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)

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