Stillwater Tragedy, The

DESCRIPTION: "From Anapest the muse has fled On Iambic to dwell And hath a woeful narrative In prosody to tell." The Stillwater River was icy and in full spate. Many cross by at the ferry, but two fall in the river and drown. It takes a week to find the first body
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1837 (MidwestFolklore)
KEYWORDS: death drowning river
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Mar 5, 1809 - William Iddings and Joseph Teague drown in the Stillwater River (West Milton, Miami County, Ohio)
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
MidwestFolklore, Opal Thornburg, "The Stillwater Tragedy: A Quaker Ballad," Volume 1, Number 1 (April 1951), pp. 55-62, "The Stillwater Tragedy" (1 text)
NOTES [151 words]: This is terrible poetry even if you ignore the strange invocation of metrical forms at the beginning, and at 56 stanzas it's about 40 verses longer than it needs to be. There is no hint that it was ever sung. But Opal Thornburg's notes give strong evidence that it was transmitted by oral tradition, so I include it.
West Milton, Ohio, is a small town just north of Dayton, Ohio; the Stillwater River flows to the east of the town. There is still a Quaker church nearby, though it is instantly obvious that there are now many non-Quakers in the area as well.
There are currently four islands in the Stillwater River as it passes West Milton (according to Google Maps), although two of them fail to appear in the satellite photos. But I would guess the island in the song is the one just south of the "E Tipp Pike" (Highway 571) bridge over the river; that looks like the most likely place for a ferry. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: MiF11055

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