Tag Archives: Ontario

31 Oct

Driving Saw Logs on the Plover

There walked on Plover’s shady banks one evening last July,
A mother of a shanty-boy, and doleful was her cry,
Saying, “God be with you, Johnnie, although you’re far away,
Driving saw-logs on the Plover, and you’ll never get your pay.

“Oh, Johnnie, I gave you schooling, I gave you a trade likewise.
You need not been a shanty-boy had you taken my advice.
You need not gone from your dear home to the forest far away,
Driving saw-logs on the Plover, and you’ll never get your pay.

“Why didn’t you stay upon the farm and feed the ducks and hens,
And drive the pigs and sheep each night and put them in their pens?
Far better for you to help your dad to cut his corn and hay,
Than to drive saw-logs on the Plover, and you’ll never get your pay.”

A log canoe came floating a-down the quiet stream.
As peacefully it glided as some young lover’s dream.
A youth crept out upon the bank and thus to her did say,
“Dear mother, I have jumped the game and I haven’t got my pay.

“The boys called me a sucker and a son-of-a-gun to boot.
I said to myself, O Johnnie, it is time for you to scoot.’
I stole a canoe and I started upon my weary way,
And now I have got home again — but nary a cent of pay.”

Now all young men take this advice: If e’er you wish to roam,
Be sure and kiss your mothers before you leave your home.
You had better work upon a farm for a half a dollar a day,
Than to drive saw-logs on the Plover, and you’ll never get your pay.

This month we have a rare instance of an old traditional song where we know the identity of its composer. “Driving Saw-Logs on the Plover” was written in 1873 by William Allen of Wausau, Wisconsin. William Bartlett, a local historian in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, knew Allen personally and connected him with song collector Franz Rickaby in the early 1920s. Thanks to notes and documents saved by Bartlett and Rickaby we know a lot about Allen, who put some of his songs out under the pseudonym “Shan T. Boy.”

Allen was born in 1843 in St. Stephen, New Brunswick just across the river from Calais, Maine. His parents were both immigrants from Ireland. The family moved to the western shores of Lake Michigan in 1855 where they lived first in Cedar River, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula and then Manitowoc, Wisconsin before heading inland to Wausau. After apprenticing with a timber cruiser near Green Bay, Allen returned to Wausau in 1868 (age 25) to begin a long career as a cruiser himself. Cruisers would roam the woods estimating the quantity and quality of trees for harvesting.

Allen’s work as a cruiser provided a context for singing and song writing. In a letter to Bartlett, he wrote “I had occasion to visit a great many logging camps in the course of each winter, and it was customary for me to sing for the lumber-jacks in lumber-jack style… …Several of my poems are sarcastic descriptions of characters and failings of our respectable (?) citizens, and I have been threatened with libel suits and shot-guns on several occasions.” “Driving Saw-Logs on the Plover” does not name any particular crooked boss but it certainly paints a grim picture of a shanty boy who, after enduring the labor and danger of a log drive, realizes his employer has no intention of paying him.

Allen based the song text and melody on a popular broadside ballad called “The Crimean War” or “As I Rode Down Through Irishtown” (see Northwoods Songs #10). It is a well worn melody in the Irish tradition. Ontario singer Bob McMahon had a nice twist on it when he sang it for Edith Fowke in 1959. I have blended McMahon’s melody with the melody and text given by Allen to Rickaby here.

22 May

Lost Jimmie Whalen

Slowly and sadly I strayed by the river,
A-watching the sunbeams as evening drew nigh,
All alone as I rambled I spied a fair damsel,
She was weeping and wailing with many a sigh.

Sighing for one who is now lying lonely,
Mourning for one who no mortal can save,
As the dark foaming waters flow sadly around her,
As onward they roll o’er young Jimmie’s grave.

“Jimmie,” said she, “won’t you come to my arms,
And give me sweet kisses as oft times you gave?
You promised you’d meet me this evening my darling,
O come dearest Jimmie, love, come from the grave!”

Slowly there rose from the depths of the river,
A vision of beauty far fairer than sun,
While red robes of crimson encircled around him,
Unto this fair maiden to speak he’s begun.

“Why did you rise me from the realms of glory,
Back to this place where I once had to leave?
To clasp you once more in my fond loving arms?
To see you once more I have come from my grave.”

“Jimmie” said she, “why not stay on earth with me,
Don’t leave me here for to weep and to rave,
But if you won’t mind me and bide here beside me,
Oh Jimmy take me to your cold silent grave.”

“Darling to me you are asking a favor
That no earthy mortal can grant unto thee.
For death is the dagger that holds us asunder,
And wide is the gulf, love, between you and me.”

“One fond embrace, love, and then I must leave you
One loving kiss, pet, and then we must part.”
And cold were the arms he encircled around her,
While cold was the bosom she pressed to her heart.

Then straightway the vision did vanish before her,
Straightway to the sky he then seemed to go,
Leaving his loved one distracted and lonely,
Weeping and wailing in sadness and woe.

Throwing herself on the banks of the river,
Weeping and wailing her poor heart would break,
Sighing “My loved one, my lost Jimmie Whalen,
I will lie down and die by the side of your grave.”

Norah Rendell and I have been singing this beautiful song for several years but somehow it has never made it onto Northwoods Songs!

It is one of two songs that commemorate the tragic drowning of a raftsman named James Phalen around 1878 in Ontario. Collector Franz Rickaby, who prints both songs in his book Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy, corresponded with multiple informants who knew the details of the Phalen drowning. It happened at King’s Chute on Ontario’s Mississippi River–a tributary of the Ottawa where the rafting crew was working for a boss named Peter McLaren who went on to be a senator. Phalen and two others were attempting to break a log jam at the “Upper Falls” section of the Chute. Phalen fell in and was swept under the logs.  

Rickaby’s informants told him that the other popular “Whalen” song, “Jim Whalen,” was definitely based on the Phalen tragedy (apparently the name was pronounced “Whalen” in that part of Ontario). They said it was written and sung “with much pathos” by a local songsmith in Lanark, Ontario named John Smith.

Rickaby was not certain that the ghost-visiting narrative of “Lost Jimmie Whalen” referred to the same drowning victim as the more journalistic “Jim Whalen.” Rickaby collected only a three verse fragment “Lost Jimmie Whalen” from Will Daugherty of Charlevoix, Michigan in 1919. A version collected in the 1950s in Ontario from Martin Sullivan by Edith Fowke clearly makes the Phalen connection by including an additional verse:

“Hard, hard were the struggles on the cruel Mississippi,
But encircled around her on every side,
Thinking of you as we conquered them bravely,
I was hoping some day for to make you my bride.”

The above-transcribed melody comes from yet another Great Lakes region singer named Robert Walker who lived in Crandon, Wisconsin (Walker’s version appears on this wonderful Folkways album). Walker’s melody, a relative of the one frequently used for “Lass of Glenshee,” is similar to that used by Sullivan but I prefer the way Walker sings the opening bar. The text above is primarily from Walker with a few lines borrowed from the Daugherty and Sullivan versions and a couple changed of my own in the sixth stanza.

15 Sep

The Farmer’s Boy


Oh the sun it sank behind a hill across the dreary moor,
Poor and lame there came a boy up to a farmer’s door,
Saying, “Please, will you tell me a man about here that would me employ,
To plough, to sow, to reap and to mow, to be a farmer’s boy?”

“My father’s dead, my mother lives with her five children small,
And what is the worst for mother dear, I’m the eldest of them all,
Although I am small, I fear no work if you’ll only me employ,
To plough, to sow, to reap, and to mow, to be a farmer’s boy.”

“Oh well,” says the farmer, “we’ll try the lad, no longer have him seek,”
“Yes, dear Papa,” his daughter cried, as the tears rolled down her cheek,
“For a man that can work, it’s hard for him to want, and to wander for employ,
Don’t send him away, but let him stay, and be your laboring boy.”

Well the years went by, the boy grew up and the good old farmer died,
He willed to the lad the farm that he had, and his daughter for a bride,
Now the lad that was once; he’s a farmer now. He often thinks with joy,
On the happy, happy day he came that way, to be a farmer’s boy.
—————–

This month’s song comes from Edith Fowke’s 1957 recording of Ottawa Valley singer Oliver John (O.J.) Abbott (1872-1962). Abbott was born in Enfield, England and came to Ontario as a 12-year-old with his brother but without their parents. As a young man in the Ottawa area, he boarded with and worked for two Irish families, the Whalens and the O’Malleys. He learned many songs from Mrs. Whalen and Mrs. O’Malley and more from his winter work in lumber camps. After being “discovered” by Fowke in his mid 80s, Abbott went on to appear alongside Pete Seeger at multiple folk festivals as a representative of the rich tradition of “woods” singing found in the Ottawa Valley region (here he is being interviewed by Ewan MacColl). “The Farmer’s Boy” must have resonated strongly with Abbott as someone who, himself, was taken as a “farmer’s boy” as a vulnerable young man.

Versions of this song were collected all over the US including in Wisconsin where it was sung by Crandon singer Warde Ford (I substituted Ford’s opening line for Abbott’s above). It has also been found throughout England where it likely originated as a mid-19th century broadside. The song must also be known in Ireland for, after singing it once in Chicago, Sligo-born flute legend Kevin Henry remarked “Where did you get ‘The Farmer’s Boy?’ I haven’t heard that since I was a boy!”