Phillips Family - evergreentrad

02 Nov

The Hunter’s Death

Ye hunters brave and bold I pray attend
To this relation hear what I have seen
’Twas of a hunter bold
’Twill make your blood run cold
To hear the story told
How he suffered there.

To hunt when he was young was his delight
And when to manhood grown his favorite
To hunt the fallow deer
The roe buck and the bear
The turkey coon and hair
With smaller game.

As people settled round on hill and dale
No ven’son to be found his hunting failed
He went in forty nine
Towards the northern line
It was his hull design
To hunt the grove.

And now comes on the day that was his last
Old Boris [Boreas?] blew away an awful blast
It both rain hale and snow
The stormy winds did blow
They chilled his nature so
Poor man was lost.

All in the drifting snow laid himself down
No further could he go there he was found
His powder so complete
Was strewed from head to feet
That the vermin might not eat
His body there.

You’d wish to know his name and where he’s from
And of what stock he came and where he’s born
He’s of as noble a race
As any in the place
His name ’twas John Lomace
Born in Westfield.

—————

We stay on the hunting theme this month with a wonderfully obscure and fascinating song from the repertoire of Reuben W. Phillips of Akeley, Minnesota. “The Hunter’s Death” was one of 22 handwritten song texts Phillips sent to collector Robert W. Gordon in March 1924. Upon receiving the songs from Phillips, Gordon was drawn to “The Hunter’s Death” in particular for its “peculiar stanza form.” He published the song’s text in the August 20, 1924 edition of his pulp magazine column “Old Songs That Men Have Sung” calling it “a curious little song, particularly in its use of the short but effective line without rime at the end of each stanza.” Soon after, Gordon hauled his Edison cylinder recording machine from Berkeley, California to Akeley to record Phillips singing the song himself. Gordon remembered the song several years later when fellow song-catcher Joanna Colcord sent him another song collected in Vermont called “The Damsel’s Tragedy” with much the same form:

Indulgent parents dear I pray attend
To this relation hear which I have penned
A deeper tragedy
You never knew, for why?
A mother’s cruelty
Ruined her son.

Given that both songs can be traced to Vermont, “The Damsel’s Tragedy” may have been the template for “The Hunter’s Death.”

Phillips told Gordon that “The Hunter’s Death” was composed in northern New York around 1849 in the vicinity of Hopkinton where Phillips himself was born. It was based on an actual man, John Lomace, who lived in the area. Westfield, Vermont is about 100 miles east of Hopkinton on the other side of Lake Champlain. Both towns are quite near the “northern line” where one crosses into Canada.

Last month, I launched the Minnesota Folksong Challenge. This is your chance to get involved in reviving the folksong heritage of Minnesota! Learn a song from the Minnesota Folksong Collection and post a video on Youtube of yourself singing it. Send me the link and I’ll add you to the growing collection of videos here! St. Paul singer John Wenstrom took the Challenge and learned “The Hunter’s Death.” You can see John’s video at the Minnesota Folksong Collection site along with the new video of the Lost Forty doing our version of this song.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

02 Jun

Lovel (revisited)

As Lovel was a-walking a-walking one morning
He espied two peddlers two peddlers a-coming
He boldly stepped up to them and called them his honey
Saying “Stand and deliver boys for all I want’s your money.”
Lol te de a de um, Lol te de a dum.

“O we are two peddlers two peddlers are we sir
And you are Mr. Lovel we take you to be sir
O we are two peddlers that have lately come from Dublin
And all that we have in our box is our beddin’ and our clothing.” Lol te de…

As Lovel was walking up Kinsberry mountain
He espied two rich misers their guineas they were counting
First he cocked his blunderbuss and then he drew his rapier
Saying “Stand and deliver boys for I’m a money taker.” Lol te de…

“O Lovel, O Lovel my poor heart’s a-breaking
For little did I think my love you ever would been taken
And if I had’ve known that the enemy was a-coming
I’d have fought like a hero although I’m but a woman.” Lol te de…

“O Polly, O Polly my poor heart’s a-breaking
If it had not been for you my love I never would been taken
For while I was a-sleeping not thinking of the matter
You discharged my pistols and loaded them with water.” Lol te de…

As Lovel was walking all up the gallows ladder
He called to the sheriff for his Irish cap and feather
Saying “I have robbed money but never killed any
I think it hard that I must die just for grabbing money.” Lol te de…

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We return this month to this wonderfully obscure and fun-to-sing variant of “Whiskey in the Jar” recorded in 1924 from Akeley, Minnesota singer Reuben W. Phillips (see N.S. Sep. 2014). The Lost Forty recently arranged Phillips’ version of Lovel and the video above shows us performing it at the beautiful Stone Saloon building in St. Paul.

I am thrilled to announce that the original field recording of Phillips singing Lovel, along with many others, is now online on the new Minnesota Folksong Collection site! Visitors to www.minnesotafolksongcollection.org can access (for free) over 40 field recordings of Minnesota singers recorded in 1924. Many of the songs featured in Northwoods Songs over the past four years appear in the collection. The site is currently relatively bare-bones but over the next few months I will be adding features to help encourage visitors to learn songs from the collection and to learn more about the Minnesota-based source singers. The site does feature sheet music transcriptions of the song melodies (a labor-intensive feature for me to create but, hopefully, something that helps users decipher the very low fi recordings).

When folklorist Robert W. Gordon recorded Minnesotans Reuben W. Phillips and Michael C. Dean, he typically only captured one or two verses of each song—rationing out the valuable space on his wax cylinders. Luckily, both Phillips and Dean supplied Gordon with complete written texts for most of the songs they sang. I have combined their texts with the field recordings on the Minnesota Folksong Collection site just as I have done above and in previous Northwoods Songs.

Phillips’ handwritten manuscript of song texts is full of many nonstandard spellings of words which I have altered to more standard spellings above and on the website to help users access the texts more easily. I have also opted to shift some of the transcriptions into keys I feel are more suitable for sight reading.

I would love to hear some feedback from Northwoods Songs readers regarding the functionality of the new site! Please check it out at www.minnesotafolksongcollection.org and drop me a line to let me know what you think.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

01 Mar

The Crafty Miss

O she on a little grey mare and he on a gelding also,
He whispered one word in her ear and straight to an inn they did go,
They soon had their horses put out, they called for a supper with speed,
They drank the full bumpers around, O the glass it went merry indeed.

This miss she arose the next morning two hours before it was day,
She called up the landlord with speed saying “Landlord what is there to pay?”
“Ten guineas” the landlord replied, she paid him his money indeed,
And then to obey her next order, “Go saddle the golden with speed.”

She hoodwinked this young man indeed, she showed him a trick for his gold,
Then mounting the gelding with speed, she left him the mare she had stole,
It was all done in Essex’s county, the truth of it there you will find,
The people they showed him no pity, they said he was served in his kind.
_____________
This month we have the second song of twelve that The Lost Forty (Randy Gosa and I) have arranged and videotaped as part of The Lost Forty Project. I learned last month’s song from a recording of Minnesota singer Michael Cassius Dean and this month’s comes from the other Minnesota singer strongly represented in the project: Reuben Waitstell Phillips.

Phillips was recorded at his home south of Akeley, Minnesota by Robert Winslow Gordon in September 1924—about a week prior to Gordon’s visit to Dean. Like Dean, Phillips had corresponded with Gordon prior to the collecting trip. The above song was one of 22 handwritten song texts Phillips sent to Gordon in March 1924 and one of at least 15 Gordon recorded during his visit to Akeley.

Listen to Reuben Phillips sing part of this song (or click here to view in the MN Folksong Collection):

Phillips titled this light and dancey song (in slip jig time) simply “A Lilt.” It is a version of an English broadside ballad entitled “The Crafty Miss, Or, An Excise-Man Well Fitted” that scholars date to the late 1600s. What is quite unusual for a song of that vintage recorded this far from its origin is that it seems to have been extremely rare in tradition. In fact, I have not been able to find a single collected version from anywhere. The longer broadside versions supply the information that the “hoodwinked” young man was a tax collector and that not only did she make off with his horse but the fact that he was left holding “the mare she had stole” resulted in his arraignment and a narrow escape from “the penalty of the law!”

As I have dug deep into the 47 songs featured in The Lost Forty Project, I have come to marvel at the differences and similarities between the two principle singers: Dean and Phillips. Though it is unlikely they knew each other, both men were born in the 1850s not more than 30 miles from each other in northern New York state and both migrated west to northern Minnesota where they lived just 120 miles apart at the time they were recorded. Still, where Dean’s repertoire is typical of lumberjack-singers of the region in that it is decidedly Irish-American, most of Phillips’ songs are more English/Scottish, quite a bit older and quite a bit more rare. Some of that has to do with their differing ethnic backgrounds but, I suspect, their occupations and routes west played a role as well. More on that in coming months!

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.