It's certainly a feature of the one recorded in the 1950s by Roy Claxton Acuff (1903-1992), the "King of Country Music." Roy Acuff had begun his career as a country singer in the 1930s, when a sunstroke followed by a nervous breakdown put paid to his dreams of a career in professional baseball. It was the sudden realization of the approaching anniversary of the sinking that reminded me of Mr. Roy's version of the song, sung in that mournful, full-out, often clueless as to key, but nonetheless beloved and distinctive voice of his. It's been playing on the soundtrack in my head for days now.

Mr. Roy's version is, at three verses and choruses, considerably shorter than others on the same theme, but it hits the high points about Monday morning ("about one o'clock") when the ship sank, about the retribution of God, and about the rich refusing to get into the lifeboats with the poor--although there is some reason to think this last may have had less to do with class distinctions than with fears that people trying to heave themselves out of the icy Atlantic waters into the lifeboats would capsize them. And, of course, there is this sentiment: "it was sad when that great ship went down."

It's a bit of a relief to turn to a somewhat lighter treatment of the sinking of TITANIC. The great North Carolina singer and guitarist Arthel "Doc" Watson recorded a song called "Travelin' Man" on his 1967 album BALLADS FROM DEEP GAP that tells a story of a hobo and gambler named Joe who, among other feats, just misses disaster on TITANIC, escaping her fate through superhuman powers:

Joe hoboed the great TITANIC, thought he'd try out the ocean blue,
When he seen that ol' iceberg comin', right off of that boat he flew!
All of them passengers hollered and laughed and said look at what a great big fool,
But while that ol' boat was sinkin' Joe was shootin' craps in Liverpool.

For more information about these songs and singers, check out their Wikipedia sites. The keywords "it was sad when that great ship went down" brings up nearly all of the song variants, while the names of the singers/songwriters bring up their biographies.

And yes, it IS still sad that that great ship went down. It has, however, become less of a tragedy that actually happened, I think, than a metaphor for any doomed enterprise that has the word "hubris" attached to it. Some have even applied it to the current Bush presidency; I'll leave it up to historians whether that's a premature designation or not.

And until next time, fair thee well.

This coming Monday, April 14th, will be the ninety-sixth anniversary of the sinking of SS TITANIC. This liner, the pride of Great Britain's White Star line, struck an iceberg that had drifted dangerously far into the North Atlantic shipping lanes at roughly 11:40 PM EST on April 14th, 1912, and sank within two hours. Of roughly 2200 passengers and crew, some 1500 were lost.

Whether due to the hubris of the company that built her or the hyperbole of the media (strictly print, in those days) who breathlessly detailed her luxurious appointments and gossiped about her first class passengers, TITANIC was proclaimed unsinkable. She was not, and was proven not, on her maiden voyage. Some religious people deemed this misfortune a judgment of God; others pointed out that a disproportionate number of the dead came from third class and steerage--the equivalent of "cheap seats." And of course, there were reports of premontions. Some of the more outstanding such came years before that alpha and omega voyage.

One of the eeriest of these "premonitions" involves a book called FUTILITY: Or, The Wreck of the Titan, published in 1898 by an obscure American writer and journalist named Morgan Robertson (1866-1915). Not only did Robertson give his fictional liner a nearly identical name to TITANIC; the respective sizes and displacements of the two ships were virtually identical, as were details as to the number of passengers aboard the two ships and a serious dearth of lifeboats. And most uncannily, both ships struck icebergs and were fatally damaged on the starboard (right)front, in the month of April. (A table showing the similarities between story and truth can be found at http://members.aol.com/ken63728/morgan.htm.)

Arguments have been made that Robertson, far from showing premonitory ability, made a series of educated guesses--somewhat in the manner of Jules Verne and his nuclear submarines and trips to the moon and the like. But then one runs up on the striking similarities between TITAN and TITANIC--and I don't mind saying, I find it odd at the least.

Another writer, the British progressive/muckraking journalist/editor William Thomas Stead, had published TWO alleged premonitions of TITANIC's demise nearly a decade before Robertson's story. On March 22, 1886, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._T._Stead), Stead published a story with a title as unwieldy as Robertson's called "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, By a Survivor", in which he detailed how a liner is sunk after hitting another ship, with great loss of life because of--you guessed it--a shortage of lifeboats. (Have to say, this one reminds me more of the 1956 ANDREA DORIA disaster than of TITANIC, although the circumstances are markedly different.) He drove the point home with this sentence: "This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats." In an 1892 story called "From the Old World to the New" Stead tells a story of a White Star liner called MAJESTIC that rescues suvivors from another ship that collided with an iceberg.

Stead was interested in the paranormal, and was also known to draw pictures of ocean liners and of himself drowning--which may have been the most true premonitions he ever had. Stead was friends with the palm reader Cheiro (aka Count Louis Hamon), whose 1922 experience with the ghost of Pharaoh Akhenaton's daughter might be a blog topic for another day. In 1912 Cheiro gave Stead a "reading" and told him under no circumstances should he travel by water in April. Stead, however, was committed to attend a peace conference being held in that month at New York's Carnegie Hall, at the specific request of President William Howard Taft. In those days before air travel, he had no choice save to travel by ship. His choice? The new, unsinkable luxury liner TITANIC.

Stead drowned on April l5, 1912, at the age of sixty-two.

Gives me the willies just to think about it.

On that watery note, fair thee well.

Yes, yes, YESYESYESYESYES!!!!!

Our Lady Vols have won their eighth national championship tonight!!!! Last game for seniors Alexis Hornbuckle, Shannon Bobbitt, Alberta Auguste, and Nikki Anosike, and for Candace Parker, who is foregoing her last year of eligibility to go in the WNBA draft.

Lady Vols 64, Stanford Cardinal 48. A long hard road with another championship banner for Pat Summitt and her team.

Yeah, I know it's crude to gloat--but CONGRATULATIONS, LADY VOLS!!!!!

Hey guys--I had a yearly physical this AM. It was about the same as usual: I arrived spot on time, 8:45 AM, the doctor arrived at 10 o'clock-- Bloodwork left me with bruises, a pap smear--the female equivalent of that prostate exam you guys SO look forward to(insert evil grin here)--been prodded, squeezed and squished from one end to the other--tinkled in a cup--the only thing they didn't ask for was a stool sample, and I didn't remind them of that one.

It left me feeling, quite frankly, ill-used. I go back in six weeks for results.

And I got a treat afterwards. Willard came up and took me for the appointment, and when I finally got out we rode up to our migratory wildfowl sanctuary at Fort Loudon State Historical Park. This park commemorates an obscure incident from the French and Indian War (1757-1763). This time of year, though, it has my favorites of all the blossoming trees: eastern redbuds



and the flowering dogwood:



That last, with its four petals tipped with an odd little brownish red splotch, has a legend attached to it: it's said that the splotches represent the wounds of Christ.

The redbuds are in full bloom; the dogwoods are just beginning, a few in sunny areas bloomed out while others lag behind, the tiny blossoms a soft foamy green color until the petals spread full out and turn that lovely creamy white.

And on that flowery note, fair thee well.