Folklore Every Good American Should Know - John Henry

Happy 4^th of July Everyone!

On this beautiful if soggy Independence Day I would like to highlight a few tall tales and legends that make up the folklore of the United States of America.  The U.S.A. has a rich and spirited folklore that unfortunately and much to my chagrin many Americans are completely unaware of.  Often it's a small taste of a watered down version people get in school, if at all, which hardly does justice to the rich tales that sprung up in the exciting times and events that built our own great country, tales that remind and perpetuate a determined, honest and indomitable American Spirit that so often is lost and/or forgotten today because when we forget the legends we forget ourselves and what we can become and great things we can do!

John Henry - A Story of Strong Determination and Working Pride

Statue of John Henry in West Virginia

“John Henry said to his captain," A man ain't nothin' but a man
But if you'll bring that steam drill round, I'll beat it fair and honest
I'll die with my hammer in my hand but I'll be laughin'
'Cuz you can't replace a steel drivin' man.”

~Legend of John Henry’s Hammer by Johnny Cash

John Henry was a steel driving man.  He started out on a plantation and when he became a free man John Henry started working for the B&O Rail road.  John Henry believed in hard work and couldn’t enjoy himself unless he had challenging work that put his mighty strength and hammer to good use.  While the train tracks were laid through the wide expanses of America steel driving men were called on to carve out the mountains so that the trains could go through.  Men would hammer bars of steel into the mountain to create holes that they’d put dynamite in to blow a hole in the mountainside.  Now John Henry was a mountain of a man himself, standing seven feet tall and he would drive the bars of steel into the mountain and lay tracks.  You could hear his hammer ring from miles away!  No one worked harder or faster than John Henry until one day, a slick haired man came up to the foreman with a steam powered machine that he claimed would make the steel-driving man obsolete.  Well that got John Henry’s gall - couldn’t stand to let any man do a better faster job than himself and he didn’t believe for one minute that any machine could do a better job than a flesh and blood man, especially not John Henry.  So the slick haired man proposed a test of this steam powered machine against John Henry and see which one could drive the steel farthest into the mountain.  Thousands of people from miles around came to see the great contest at the Big Bend, between this new steam drill technology and flesh and blood John Henry with his hammer.  The Foreman signaled them to start and for awhile John Henry kept pace with the steam drill and then slowly the steam drill started to take the lead.  John Henry was pouring sweat and covered in the dust of the mountain but did he give up? Not John Henry!  He kept on driving that steel.  And sure enough that steam drill begun to run out of steam and had to break to refuel and then started up again.  John Henry laughed and picked up a second hammer and with a hammer in each hand he drove that steel with such fervor that the people thought the mountain was caving in! Some accounts say that the steam drill tried so hard to keep up with John Henry that it broke and plum blew apart while others say that when the dust and steam cleared the steam drill had cleared a tunnel of twelve feet, eight inches but John Henry’s tunnel went fourteen feet, two inches! What’s for sure is that after John Henry proved that no machine could ever replace a flesh and blood man he laid down exhausted, that contest took everything out of John Henry and he died that night doing what he loved and smiling at the thought that no machine could replace a steel driving man.

“Tell 'em I can hoist a jack, and I can lay a track, I can pick and shovel too, ain't no machine can. That's been proved to you.”

~Legend of John Henry’s Hammer, Johnny Cash

Resources:

Cash, Johnny. “Legend of John Henry’s Hammer”. Song.

Sullivan, Charles. American Folk: Classic Tales Retold. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1998. Print.

Zorn, Steven.  Classic American Folktales. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Courage Books, 1992.  Print.