Maine - evergreentrad

20 Nov

Sweet Mary Jane

My true love’s name was Mary Jane,
Her epitaph reveals the same,
Her grace and charm I will proclaim,
Through all my days moreover,
Where could you find a fairer dame,
And search this wide world over.

“My love and I we did agree,
That when I would return from sea,
We’d go straightway and married be,
And live a life of leisure,
No more to face the stormy sea,
In quest of gold and treasure.

“But I had not gone across the main,
When cruel death had my companion slain,
The pride and beauty of the plain,
In her cold grave lay moldering,
And our fond plan was all in vain,
Amid the ruins smoldering.

“I am distressed what shall I do,
I’ll roam this wide world through and through,
I’ll sigh and sing for sake of you,
My days I’ll spend in mourning,
And in my dreams I’ll wander through,
The lane that knows no turning.

A sad and beautiful song this month that was collected from several singers in eastern Canada and that was also in the repertoire of Minnesota singer Michael Dean. In most Canadian versions, the lost lover’s name is “Phoebe” (or “Bright Phoebe”). In Maine, singer Carrie Grover learned it as “Sweet Caroline” while in Minnesota, Dean sang “Mary Jane” and printed it as “Sweet Mary Jane” in his 1922 songster The Flying Cloud.

The above melody is my best effort to transcribe the richly ornamented version sung by New Brunswick singer Angelo Dornan. We do not know what melody Dean used but most collected melodies, including Dornan’s, show a resemblance to the famous “Greensleeves” melody. Dornan’s striking twists and turns make his air refreshingly unique. For text, I subbed in Dean’s first line and made a couple small changes of my own but otherwise stayed close to Dornan’s version including its unique six-line poetic structure (most other versions have four-line stanzas). Dornan sang two additional verses to what appears here and a transcription of his full version appears in Helen Creighton’s Maritime Folk Songs.

20 Nov

Morzie Ellsworth

My name is Morzie Ellsworth the truth I’ll tell to you,
I’m in the prime of manhood and my age is twenty-two,
On the fourteenth of October last, I boarded on a train,
And bound for Pennsylvania, I left the state of Maine.

I landed safe in Williamsport, a lumberman’s rendezvous,
And there I hired with Jacob Brown as one of the winter’s crew,
We agreed upon the wages, as you shall plainly see,
And the time of term it was six months to serve him faithfully.

He gave to me a sheathing belt, likewise a bowie knife,
A battle axe and carbine gun for to defend my life,
But woe be on the morning when I did undertake,
A voyage to the forest for gold and riches sake.

There’s the tomtit and the moose-bird and the roving caribou,
The lucifee and partridge that through the forests flew,
And the wild ferocious rabbit from the colder regions came,
And several other animals too numerous to name.

And when the snow began to melt the foreman he did say,
“Lay down your saws and axes boys, and haste to break away,
For the broken ice is floating now in business we will thrive,
And you able-bodied shanty-boys are needed on the drive.”

It would melt your heart with pity, it would make your blood run cold,
To see the work that Nature did in all her rudest mould,
And to see those overhanging rocks along the ice-bound shore,
Where rippling waters fierce do rage and cataracts do roar.

So to conclude and finish, I have one thing more to say,
When I am dead and in my grave, a-mould’ring in the clay,
No artificial German text you can for me sustain,
Just simply say, “Here’s a roving wreck that came from Bangor, Maine.”

Ninety-five years ago, in the summer of 1923, Franz Rickaby collected a version of the above song in Bayport, Minnesota (south of Stillwater) from former lumberjack Hank Underwood who called it “The Maine-ite in Pennsylvania.” Underwood’s four verse version (verses 2, 4, 6 and 7 above) likely descended from the New Brunswick song “Morris Ellsworth” which satirizes a greenhorn logger from Prince Edward Island who comes to the Miramichi woods to log. The St. Croix Valley where Underwood was born, had a high concentration of immigrant loggers from the Miramichi region – including Underwood’s parents.

Jokes and stories making fun of inexperienced men in the logging camp – especially their fear of animals – were common in the woods. According to folklorist Edward Ives, PEI men were looked down upon in Miramichi. Interestingly, Rickaby reported that “State of Maine” men were often foremen or bosses in Minnesota. Underwood likely learned his version while logging in Pennsylvania where, perhaps, Maine-ites had a different reputation. For a biography of Hank Underwood see the liner notes to my CD Minnesota Lumberjack Songs which also includes an arrangement of this song.

For the version above, I use a melody very close to Underwood’s melody and extend his text with extra verses added in from one of the Miramichi versions and one verse pulled from “Jim Porter’s Shanty Song” also collected by Rickaby.

01 Mar

Nora McShane

I left Balamonoth a long way behind me,
To better my fortune I crossed the deep sea,
But I’m sadly alone, not a creature to mind me,
And, faith, I’m as wretched as wretched can be;
In truth, I think I’m near broken hearted.
To country and home I must return back again,
For I’ve never been happy at all since I parted
From sweet Balamonoth and Nora McShane.

I sigh for the turf fire so cheerfully burning,
Where barefooted I trudged it from toiling afar,
And tossed in the light the thirteen I’d been earning,
And whistled the anthems of Erin go Bragh;
But now far away from my fireside I’m parted,
Away back in dear America over the main,
And may God speed the ship that is sailing tomorrow,
Back to dear old Erin and Nora McShane.

There is something so dear in the cot I was born in,
Though the walls are but mud and the roof is but thatch,
How familiar the grunt of the pigs in the morning,
What pleasure in lifting that auld rusty latch;
It’s true I’d no money, but then I’d no sorrow,
My pockets were light and my head had no pain,
But if I’m living when the sun shines tomorrow,
I’ll go back to ould Erin and Nora McShane.

___________________

Several years ago, Maeve O’Mara and Liam O’Neill, proprietors of Irish on Grand, gave me a copy of a handwritten notebook of old song lyrics that someone from Hugo, Minnesota dropped off at the store. The notebook was made by Sylvester Johnson (whose parents immigrated from Cork) in the late 1800’s. The Johnson Manuscript is a fascinating collection of 27 songs including many 19th century sentimental Irish songs from both sides of Atlantic. There are at least five songs in the manuscript that also appear in Michael Dean’s Flying Cloud including “The Lament of the Irish Emigrant” and “Norah McShane.”

The text of “Norah McShane” was written by English poet Eliza Cook in 1838 when she was 20 years old. Cook was an outspoken advocate for women’s rights and a hero to many working class people in England and America. Several of her poems were widely known and set to music. I have yet to find a source for a melody in any North American source from oral tradition. However, a parody of “Norah McShane” called “Lake Chemo” written by James Wilton Rowe in the 1870s was collected in the woods of Maine by Phillips Barry. Rowe’s melody is a variant of the classic air Thomas Moore used for his “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms.” The Dean and Johnson versions suggest a longer phrase length than the Rowe parody so I blended Rowe’s melody with other elements of the “Endearing Young Charms” melody to get the melody above. The text is as it appears in Dean.

Woodcut accompanying one of several 19th century broadside printings of Norah MacShane found in the Bodleian Library