Brian - evergreentrad

01 Oct

Carnanbane

When I was young and foolish still, Amerikay ran in my head,
I from my native country strayed, which caused me many a tear to shed.
I left that place was nate, complete, where gently blossoms the hawthorne,
On the twenty-sixth of Ap-er-ile, it being on a Friday’s morn.

My friends and comrades convoyed me to near a place called Claudy town,
And when our parting did draw near, the tears from them came trinkling down.
With courage stout I stepped out and down the Faughn took my way,
And in the space of two short hours my course I stopped on Derry Quay.

It’s down the Foyle we then did steer and dropped our sails on Moville strand.
And as the sun was going down I lost the sight of Paddy’s land.
Our seamen stout they stepped out while the headwinds did softly blow,
Still hoping for a pleasanter gale; next morning we to sea would go.

But when I’m landed in St. John’s, I’ll fill my glass and grieve no more,
Still hoping for the pleasant hours when I’ll return to the Irish shore,
And when I’m in the fields alone or wandering o’er Columbia’s land,
I’ll often think of going home to the girl I left in Carnanbane.

We stray from the formula a bit this month for a song that has was not collected in North America at all but that does tell the type of Ireland to Canada immigration story that is at the root of how Irish songs came to be sung in the north woods. Carnanbane is a townland in County Derry and the above melody (with some adaptation by me) and text were collected by Sam Henry from William Laverty who got it from James Young of Dungiven.

The song’s protagonist leaves Derry quay and sails for “St. John’s.” St. John’s is the capital of Newfoundland and St. John is an important port city in New Brunswick. Folk song scholar John Moulden has argued convincingly that Irish songs of emigration frequently confuse St. John with St. John’s and that a story of emigration from Derry was almost certainly referencing St. John, New Brunswick. Moulden quotes Sholto Cooke’s book The Maiden City and the Wester Ocean saying St. John, New Brunswick was “…the cradle of Derry trade with North America and the destination of great numbers of emigrants for Canada or in transit to the United States.” Ships did not typically carry passengers from Derry to Newfoundland.

Emigration to Canada was especially common in the pre-Famine years with the two main destinations being St. John and Quebec City. Of the over 750,000 Irish that sailed for the New World between 1828 and 1844, Canadian ports welcomed about 55% of all arrivals (409,000 total over those 17 years). Many Irish immigrants continued on to urban centers in the United States. Those that stayed in Canada tended to fall into more rural patterns of life. Men took outdoor seasonal laboring jobs digging canals, building railroads or working in the lumber woods. Wherever they went, they carried songs.

01 Sep

Mickey Free

I’m from the town of Bangor
Down in the state of Maine,
A native American Irishman,
That spakes the English plain;
I landed in Stillwater town
In the year of fifty-three,
Me arm was strong, me heart was warm,
And me courage bould and free.

It’s on the Boom I sarved me time—
Wid corporation fare,
Plenty to eat sich as it was,
And something I had to wear;
And I’ve worked the Namekagon
In ould Schulenburg’s employ,
And on the Clam and Yellow rivers
For the valiant Bob Malloy.

And I’ve camped among the wigwams,
On Totogatic’s shore,
Where I held me own with Whalen,
Jim Crotty and George Moore;
And I worked wid Pease and Jackman
In the year of seventy-four,
And when ould Dan, he shelled the Pease,
I heard the cannons roar.

And on the Namekagon drive
With Tom Mackey I have been,
Where I fought the great Tom Haggerty—
While Bill Hanson stood between;
And I fought with big John Mealey—
And might have won the day,
If bould Jake Resser had been there
And seen I had fair play.

And I’ve been at stoppin’ places,
When travellin’ on my way,
Where gray backs big as June bugs
Were thick as flowers in May;
And I’ve been with ould man Greeley
Upon the St. Croix drive;
Where misketeys big as hummin’ birds—
Used to ate the min alive.

And I might have been a partner
With Ike Staples in the mill,
Or at least a boss for Louie
Or ould New Brunswick Bill;
But I’m always weak with wimmin—
Let them be wives or maids,
They may be fair and pretty
Or black as the ace of spades.

And they’ve broke me heart entirely—
Nary a cint’s forninst me name,
I may work for Dunn or Crotty
It’s always just the same,
But I’m thinkin’ to turn farmer
And forget me early days,
Take “homestead” up in Bashaw
Where I’m sure to mend me ways.

This song tells the story of St. Croix Valley timber cruiser Ed Hart (~1830-1900). Born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, Hart moved to Bangor, Maine as a young man before continuing to Stillwater, Minnesota where he became a cruiser (someone who surveyed timberlands for lumber companies). The song was written by William Young, a US government agent sent to the St. Croix in the 1870s to investigate illegal logging. Young befriended Hart, who took him along on his timber cruising trips where they traveled 30 miles a day on snowshoes and slept out under the stars in the middle of winter. Young was so impressed by his rugged friend that he composed this ballad based on Hart’s life.

The text above is taken word-for-word from James Taylor Dunn’s book The St. Croix: Midwest Border River complete with its many “Irish-American dialect” words (ould, misketeys, etc.) It is unclear what Dunn’s source was for the song though he says it “made its first known appearance at Taylors Falls early in 1878 and was widely repeated up and down the valley.” I also found proof of the song entering the oral tradition in the St. Croix. In an interview at the Minnesota Historical Society, Maggie Orr-O’Neill, whose father owned camps on the Wisconsin side of the Valley, remembered hearing local “red shirts” (river drivers) sing the verse about “mosquitoes big as hummingbirds.”

I sang a version of this song for my Minnesota Lumberjack Songs album where I skipped verse four and changed the end of verse six. (I sing: “The fair ones and the cruel ones with hearts as black as spades.”) The crass racial undertones at the end of verse six as printed by Dunn could have stemmed from songwriter Young’s discomfort with Ed Hart’s Ojibwe wife Me-dwe-a-shi-kwe. Hart and Me-dwe-a-shi-kwe married in 1871 and, as the last verse says, homesteaded in Bashaw, Wisconsin where they raised a family.

The Namekagan, Clam, Yellow and Totogatic are all rivers and streams in northwestern Wisconsin. Schulenburg, Bob Malloy, old man Greeley (Elam Greeley), Ike Staples (Isaac Staples), Louie (Louis Torinus) and New Brunswick Bill (William Chalmers) were a sort of who’s who of the mid-1800s logging industry in the St. Croix. “Dan he shelled the Pease” is a pun on a violent dispute between Dan E. Smith and the Pease and Jackman logging company in 1874. Graybacks are bedbugs.

I have been unable to find the original melody for this song and I have tried a few different options over the years. Above, I have married the text to a melody used by Newfoundland singer Mike Molloy for a popular north woods song called “My Good-Looking Man.”

02 Aug

When the Manistee Went Down

Farewell, old boat, and precious freight,
McKay and his staunch, strong crew,
No more at home shall the cargo wait,
For loved ones to come with you.
The work she did no other would do,
Success would the effort crown,
But oh! the anguish of waiting hearts,
When the Manistee went down.

CHORUS:
Oh! God, it must have been dreadful,
To freeze and then to drown,
In a storm on Lake Superior,
When the Manistee went down.

Fond memory oft will picture here still,
Her cabins and decks grow dear,
In a storm that made every fiber thrill,
McKay spoke words of cheer.
Farewell, old boat, and gallant crew,
Love will your memories crown,
Bot, oh! the darkness, pain and grief,
When the Manistee went down.

Another scene of horror,
Came when this deep, cold lake,
The schooner M. A. Hulbert, with,
Twenty brave, strong men, did take.
It was next they should lie beneath the wave,
When her ballast above were o’er,
But we long the helpless ones to save,
Whose voices we hear no more.

We have another song this month from the pen of James J. Somers who came to Duluth at age 17 from the Georgian Bay region of Ontario. He was in Duluth in November 1883 when the packet steamer Manistee left Duluth harbor for Ontonagon, Michigan never to return. Tragedy struck again that December when the schooner Mary Ann Hulbert, also out of Duluth, sank near St. Ignace Island at the northern end of Lake Superior.

As with most other songs in Somers’ book, he left us no melody for this one. Andy Irvine’s version of Pat Reilly came into my head when I was looking at Somers’ text so I have tried to adapt it to that melody here. I made a few edits to Somers’ words. The original, along with the rest of his book “Jim’s Western Gems” is available in digital form via archive.org.