Minnesota - evergreentrad

05 Dec

Banks of the Nile (Laws N9)

INTRODUCING: NORTHWOODS SONGS on YOUTUBE!

Starting this month, I will be videotaping myself singing the Northwoods Songs song of the month and posting it on Youtube. I am excited to add this new dimension to the column!

Here I am singing Mike Dean’s “Banks of the Nile” while on vacation in the pines of beautiful Bowen Island, British Columbia last week. [Listening now, I realize I have considerably changed the first line of the melody on every verse but the first! The many other variations and deviations are my own creative interpretation as well.]

Hark! hark! the drums are beating, my love, I must away,
I hear the bugle calling, I can no longer stay;
We are ordered out from Portsmouth for many a long mile,
To *[join the British army] on the banks of the Nile.

Oh, Willie dear, don’t leave me here behind to weep and mourn,
So I may curse and rue the day that ever I was born,
For the parting from my sweetheart is like parting from my life,
So stay at home, dear Willie, and I will be your wife.

The Queen she calls for men, love, and I, for one, must go,
The Queen she calls for men, love, I dare not answer No;
We must away to face the foe while cannons roar the while,
To fight with Briton’s heroes on the banks of the Nile.

Then I’ll cut off my yellow hair and go along with you,
I will put on men’s clothing and go see Egypt, too;
I will cherish and protect you through hardship and through toil,
And we’ll comfort one another on the Banks of the Nile.

Your waist it is too slender, love, your fingers are too small,
I am afraid you would not answer when on you I would call,
Your delicate constitution would last but a short while,
Among those sandy deserts on the Banks of the Nile.

Oh, cursed be the cruel war and the hour it first begun,
For it has robbed old Ireland of many a noble son;
It robs us of our sweethearts, protectors of the soil,
And their bodies feed the wild fowls on the Banks of the Nile.

But soon the war will be over and we’ll all be coming home,
Unto our wives and sweethearts we left behind to mourn;
We will kiss them and embrace them with their little winning smile,
And we never will return again to the Banks of the Nile.

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Once again this month we have a song I transcribed from a 1924 recording of Minnesota-based singer Michael Cassius Dean (with the full text taken from Dean’s 1922 songster The Flying Cloud). Versions of “The Banks of the Nile” have been collected all over the English-speaking world. The scenario of the girl pledging to dress as a man to follow her love to war (or sea) will be well-known to anyone familiar with traditional folk song.

As for the historical context, there were several British campaigns in Egypt (and Sudan which is also bisected by the Nile) throughout the 1800s culminating in Britain’s takeover of Egypt in 1882. This song likely dates from early to mid 1800s. Of course, two centuries later, western governments are still sending soldiers to that part of the world and the “cruel war” is far from over.

*Some versions of “The Banks of the Nile” mention the dark skin of the Eqyptian/Sudanese adversaries in the fourth line of the first stanza. Dean’s version does so in a rather offensive way so I opted to borrow a variant fourth line from other versions.

17 Nov

Tour Recap

With a final show in Madison, WI last week, Randy and I wrapped up a great string of shows across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan celebrating the release of The Falling of the Pine. Looking back now, we saw some beautiful parts of the country (can’t wait to get back to the U.P.!). Here’s the full list:

St. Paul, MN
Hinckley, MN
Moose Lake, MN
Silver Bay, MN
Bemidji, MN
Kelliher, MN
Madison, WI
Green Bay, WI
Calumet, MI
Marquette, MI
Mt. Pleasant, MI
Saginaw, MI
Richland, MI
Kalamazoo, MI

Thanks to everyone that put on the gigs and those that came out to see us!

We have some more travels in the works for winter 2014 and beyond. Stay tuned!

Richland Community Hall, Richland, MI

14 Oct

What a Time on the Way

Neddy he’s a splendid cook,
Always stops beside some brook,
Scrambled eggs three times a day,
Lotsa bread and a big cuppa tay,
And a fol-da-lee-dle-o, fol-da-lee-dle-ay,
Hi-fol-da-lo, what a time on the way.

Now that the harvest days are through,
To old D-kotey we will bid you adieu,
Back to the jack pines we will go,
To haul these saw logs in the snow.
And a fol-da-lee-dle-o, fol-da-lee-dle-ay,
Hi-fol-da-lo, what a time on the way.

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Folklorist Robert Winslow Gordon could not resist making a few song-collecting detours as he traveled from Berkeley, California to a new job at Harvard in 1924. He later recalled that he had spent “too much time on the way, especially in Northern Minnesota, where I got a number of good things.” The good things he got were several recordings of songs sung by of members of the Phillips family of Akeley, Minnesota.

Gordon recorded the above song fragment from Israel Lawrence [Lorentz] Phillips (1883-1967). It is quite similar in content and, to some extent, melody to another song called “How We Got Up to the Woods Last Year” that was collected in Ontario and Michigan. “What a Time on the Way” references the common practice among itinerant young men to work the harvest in the Dakotas (here referred to as “old D-kotey”) before returning to a winter job in a Minnesota logging camp.

This song’s chorus also brings to mind one of the earliest accounts I have found of lumber camp singing in Minnesota. Any aficionado of traditional folk song will be familiar with the type of nonsense syllables (“fol-da-lee-dle-o,” etc.) here. Perhaps it was a similar chorus that confused J. M. Tuttle of Harpers New Monthly Magazine who witnessed the evening activities in “Moses’s Camp” near the East Branch of the Rum River in March 1867:

Thirty fine-looking, healthy, robust, well-behaved men sat down at the supper-table, and who, when their appetites were sated, broke up the evening in various ways. Some mended their clothes, some darned their socks, some, using the sinews of the deer, obtained of the Indians, for thread, repaired their moccasins, while others employed their time in reading. The hours were relieved, too, by a little entertainment in the shape of music and dancing. One young man, who had swung the axe all day, rosined up his bow and gave us few lively airs on his fiddle, while two other logmen, who had tramped in twelve inches of snow since the early morn, engaged in a “double shuffle,” or something of the kind, on one of the planks of the floor. A pleasant-voiced son of Erin sang two or three songs, substituting simple musical sounds where he was unable to recall the words. Others still filled the intervals between the music with conversation on a variety of topics, breaking out now and then in loud, hearty laughter.

(J. M. Tuttle, Harpers New Monthly Magazine Vol 36 Issue 214“Minnesota Pineries” edited by Henry Mills Alden, March 1868)