01 Nov

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 Oct

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.

31 Jul

Duluth in Eighty-Two

To tell the truth I came to Duluth in eighteen eighty-two,
The Windsor was the best hotel on Superior Avenue,
I walked right in to the lion’s den, the Gilbreths kept the joint,
Then nix come arouse to the Cap Norris house or Minnesota Point.

It may seem queer but I did not hear of any iron range,
But the big pine trees, bent to the breeze; oh, mister, what a change,
No ore docks then but now, gentlemen, look up along the bay,
See the docks of ore, hear the whistles roar, as the big boats steam away.

No big flour mills high as the hills; no Duluth Board of Trade,
Just two elevators and no speculators—the wheat was just one grade,
No electric light, to daze the sight; no monster areal bridge,
No electric railway across St. Louis bay; no incline up the ridge.

No Lester park to spoon in the dark; no big automobiles,
Not even a bike—every man did hike; them days we eat [ate?] square meals,
A restaurant or boarding house looked good, but by the way,
They are now out of date—we all want to eat at the St. Louis big, swell cafe.

Just one main road was all we had, and the scally to St. Paul.
Every man used an axe; we had no whalebacks—McDougall and Hill looked small.
But Jim Hill has growed [sic], he controls [sic] each road, down east and way out West,
And they tell me he controls the sea—ask Jim, he can tell you best.

I remember quite well and in song I tell how the Manistee went down,
With Catain [sic] McKay and crew that sailed from the Zenith Town,
And the Hulbert too sank with her crew far out from any shore,
In the water’s deep they all do sleep—we shall never see them more.

I miss each one of my old friends gone, tho [sic] many still remain,
Soon we shall meet each other to greet [sic], tho we must part again,
This spring I’ll call and see you all and view your city grand,
They say you’ve growed beyond Herman town road and you are still annexing land.

We return this month to this fascinating 1913 book of songs and poems by James J. Somers for one of his several lyrics set in Duluth. Like “The Zenith of the West” that I wrote about a couple months ago, “Duluth in Eighty-Two” is chock full of interesting details about Duluth in the late 1800s. We have Lester Park and the aerial bridge here again along with the “incline”—Duluth’s dramatic Incline Railway that was built in 1891 and gave easy access to the city’s beautiful Superior view.

The tragic shipwrecks of the Manistee and Hulbert both happened in 1883, soon after Somers arrived in town (he wrote another song entirely about the wrecks that I’ll share later). The Captain [Michael] Norris, mentioned in the first verse here, was a survivor of the 1874 Superior shipwreck of the Lotta Bernard.

“Duluth in Eighty-Two” also presents some unfamiliar slang. I haven’t figured out what the “scally to St. Paul” might have been (train? stagecoach?). “Nix come arouse” in the first verse was new to me too. Fred L. Holmes, in Old World Wisconsin, writes that, in German Milwaukee “’nix come erous’ is a customary byword for [the German] ‘nichts kommt heraus.’” The September 23, 1937 Perry Daily Journal of Perry, Oklahoma translates the original German phrase “nichts kommt heraus” as “nothing comes forth” but says that in the early 1800s the phrase became vulgarized in German America to “nix come erous” with the meaning shifting to “there’s nothing to it.” H.L. Mencken, in The American Language called nix come erous a German loan-phrase “in decay” that (in 1921) was “familiar to practically all Americans.”

Since Somers’ book does not provide any melodies, I used a tune collected by Franz Rickaby in 1920s Eau Claire from Elide Marceau Fox who used it for the song “Johanna Shay.” I think it fits “Duluth in Eighty-Two” quite well.