Duluth - evergreentrad

The Day We Rode Behind McArthur’s Blacks

Four Hibbing sports so gay
To Chisholm made their way—
Not knowing Longyear Lake was full of cracks.
They all got quite a soak,
And some of the boys went broke—
The day we rode behind McArthur’s blacks.

CHORUS:
There was Gullicson and me,
And Brother Will, you see;
We tried our best to cover up our tracks;
But we made too big a break
In the ice on Longyear Lake—
The day we rode behind McArthur’s blacks

The road was rather wavy,
Some jolts were mighty heavy—
It was lucky we had cushions at our backs.
I took swift rides before.
But I don’t want no more—
Like the one I took behind McArthur’s blacks.

At Riley’s we did stop.
Then went to the plumbing shop,
Got fixed up and gladly paid the tax.
Then we telephoned Joe Zant,
We’d like to but we can’t—
The day we rode behind McArthur’s blacks.

The town we did survey
Before we came away
We inspected every building but the shacks.
The postoffice looked the best
To the farmer from the west—
The day we rode behind McArthur’s blacks.

When I awoke next morn
I looked somewhat forlorn—
I was shy a lot of North Dakota flax.
In spots I felt quite sore,
And vowed I’d ride no more—
Behind McArthur’s noted span of blacks.

We have a second song from the pen of Irish-Minnesotan poet and songsmith Jim Somers this month. The text appears in his book Jim’s Western Gems where Somers leaves us the note that it was “written at Duluth in 1912.”

The shores of Longyear Lake are in downtown Chisholm, Minnesota. Jim and his brother William Somers both lived in Hibbing at various times in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Jim moved to Minneapolis from his farmstead in North Dakota in 1910 and seems to have spent time in Hibbing and Duluth throughout these years. The story of falling through the ice behind McArthur’s black horses must have taken place around this time. (And who knows how much it was exaggerated in the song!)

No air is indicated for this song in Somers’ book. I used the air for “Down Went McGinty” which Somers indicated he used for another one of his songs in his book: “The Night That Miller Milked the Mooley Cow.” “Down Went McGinty” was sung in Bemidji for song collector Franz Rickaby in 1923 by Irene McCrady and it’s McCrady’s version I adapted for the above with a few changes.

You Pretty Girls of Michigan

[As I was learning this song over the last few weeks, a different melody for the 4th line came into my head that *I think* I’m stealing from another Great Lakes song with a similar melody. I liked it, so that’s how I sing it here.]

You pretty girls of Michigan, give ear to what I write,
Of sailing on the stormy Lakes, in which we take delight;
In sailing on the stormy Lakes, which we poor seamen do,
While Irishmen and the landlubbers are staying at home with you.

They’re always with some pretty girls a’telling them fine tales
Of the hardships and the hard day’s work they’ve had in their cornfields;
And when it’s eight o’clock at night it’s into bed they crawl,
While we, like jovial hearts of oak, stand many a bitter squall.

You pretty girls of Michigan if you did only know
The hardships and dangers we seamen undergo,
You would have more regard for us than oft you’ve had before;
You’d shun to meet those landlubbers that lounge about the shore.

For oft at twelve o’clock at night when the wind begins to blow;
“Heave out, heave out, now lively lads, roll out from down below!”
It’s now on deck stands every man, his life and ship to guard;
“Aloft! Aloft!” the captain cries, “send down the tops’l yard!”

And when the seas are mountain high and toss our vessel ’round,
And all about does danger lurk, the vessel may go down!
Now every man is on the deck, all ready to lend a hand
To shorten sail to weather the gale until we reach the land.

We sail the Lakes from spring to fall from Duluth to Buffalo,
While landlubbers are home with you or about their fields they go;
We sail the Lakes and money make for the girls that we adore,
And when our cash is getting low, we ship again for more!

________________________________________________________

This month’s song comes from a blend of sources. The prolific collector of Great Lakes folksong Ivan Walton put down the above text based on versions gathered from Pat Banner of St. Clair, Michigan, and Captain A.E. Baker of Dunkirk, New York in 1933. Walton’s composite text is published in the wonderful book Windjammers (Walton, Ivan and Joe Grimm. 2002. Detroit: Wayne State University Press) which I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in songs of the Great Lakes. Walton did not collect a melody for this song.

A closely related song, “Ye Maidens of Ontario,” was collected in Bemidji, Minnesota in 1923 by collector Franz Rickaby from the singing of Albert Hannah. Above, I have married the words collected by Walton to the melody sung by Hannah. Normally, as a proud Minnesotan, I would stick to the words also collected in Minnesota but, in this case, it is the Michigan/New York text that contains a rare reference to a Minnesota place name: Duluth. Of course, Duluth was (and is) Minnesota’s gateway city to the Great Lakes and, as the phrase “Duluth to Buffalo” implies, it was the end of the line for these rough and tough freshwater sailors.

The pairing of “Irishmen and landlubbers” in the first verse is interesting. Irishmen certainly sailed the Lakes themselves and Irish names appear in other Great Lakes ballads (see N.S. Apr. 2014).