The Belled Buzzard: Where do song ideas come from?
by Bryce Martin

John Hartford composed "Gentle on My Mind" after watching the movie Dr. Zhivago.

For old-timers, though, often the most simple of songs came from long, wrought-out tales handed down involving fact and maybe a little fiction.

As in this recount of the origin of the old-time breakdown fiddle tune "The Belled Buzzard" and the little, tinkling bell-sound made by the fiddler that provides a signature for the tune:

The melody has similarities to "Billy in the Lowlands." Ford (1940) relates an Ozark tale regarding the origins of the tune, concerning a settlement along a river bottom. "One bank of the river was bordered for miles by high unscalable bluffs crowned with scrub timber, the home and breeding place of thousands of buzzards. Hog raising was the main source of income of the community. Mast from the acorn-bearing trees furnished food for the droves of hogs ear-marked and turned into the woods each year, to by rounded up in the fall ready for market. One summer hog cholera broke out among the porkers. The buzzards, feasting on the dead carcasses, carried the disease from one section of the country to another. There was an unwritten law that these birds should no be killed, but the farmers were aware that, unless some action was taken to check the spread of the disease, their hogs, together with their incomes, would be wiped out entirely. A meeting was called. It was decided to capture one of the birds and fasten a small sheep bell to it, in the hope that it would cause them to leave. One of the birds was accordingly trapped and belled. His arrival among the others created a great commotion and in a few days the flock of buzzards disappeared, only the belled buzzard remaining. Finally he, too, took flight. At the end of the summer there was an epidemic of typhoid fever in the community, many dying. About the same time the belled buzzard reappeared, the tinkle of his bell being plainly heard as he soared above the houses. He came and went time after time and always following his reappearence some sort of calamity happened. The return of the belled bird aroused apprehension in the minds of the more superstitious and his presence became associated with their misfortunes. They believed the repulsive fowl was posessed of an evil spirit. Many believe he still roams the skies, as he has for more than a hundred years, so that even today any report of the belled buzzard casts a spell of gloom over them. The tune, 'The Belled Buzzard', has been handed down through the years with this tradition, the plucking of the fiddle string in certain places in the music representing the tinkle of his bell."

Source for notated version: fiddler Ruthie Dornfeld (Seattle) [Phillips]. Ford (Traditional Music in America), 1940; pg. 60. Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), 1994; pg. 22.

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