Born on a mountain top in Tennessee,— The Ballad of Davy Crockett, lyrics by Tom Blackburn, music by George Bruns
Greenest state in the land of the free,
Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree,
Kilt him a b'ar1 when he was only three.
America in the 1950s: land of upward social mobility, land of the Red Scare2, land of civil religion and historical myth. It was also the land where millions of little boys perched before their black-and-white televisions, waiting for the Indian to disappear as the set warmed up, wearing the coonskin caps they'd begged Santa for — complete with ringed tail, of course — humming the theme song above in anticipation of an episode in the first mini-series in media history3. Davy Crockett's legend was reborn.
In that legend, of course, were what Mark Twain, himself legendary, had called 'some stretchers'4. David Crockett did not kill a bear when he was three — he was eight, by some accounts, it was a bear cub, and he soon realised his mistake when the mother bear came after him. But he was the sort of hero any boy or girl5 could be proud of: woodsman in a time when the frontier was just west of the Cumberland Gap, soldier in the War of 18126, two-term Congressman, entertaining storyteller, and — last but not least — Alamo martyr.
The legend of Davy Crockett has occupied the American imagination for almost two centuries. But the man himself is more interesting than his legend. His family history, from the Court of Versailles to Cork to the American frontier, is an illuminating American journey. His own life — one of self-reliance, honesty, and determination against odds — sheds light onto what it was like to grow up in the early American republic.
