04 Sep

Johanna Shay

In the Emerald Isle so far from here across the dark blue sea,
There lives a maid that I love dear and I know that she loves me,
With roguish eyes of Irish blue her cheeks like dawn of day,
Oh, the sunshine of my life she is, my own Johanna Shay.

Oh, Johanna is tall and lovely and like a lily fair,
She is the prettiest girl that can be found in the County of Kildare,
And if I have good luck, me boys, I’ll make her Mrs. O’Day,
For my bundle I’ll pack and I’ll sail right back to my own Johanna Shay.

There’s a bird in yonder garden singing from a willow tree,
That makes me think of Johanna when she used to sing to me;
When side by side o’er the mountains or by the lake we strolled,
And her cheeks would flush with an honest blush whenever a kiss I stole;
Though the ocean rolls between us, if harm was in her way,
I would jump right in and boldly swim to my own Johanna Shay.

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This summer marks the 90th anniversary of a productive three-week song collecting trip around Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin by folksong collector Franz Rickaby. Rickaby had just finished his final year as English professor at the University of North Dakota in 1923 and was about to move to the warmer climes of California in an attempt to ease the pain of rheumatic fever—the disease that tragically cut his life, and the preservation of Upper Midwestern traditional folksong, short. He gathered songs first in Bemidji and then met with prolific singer Michael Dean in Virginia, MN before heading to Eau Claire, WI and Bayport, MN. The above song text comes from Dean’s repertoire as printed, not by Rickaby, but by Dean in his self-published songster The Flying Cloud. Rickaby did not transcribe “Johanna Shay” from Dean’s singing, but he did jot down the melody used for it by Eau Claire singer Elide Marceau Fox. I married Fox’s melody to Dean’s text above.

I have found not one single other instance of this song in any other collection of texts, transcriptions or recordings—remarkable in this age of searchable digital archives and well-researched databases of folk song! Fox’s melody (and some of the poetry) hints at a connection to the Irish Music Hall song-writers of the 1800s. Whether it was born on the stage or was simply in imitation of that style we may never now. Still, quite a nice little song I think.

10 Jul

Vandiemens Land (Laws L18)

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Come, all you lads of pleasure and rambling boys beware,
Whenever you go hunting with your hounds, your gun and snare,
Whenever you go a-hunting with the valleys at your command,
Think of the tedious journey, boys, going to Vandiemens Land.

There was Joe Brown from Nottingham, Jack Williams and Jack Jones,
They were three as jolly fellows, so well their country knows;
They were taken one night near the bay, all with their gun in hand,
And for fourteen years transported unto Vandiemens Land.

There was a girl from Nottingham, Sally Simons was her name,
For seven years transported for carrying on the game;
Our Captain bought her freedom and he married her off hand,
She gave us good usage going to Vandiemens Land.

The landing port we went to was on a foreign shore,
The planters they surrounded us, full a score or more,
They yoked us up like horses and sold us out off hand,
And they hitched us to the plow, me boys, to plow Vandiemens Land.

The houses that they built for us was made of sods and clay,
The beds we had to sleep on were made of rotten hay;
Oh, rotten hay for beds, me boys, and slumber if you can,
Oh, they gave us the very worst usage while on Vandiemens Land,

Last night as I lay down to sleep I had a pleasant dream,
I dreamt I was back in Ireland, down by a purling stream,
With my Irish girl beside me and her at my command,
But when I awoke my heart was broke, off on Vandiemens Land.
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Anthony Van Diemen of the Dutch East India Company chartered an expedition led by explorer Abel Tasman resulting in the first European landing on land (later discovered to be an island) off the south-eastern coast of New South Wales (Australia) in 1642. The island, later renamed Tasmania, was colonized by the British in 1803 as a penal colony with the name Van Diemen’s Land. Convicts were sent to the island from that time until 1853.

Several traditional ballads mention punishment by transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. In this one, once prevalent in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia and North America, the crime is poaching. This version, collected from Minnesotan singer Mike Dean, is from the point of view of a convicted Irishman though his criminal shipmates are poachers from Nottingham, England. Other versions tell of poachers apprehended in Ireland itself.

In the 1800s, the right to hunt in England and Ireland was limited to the aristocracy. Poaching was not the violation of animal protection laws it is today but rather an assault on the property of the wealthy who kept game on their lands. Poachers were usually people from the lower classes seeking food or money from the sale of wild game on the black market. Mike Dean was himself an avid hunter who made many trips around Minnesota and eastern South Dakota hunting prairie chickens while living in Hinckley in the late 1800s. It is interesting to imagine what this song meant to him as the son of Famine immigrants from County Mayo.

More detailed information on this song from the Traditional Ballad Index

30 Nov

Jerry Go Oil the Car (Laws H30)

Come, all you railroad section hands, I hope you will draw near,
And likewise pay attention to these few lines you’ll hear,
Concerning one Larry Sullivan, alas, he is no more,
He sailed some forty years ago from the green old Irish shore.

For four and thirty weary years he worked upon the track,
And the truth to say from the very first day he never had a wreck,
For he made it a point to keep up the lower joints with the force of the tamping bar;
Joint ahead and center back and Jerry go oil the car.

To see old Larry in the winter time when the hills were clad with snow,
It was his pride on his handcar to ride as over the section he’d go,
With his big soldier coat buttoned up to his throat, sure he looked like an Emperor,
And while the boys were shimming up the ties, sure Jerry would be oiling the car.

When Sunday morning came around to the section hands he’d say,
“I suppose you all know that my wife is going to Mass today,
And I want every man for to pump all he can, for the distance it is very far,
And I’d like to get in ahead of number ten, so Jerry go oil the car.”

“And now when my friends are gathered around, there is one request I crave,
When I am dead and gone to my rest, place the handcar on my grave;
Let the spike mawl rest upon my breast with the gauge and the old clawbar,
And while the boys are lowering me down, lave Jerry to be oiling the car.”

“Give my regards to the roadmaster,” poor Larry he did cry,
“And rise me up so I may see the handcar before I die.”
He was so wake he could hardly spake, in a moment he was dead;
“Joint ahead and center back,” were the very last words he said.

Remarks by Mrs. Sullivan:

God bless you, Larry Sullivan, to me you was kind and good,
For me you’d make the section hands go out and cut the wood,
To the well also for water they would go, and chop the kindling fine,
And if any of them would growl, upon my soul, he’d dam soon get his time.

And now that he is dead I want it to be said that the cars they never got a jar;
Joint ahead and center back and Jerry go oil the car.

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In his memoir about growing up in Cloquet, MN in the early 1900s, Walter O’Meara recalls stories told by his father Michael O’Meara, a life-long lumberman who was born in Ontario to Irish parents. One story concerns Scotty Boyle, a foreman on the Embarrass River:

In Scotty’s camp…the crew was not awakened, as in other camps, by the raucous notes of the long tin horn called the “gabrel.” No indeed. “Give ‘em Larry,” Scotty would say to a young Irishman on his crew, and the men were apprised of the dawn of a new day in the pines by the sweet strains of “Larry O’Sullivan.”[1]

Minnesota singer Mike Dean called the song by its other common name, “Jerry Go Oil the Car.” Above is the text from Dean’s songster The Flying Cloud including his own note that the last 1½ stanzas are the words of “Mrs. Sullivan.” The melody is as sung by Dean on a recently rediscovered 1924 wax cylinder recording made by Robert Winslow Gordon. Gordon recorded Dean’s first verse on one cylinder and then the 2^nd and 3^rd verses on a separate cylinder and the melody, though a version of “The Star of the County Down” in both cases, is considerably different between the two recordings. I give the verse 2 & 3 melody here. Gordon’s recordings show that Dean sang the song with a noticeable Irish brogue. He flips some Rs, oil becomes “ile” and emperor is “emporarr.”

Mike’s brother Charles Dean lived most of his life in the Twin Cities and, like millions of Irish-Americans across the US in the late 1800s, was a railroad worker for most of his life. Mike would have been quite familiar with railroad men himself as he ran a string of saloons and hotels across the street from the St. Paul and Duluth Depot in Hinckley, a common dinner stop for trains between St. Paul and Duluth.

[1] O’Meara, Walter. We Made it Through the Winter. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society, 1974, p.10.

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More detailed information on this song from the Traditional Ballad Index