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2 whether Dick or any of the other Wob minstrels and bards were conscious of the folksong concept (as it is used by contemporary academic folklorists).

  On New Yrs Eve Dick took me to an IWW party at the home of Becky Dempsey. I met Herbert Mahler, Pete Stone, and others. Dick had given Pete my Neuhaus article. Pete helped me on the songs.   He had heard "some 400 cats who had come from the midwest to winter up in Seattle" sing "The Kitten in the Wheat" in 1916. You'll recall that that John Neuhaus had given his source for the "Kitten" as the Literary Digest. It could have been planted against the IWW as a phony. But Pete Stone was quite certain it had been sung and even sang a stanza for me. Naturally I was elated because it was my first evidence that the "Kitten" was actually sung.  
  Meanwhile Brazier calmly informed me that "The Kitten" is a direct parody of a well known Cornish poem and song by Robert Stephen Hawker who was also known as "The Vicar of Morwenstow."  The poem is called "The Song of the Western Men" or the "Trelawny Ballad" since it