Vance No More: A Song History
“Vance No More” is a brisk Dorian-mode fiddle tune that Andrew Kuntz transcribed for the Traditional Tune Archive from home discs of John Salyer (1882–1952), a fiddler from Salyersville in Magoffin County, Kentucky, which his family made in 1941–42.[1] The tune is thought to grow out of “The Vance Song,” a ballad connected with Abner Vance, a Baptist preacher who was hanged at Abingdon, Virginia, in 1819.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index catalogs that ballad as Laws F17 (Roud 2216), with texts in the collections of Cox, Hudson, Combs and Wilgus, and Burt, and notes that Laws took it for one of the few confession songs probably written by the man it describes.[2]
John Hazelhurst Boneval Latrobe, Dining Room and Stage Offices at White Sulphur Springs, watercolor on off-white wove paper, 1832. A Virginia mountain resort painted in 1832, shown for the Virginia of Abner Vance, hanged at Abingdon in 1819; the watercolor has no connection to the tune.
Documents gathered by researcher Barbara Vance Cherep, and summarized by Ryan Hardesty, show that Vance shot Lewis Horton from behind at a Clinch River crossing on September 22, 1817, and that Horton died five days later.[3] Vance was convicted in April 1818, won a retrial on appeal by arguing he had been unable to plead insanity, was convicted again in May 1819, and was hanged on July 16 of that year.[3] Sources differ on why the shooting happened: the Ballad Index says Horton had seduced Vance’s daughter, while the records Hardesty summarizes state no motive, and although they show the two families in Chancery suits, he finds no clear link between those suits and the killing.[2][3] The story that Vance composed the song in jail and preached his own funeral sermon is best taken as legend, since period reports of the hanging describe a long speech and the records mention no singing.[1][3] Through his granddaughter Nancy, Vance was an ancestor of “Devil” Anse Hatfield of the Hatfield–McCoy feud.[1]
Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded “The Vance Song” for the Library of Congress from 85-year-old Branch H. Higgins at Salyersville on October 28, 1937, and it was printed in Our Singing Country (1941), compiled by John A. Lomax, Alan Lomax and Ruth Crawford Seeger.[4][5] Hog-Eyed Man recorded the Salyer tune on Hog Eye Man vol. 3 in 2016.[1] Deborah Hamouris sets “Vance No More” in DAD tuning, capo 4, in Indian Summer, her book of 24 original and traditional pieces for standard mountain dulcimer, with notes on each tune, published by Deborah Hamouris.[6]
Sources
- Traditional Tune Archive: "Vance No More".
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Vance Song".
- Blue Ridge Country: "Hatfields & McCoys, Revisited: Part 5.2 – The Legend of Abner Vance".
- Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings: "The Vance Song".
- Association for Cultural Equity: "Branch H. Higgins".
- Deborah Hamouris: "Indian Summer".
- Image: John Hazelhurst Boneval Latrobe, Dining Room and Stage Offices at White Sulphur Springs, watercolor on off-white wove paper, 1832. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.