GDG- Re: Lincoln the Poet

[Bill and Glenna Jo Christen]

>From: Dennis Lawrence <denlaw at kc.rr.com>
>Subject: GDG- Lincoln the Poet
>  
>
Dennis,

Have you read the poem attributed to Lincoln that was included in his 
1829 "First Chronicles of  Reuben"? It was written in response to a 
public social snub by the family of the husband of Lincoln's 
half-sister, Sarah Bush Grigsby. She had died a few years earlier during 
childbirth and Lincoln blamed her death on the Grigsby family. In 1829 
Lincoln was not invited to the weddings of two of  four other Grigsby 
boys, Reuben, Jr. and Charles. As a consequence of the snub, it seems 
that two other former Grigsby brothers-in-law (Billy and Nathaniel) were 
the target of a biblical-like parody that included this poem (spelling 
as in the original):

i will tell you a Joke about Jowel and mary
it is neither a Joke nor a [s]tory
for rubin and Charles has married two girles
but biley has married a boy
the girles he had tried on every Side
but none could he get to agree
all was in vain he went home again
and sens [says] that he is married to natty

so biley and naty agreed very well

and mamas well pleased at the matc[h]
the egg it is laid but Natys afraid
the Shell is So Soft that it will never will hatc[h]
but betsy She Said you Cursed ball [bald] head
my suiter you Can never be
besides your low Cro[t]ch proclaims you a botch
and that can never Can answer for me.

Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon's Informants: 
Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Chicago: 
University of Illinois Press, 1998), 152.

It was widely discussed amongst the neighbors and local Indiana 
community. There is no surviving copy in Lincoln's hand, but in 1865 
William Herndon acquired a transcript of a oral recitation by a Mrs. 
Crawford who had employed Lincoln at the time the it was written. It 
certainly speaks of Lincoln's earthy side.

Bill Christen.

-- 
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