01 Mar

Farewell to Nancy

*my source singer for this transcription, Carrie Grover, varies her pitch selection on the asterisk-marked notes throughout her beautiful performance. Consult the online recording to get a feel for this and other aspects of her singing. A transcription can’t do it justice!

I’ve travelled this country both early and late,
I’ve travelled this country when hard was my fate,
Fell in love with a pretty fair maid, but she does me disdain,
Oft times she has slighted me, but I’ll try her again.

Oh, your parents are rich, love, and you hard to please,
I would have you take pity on your heart-broken slave,
I would have you leave your father and your mother also,
And through this wide world with your darling boy go.

“Oh, Johnnie, dear Johnnie, such advice will not do,
For leave my own country and to go along with you,
My friends and old sweethearts they would mourn my sad fate,
If I’d leave my own country and go follow a rake.”

Now my love she won’t have me, and away I must go,
To the wide spreading ocean where the salt breeze does blow,
To seek a companion, it is all my design,
Fare you well, dearest Nancy, must I leave you behind?

Fare you well, dearest Nancy, and merry may you be,
I will always think of you wherever you be,
But since you’ve proved unloyal to the one that’s so true,
May the wide spreading ocean separate I and you.

We return to the wonderful repertoire of New Brunswick/Maine singer Carrie Grover this month for a song you can hear online via the Carrie Grover Project website. Grover’s singing is full of character and nuance and is definitely worth hearing. As I say above, the recording does a far better job of conveying her style than anything I can transcribe (or describe!) here.

Grover’s “Farewell to Nancy” contains some “floating” lines in the first verse that turn up in versions of other songs including “Green Grows the Laurel” and the Scottish Bothy ballad “Airlin’s Fine Braes.” Steve Roud classifies “Farewell to Nancy” along with a song called “Little Susie” that was sung in parts of the southern US. A version of “Little Susie” collected by Max Hunter in Arkansas does share many words with Grover’s song.

It is Carrie Grover’s striking melody that I find most attractive here. I love the big leaps and interesting pitch variances in her performance.

01 Mar

The Cuckoo

Our meetings are pleasure, our partings are grief,
But a false-hearted young man is worse than a thief,
For a thief can but rob you and take all you have,
But a false-hearted young man will bring you to the grave.

The grave it will rot you and bring you to dust.
A false-hearted young man no maiden can trust,
They will kiss you and court you fair maids, to deceive,
And there’s not one in twenty that you can believe.

Oh, I can love little or I can love long,
I can love a new sweetheart when the old one is gone,
I can tell them I love them to give their hearts ease,
And when their back’s to me I will love whom I please.

Most of my song-sleuthing is aimed at finding English language songs that traveled across the north Atlantic with Irish immigrants and took hold in the north woods regions of North America. This particular Irish repertoire spread throughout the white pine belt as logging and other industries moved westward through the 1800s. While the songs can be traced, with almost no audio recording evidence of singers recorded pre-1920, it is harder to speak authoritatively about singing style in the lumber boom years of the 19th century. Still, it is safe to state that Irish singing style, as it existed in that century, did mark the approach used in the north woods. I think it is also safe to say that the blends of Black American and Scots-Irish song traditions that formed the folk traditions in Appalachia and further south were less present in the north woods historically. There was an Irish-influenced “woods style” of singing that was distinct from styles prevalent to the south.

Of course, singers of those earlier times didn’t worry as much about these distinctions as we do! And the songs themselves crossed from community to community regardless of origin. This month we have a song that began as a broadside ballad in England and, skipping Ireland almost entirely, took hold in the American south where it became a standard of the Appalachian repertoire (and Americana music today). Whether “The Cuckoo” stopped in the lumbercamps before going south is unknown but it did end up in the repertoires of several woods singers in New England and the Canadian Maritimes. It is interesting to compare the stylistic differences between how it was sung by northern singers and the more commonly heard southern versions (for a quintessential southern version see this amazing video on YouTube of Clarence Ashley). 

Thanks to the massive collection of recordings brought together by Helen Hartness Flanders and now available freely online via archive.org, we have several northern versions of this song to enjoy. The melody and first verse above are from Hanford Hayes at Stacyville, Maine as recorded by Flanders in May 1942. The additional verses are from Nova Scotia/Maine singer Carrie Grover. A similar melody (basically a pared down version of lines 3 and 4) was used by singer George Edwards in the Catskills area of New York.

I love Hayes’ dark and quirky melody and his leisurely style. I’d recommend listening to the online recording to hear the way he ornaments the long note in the first bar of each line. His style is masterful and reminiscent to me of the great Angelo Dornan of nearby New Brunswick.

21 Nov

Young Matt Ilan

There was a lord, lived in the north,
He had one fair and comely daughter,
She fell in love with a young man,
He was a servant to her father.
But when the old man came to know,
He swore that he would quit that island,
The lady cries, “My heart will break,
If I must part with young Matt Ilan.”

One night he discussed his lady fair,
All in her silent, lonely chamber,
Saying, “Matt Ilan I’ll transport,
I fear my child she stands in danger.”
His daughter she in ambush lay,
Oppressed with grief, she went off smiling,
Saying, “My father I’ll deceive,
I will protect my young Matt Ilan.”

Then to his room straightway she went,
Desiring him for to awaken,
Saying, “Rise, my love, and go your way,
Or else I fear you will be taken.
This night I heard my father say,
In spite of fate he would transport you,
So go your way before it is day,
You know, my love, that I do adore you.”

She sat her down on his bedside,
For about the space of half an hour,
And every word her true love spoke,
The tears down from her eyes did pour.
Her arms about his neck she threw,
His arms about her waist he twined them,
“No lord nor duke will e’er I wed,
My heart will go with you, Matt Ilan.”

“And must I go away?” he said,
“Just like some poor, forlorn ranger,
And leave my service in distress,
And must I go without my wages?”
“Oh, here are fifty pounds,” she says,
“’Tis more than all my father owed you,
So now away before it is day,
And I wish, my love, I had gone before you.”

Then after this came many an earl,
And many a lord to court this lady,
‘Twas all in vain, it was all no use,
No lord nor earl could gain her favor.
Her father asked the reason why,
At which his daughter plainly told him,
“No lord nor earl will e’er I wed,
My heart has gone with young Matt Ilan.”

Oh, then up speaks her father dear,
“I did not know how dear you loved him,
Now, I will bring young Ilan home,
Since none there are you adore above him.”
A letter then she wrote straightway,
Her heart to him it was inclining,
So, to church away without delay,
And she made a lord of young Matt Ilan.

This month we have a beautiful, unique version from Maine of a song that is well-known in Irish music circles thanks to its popularization in the 1970s. The great Ulster musician, co-founder of The Boys of the Lough and song collector Robin Morton published “Matt Hyland” in his 1970 book Folksongs Sung in Ulster. (Morton, sadly, passed away last month.)  Morton’s source was Sandy McConnell, the father of his soon-to-be bandmate, Fermanagh musician Cathal McConnell. Sandy got it from another Fermanagh singer, Tommy McDermott. Morton observed that the song seemed to only be found in tradition in south Ulster.

As has often been the case in my research, the north woods of North America turn out to have been a place where Ulster songs migrated and survived. Carrie Grover sang the above version for collector Sydney Robertson-Cowell in 1941. Grover, born in Nova Scotia and based for most of her life in Maine, wrote in her book A Heritage of Songs “I have never heard anyone but my father sing this song, and he said he never heard anyone sing it but the man from whom he learned it. It is so long ago that I can’t be sure, but I think the singer was a man from New Brunswick whose name was Davidson.”

The source for my transcription was the audio recording of Grover made available online through the wonderful work of Julie Mainstone Savas on her Carrie Grover Project site (carriegroverproject.com). I recommend listening to the recording for Grover’s effective use of a sort of “in between” pitch at the peak of the opening phrase.