Franz Rickaby - evergreentrad

15 Apr

Persian’s Crew (Laws D4)

(The version in the video is based on the one below but includes my own deviations which are, in part, on purpose and, in part, due to forgetfulness!)

Sad and dismal is the story that I will tell to you,
About the schooner Persia, her officers and crew;
They sank beneath the waters deep in life to rise no more,
Where wind and desolation sweeps Lake Huron’s rock bound shore.

They left Chicago on their lee, their songs they did resound,
Their hearts were filled with joy and glee, for they were homeward bound;
They little thought the sword of death would meet them on their way
And they so full of joy and life would in Lake Huron lay.

In mystery o’er their fate was sealed, they did collide, some say,
And that is all that will be revealed until the judgment day;
But when the angels take their stand to sweep these waters blue,
They will summon forth at Heaven’s command the Persian’s luckless crew.

No mother’s hand was there to soothe the brow’s distracted pain,
No gentle wife for to caress those cold lips once again;
No sister nor a lover dear or little ones to moan,
But in the deep alone they sleep, far from their friends and home.

Her captain, he is no more, he lost his precious life,
He sank down among Lake Huron’s waves, free from all mortal strife;
A barren coast now hides from view his manly, lifeless form,
And still in death is the heart so true that weathered many a storm.

There was Daniel Sullivan, her mate, with a heart as true and brave,
As ever was compelled by fate to fill a sailor’s grave;
Alas, he lost his noble life, poor Daniel is no more,
He met a sad, untimely end upon Lake Huron’s shore.

Oh, Daniel, Dan, your many friends mourn the fate that has on you frowned,
They look in vain for your return back to Oswego town;
They miss the love glance of your eye, your hand they’ll clasp no more,
For still in death you now do lie upon Lake Huron’s shore.

Her sailors’ names I did not know, excepting one or two,
Down in the deep they all did go, they were a luckless crew;
Not one escaped to land to clear the mystery o’er,
Or to lie adrift by Heaven’s command in lifeless form ashore.

Now around Presque Isle the sea birds scream their mournful notes along,
In chanting to the sad requiem, the mournful funeral song,
They skim along the waters blue and then aloft they soar,
O’er the bodies of the Persian’s crew that lie along the shore.
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We are back to the repertoire of Minnesota singer Michael Cassius Dean this month with the second of two Great Lakes shipwreck songs (see N.S. Feb. 2013 for the other) recorded from Dean by folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon in 1924. As usual, the text is from Dean’s songster The Flying Cloud and the melody is my transcription of the Gordon recording.

The schooner Persian was headed from Chicago to its home port of Oswego, New York with a cargo of grain in the fall of 1869 when it was caught in a heavy storm just east of the Straits of Mackinac. The eight-man crew was never heard from again. The song began as a poem penned by Oswego man Patrick Fennel, a dear friend of the Persian’s first mate Daniel Sullivan. Fennel’s pen name was Shandy Maguire.[1] The melody used by Dean and other Great Lakes sailors and lumbermen who set the poem to music was one used for many songs in the region. Dean himself used the same air for “As I Rode Down Through Irishtown” (see N.S. Mar. 2013).

Read more about this song on it’s Traditional Ballad Index page: http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/LD04.html

[1] Walton, Ivan H. / Joe Grimm. Windjammers: Songs of the Great Lakes Sailors. Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Pr., 2002, p. 191.

26 Mar

Ned McCabe

I’m a fine old Irish laborer, from Ireland I came,
To try me luck on Columbia’s shore, and Ned McCabe’s my name.
I’ve had me days of sunshine, although I can’t complain,
But those good old days for laborers will never come back again.

Chorus:
’Tis boys, be gay and hearty, and never ye be afraid,
But bear misfortunes with a smile like poor old Ned McCabe

But when I landed in Quebec, I had nary a red at all,
I hired out to a contractor, boys, to work upon a canawl.
I’d eighty cents a day, me boys, and whiskey too had I,
But when I think of those good old days, it almost makes me cry. Chorus

*I’ve cleared the lands in the far-off west, and many a mile I’ve trod,
And many’s the snake, and wild beast, I’ve laid beneath the sod. Chorus

Now the winter time is coming on, and away down south I’ll go,
To secure myself a winter’s job away from frost and snow.
Old Canady being by favorite whenever there I went,
I could drink my twenty jiggers a day and never step off o’ the plank. Chorus

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Folk song collector Franz Rickaby made the above transcription of this very rare song from the singing of George Hankins (1849-1934) of Gordon, Wisconsin in the early 1920s. Earlier in his life, Hankins worked as a lumberjack and railroad man in Minnesota before making his home in Gordon, about 45 miles southeast of Duluth. Hankins told Rickaby that he learned the song when he first came to live in Wisconsin.

The song itself illustrates a familiar storyline for the first Irishmen to come to Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was common for Famine-era immigrants who sailed to Canada to find work as lumberjacks, railroad men, Great Lakes sailors or canal workers. Many of these men and their sons followed those jobs, or sometimes seasonal farm work, over the border into the US. So it was with many of the men who built Stillwater, Minnesota and other St. Croix Valley towns.

*I took some liberty with the words of this verse in what I published in the IMDA newsletter and in what I sing myself. The original as transcribed by Rickaby reads:

I’ve cleared the lands in the far-off west where no white man ever trod,
And many’s the snake, and red man too, I’ve laid beneath the sod.

14 Oct

The Lass of Dunmore

As I went a-walking one morning,
Bright Phoebus so clearly did shine,
And the meadow larks warbled melodious,
While the rose in the valleys did twine;
It was down by a grove where I wandered,
A while to repose in the shade,
On my destiny there for to ponder,
It was there I beheld a fair maid.

I raised up on my feet for to view her,
And those tender words I did say,
“Who are you, my fairest of creatures?
How far through this grove do you stray?”
She answered, “Kind sir, I will tell you,
And the truth unto you I deplore,
It’s a matter that’s lately befell me,
My dwelling place is down in Dunmore.

“Oh, once I did love a bold seaman,
And he, too my fond heart had gained,
No mortal on earth could love dearer,
But now he is crossing the main,
With Nelson, that hero of battle,
In the English navy so brave,
Where cannons and guns loud do rattle,
For to fight the proud French on the wave.”

“Then perhaps that your true love is drowned,
And he ne’er will return home again,
For many a man has fallen a victim
With Nelson while crossing the main;
And the same thing might happen to your love,
As it’s happened to others before,
So it’s come with me now, I pray, darling.
And leave the dark shades of Dunmore.”

“Oh, how could I be so unfaithful
To a heart that is constant and true,
To leave my own father’s dwelling
And to venture my fortunes with you?
Oh, the people would call me unconstant,
For it’s truly to him I am swore,
And true lovers ne’er should be parted,
I’ll wait for that lad in Dunmore.”

Then says I, “My fair, tender blossom,
The spring time of life soon will be o’er,
And the October leaves will be falling,
They will fade the fair Rose of Dunmore.”
When I found that her heart was a-yielding,
Like I’ve found it with others before,
Oh, I packed up my all for Renfralen,
And I stole the fair Rose of Dunmore.

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Folksong collector and scholar Franz Rickaby hunted for songs in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan from 1919 to 1923. Most of his informants were retired lumberjacks, or “shanty-boys,” and Rickaby took interest in how and where they learned their songs. He was also quite interested in the origins of the songs themselves. Most that were written about life in the northwoods were based on older traditional songs and Rickaby concluded, more specifically, that “the Irish street-song was the pattern upon which a liberal portion of the shanty-songs were made.”[1]

In the notes to his Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy, Rickaby points out several “parent” songs that served as models for songs made up by lumbermen. One such parent song is “The Lass of Dunmore.” Rickaby cites it as the model for “The Banks of the Little Eau Pleine” which was authored by Wausau, Wisconsin timber cruiser W.N. “Billy” Allen about the drowning of a raftsman in the Wisconsin Dells. Rickaby made the connection based on a version of the text of “The Lass of Dunmore” printed by Minnesota singer Mike Dean in his songster The Flying Cloud. No melody was ever collected from Dean for “The Lass of Dunmore” but the text does resemble that of the “Little Eau Pleine” and it turns out that the only other version of “The Lass of Dunmore” I know of was collected in Allen’s home province of New Brunswick in the 1960s. Amazingly, it shares its melody with versions of “Little Eau Pleine” collected by Rickaby from both Dean and Ed Springstad of Bemidji.

Here I have married Dean’s text for “The Lass of Dunmore” with his melody used for “The Banks of the Little Auplaine” as recorded by Robert Winslow Gordon in 1924 from Dean’s singing.

[1] Rickaby, Franz Lee. Ballads and Songs of the Shanty Boy. 1926:xxv