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Breckinridge Elkins
photo
Figure 1
by Jeffrey Shanks
In Robert E. Howard’s first published Breckinridge Elkins yarn, “Mountain Man,” Pap gives his boy some interesting advice before sending him off to the frontier town of Tomahawk:
Don’t be techy — but don’t forgit that yore pap was once the rough-and-tumble champeen of Gonzales County, Texas. And whilst yo’re feelin’ for the other feller’s eye, don’t be keerless and let him chaw yore ear off. (1-2)
“Rough-and-tumble” fighting is a uniquely American style of unarmed combat that was prevalent in the South and on the frontier from the late 18th through the middle of the 19th century. It is characterized by the use of brutal biting and gouging tactics that would horrify the sensibilities of even the most hardened of modern boxing or mixed martial arts fans. Rough-and-tumble was not simply uncontrolled mayhem – it was a fighting system with standard techniques that generally involved grappling and pinning the opponent in order to be able to bite the nose or ears or to use a thumb to remove an eye.
The most thorough study of rough-and-tumble fighting is by Purdue University historian Elliot Gorn, who views it as an expression of “the intensely competitive status system” that existed in the violent and poverty-stricken atmosphere of the southern backcountry and western frontier. For the lower class this brutal form of hand-to-hand combat functioned in the same way that traditional dueling did for the upper class – as a violent means for redeeming one’s honor (Gorn 42).
Much of our information on rough-and-tumble fighting comes from stories of individuals traveling through some of the less-settled areas of the American south. For example, Englishman Charles William Janson described a rough-and-tumble encounter that he witnessed while traveling in Georgia in the early 19th century:
We found the combatants . . . fast clinched by the hair, and their thumbs endeavoring to force a passage into each other’s eyes; while several of the bystanders were betting upon the first eye to be turned out of its socket. For some time the combatants avoided the thumb stroke with dexterity. At length they fell to the ground, and in an instant the uppermost sprung up with his antagonist’s eye in his hand!!! The savage crowd applauded, while, sick with horror, we galloped away from the infernal scene. (Janson 308-09)
These were not simply random brawls, but rather, ritualized contests with certain agreed-upon conventions. When a challenge was issued, the combatants would agree as to whether the fight would be by the London Prize Ring rules (i.e. a traditional boxing match) or no-holds-barred (i.e. rough-and-tumble). Often a set time and place would be agreed upon for the set-to in order to give spectators and gamblers a chance to assemble (Gorn 20). This is illustrated by an account of a rough-and-tumble fight that took place in Wheeling in 1806:
The quarrel was confined to a Virginian. . . . and a Kentuckian. . . . A ring was formed, and the mob demanded whether they proposed to fight fair, or to rough and tumble. That latter mode was preferred. . . . Very few rounds had taken place, or fatal blows given, before the Virginian contracted his whole form. . . . and summoning up all his energy for one act of desperation pitched himself into the bosom of his opponent. . . . The shock received by the Kentuckian, and the want of breath, brought him instantly to the ground. The Virginian never lost his hold; like those bats of the South who never quit the subject on which they fasten till they taste blood, he kept his knees in his enemy’s body; fixing his claws in his hair, and his thumbs on his eyes, gave them an instantaneous start from their sockets. (Blaire and Meine 108-109)
Howard was clearly very familiar with rough-and-tumble fighting at an early age and even practiced some of the techniques with friends. In a 1923 letter to Tevis Clyde Smith he writes:
We had an enjoyable time engaging in “rough-and-tumble” wrestling. No holds barred. Kick, knee, hit or gouge. Good exercise and teaches you to use everything you have. Fists, feet, fingers, everything. One of the guys was standing on a tractor. I grabbed him and jerked him off and he jabbed his thumb in my eyes as we fell . . . I had one of the guys down once, one hand at his eyes and the other at his ribs and he kicked me in the groin. Darn near laid me out. We had a fine time. (“Letter” 11-12)
The earliest reference to rough-and-tumble in one of Howard’s published works occurs in the 1929 story, “The Pit of the Serpent.” In this tale, “Sailor” Steve Costigan finds himself involved in an underground bare-knuckle fight that he describes as combining “the viciousness of a rough-and-tumble with that of a legitimate ring bout” (10). In the later “Cultured Cauliflowers,” Costigan ends up in an impromptu rough-and-tumble with a fellow pugilist:
. . . . I roared, and we went to the floor together. I wouldn’t have had much chance with him in a regular ring bout, but in a rough-and-tumble brawl I had the advantage, even with my bad sight. He done his best and tried to gouge out my eye, but I butted the wind outa him, and whilst he was trying to get his breath, I socked him on the chin so hard it curled his hair. (128)
But it is in the Breckinridge Elkins stories that rough-and-tumble fighting is most prevalent, even pervasive. In returning to “Mountain Man,” we see that the contrast between backcountry rough-and-tumble fighting and sport boxing provides one of the most humorous scenes in the story as Breckinridge finds himself as a participant in a bare-knuckle boxing match. Unfamiliar with sport boxing, he is confused when his opponent, O’Toole, starts hitting him. After some explanation from his exasperated corner men, Breckinridge finally seems to understand:
“Oh,” I said, suddenly seeing light. “This here is a fight, ain’t it?” . . . If a fight was all they wanted, I was satisfied. All that talk about rules, and the yelling of the crowd had had me so confused I hadn’t knowed what it was all about.
But Breckinridge’s understanding of a “fight” is not what his opponent, the referee, or the spectators are expecting:
I spit out a mouthful of blood and got my hands on him and started chewing his ear, and he squalled like a catamount.
For Breckinridge, “fight” means rough-and-tumble, not fisticuffs. O’Toole is clearly not unfamiliar with this type of fighting and adjusts his approach accordingly:
He gasped: “If you want to make an alley-fight out of it, all right! I wasn’t raised in Five Points for nothing!” He then rammed his knee into my groin, and groped for my eye, but I got his thumb in my teeth and begun masticating it, and the way he howled was a caution.
The fight ends in dramatic fashion when Breckinridge sends O’Toole flying from the ring with a mule kick; the blatant fouling sends the crowd into a rage and riotous mayhem ensues.
The gag here is not simply the slapstick violence, but rather the disconnect between Breckinridge’s backwoods understanding of what a “fight” is supposed to be and the more civilized rules of traditional pugilism. Without an understanding of rough-and-tumble fighting that nuance can be lost on the reader. Thus, we can now see that Pap’s reference to rough-and-tumble fighting earlier in the story was not just a throwaway line, but was placed there quite intentionally in order to set up this scene with the boxing match.
Cataloging an exhaustive list of rough-and-tumble references in Howard’s humorous westerns is beyond the scope of this article, but a few examples from the texts should demonstrate how the fighting style tends to be used as a narrative device:
His only reply was a promise to eat my heart without no seasoning, and he then sunk his teeth into my ear and started to chaw it off, whilst gouging for my eyes with both thumbs and spurring me severely in the hind laigs. (“Cupid from Bear Creek” 203)
And if Joel Gordon hadn’t been so stubborn trying to gouge me he wouldn’t of got his laig broke neither. (“War on Bear Creek” 75)
“I’m goin’ to chaw Bill Glanton’s ears off for saddlin’ that critter on me.” (“War” 78)
“Lemme at him!” howled Joel, gnashing his teeth whilst blood streamed down his whiskers. “He’s broke three of my fangs and I’ll have his life!”. . . . “Stand aside, Breckinridge!” raved Erath. “No man can chaw a ear offa me and live to tell the tale!” (“A Gent from Bear Creek” 124)
Hawkins lost his knife in the melee, but he was as big as me, and a bear-cat at rough-and-tumble. We would stand up and whale away with both fists, and then clinch and roll around the floor, biting and gouging and slugging, and once we rolled clean over Uncle Esau and kind of flattened him out like a pancake. (“The Road to Bear Creek” 146)
The matter-of-fact way in which Howard describes the characters attempting to blind and maim each other as though it is no big deal is the typical way in which violence is portrayed in these stories. This is not a stylistic device that is unique to Howard, but as we will see, it is part of a long and rich literary tradition.
Indeed, Howard’s knowledge of backwoods brawling seems to have included the history and folklore associated with this type of fighting, even to the point of having the recurring place-name “Chawed Ear” appear in several Breckinridge Elkins stories. While humorous, this is not far from reality, as Gorn (27) notes the existence of place-names such as “Gouge Eye” and “Fighting Creek” that take their names from famous fights.
In fact, rough-and-tumble fighting was a common element in frontier folklore and traditional south-western humor, genres which clearly inspired the Breckinridge Elkins tales. The frequency of this type of fighting as a literary convention in frontier humor even led to the development of a sort of stock character known as the “ring-tailed roarer.” The roarer was not only a pugnacious scrapper, but also a prodigious braggart, often bellowing out an almost formulaic series of boasts about his physical toughness and fighting prowess prior to engaging in a scrap. Legendary keelboatman Mike Fink, the subject of numerous tall tales, was known as a champion rough-and-tumbler as well as a master of the pre-fight boast:
I’m a Salt River roarer! I’m a ring tailed squealer! I’m a reg’lar screamer from the old Massassip’! Whoop! I’m the very infant that refused his milk before its eyes were open and called out for a bottle of old Rye! I love the women an’ I’m chockful o’ fight! I’m half wild horse and half cock-eyed alligator and the rest o’ me is crooked snags an’ red-hot snappin’ turkle…. I can out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, out-brag, out-drink, an’ out-fight, rough-an’-tumble, no holts barred, any man on both sides the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans an’ back ag’in to St. Louiee. (Blaire and Meine 105-106)
Breckinridge Elkins is a great deal more modest than Mike Fink, but he has also been known to occasionally engage in a bit of mild braggadocio prior to a skirmish:
“Let that be a warnin’ to you Grizzly Claw coyotes! I’m Breckinridge Elkins from Bear Creek up in the Humbolts, and I shoot better in my sleep than most men does wide awake!” (“The Scalp Hunter” 113)
“I’m Breckinridge Elkins of the Humbolt Mountains, and I’m preparin’ for to shake my mane!” (“Gent” 135)
As with Howard’s humorous stories, the gory details of rough-and-tumble fights, when told in a folkloric context, are often exaggerated to the point that the description becomes a form of dark humor or violent camp (Gorn 32-33). For example:
I then caught his ear in my mouth, gin his head a flirt, and out come his ear by the roots! I then flopped his head over, and caught his other ear in my mouth, and jerked that out in the same way, and it made a hole in his head that I could have rammed my fist through, and I was just goin’ to when he hollered: ‘Nuff!’ (Moore 112).
Descriptions like this no doubt horrified many of the more civilized readers back east, but the wild folk living on the fringes of American hegemony, where violence was a way of life, seemed to revel in this kind of sadistic humor and even in the depictions of themselves as fierce savages. Folklorist Richard Dorson suggests a partial reasoning behind this:
Maybe the frontier laughed so uncouthly because it was branded uncouth. Somewhat in the manner of an oat-sowing youth, it boasted of its shortcomings. Delicacy was the password in the genteel literature of the period; in the vigorous newspaper humor of the day it was a word unknown. Barbarous fights were described with a relish for gruesome detail. Squeamishness was a subject for disdain. (Dorson xx)
A well-known example of this is the short story, “The Fight,” by southern humorist August Baldwin Longstreet, first published in 1835. In this tale, two friends who are both expert rough-and-tumblers are tricked into fighting each other by the villain of the story, a ne’er-do-well by the name of Ransy Sniffle. Once the fight begins, the reader is treated to several pages of brutal mayhem as the two friends tear into each other; eyes are gouged out, noses and ears are bitten off, fingers are lost, and bones are broken. The two fighters absorb an absurdly unrealistic amount of punishment before one of them finally gives up (Longstreet 34-42). In reading this story, one cannot help but be reminded of one of the knock-down, drag-out fights between Breckinridge Elkins and the one man who could almost be considered his equal – his cousin Bearfield Buckner:
. . . he swung his laig and kicked me in the mouth as hard as he could, and imejitately busted into a guffaw of brutal mirth. Whilst he was thus employed I spit his boot out and butted him in the belly with a vi’lence which changed his haw-haw to a agonized grunt, and then we laid hands on each other and rolled back and forth acrost the floor, biting and gouging . . .
I splintered the roulette wheel with his carcass, and he hit me on the jaw so hard he knocked me clean through the bar and all the bottles fell off the shelves and showered around me, and the ceiling lamp come loose and spilled about a gallon of red hot ile down his neck.
Whilst he was employed with the ile I clumb up from among the debris of the bar and started my right fist in a swing from the floor, and after it traveled maybe nine feet it took Cousin Bearfield under the jaw, and he hit the oppersite wall so hard he knocked out a section and went clean through it, and that was when the roof fell in. (“The Riot at Cougar Paw” 117)
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Figure 2
The one periodical that probably influenced southern frontier humor more than any other was The Davy Crockett Almancks, published annually in the mid-19th century. These almanacs contained a myriad of humorous anecdotes and tall tales, supposedly penned by Crockett himself, about life along the Mississippi River and on the western frontier. The true author or authors of the Almanacks are unknown, but like the Breckinridge Elkin stories, they are written in frontier dialect in a first-person narrative. The Almanacks describe numerous rough-and-tumble fights involving Crockett, Mike Fink, and other legendary ring-tailed roarers, always with the same humorous, over-the-top violence that we find nearly a century later in the Breckinridge Elkins tales. Whether or not Howard ever came across copies or reprints of some of the Davy Crockett Almanacks, it seems clear that they are, at least indirectly, the literary ancestor of his humorous westerns. For example, the description of Crockett, recently elected to Congress, involved in a rough-and-tumble on the streets of Washington, D.C. sounds like it easily could have been a scene in a Breckinridge Elkins story:
He seized the waistbands of my breeches as I come down, and I stuck my thumb in his eye; he roared out like a bull, and tried to punch me in the bowels with one fist. By this time the people had gathered around us like it war a gin’ral ‘lection, and every one said it war the fust time they seed a member of Congress who had any spunk. Pretty soon I got the squatter down, and jist then he fixt his teeth into my throte, and I felt my windpipe begin to loosen. I kept my thumb in his eye, and war jist going to give it a twist and bring the peeper out, like taking up a gooseberry in a spoon, when a member of Congress cotch’d hold of my coat tail; but he tore off the skirt and discombobolated my hold on the feller’s eye, without hauling me off. Then the varmint seized me by the pantaloons and tore ‘em clean off. (Dorson 83)
Another common motif in the Almanacks as well as other southern humor publications is the fight between men (and women) and the wild animals of the frontier. Sometimes this takes the form of a more-or-less straightforward hunting narrative and other times it can be a tall tale-like story of a frontier tough guy taking on a fearsome beast in hand-to-hand combat. Thus we hear tales of Kentuckians popping out the eyeballs of bears and alligators (Moore 87). Davy Crockett once bragged on the floor of Congress, in true ring-tailed roarer fashion, that he could lick a lion in a rough-and-tumble (Dorson 30). Not to be outdone, Breckinridge Elkins also takes on his share of fierce critters, including a memorable encounter in a cave with a grizzly bear that he mistakes for a “wildman”:
It seemed to get darker the further I went, and purty soon I bumped into something big and hairy and it went “Wump!” and grabbed me. Thinks I, it’s the wildman, and he’s on the war-path. We waded into each other and tumbled around on the rocky floor in the dark, biting and mauling and tearing. I’m the biggest and the fightingest man on Bear Creek, which is famed far and wide for its ring-tailed scrappers, but this wildman shore give me my hands full. He was the biggest hairiest critter I ever laid hands on, and he had more teeth and talons than I thought a human could possibly have. He chawed me with vigor and enthusiasm, and he waltzed up and down my frame free and hearty, and swept the floor with me till I was groggy.
For a while I thought I was going to give up the ghost, and I thought with despair of how humiliated my relatives on Bear Creek would be to hear their champion battler had been clawed to death by a wildman in a cave.
That made me plumb ashamed for weakening, and the socks I give him ought to of laid out any man, wild or tame, to say nothing of the pile-driver kicks in his belly, and butting him with my head so he gasped. I got what felt like a ear in my mouth and commenced chawing on it, and presently, what with this and other mayhem I committed on him, he give a most inhuman squall and bust away and went lickety-split for the outside world. (“The Haunted Mountain” 88)
So can Breckinridge Elkins be considered a true ring-tailed roarer in the tradition of Davy Crockett and Mike Fink? I think the case can be made that Howard was thinking along those lines, at least at times, though other legendary frontier figures like the giant Texican Strap Buckner, the gun-slinging ranger Bigfoot Wallace, the mountain man Jim Bridger, and others certainly contributed elements as well. Mark Finn (65-71) and others have argued convincingly that Howard’s humorous westerns should be seen as part of the frontier folk humor tradition. Certainly his use of rough-and-tumble fighting as a comic motif in these stories illustrates how knowledgeable he was about the roots of the genre and it lends his Breckinridge Elkins yarns an air of authenticity that is sorely lacking in the slightly earlier “fakelore” saga of Pecos Bill – a fictional character to whom Breckinridge has often been compared. Howard was well aware of the conventions of southwestern frontier humor and he used them to great effect, creating a series of tales that should be seen as a continuation of and a contribution to that great American literary tradition.
List of Figures:
Figure 1 – Breckinridge chaws the ear off a grizzly bear in “The Haunted Mountain.” (Illustration by Lorence Bjorklund, Action Stories, February 1935)
Figure 2 – “Hands of Celebrated Gougers” from The Davy Crockett Almanacks 1851 (Artist unknown)
Works Cited:
Blair, Walter and Franklin J. Meine. Mike Fink: King of the Mississippi Keelboatmen. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1933. Print.
Burke, Rusty. “The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf.” www.rehupa.com. Robert E. Howard United Press Association, 1998. Web. Accessed March 2011.
Dorson, Richard M. (ed.). Davy Crockett, American Comic Legend. New York: Rockland Editions, 1939. Print.
Finn, Mark. Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard. Austin: Monkey Brain Books, 2006. Print.
Gorn, Elliott J. “’Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry.” The American Historical Review. Vol. 90 (1985), 18-43. Print.
Howard, Robert E. “Cultured Cauliflowers” Boxing Stories. Ed. Chris Gruber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 115-129. Print.
—. “Cupid from Bear Creek.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 190-206. Print.
—. “A Gent from Bear Creek.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 124-139. Print.
—. “The Haunted Mountain.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 79-92. Print.
—. “Letter to Clyde Tevis Smith,” July 30, 1923. The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, Volume One: 1923-1929. Ed. Rob Roehm. REH Foundation Press, 2007. 11-14.
—. “Mountain Man.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 1-14. Print.
—. “The Pit of the Serpent” Boxing Stories. Ed. Chris Gruber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 3-18. Print.
—. “The Riot at Cougar Paw.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 108-123.
—. “The Road to Bear Creek.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 140-151. Print.
—. “The Scalp Hunter.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 111-123. Print.
—. “War on Bear Creek.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 61-78. Print.
Janson, Charles William. The Stranger in America, 1793-1807. [1807] New York: Press of the Pioneers (reprint edition), 1935. Print.
Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin. “The Fight.” Southern Frontier Humor: An Anthology. Eds. M. Thomas Inge and Ed Piacentino. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2010. 34-42. Print.
Moore, Arthur K. The Frontier Mind. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957. Print.
Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Shanks. All rights reserved.
Breckinridge Elkins
photo
Figure 1
by Jeffrey Shanks
In Robert E. Howard’s first published Breckinridge Elkins yarn, “Mountain Man,” Pap gives his boy some interesting advice before sending him off to the frontier town of Tomahawk:
Don’t be techy — but don’t forgit that yore pap was once the rough-and-tumble champeen of Gonzales County, Texas. And whilst yo’re feelin’ for the other feller’s eye, don’t be keerless and let him chaw yore ear off. (1-2)
“Rough-and-tumble” fighting is a uniquely American style of unarmed combat that was prevalent in the South and on the frontier from the late 18th through the middle of the 19th century. It is characterized by the use of brutal biting and gouging tactics that would horrify the sensibilities of even the most hardened of modern boxing or mixed martial arts fans. Rough-and-tumble was not simply uncontrolled mayhem – it was a fighting system with standard techniques that generally involved grappling and pinning the opponent in order to be able to bite the nose or ears or to use a thumb to remove an eye.
The most thorough study of rough-and-tumble fighting is by Purdue University historian Elliot Gorn, who views it as an expression of “the intensely competitive status system” that existed in the violent and poverty-stricken atmosphere of the southern backcountry and western frontier. For the lower class this brutal form of hand-to-hand combat functioned in the same way that traditional dueling did for the upper class – as a violent means for redeeming one’s honor (Gorn 42).
Much of our information on rough-and-tumble fighting comes from stories of individuals traveling through some of the less-settled areas of the American south. For example, Englishman Charles William Janson described a rough-and-tumble encounter that he witnessed while traveling in Georgia in the early 19th century:
We found the combatants . . . fast clinched by the hair, and their thumbs endeavoring to force a passage into each other’s eyes; while several of the bystanders were betting upon the first eye to be turned out of its socket. For some time the combatants avoided the thumb stroke with dexterity. At length they fell to the ground, and in an instant the uppermost sprung up with his antagonist’s eye in his hand!!! The savage crowd applauded, while, sick with horror, we galloped away from the infernal scene. (Janson 308-09)
These were not simply random brawls, but rather, ritualized contests with certain agreed-upon conventions. When a challenge was issued, the combatants would agree as to whether the fight would be by the London Prize Ring rules (i.e. a traditional boxing match) or no-holds-barred (i.e. rough-and-tumble). Often a set time and place would be agreed upon for the set-to in order to give spectators and gamblers a chance to assemble (Gorn 20). This is illustrated by an account of a rough-and-tumble fight that took place in Wheeling in 1806:
The quarrel was confined to a Virginian. . . . and a Kentuckian. . . . A ring was formed, and the mob demanded whether they proposed to fight fair, or to rough and tumble. That latter mode was preferred. . . . Very few rounds had taken place, or fatal blows given, before the Virginian contracted his whole form. . . . and summoning up all his energy for one act of desperation pitched himself into the bosom of his opponent. . . . The shock received by the Kentuckian, and the want of breath, brought him instantly to the ground. The Virginian never lost his hold; like those bats of the South who never quit the subject on which they fasten till they taste blood, he kept his knees in his enemy’s body; fixing his claws in his hair, and his thumbs on his eyes, gave them an instantaneous start from their sockets. (Blaire and Meine 108-109)
Howard was clearly very familiar with rough-and-tumble fighting at an early age and even practiced some of the techniques with friends. In a 1923 letter to Tevis Clyde Smith he writes:
We had an enjoyable time engaging in “rough-and-tumble” wrestling. No holds barred. Kick, knee, hit or gouge. Good exercise and teaches you to use everything you have. Fists, feet, fingers, everything. One of the guys was standing on a tractor. I grabbed him and jerked him off and he jabbed his thumb in my eyes as we fell . . . I had one of the guys down once, one hand at his eyes and the other at his ribs and he kicked me in the groin. Darn near laid me out. We had a fine time. (“Letter” 11-12)
The earliest reference to rough-and-tumble in one of Howard’s published works occurs in the 1929 story, “The Pit of the Serpent.” In this tale, “Sailor” Steve Costigan finds himself involved in an underground bare-knuckle fight that he describes as combining “the viciousness of a rough-and-tumble with that of a legitimate ring bout” (10). In the later “Cultured Cauliflowers,” Costigan ends up in an impromptu rough-and-tumble with a fellow pugilist:
. . . . I roared, and we went to the floor together. I wouldn’t have had much chance with him in a regular ring bout, but in a rough-and-tumble brawl I had the advantage, even with my bad sight. He done his best and tried to gouge out my eye, but I butted the wind outa him, and whilst he was trying to get his breath, I socked him on the chin so hard it curled his hair. (128)
But it is in the Breckinridge Elkins stories that rough-and-tumble fighting is most prevalent, even pervasive. In returning to “Mountain Man,” we see that the contrast between backcountry rough-and-tumble fighting and sport boxing provides one of the most humorous scenes in the story as Breckinridge finds himself as a participant in a bare-knuckle boxing match. Unfamiliar with sport boxing, he is confused when his opponent, O’Toole, starts hitting him. After some explanation from his exasperated corner men, Breckinridge finally seems to understand:
“Oh,” I said, suddenly seeing light. “This here is a fight, ain’t it?” . . . If a fight was all they wanted, I was satisfied. All that talk about rules, and the yelling of the crowd had had me so confused I hadn’t knowed what it was all about.
But Breckinridge’s understanding of a “fight” is not what his opponent, the referee, or the spectators are expecting:
I spit out a mouthful of blood and got my hands on him and started chewing his ear, and he squalled like a catamount.
For Breckinridge, “fight” means rough-and-tumble, not fisticuffs. O’Toole is clearly not unfamiliar with this type of fighting and adjusts his approach accordingly:
He gasped: “If you want to make an alley-fight out of it, all right! I wasn’t raised in Five Points for nothing!” He then rammed his knee into my groin, and groped for my eye, but I got his thumb in my teeth and begun masticating it, and the way he howled was a caution.
The fight ends in dramatic fashion when Breckinridge sends O’Toole flying from the ring with a mule kick; the blatant fouling sends the crowd into a rage and riotous mayhem ensues.
The gag here is not simply the slapstick violence, but rather the disconnect between Breckinridge’s backwoods understanding of what a “fight” is supposed to be and the more civilized rules of traditional pugilism. Without an understanding of rough-and-tumble fighting that nuance can be lost on the reader. Thus, we can now see that Pap’s reference to rough-and-tumble fighting earlier in the story was not just a throwaway line, but was placed there quite intentionally in order to set up this scene with the boxing match.
Cataloging an exhaustive list of rough-and-tumble references in Howard’s humorous westerns is beyond the scope of this article, but a few examples from the texts should demonstrate how the fighting style tends to be used as a narrative device:
His only reply was a promise to eat my heart without no seasoning, and he then sunk his teeth into my ear and started to chaw it off, whilst gouging for my eyes with both thumbs and spurring me severely in the hind laigs. (“Cupid from Bear Creek” 203)
And if Joel Gordon hadn’t been so stubborn trying to gouge me he wouldn’t of got his laig broke neither. (“War on Bear Creek” 75)
“I’m goin’ to chaw Bill Glanton’s ears off for saddlin’ that critter on me.” (“War” 78)
“Lemme at him!” howled Joel, gnashing his teeth whilst blood streamed down his whiskers. “He’s broke three of my fangs and I’ll have his life!”. . . . “Stand aside, Breckinridge!” raved Erath. “No man can chaw a ear offa me and live to tell the tale!” (“A Gent from Bear Creek” 124)
Hawkins lost his knife in the melee, but he was as big as me, and a bear-cat at rough-and-tumble. We would stand up and whale away with both fists, and then clinch and roll around the floor, biting and gouging and slugging, and once we rolled clean over Uncle Esau and kind of flattened him out like a pancake. (“The Road to Bear Creek” 146)
The matter-of-fact way in which Howard describes the characters attempting to blind and maim each other as though it is no big deal is the typical way in which violence is portrayed in these stories. This is not a stylistic device that is unique to Howard, but as we will see, it is part of a long and rich literary tradition.
Indeed, Howard’s knowledge of backwoods brawling seems to have included the history and folklore associated with this type of fighting, even to the point of having the recurring place-name “Chawed Ear” appear in several Breckinridge Elkins stories. While humorous, this is not far from reality, as Gorn (27) notes the existence of place-names such as “Gouge Eye” and “Fighting Creek” that take their names from famous fights.
In fact, rough-and-tumble fighting was a common element in frontier folklore and traditional south-western humor, genres which clearly inspired the Breckinridge Elkins tales. The frequency of this type of fighting as a literary convention in frontier humor even led to the development of a sort of stock character known as the “ring-tailed roarer.” The roarer was not only a pugnacious scrapper, but also a prodigious braggart, often bellowing out an almost formulaic series of boasts about his physical toughness and fighting prowess prior to engaging in a scrap. Legendary keelboatman Mike Fink, the subject of numerous tall tales, was known as a champion rough-and-tumbler as well as a master of the pre-fight boast:
I’m a Salt River roarer! I’m a ring tailed squealer! I’m a reg’lar screamer from the old Massassip’! Whoop! I’m the very infant that refused his milk before its eyes were open and called out for a bottle of old Rye! I love the women an’ I’m chockful o’ fight! I’m half wild horse and half cock-eyed alligator and the rest o’ me is crooked snags an’ red-hot snappin’ turkle…. I can out-run, out-jump, out-shoot, out-brag, out-drink, an’ out-fight, rough-an’-tumble, no holts barred, any man on both sides the river from Pittsburgh to New Orleans an’ back ag’in to St. Louiee. (Blaire and Meine 105-106)
Breckinridge Elkins is a great deal more modest than Mike Fink, but he has also been known to occasionally engage in a bit of mild braggadocio prior to a skirmish:
“Let that be a warnin’ to you Grizzly Claw coyotes! I’m Breckinridge Elkins from Bear Creek up in the Humbolts, and I shoot better in my sleep than most men does wide awake!” (“The Scalp Hunter” 113)
“I’m Breckinridge Elkins of the Humbolt Mountains, and I’m preparin’ for to shake my mane!” (“Gent” 135)
As with Howard’s humorous stories, the gory details of rough-and-tumble fights, when told in a folkloric context, are often exaggerated to the point that the description becomes a form of dark humor or violent camp (Gorn 32-33). For example:
I then caught his ear in my mouth, gin his head a flirt, and out come his ear by the roots! I then flopped his head over, and caught his other ear in my mouth, and jerked that out in the same way, and it made a hole in his head that I could have rammed my fist through, and I was just goin’ to when he hollered: ‘Nuff!’ (Moore 112).
Descriptions like this no doubt horrified many of the more civilized readers back east, but the wild folk living on the fringes of American hegemony, where violence was a way of life, seemed to revel in this kind of sadistic humor and even in the depictions of themselves as fierce savages. Folklorist Richard Dorson suggests a partial reasoning behind this:
Maybe the frontier laughed so uncouthly because it was branded uncouth. Somewhat in the manner of an oat-sowing youth, it boasted of its shortcomings. Delicacy was the password in the genteel literature of the period; in the vigorous newspaper humor of the day it was a word unknown. Barbarous fights were described with a relish for gruesome detail. Squeamishness was a subject for disdain. (Dorson xx)
A well-known example of this is the short story, “The Fight,” by southern humorist August Baldwin Longstreet, first published in 1835. In this tale, two friends who are both expert rough-and-tumblers are tricked into fighting each other by the villain of the story, a ne’er-do-well by the name of Ransy Sniffle. Once the fight begins, the reader is treated to several pages of brutal mayhem as the two friends tear into each other; eyes are gouged out, noses and ears are bitten off, fingers are lost, and bones are broken. The two fighters absorb an absurdly unrealistic amount of punishment before one of them finally gives up (Longstreet 34-42). In reading this story, one cannot help but be reminded of one of the knock-down, drag-out fights between Breckinridge Elkins and the one man who could almost be considered his equal – his cousin Bearfield Buckner:
. . . he swung his laig and kicked me in the mouth as hard as he could, and imejitately busted into a guffaw of brutal mirth. Whilst he was thus employed I spit his boot out and butted him in the belly with a vi’lence which changed his haw-haw to a agonized grunt, and then we laid hands on each other and rolled back and forth acrost the floor, biting and gouging . . .
I splintered the roulette wheel with his carcass, and he hit me on the jaw so hard he knocked me clean through the bar and all the bottles fell off the shelves and showered around me, and the ceiling lamp come loose and spilled about a gallon of red hot ile down his neck.
Whilst he was employed with the ile I clumb up from among the debris of the bar and started my right fist in a swing from the floor, and after it traveled maybe nine feet it took Cousin Bearfield under the jaw, and he hit the oppersite wall so hard he knocked out a section and went clean through it, and that was when the roof fell in. (“The Riot at Cougar Paw” 117)
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Figure 2
The one periodical that probably influenced southern frontier humor more than any other was The Davy Crockett Almancks, published annually in the mid-19th century. These almanacs contained a myriad of humorous anecdotes and tall tales, supposedly penned by Crockett himself, about life along the Mississippi River and on the western frontier. The true author or authors of the Almanacks are unknown, but like the Breckinridge Elkin stories, they are written in frontier dialect in a first-person narrative. The Almanacks describe numerous rough-and-tumble fights involving Crockett, Mike Fink, and other legendary ring-tailed roarers, always with the same humorous, over-the-top violence that we find nearly a century later in the Breckinridge Elkins tales. Whether or not Howard ever came across copies or reprints of some of the Davy Crockett Almanacks, it seems clear that they are, at least indirectly, the literary ancestor of his humorous westerns. For example, the description of Crockett, recently elected to Congress, involved in a rough-and-tumble on the streets of Washington, D.C. sounds like it easily could have been a scene in a Breckinridge Elkins story:
He seized the waistbands of my breeches as I come down, and I stuck my thumb in his eye; he roared out like a bull, and tried to punch me in the bowels with one fist. By this time the people had gathered around us like it war a gin’ral ‘lection, and every one said it war the fust time they seed a member of Congress who had any spunk. Pretty soon I got the squatter down, and jist then he fixt his teeth into my throte, and I felt my windpipe begin to loosen. I kept my thumb in his eye, and war jist going to give it a twist and bring the peeper out, like taking up a gooseberry in a spoon, when a member of Congress cotch’d hold of my coat tail; but he tore off the skirt and discombobolated my hold on the feller’s eye, without hauling me off. Then the varmint seized me by the pantaloons and tore ‘em clean off. (Dorson 83)
Another common motif in the Almanacks as well as other southern humor publications is the fight between men (and women) and the wild animals of the frontier. Sometimes this takes the form of a more-or-less straightforward hunting narrative and other times it can be a tall tale-like story of a frontier tough guy taking on a fearsome beast in hand-to-hand combat. Thus we hear tales of Kentuckians popping out the eyeballs of bears and alligators (Moore 87). Davy Crockett once bragged on the floor of Congress, in true ring-tailed roarer fashion, that he could lick a lion in a rough-and-tumble (Dorson 30). Not to be outdone, Breckinridge Elkins also takes on his share of fierce critters, including a memorable encounter in a cave with a grizzly bear that he mistakes for a “wildman”:
It seemed to get darker the further I went, and purty soon I bumped into something big and hairy and it went “Wump!” and grabbed me. Thinks I, it’s the wildman, and he’s on the war-path. We waded into each other and tumbled around on the rocky floor in the dark, biting and mauling and tearing. I’m the biggest and the fightingest man on Bear Creek, which is famed far and wide for its ring-tailed scrappers, but this wildman shore give me my hands full. He was the biggest hairiest critter I ever laid hands on, and he had more teeth and talons than I thought a human could possibly have. He chawed me with vigor and enthusiasm, and he waltzed up and down my frame free and hearty, and swept the floor with me till I was groggy.
For a while I thought I was going to give up the ghost, and I thought with despair of how humiliated my relatives on Bear Creek would be to hear their champion battler had been clawed to death by a wildman in a cave.
That made me plumb ashamed for weakening, and the socks I give him ought to of laid out any man, wild or tame, to say nothing of the pile-driver kicks in his belly, and butting him with my head so he gasped. I got what felt like a ear in my mouth and commenced chawing on it, and presently, what with this and other mayhem I committed on him, he give a most inhuman squall and bust away and went lickety-split for the outside world. (“The Haunted Mountain” 88)
So can Breckinridge Elkins be considered a true ring-tailed roarer in the tradition of Davy Crockett and Mike Fink? I think the case can be made that Howard was thinking along those lines, at least at times, though other legendary frontier figures like the giant Texican Strap Buckner, the gun-slinging ranger Bigfoot Wallace, the mountain man Jim Bridger, and others certainly contributed elements as well. Mark Finn (65-71) and others have argued convincingly that Howard’s humorous westerns should be seen as part of the frontier folk humor tradition. Certainly his use of rough-and-tumble fighting as a comic motif in these stories illustrates how knowledgeable he was about the roots of the genre and it lends his Breckinridge Elkins yarns an air of authenticity that is sorely lacking in the slightly earlier “fakelore” saga of Pecos Bill – a fictional character to whom Breckinridge has often been compared. Howard was well aware of the conventions of southwestern frontier humor and he used them to great effect, creating a series of tales that should be seen as a continuation of and a contribution to that great American literary tradition.
List of Figures:
Figure 1 – Breckinridge chaws the ear off a grizzly bear in “The Haunted Mountain.” (Illustration by Lorence Bjorklund, Action Stories, February 1935)
Figure 2 – “Hands of Celebrated Gougers” from The Davy Crockett Almanacks 1851 (Artist unknown)
Works Cited:
Blair, Walter and Franklin J. Meine. Mike Fink: King of the Mississippi Keelboatmen. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1933. Print.
Burke, Rusty. “The Robert E. Howard Bookshelf.” www.rehupa.com. Robert E. Howard United Press Association, 1998. Web. Accessed March 2011.
Dorson, Richard M. (ed.). Davy Crockett, American Comic Legend. New York: Rockland Editions, 1939. Print.
Finn, Mark. Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard. Austin: Monkey Brain Books, 2006. Print.
Gorn, Elliott J. “’Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch’: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry.” The American Historical Review. Vol. 90 (1985), 18-43. Print.
Howard, Robert E. “Cultured Cauliflowers” Boxing Stories. Ed. Chris Gruber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 115-129. Print.
—. “Cupid from Bear Creek.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 190-206. Print.
—. “A Gent from Bear Creek.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 124-139. Print.
—. “The Haunted Mountain.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 79-92. Print.
—. “Letter to Clyde Tevis Smith,” July 30, 1923. The Collected Letters of Robert E. Howard, Volume One: 1923-1929. Ed. Rob Roehm. REH Foundation Press, 2007. 11-14.
—. “Mountain Man.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 1-14. Print.
—. “The Pit of the Serpent” Boxing Stories. Ed. Chris Gruber. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 3-18. Print.
—. “The Riot at Cougar Paw.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 108-123.
—. “The Road to Bear Creek.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 140-151. Print.
—. “The Scalp Hunter.” The Complete Action Stories. Ed. Paul Herman. Holicong, PA: Wildside Press, 2003. 111-123. Print.
—. “War on Bear Creek.” The Riot at Bucksnort. Ed. David Gentzel. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 61-78. Print.
Janson, Charles William. The Stranger in America, 1793-1807. [1807] New York: Press of the Pioneers (reprint edition), 1935. Print.
Longstreet, Augustus Baldwin. “The Fight.” Southern Frontier Humor: An Anthology. Eds. M. Thomas Inge and Ed Piacentino. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2010. 34-42. Print.
Moore, Arthur K. The Frontier Mind. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1957. Print.
Copyright © 2011 by Jeffrey Shanks. All rights reserved.