William Owen

DESCRIPTION: "Come, all you men who have come here... To see my body put to death and buried in the clay." The singer warns against bad company. Lewis Collins lured the singer astray; he shot General Hyder and will be executed. He regrets leaving his family
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1950 (Boswell)
KEYWORDS: warning death gallows-confession
FOUND IN: US(Ap)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Wolfe/Boswell-FolkSongsOfMiddleTennessee 47, pp. 81-82, "William Owen" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #11035
NOTES [437 words]: Although this song is called "William Owen," that name never occurs in the text; the only names it contains are "Lewis Collins" and "General Hyder."
Wolfe was unable to identify either one, and I grant Collins is probably beyond identification unless we can identify Hyder.
Searching for a general under the name "Hyder" produces nothing. Neither does "Haider" or "Heyder." Phisterer's comprehensive list of Union generals shows that there was no Union officer with that name, and Boatner reveals no Confederate officer so named.
There was a War of 1812 general named Adair: John Adair, 1757-1840 (Heidler/Heidler, p. 1). But he was not murdered and obviously lived to a ripe old age.
The higher likelihood, however, is that it is a Civil War general. At least one high-profile general was murdered during the war: William "Bull" Nelson was killed by one of his junior officers, Jefferson C. Davis, who amazingly was not punished for the crime (Boatner, pp. 226, 586). I don't think Nelson can be considered the inspiration of the song.
I can think of two faint possibilities, though, both based on distortions of the victim's first name rather than surname. One is Union General Adelbert Ames (1835-1933), who after the war became reconstruction governor of Mississippi (Boatner, p. 12). He obviously wasn't murdered (in fact, HTIECivilWar, p. 11, says that he was the last surviving full-ranked Civil War general), but as a carpetbagger official, he must have been deeply hated -- indeed, I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Jesse James gang wanted to go after him. He resigned his governorship of Mississippi in 1876 to avoid impeachment (HTIECivilWar, p. 11)
A slightly stronger candidate is General E. R. S. Canby (1817-1873). It will be evident that "General E. R." could easily become "General Hyder." And Canby was murdered -- not by Whites but by Modoc Indians in California in January 1873 while negotiating with them (HTIECivilWar, p. 111). Bunting, p. 121, says that he was unarmed, and that a local Indian agent was murdered with him (and notes that, ironically, this was done during the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, who -- almost alone among nineteenth century presidents -- wanted to treat the Indians relatively well; Bunting, p. 117)
What's more, during his Civil War service Canby was injured by guerillas while commanding in Mississippi. He survived, but was severely wounded. Perhaps confused memories of these two incidents might have inspired this song.
Or, of course, "General Hyder" could be a distortion of something completely different. That is probably the most likely explanation. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 2.6
File: BosWo47

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