I Can Whip the Scoundrel

DESCRIPTION: "The Yankees came to Baldwin, They came up in the rear, They thought they'd find old Abner, But Abner wasn't there." The singer declares he can "whip the scoundrel That stole old Abner's shoes." He is a prisoner but hopes to fight again
AUTHOR: (earliest form, "Billy Patterson," by Daniel Decatur Emmett)
EARLIEST DATE: 1950 (Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida); Emmett's song is from 1859
KEYWORDS: soldier Civilwar clothes floatingverses
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Feb 1864 - The Olustee campaign
FOUND IN: US(MW, SE)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida, #7, "I Can Whip the Scoundrel" (1 text, incomplete, 1 tune)
Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 225-226, "I Can Whip the Scoundrel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #5019
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "As I Went Down to Newbern" (lyrics, theme, subject?)
NOTES [4713 words]: I'm going to leave my initial notes below, because they apply to the song as it currently exists, but Carter C. has resolved the questions I had; his quite impressive research (along with many texts of the song) is available on Mudcat.org. He finds that both "As I Went Down to Newbern" and "I Can Whip the Scoundrel" are derived from an 1859 song, "Billy Patterson," by the famous Daniel Decatur Emmett, apparently first printed in 1863. This song was based on a joke from the 1830s, and obviously predates the American Civil War. Clearly many people took the core of the Emmett song and adapted it to a local incident. For more on the original, and its evolution, I refer you to the Mudcat thread "Origins: I Can Whip the Scoundrel'; my earlier notes about this particular version follow (now somewhat expanded) follow:
This song is clearly derived from the same original as "As I Went Down to Newbern." It's not clear which is the earlier, but "Newburn" almost certainly refers to the earlier event, so it is the more likely to be older.
Carter C. also resolved my biggest question, the meaning of the reference to "Abner." All this will be covered below; I just want to set the background.
The question is, what event does this song refer to? Silber suggests the 1864 Florida campaign which tried to divide southern Florida from the rest of the Confederacy -- an attack foiled at Baldwin, near Jacksonville. But this was a very obscure campaign, and the song doesn't have enough detail to really identify it. If correct, the reference is to the Battle of Olustee (Ocean Pond), Florida, February 20, 1864, in which a relatively large Union force commanded by General Truman Seymour attacked piecemeal and was repulsed in the only real battle fought on Florida soil (HTIECivilWar, p. 545). On the whole, this makes sense.
Florida's population at the time was small, and the coastline indefensible; the Union could take points on the coast at almost any time, and the Union took Fernandina, Jacksonville, and St. Augustine early in the war (Nulty, pp. 42-45). In fact, they took Jacksonville multiple times, and abandoned it, with the third occupation starting in March 1863 (Nulty, p. 50); one of the effects of all these occupations and de-occupations was to recruit Blacks into the Union army (Nulty, pp. 56-57).
The 1864 event was a complicated campaign. "By the end of 1863, there was sufficient reason for the Federal government to take an interest in Florida. It was a source of recruits for the black regiments in the Department of the South, it represented a major source of commissary supplies for the Confederacy, and the Confederacy [which was dependent on its railroads but had no ability to make new rails or engines] planned to move scarce rails from the area to more strategic locations. Additionally, there was a strong possibility that Florida [or at least the Florida peninsula] could be severed from the Confederacy and restored to the Union, and a port in Florida might be opened to alleviate both the local economy and enhance certain people in the right positions. Troops were available, transportation was available, and the area was vulnerable -- a minimum risk that had good prospect of returning a maximum gain" (Nulty, p 75). The goals, according to Boyd, p. 3, was to "provide an outlet for the products of the state, deprive Confederate armies outside Florida from supplies from the state, recruit Blacks, and take steps toward returning Florida to the Union." Given the lack of defenders, it should have been easy. All that was needed was a competent commander.
And so it was that area commander Quincy A. Gillmore on February 4, 1864 sent off Truman Seymour's force (a de facto division) for Florida (Nulty, p. 76).
The Federal force was strong, but its officers were dubious. Seymour, the expedition commander, was the only general officer, and his experience as a division commander was limited -- mostly he had taken charge when a senior officer was disabled. Even as a brigade comander, he had once gotten so disoriented and dazed as to have lost track of his entire brigade (SearsGates, p. 299). His brigade commanders were all inexperienced, and many of his troops were Black. The war showed that Black soldiers were just fine -- but their officers often weren't; they had a bad tendency to be men who had failed in other roles and took a job in a Black regiment to gain or keep an officer's ranking. And Seymour had so little transport that his men had to carry six days' rations (Nulty, pp. 76-77). Plus the troops had been reorganized just before the campaign (Boyd, pp. 4-5), so the officers generally didn't know their commands!
The invaders made a successful surprise landing at Jacksonville, which had been largely abandoned by its inhabitants after all those invasions and de-invasions (Nulty, pp. 81-82). Boyd, p. 4, suggests that not even Seymour knew where they were going until they were at sea; General Gillmore kept it secret. What is certain is that Seymour would be in charge of the troops that went out from Jacksonville.
Baldwin was a critical point; Florida had only three railroads, one a very short branch in the west that didn't connect to anything else in the state, the other two running from Tallahassee to Jacksonville (with Olustee being the next major stop east of Confederate commander Finnegan's base at Lake City, and Baldwin somewhat beyond that) and the other from the Gulf coast at Cedar Key to the Atlantic coast at Fernandina (Amelia Island). Very roughly, they were equivalent to modern Interstate Highway 10 for the east-west route and to US Highway 301 toward Gainesville and Floriay Highway 24 from there to Cedar Key. These two lines (neither of which connected to anything outside Florida) met at Baldwin. Thus, in 1864, Baldwin was the key to Florida's internal communications (Nulty, pp. 20-23). Olustee was a little to the west on the Tallahassee-Jacksonville rail.
The Federals had another advantage in addition to surprise. The Confederate commander in the area was Brigadier General Joseph Finegan, who was no soldier; he was a lawyer jumped up directly to the status of General by the Confederate government (Nulty, p. 19). He was placed in charge of East Florida (with headquarters in Lake City) in 1862, but he was not assigned any regular troops (Nulty, pp. 36-37). When the Union forced landed in Jackson, Finegan had just two regular battalions and a few odd companies, plus a little cavalry and artillery -- fewer than 1300 men, and those scattered (Nulty, p. 84). General P. G. T. Beauregard, who commanded the whole southeast coast, was scrambling to find troops and to locate an officer who could either command Finegan's forces or who could take over in Charleston so Beauregard, who was based there, could head to Florida (Nulty, p. 83).
Once landed, it took the Union forces until the afternoon of February 8 to get started, but Seymour finally sent out a strong column -- although it was not under Seymour but under one of his subordinates, Colonel Guy V. Henry. The first major force they encountered was the Second Florida Cavalry under Lt. Colonel Abner McCormick -- clearly the "Abner" of the song. Cavalry at this time functioned primarily as scouts, but McCormick failed utterly in this task; the Union column bypassed him to attack an artillery camp several miles away, capturing several guns but letting McCormack's troops escape (Nulty, pp. 86-88; Boyd, p. 5). I would assume this was when Abner's shoes were stolen; his 202 men (Nulty, p. 128) did not play a great part in the battle. (Either that, or the reference to his shoes refers in some obscure way to the capture of the guns.)
The Union forces didn't inflict many casualties, but they captured several artillery pieces, then pushed on to Baldwin (Nulty, pp. 89-92), where both General Seymour and General Gillmore joined the troops. At this point, the Union forces seemed to have won; they had captured their single most important objective and blocked both of Florida's two railroad lines.
After that, General Gillmore went back to Jacksonville, then to South Carolina, leaving General Seymour in charge of the advance (Nulty, pp. 96-97, 114). That may have been a mistake. Gillmore also turned passive, giving the Confederates time to deal with the situation (Nulty, p. 105). Gillmore apparently wanted to have the Federals fortify the region around Baldwin, thus controlling the eastern ends of the railroads. At the time Seymour took Baldwin, Finegan had just 490 infantry and 110 cavalry at Lake City, the logical next stop (Boyd, p. 8); Seymour could have swallowed him whole. But Seymour, despite saying he wanted to do more, waited a week, losing most of the benefits of surprise (Nulty, pp. 115-117)
The Confederates may have been weak and Finegan no soldier, but at least he started gathering troops. When the Federals backed off from a cavalry raid on Lake City, Finegan pushed forward from Lake City to Olustee, which he regarded as easier to defend (Boyd, p. 9). And, on February 8, the Confederates started to send troops from outstate -- although, because of their incomplete railroad network, it would take them about a week to arrive (Nulty, p. 93). The troops General Beauregard found were two Georgia brigades under Alfred H. Colquitt and Colonel George P. Harrison (Boyd, p. 12). They were pretty good troops -- Colquitt's brigade had been part of the Army of Northern Virginia (in D. H. Hill's division) until after Chancellorsville, when Robert E. Lee traded Colquitt's troops for the brigade of Junius Daniel (Freeman, volume II, p. 710; on p. 664, he suggests that this was because Robert E. Lee was dissatisfied with Colquitt's performance at Chancellorsville. Other scholars also seem to agree that Colquitt's performance had been inept. Yet the brigade had fought with grim heroism; at Antietam, for instance,the 6th Georgia -- of which Colquitt had been colonel -- "was all but wiped out. Of the 250 men it brought to the Cornfield [on the left at Antietam], 24 survived unhurt" (SearsLandscape, p. 211). I seem to recall reading that the regiment -- which would normally be commanded by a colonel -- was led by a lieutenant. Given a chance, they would hit the Federals hard.
(It is possible that Chancellorsville cost him his brigadier's star; Nulty consistently calls him a colonel at Olustee. However, Boatner, p. 166, says he was made brigadier general September 1, 1862, and every other source I've checked agrees that he was a brigadier. Promotions to general had to be approved by the Confederate congress, which sometimes did not act on the promotions, so Colquitt could have lost his promotion. But no other source mentions this. The reports I checked in OfficialRecords.I.35.2 call him a brigadier.)
The reinforcements arrived just in time (Nulty, pp. 121-122), and their 2000+ men gave Finegan the forces he needed to stand up to the Federals.
Nulty, p. 123, estimates 4600 Confederate infantrymen, with 12 cannon and fewer than 500 cavalry; the Federals he estimates to have had 5500 men and 16 cannon. Boyd, p. 16, also credits the Federals with 5500 men and 16 guns. Apparently the Federals had less firepower than that number implies, since a number had recently switched their weapons, meaning that some did not know how to use their pieces, and a number of the replacement rifles were defective (Boyd, p. 24).
Seymour, after sitting around for a week, suddenly got very active on February 20, 1864, heading west to make railroad operations even harder for the Confederates (Nulty, p. 124). He sent his cavalry ahead , but they didn't really scout; they just barged ahead with little attention to security (Nulty, p. 125) -- a sign, perhaps, of everyone's inexperience? Nulty, p. 213, concludes that Seymour moved "in the middle of enemy-occupied territory with little knowledge of the strength or location of the enemy and with inadequate logistic support" -- which seems to be true from everything I have read. The Confederates weren't doing much better as far as scouting was concerned; Abner McCormick's cavalry was sort of watching one flank, but McCormick wasn't even in charge the whole time (Nulty, p. 131). But the Confederates, being on the defensive, had less need for intelligence.
The battle started with leading elements of the Federal cavalry, and Barton's brigade, skirmishing with Colquitt's brigade, probably Finegan's best unit (Nulty, pp. 131-133, with map on p. 132; Boyd, pp. 17-18, with maps on pp. 19-21). FInegan assigned the field command to Colquitt (Boyd, p. 18) even as he sent more forces than just Colquitt's brigade to the battle site.
Neither side was ready for a fight, but it sounds as if the Confederates, who had their units in a relatively compact mass and were defending anyway, had the better of it. Boyd, p. 36, says "the entire Confederate force was quickly brought upon the field in fresh condition, while Seymour's columns, fatigued from a long march, were successively brought onto the field as individual brigades, and consequently for a great part of the action, each faced a numerically superior opponent." The Confederates routed part of the Federal advance guard and inflicted severe casualties on the rest (Nulty, pp. 137-145). Colquitt, who had field command (Nulty, p. 155), put reinforcements into line as they came up and advanced against the Federal vanguard (Nulty, pp. 148-155). Seymour, with his leading elements crushed, probably should have pulled back, built a defensive position, and tried to learn more about what was going on, but instead he just shoved more units into the fight piecemeal and let them get slaughtered. The Confederates came on until a shortage of ammunition forced them to halt (Nulty, p. 162). When they were finally resupplied, they apparently had the Union forces clumped together with the Confederates in a sort of a bowl around them (Nulty, p. 165).
The Union forces, badly beaten, retreated (and Seymour turned field command over to one of his subordinates, Colonel Barton; Boyd, p. 29. I find it hard to imagine what Seymour had to do that was more important than directing the retreat). Colquitt the cautious, despite having thoroughly wrecked the Union army, did not follow up his victory; it was not until the next day that a pursuit was organized (Nulty, p. 171). Nonetheless, Nulty, p. 209, attributes the Confederate success in the battle to Colquitt's management of the field. The consensus seems to be that General Finegan was overly cautious in following the Union forces (Nulty, p. 184).
Seymour probably could have rallied the troops at Baldwin and defended that key railroad junction, but instead burned the town and kept on going (Nulty, pp. 178-179); Boyd, p. 29, notes that the retreating Federals were at least careful to damage the railroad.
The irony is, the Federals promptly scraped up about four brigades of reinforcements (organization table on p. 189 of Nulty). All the brigades were small, but still, they roughly doubled the Federal force. Since the Confederates had taken casualties, too, Seymour once again had the forces to win the campaign he had so thoroughly muffed. But he showed no signs of interest in further action. The Federals settled down in Jacksonville; the Confederates refused to attack, although they did work on fortifications at Baldwin (Nulty, p. 201).
The most careful nineteenth century reckoning of losses (Phisterer, p. 215) concluded that Union forces at Olustee lost 193 killed, 1175 wounded, and 460 missing (total of 1828); the Confederates lost about 500. Boatner, p. 608, and Boyd, p. 30, say Seymour had 5115 effectives, and lists 203 killed, 1152 wounded, 506 missing, total of 1861 -- which Boatner regards as a loss rate of 36%. Nulty, p. 203, says 5115 Union soldiers fought, and 1335 were casualties, a casualty rate of 26.5%, On p. ix, claims that "by proportion of casualties to men engaged, was the third bloodiest defeat of the entire war for the Union" (on p. 203 he clarifies that the two bloodier battles were both in 1864: the combined Wilderness/Spottsylvania campaign and the June 14 Battle of Port Hudson. (There was, however, no battle at Port Hudson on June 14, 1864, according to Phisterer, p. 179; the date should be 1863, when Phisterer lists the "Second Assault... at Port Hudson, La.") Livermore, p. 74, also makes the casualty rate 26.5%, and is the likely source for some of those other figures. Livermore, p. 75, lists this the second-highest loss rate for any Union force in the war (behind, yes, Port Hudson) -- although noting that comparing small forces like that at Olustee with full-size armies is not fair; individual divisions in larger armies sometimes took higher casualties. Still, there is no question but that losses at Olustee were very high.
No matter which exact numbers you accept, Seymour had only ten regiments, although most of them had more than 500 men (Boyd, pp. 14-15; that was pretty strong for regiments at that stage of the war) so a loss of more than 1300 was definitely high, and if his losses were in excess of 1800, that would be simply staggering; one estimate I saw somewhere placed his losses at 40%.
And two of Seymour's regiments (54th Massachusetts and 1st North Carolina) were of "Colored" soldiers (Gannon, p. 45), so some of those missing troops would presumably have ended up back in slavery. Gannon, p. 45, says that the two Black regiments in fact covered the Union retreat, and did it in such a gallant way as to prevent a Union rout; p. 44 shows an engraving of the event, although I doubt its accuracy.
Boatner give Confederate losses as 934 killed and wounded out of about 5200 engaged, so their rate of loss was about half that of the Federals. Gannon, p. 43, says that Finegan had 93 killed, 847 wounded, 6 missing, which isn't quite the same figure, but it's close.
Seymour later tried to convince his bosses that he had earned some sort of success; he turned in a report claiming high Confederate losses and adding that "every report that is received goes to show that it has been for them one of the severest engagements of the war" (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 3). It got him nowhere. On March 24, he was relieved of his command (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 27) and on April 20 was ordered to a non-combat role (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 62).
Nulty, p. 217, assigns some of the blame for the defeat to General Gillmore, the district commander, who failed to coordinate the actions of his department and so let the Confederates concentrate their forces; Gillmore also failed to oversee Seymour. But he assigns much more to Seymour: "General Seymour's blundering in allowing his forces to be committed piecemeal and defeated in detail (something he had done before in the abortive attack on Battery Wagner [in Charleston]) pretty well ended hopes for what could have been achieved. General Seymour was too limited in vision to have commanded the advance force of the Federal expedition.... His disregard for security while in the enemy's territory, his failure to develop reliable intelligence, his failure to appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of his own units, his inertia when his forces had the advantage, his too-rapid piecemeal commitment of his units into an unknown situation, and his contradictory statements and behavior within a short period of time were responsible fo the failure of what was potentially a low-cost, significant Union victory" (Nulty, pp. 216-217). I see no reason to disagree with any of this.
Seymour later tried to convince his bosses that he had earned some sort of success; he turned in a report claiming high Confederate losses and adding that "every report that is received goes to show that it has been for them one of the severest engagements of the war" (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 3). It got him nowhere. On March 24, he was relieved of his command (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 27) and on April 20 was ordered to a non-combat role (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 62)
Despite the disaster, and the congressional investigation that followed, Seymour's career recovered -- after a time as a troop inspector, he returned to the Army of the Potomac later in 1864. He was demoted to brigade command, but that was probably just the side effect of the transfer, and he later (after being taken prisoner and exchanged) returned to division command, and was allowed to remain in the regular army after the war (WarnerBlue, pp. 432-433; Nulty, p. 217).
General Finegan's career doesn't seem to have been affected much, either. He was an unusual Confederate general, born in Ireland in 1814 and moved to Florida in the late 1830s. He became a planter and owned a lumber mill. He was a member of Florida's secession convention, and made a brigadier in April 1862.
Immediately after Olustee, when General Beauregard finally made it to Florida and looked things over, he certainly didn't act as if Finegan had just won a signal victory. He reorganized the local forces, taking most of Finegan's troops and giving them to other officers. Even a camp that had been named for Finegan was renamed (Nulty, p. 197). Clearly Beauregard felt that Finegan's performance had been poor. Before leaving the area on March 20, Beauregard put James Patton Anderson in charge of the Department of Florida (Nulty, p. 200. WarnerGray, p. 7, reports that Anderson, like Finegan, had been part of the Florida secession convention -- but his military record was far better, having commanded a brigade and division in the Army of Tennessee from Shiloh to Chattanooga).
Nulty's considered opinion of Finegan, pp. 217-218, is that he "received a great deal of credit for doing relatively little. One wonders how he was able to keep himself so busy so as not to appear on the battlefield until the Union forces were in full retreat. The failure to coordinate the efforts of the individual Confederate forces and immediately to pursue the defeated enemy rests on his shoulders..... Colonel (sic.) Colquitt, the real hero of Olustee, did an excellent job with the infantry but did not make enough use of the artillery and cavalry. General Seymour, given all his blunders, was fortunate in having General Finegan for an opponent." Boyd, p. 33, gives Finegan a little more credit, but also appears to think Colquitt deserves most of the credit. There is evidence (summarized by Boyd, p. 34) that several senior Confederate officers did not trust Finegan.
In 1864, after Olustee, some of the units that fought there returned to where they came from; others were formed into a brigade under Finegan (Boyd, p. 35). Finegan was sent to the Army of Northern Virginia in time for the Battle of Cold Harbour (WarnerGray, pp. 88-89, OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 485 prints the order, which is dated May 16, 1864), where his three regiments were joined with three regiments of the wounded Brigadier General Perry's brigade, with Finegan taking over the combined brigade (Furguson, pp. 96-97). The Florida units he took with him were joined with a handful of Florida regiments that were already in William Mahone's division to form a six regiment unit known as Finegan's Brigade (Ferguson, p. 273). His performance at Cold Harbor wsa not good; his brigade took 275 casualties at a battle in which most other units came out almost unscathed; there were some who thought he was drunk (Rhea, p. 384). Nonetheless, he stayed with the Army of Northern Virginia until March 1865, when he was sent back to Florida. After the war, he was involved in Florida politics and as a lawyer; he died in 1885 (Boatner, p. 279).
The whole business tends to get ignored in Civil War histories; it was a morale-booster for the Confederacy, but it didn't actually improve their position or hurt the Federals. Indeed, Nulty, p. ix, concludes that the Union campaign was, in outline, a success: "it came very close to severing Florida from the Confederacy, it forced the Confederacy to divert seventeen thousand men from a thinly manned defense of Charleston and Savannah, it delayed the critical reinforcement of the Southern Army of the Tennessee at a time when that army was fighting desperately to prevent the Union invasion of northwestern Georgia, it gave further proof of the ability of black soldiers to fight, and for a time it put a severe crimp in the subsistence supply lines that fed two Southern armies. In respect to the number of men the Union committed and the long-range ramifications of the expedition, the Federal expedition into Florida in 1862 was a success!"
The reference to "Abner" defeated me; the Confederate commander at Olustee was Joseph Finegan, and his two leading subordinates were Alfred H. Colquitt and George P. Harrison.
Morris also seems to connect the song with the Olustee campaign, saying that part of G. V. Henry's Fortieth Massachusetts Mounted Infantry entered Baldwin, Florida on February 9, 1864. But he offers no explanation for the mention of "Abner."
It turns out, though, that Carter C. has a likely explanation of that one. "Brigadier General George H. Gordon, USA, commanding District of Florida, commanding Union expedition on the St. Johns River, reconnoitered the vicinity of Palatka, reported no Confederates at Camp Finegan, and Southern forces in East Florida were: 'At Camp Milton, the Second Florida Cavalry, Colonel Abner H. McCormick, CSA, 600 men; Camp Milton and McGirt's Creek strongly fortified. At Baldwin, no troops, strong fortifications, two pieces of artillery.'"
Checking four miscellaneous references, I find no record of McCormick ever rising above the rank of colonel or of doing anything else of note. He certainly didn't impress his superiors; on March 11, he was called upon to explain his behavior to General Beauregard (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 348), and on August 20, a report went to the Confederate Adjutant General himself, reporting that "Upon two occasions the cavalry, under Lieutenant-Colonel McCormick (Second Florida Cavalry), has been reported to me, reflecting no credit on the commander." His failure at Olustee is specifically mentioned (OfficialRecords.I.35.2, p. 614). The report does not explicitly call for his relief -- but lists officers who would be good replacements. The conclusion seems pretty clear.
Abner McCormick, if he was not party to the post-Olustee atrocities against Black soldiers, certainly wanted to be: "Lt. Col. A. H. McCormick of the Second Florida Cavalry made a speech to his men before the battle, claiming the blacks were there to rape and pillage and stating that he would take no prisoners" (Nulty, p. 210). And it is noteworthy that there were few prisoners from the "Colored" regiments; Finegan reported taking 150 wounded prisoners, but only three of them Black (Boyd, p. 32), even though it is clear that at least a quarter and probably more than a third of Seymour's force was Black!
There is one other recent book about Olustee, Greg Ahlgren, Olustee: America's Unfinished Civil War Battle, Canterbury House Publishing, 2018. Despite having a title that sounds like non-fiction, it is in fact a novel, so I have not read it. It does have an afterword about the history, which is unpaginated. It mentions that, starting in 1977, re-enactors have replayed Olustee -- but, Ahlgren notes, Black re-enactors are rarely involved. Ahlgren also cites two personal accounts of atrocities committed against the Black union soldiers. (Nulty also mentions Confederate officers insulting the body and memory of a white colonel who was killed while commanding a Black regiment; Nulty, p. 190).
Ahlgren also mentions an hypothesis that Truman Seymour's reckless actions arose from the fact that he was known to suffer from "melancholia" -- which he equates, too loosely, with bipolar disorder. Bipolar II disorder does result in excessive optimism during periods of hypomania, so it could explain Seymour's actions, but I'd need better evidence than a mention of melancholia to be confident that that is what Seymour experienced. Nonetheless John Hay also wrote of Seymour's mood swings (Nulty, p. 119). Since the changes in mood were fairly rapid, it is highly unlikely that they were bipolar disorder, but some sort of emotional problem seems not unlikely. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.6
File: SCWF225

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2024 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.