Uncle Bud pointed to the ruin of an old-fashioned railroad trestle about twenty feet above us. The supporting stones were crumbling. The metal-work was rusted. In a few more years the accumulation of vines and weeds would cover
it completely. No train had crossed that trestle for a long, long time. Uncle Bud said, “That’s where Jessie James robbed a train”. I was about four or five years old at the time. I didn’t know anything about Jessie James. Uncle Bud filled me in, “Jessie James robbed banks & trains and gave the money
to poor farmers the banks & trains had robbed”.
That’s all I knew about Jessie James until many years later. It was my introduction to outlaws. Outlaws are criminals, but they are a special sort of criminal. Their crimes are partially justified by being interweaved with social justice. There’s usually some truth to it. Legend takes care of the less pleasant parts. Historians may quibble about this or that fact. People decide in their own mysterious ways who’s a common criminal and who’s an Outlaw.
I suppose Spartacus was the first famous outlaw of Western culture. To the Romans he was an escaped slave and criminal. To many of the subjugated Roman population, he was a heroic outlaw. Though he was inevitably killed by Rome, his legend lives on. That’s one of the distinguishing marks of true outlaws. They live on in legend. The facts be dammed, the story is too good to be forgotten.
Robin Hood is the most famous, and really the archetype for all outlaws. He may have been several persons conflated into one. It doesn’t matter. He stole from the rich and gave to the poor. That’s what elevates a criminal into being an outlaw. It needn’t be true. It needs only to be believed.
Being declared an Outlaw in Robin Hood’s time meant more than mere personal opinion. Outlaw were literally outside the Law. They were denied the legal protections and privileges due to citizens. They could be beaten, killed, or cheated with impunity by anyone who was up to the challenge.
Court appointed lawyers weren’t even a distant dream.
A different kind of Outlaw is the Political Outlaw. William Wallace and later, Rob Roy, both of whom fought against English occupation of Scotland, were outlaws to the English, and heroic warriors to the Scotts. Political Outlaws do often hand out what they take to those they think deserving - but then, so do all politicians. It’s always easier to give away somebody else’s money than your own.
Some Pirates might be considered a variety of Outlaw, but the majority of them were more inclined to keep-for-themselves rather than to give-to-the-poor. They also did most of their skullduggery on the waves. They deserve their own uniquely nautical category.
Outlaws, like Jessie James, and so many more, got famous just after the Civil War and thereafter, right up to a few years past the end of Prohibition. Something about modern times seems to produce more outright crooks than Outlaws. Maybe it’s the lack of laudatory songs. Being celebrated in song can transform a common crook into an Outlaw. The song may not be truly deserved, or not even true at all, but it is the vehicle that drives the legend.
Woody Guthrie’s balled of Pretty Boy Floyd is a case in point. Pretty Boy Floyd may once have come as a stranger to a poor farmer’s door, eaten at the poor farmer’s table, then slipped a hundred dollar bill under the poor farmer’s plate - but probably not too often.
Dylan’s song of John Wesley Harding is drolly wacky, though sung sincerely. He sings of John Wesley as having, “a gun in every hand”, and “never know to hurt an honest man”.
Whatever outlaw ballads lack in veracity they make up for in what-ought-to-be.
Some Outlaws write their own song. Bonnie Parker wrote, and sent to newspapers, many poems romancing the two-year ride & rob career of Bonnie & Clyde.
None of her poems mention a pit-stop the duo made at my hometown, Mt. Moriah, Missouri.
It’s not surprising; she had no reason to mention Mt. Moriah, it’s a very small town and they only stopped for gas. The gas station is long gone, but Bonnie & Clyde’s brief visit lives on in the tales told by the folks around eastern Harrison County.
Below is the last verse of one of Bonnie’s poems:
The Trail’s End.
Some day they’ll go down together
they’ll bury them side by side.
To few it’ll be grief,
to the law a relief
but it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.
Bonnie Parker did not smoke. The poetess outlaw posed with the cigar only to enhance tough-girl effect .
Hometown girl makes good: Notorious, but not quite an Outlaw - Martha Jane Canary, better known as Calamity Jane, was born
in Princeton, Missouri, only a few miles from my hometown,
Mt. Moriah. The Princeton town council has honored her with
a commemorative book.