Canada - evergreentrad

01 Nov

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.

31 Oct

Ye Noble Sons of Canardie

Come all you loyal Britons I pray you lend an ear,
Draw up your loyal forces and then your volunteers,
Oh we’re going to fight those Yankee boys, by water and by land,
And we never will return till we conquer swords in hand.
Oh you noble sons of Canardie, come to arms boys come.

O now the time has come, my boys, to cross the Yankee line,
We remember they were rebels once, and conquer’d John Burgoyne.
We’ll subdue those mighty Democrats, and pull their dwellings down,
And we’ll have the states inhabited with subjects to the crown.
Oh you noble sons of Canardie, come to arms boys come.

I’d rather fight the biggest fleet that ever crossed the seas,
Than twenty of those Yankee boys behind their stumps and trees,
For from hedges and from ditches and from every tree and stump,
You can see those sons of b—— those cursed Yankees jump.
Oh we’ve got too far from Canardie, run for life, boys, run.

O Prevost sighed aloud and to his officers did say,
The Yankee troops are hove in sight and hell will be to pay,
Shall we fight like men of courage, and do the best we can,
When we know they’ll flog us two to one, I think we’d better run.
Oh we’ve got too far from Canardie, run for life, boys, run.

The old ’76s marching forth, on crutches they do lean,
With their rifles leveled at us with their specs they take good aim,
And you know there’s no retreat for those who’d rather die than run,
Make no doubt that these are those that conquered John Burgoyne.
Oh we’ve got too far from Canardie, run for life, boys, run.

We’ve reached the British ground, my boys, we’ll have a day of rest,
I wish my soul that I could say ‘twould be a day of mirth,
But I’ve left so many troops behind, it causes me to mourn,
If ever I fight the Yankees more, I’ll surely stay at home.
Now we’ve got back to Canardie, stay at home, boys, stay.

A health to all the British troops, likewise general Prevost,
A health to all our families, and the girls that we love most,
To MacDonough and Macomb, and to every Yankee boy,
Now boys fill up your tumblers for I never was so dry.
Now we’ve got back to Canardie, stay at home, boys, stay.

For this month’s song, we revisit the repertoire of the Phillips family of Chamberlain, Minnesota for a song about the Battle of Plattsburg during the War of 1812. Collector Robert Winslow Gordon recorded three verses (verses 1, 3 and 5 above) from the Phillips family in September 1924. Interestingly, he chose to record just one verse a-piece from brothers Reuben and Seymore and Reuben’s son Israel. The melody above is my transcription based on the three recordings which are quite similar in melody. Verses 2, 4, 6 and 7 above were taken from an 18 verse printed broadside of the song.

“Canardie” is a poetic reworking of “Canada” and the Phillips family had a close connection to the British invasion, via Canada, of northern New York during the War of 1812. According to Early History of the Town of Hopkinton [NY], Seymour and Reuben’s maternal grandfather Samuel Goodell (1778-1822) was briefly taken prisoner during a British Army raid on Hopkinton, New York’s ample flour supply in February 1814. The nearby Battle of Plattsburgh described in the song proved to be the decisive Yankee victory in the war. The song, though told from the British perspective, is clearly a Yankee composition.

The final verse mentions the two Irish-American military leaders credited with the Plattsburgh victory: US Army Brigadier General Alexander Macomb and naval Master Commandant Thomas Macdonough. Macomb’s father was from Ballynure, County Antrim and Macdonough’s great-grandfather hailed from Leixlip, County Kildare.

Broadside woodcut courtesy of Toronto Public Library’s Digital Archive Ontario

26 Mar

Ned McCabe

I’m a fine old Irish laborer, from Ireland I came,
To try me luck on Columbia’s shore, and Ned McCabe’s my name.
I’ve had me days of sunshine, although I can’t complain,
But those good old days for laborers will never come back again.

Chorus:
’Tis boys, be gay and hearty, and never ye be afraid,
But bear misfortunes with a smile like poor old Ned McCabe

But when I landed in Quebec, I had nary a red at all,
I hired out to a contractor, boys, to work upon a canawl.
I’d eighty cents a day, me boys, and whiskey too had I,
But when I think of those good old days, it almost makes me cry. Chorus

*I’ve cleared the lands in the far-off west, and many a mile I’ve trod,
And many’s the snake, and wild beast, I’ve laid beneath the sod. Chorus

Now the winter time is coming on, and away down south I’ll go,
To secure myself a winter’s job away from frost and snow.
Old Canady being by favorite whenever there I went,
I could drink my twenty jiggers a day and never step off o’ the plank. Chorus

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Folk song collector Franz Rickaby made the above transcription of this very rare song from the singing of George Hankins (1849-1934) of Gordon, Wisconsin in the early 1920s. Earlier in his life, Hankins worked as a lumberjack and railroad man in Minnesota before making his home in Gordon, about 45 miles southeast of Duluth. Hankins told Rickaby that he learned the song when he first came to live in Wisconsin.

The song itself illustrates a familiar storyline for the first Irishmen to come to Minnesota and Wisconsin. It was common for Famine-era immigrants who sailed to Canada to find work as lumberjacks, railroad men, Great Lakes sailors or canal workers. Many of these men and their sons followed those jobs, or sometimes seasonal farm work, over the border into the US. So it was with many of the men who built Stillwater, Minnesota and other St. Croix Valley towns.

*I took some liberty with the words of this verse in what I published in the IMDA newsletter and in what I sing myself. The original as transcribed by Rickaby reads:

I’ve cleared the lands in the far-off west where no white man ever trod,
And many’s the snake, and red man too, I’ve laid beneath the sod.