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Bob Porter

I learned this song from Maggie Hammons with additions from Jerry Milnes who learned it from Currence Hammons? I haven't found any other printed source or reference to the song. In the 1800s and earlier it was customary in the mountains for the family's hogs to roam free in the forests feeding on mast. When the time came to round them up, ownership was identified by ear markings. A deer drive is when a group of deer are driven down a valley and into an ambush of hunters, enabling them to easily pick off the number they want.
In the song, as far as I can tell, a lean year comes around and the people go back to their old hunting grounds and discover with relief that the pigs and deer have done well. What is most mysterious about the song is the last words of the the wounded pig in the form of a frightening curse against humanity. It is more typical of pagan or Indian folklore to believe in the supernatural powers of certain animals. The pig I take to represent the natural world and fear and estrangement from nature is one of the hallmarks of our technology based culture. We assume it would want vengeance for all we have done to it if it were able to get it. A guilty conscience which shows itself repeatedly in the number of scary movies we have made involving giant blood thirsty insects, animals with a taste for hunting humans or aggressive, planet hungry aliens, all figments of our imagination. We are afraid that something will do to us as we have done to others and the last verse of "Bob Porter" articulates this fear.

lyrics

Bob Porter
Maggie Hammons Parker & Gerald Milnes (and Dona Gum?)

One year, one year when bacon was scarce and us having none
We mounted our horses and shouldered our guns,
Straight way to the wild woods we did steer,
To kill off the wild hogs and drive in the deer.

When we got there, we rambled a while,
We looked at each other beginning for to smile,
Saying these ain't the same hogs we fit here before,
The old blue sow and the black listed boar.

The old blue sow lie still in here bed,
Hearing every word that Bob Porter he said,
She rose from her bed and began for to run,
But soon as she did it was Porters old gun.

Now the old blue sow lie still in her bed,
Saying "Now you will suffer for what you have said,
"Your streets they will rattle the waters will roar,
"Your back it will ache til it's perfectly sore."

credits

from Green Are The Woods, released June 13, 1999
Learned from a field recording of Maggie Hammons

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Helena Triplett Faust Wellington, New Zealand

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