Hell Among the Yearlings

Yearlings are young cattle, and the title probably means a herd running wild. Another reading takes "hell" as thick brush, with the calves lost in it. Several unrelated tunes carry the name.

Edgar Lee Masters, the Spoon River poet, visited Illinois fiddler John Armstrong in 1916 and later wrote down the story Armstrong told: cattle broke into Ben Sutton's corn during a dance, and the tune had that name ever after. The Kessinger Brothers recorded it in 1928. Its first part usually runs nine bars instead of eight.