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This 1870 Currier and Ives lithograph was inspired by The Arkansas Traveller, a melody with a story that appeared around 1858-1863. It depicts a wise-cracking, fiddle-playing hillbilly's encounter with a sophisticated city-slicker. The dialogue and tune, performed and recorded by Steve Porter and Ernest Hare in 1922, are part of the American Variety Stage collection. A brief historical timeline of The Arkansas Traveller is presented below. |
 Arkansas Traveller: Scene In The Back Woods Of Arkansas Created/Published [New York]: Currier and Ives, 1870 (not available online) Prints and Photographs Division, The Library of Congress |
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Image Caption Text: Traveller, - To Squatter, - Can you give me some refreshments and a night's lodging? - Squatter, No sir - Haven't got any room, nothin to eat (fiddles away) - Traveller - Where does this road go to? - Squatter, - It don't go anywhere, it stays here, - (Still fiddling) - Traveller, - Why don't you play the rest of the tune? Squatter - Don't know it, - Traveller - Here give me the fiddle - plays. |
| February 23, 1847 | First printing of the melody by W. C. Peters under the title Arkansas Traveller and Rackinsac Waltz |
| 1851 | Tune is called A Western Refrain |
| 1858-1863 | Famous dialogue story probably appeared first in two sheet music editions by Mose Case |
| December, 1863 | Almost identical copy was published by Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston with the credit to Mose Case |
| 1858 - 1860 | Version by Col. Faulkner with large colored lithograph entitled The Arkansas Traveller, designed by one of the natives and dedicated to Col. S.C. Faulkner, contains melody, but no dialogue |
| 1870 | Currier and Ives publish two prints entitled The Arkansas Traveller and The Turn of the Tune |
| 1876 | Large cardboard printing by Col. S. C. Faulkner or B. S. Alford. Faulkner claims to have been the original Arkansas Traveller in 1840 |
| Reference: Fuld, James J. The Book of World-Famous Music. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1996. pp. 107-108. |