song - evergreentrad

25 Oct

My Eileen is Waiting for Me

I am always light hearted and easy, not a care in the wide world have I,
Because I am loved by a Coleen I couldn’t help like if I’d try;
She lives away over the mountains where the little thrush sings in the tree,
In a cabin all covered with ivy my Eileen is waiting for me.

Chorus—
It’s over, yes over the mountain where the little thrush sings in the tree,
In a cabin all covered with ivy my Eileen is waiting for me.

The day I bid good-bye to Eileen, that day I will never forget,
How the tears bubbled up from their slumber, I fancy I’m seeing them yet;
They looked like the pearls in the ocean as she wept those tears of love,
Saying, “Barney, my boy, don’t forget me until we meet again here or above.”

Though mountains and seas may divide us and friends like the flowers come and go,
Still these thoughts of my Eileen will cheer me and comfort wherever I go,
For the imprints of love and devotion, surrounded by thoughts that are pure,
Will serve as a guide to the sailor while sailing the wild ocean o’er.

———-

With the passing of beloved musician Martin McHugh this past month, I chose a song that was a favorite of his. Martin played “My Eileen is Waiting for Me” as a waltz at countless sessions and dances and would sometimes sing bits of the words if you were lucky!

It turns out this song has a long history in Minnesota. Mike Dean printed his version in his 1922 songster The Flying Cloud under the title “Allanah is Waiting for Me” (a curious and possibly misprinted title because in Dean’s actual song lyric the name is Eileen). It was also in the repertoire of Ontario singer O.J. Abbott who called it “Over the Mountain.”

“Over the Mountain” was the original title when, in 1882, the song was composed by celebrity tenor William J. Scanlan, a second generation Irishman from Springfield, Massachusetts. Scanlan sang it in the play “Friend or Foe” which he performed at the Grand Opera House in Saint Paul in April 1885. The song reached Ireland by the early 1900s where it was found in a County Cavan manuscript in 1905. By the 1920s, the song’s melody and sections of its lyrics began a new life in American country music after a recording by Uncle Dave Macon and a rewrite, by Fiddlin’ John Carson, called “The Grave of Little Mary Phagan.”

Dean’s melody is unrecorded but Abbott sang it to a similar melody to that used by Martin McHugh. The above is a marriage of Dean’s words from 1922 with McHugh’s melody circa 2022 (based on McHugh’s album The Master’s Choice.)

Ad for Scanlan’s performances at the Grand Opera House in St. Paul from the April 12, 1885 *Minneapolis Sunday Tribune*

25 Oct

Farewell to Caledonia

My name is Willie Rayburn, in Glasgow I was born,
The place of my residence I was forced to leave in scorn;
From home and habitation was forced to gang awa’,
So fare-you-well, you hills and dales of Caledonia.

The crime that I was taken for was robbery and fraud,
I lay the blame on nae one upon this earthly sod;
I lay the blame on nae one, but comrades I had twa,
So fare-you-well, the hills and dales of Caledonia.

It was early the next morning before the break of day,
Our turnkey came to us, those words to us did say,
“Rise up, you pitiful convicts, I warn you one and a’,
This day you leave the hills and dales of Caledonia.”

Then I arose, put on my clothes, my heart was filled with grief,
My friends they gathered around me, but could grant me no relief;
They bound me down in irons for fear I’d run awa’,
So fare-you-well, you hills and dales of Caledonia.

Here is to my old father, he is one of the best of men,
And also to my own true love, Catharina is her name,
No more we will roam by Cylde’s green banks or by the brim awa’,
This day I leave the hills and dales of Caledonia.

Goodbye to my old mother, I am sorry for what I have done,
I hope it ne’er will be cast to her the race that I have run;
I hope the Lord will protect her when I am far awa’,
So fare-you-well, you hills and dales of Caledonia.

We return to the deep and fascinating repertoire of Irish-Minnesotan singer Michael Dean this month for a Scottish song that has a long history in Ireland. Like “Highland Mary” and other songs, “Farewell to Caledonia” likely came from the pen of a Scottish song maker and went to the north of Ireland with the flow of itinerant workers and immigrants between the two islands. It was printed as a broadside in Scotland in the mid-1800s as “Jamie Raeburn’s Farewell” (the song’s narrator is Jamie in most versions). Sam Henry printed a variant from Strabane, County Tyrone in his Songs of the People newspaper column in 1926. The song appears in several Scottish song collections and has been popular with many singers and bands since the folk revival of the 1960s.

Across the Atlantic, the song turns up in Mike Dean’s Minnesota-printed Flying Cloud songster as well as in the repertoires of two New England singers recorded by Helen Hartness Flanders: Sidney Luther of Pittsburg, New Hampshire and Charles Finnemore of Bridgewater, Maine. We have no record of what melody Dean used. Luckily, Finnemore is one of my favorite New England singers so I was delighted to discover the recording of him singing his version in October 1945. Finnemore’s melody is quite close to that sung by Ontario/North Dakota singer Arthur Milloy for the song “Mines of Cariboo” which is a favorite of mine. The above is a combination of Dean’s text and Finnemore’s melody.

Woodcut from a 19th century broadside printing of “Jamie Raeburn” held by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. See: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/view/sheet/26720

06 Sep

Never Go Back on the Poor

In this world of sorrow, of toil and regret, there are scenes I would gladly pass o’er,
But stern duty compels that each fact must be told, so through life we may check them the more;
Is it right that a man who has well earned his pay, on the pipes by the sweat of his brow,
Should wait like a beggar on green day by day, or else home in hunger to go?
Don’t show any favor to friend or to foe, the beggar or prince at your door;
If you always do right you will get your reward, but never go back on the poor.

From the wild waste of waters there came a death cry, as dashed on an iron bound shore,
A noble ship struck in the darkness of night, and sank midst the tempest’s loud roar;
The captain asleep and the men of their post, with the coal and provision run short,
While the doomed ones they hoped for that bright Western land, which in sweet joyous dreams they had sought.
Can it be such neglect shall by us be forgot, or that money will triumph once more?
A good, willing hand, a stout branch and a rope, for those who go back on the poor!

When the divers went down ’neath the wreck for to search, for the bodies that lay far below,
“It’s nothing but a steerage,” was oft the remark, as a ghastly corpse came up to view;
As if only a steerage could shut out a soul, because poverty claimed him her own,
As if dollars and dimes was the source of all worth, and the road to all good that is known.
But the white star must change her color aloft, to blood red afloat and ashore,
Till the steamer Atlantic is forgotten by time, with her cargo of unburied poor.

This month we have another song from the repertoire of Irish-Minnesotan Michael Dean. The song itself is fairly obscure but its moral is one found with some frequency in Dean’s Flying Cloud songster. The 1922 book contains several songs encouraging sympathy for the plight of the poor, wayward and elderly. These include expressions of working class grief like “The Tramp’s Lament” and “The Long Shoreman’s Strike” and the tear jerking “She May Have Seen Better Days” about a girl huddled on the street in a big city who “was once someone’s joy, cast aside like a toy.” Dean also sang three songs specifically about elderly people cast out by their families to live out their days in the county almshouse: “Just Tell Them That You Saw Me,” “I Told Them That I Saw You” (a response to the former) and “Over the Hills to the Poor House.” Another song, “Jim Fisk,” includes the same repeating admonition to “never go back on the poor” that appears in this month’s song. Of all these, “Jim Fisk” seems to have been the most popular across the north woods. (The song is fascinating for its use of Fisk, a famous robber baron of the era, as an exemplar of ethical behavior—seemingly because he provided aid after the Great Chicago Fire and “did all his deeds, both the good and the bad, in the broad, open light of the day!”)

Sentimental songs advocating charity and mercy for the poor were common and popular on late 19^th century music hall stages and in oral tradition. They may have had a special resonance for Dean who no doubt met many the wayward son as a saloonkeeper in logging era Minnesota. Dean also owned a farm east of Hinckley that he sold to Pine County in 1905 to establish the county’s first poor farm. Dean stayed on as the institution’s manager for two years where he, again, would have met characters reminiscent of these songs.

The text of “Never Go Back on the Poor” appears in Wehman’s song collection No. 11 published in 1886 with the note that it’s tune is that of “Don’t Put Your Foot on a Man When He’s Down.” I found sheet music for “Don’t Put Your Foot…” in the Lester Levy Sheet Music Collection online and adapted it to Dean’s words above. The central story to this song, again used to evoke charity, is the 1873 wreck of the White Star Line passenger steam ship Atlantic. The Atlantic sunk off the coast of Nova Scotia and inspired other songs as well.