video - evergreentrad

20 Nov

The Dublin Lasses Reel

Between 1910s and 1970s, folk song scholars, collectors and singers transcribed or recorded abundant examples of Irish-influenced traditional singing held over in the Great Lakes region from the days of live-in logging camps and fresh water schooners. The presence of instrumental music in old time Great Lakes logging camps is also well documented in photos and first-hand accounts but, sadly, very few transcribers or recorders bothered to capture any of the tunes!

I decided to take a month off from the songs and share an interesting version of an Irish reel (usually called “The Five Mile Chase”) from Beaver Island, Michigan fiddler Patrick Bonner (1882-1973). Bonner’s fascinating fiddle playing was recorded. Alan Lomax recorded a dozen or so tunes from him in 1938 and Ivan Walton a dozen more in 1940. Bonner’s setting of “The Dublin Lasses” was one of some 80 or more tunes recorded between 1950 and the mid-60s by Edward “Edgar” O’Donnell. O’Donnell’s (low fi) recordings of Bonner are available online here.

Patrick Bonner was the son of Black John Bonner, believed to be the first Irishman to arrive on Beaver Island after the fall of the island’s Mormon kingdom in 1856. Black John was born on Rutland Island (=Inis Mhic an Doirn), County Donegal not far from Arranmore (the birthplace of most first generation Irish-Beaver Islanders). His song Patrick was born on Beaver Island and lived there his entire life working as a farmer, logger and sailor and entertaining on his fiddle at “dances, picnics, weddings, and house parties.”[1] Patrick Bonner’s playing is an intriguing blend of Irish fiddle style and a looser, simpler, more “American” approach. I highly recommend looking him up online to hear him for yourself!

[1] Sommers, Laurie Kay, Beaver Island House Party, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996) 45.

13 Jul

The Deep Deep Sea

“Oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea,” these words came faint and mournfully,
From the pallid lips of a youth who lay on his cabin couch from day to day,
He had wasted and pined till o’er his brow the death shade slowly passed, and now,
When the land of his fond loved home was nigh they had gathered around to see him die.

For in fancy we listened to well-known words, the free wild winds and the songs of the birds,
“I had thought of home, of cot and bower, and of scenery I loved in childhood’s hour,
I had ever hoped to be laid when I died in the church-yard there on the green hill-side,
By the home of my father my grave should be. Oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea.”

“Let my death slumbers be where a father’s prayer and a sister’s tears will be blended there,
Oh, it will be sweet ere the heart-throb is o’er to know where its fountains will gush no more,
Let those it so fondly has yearned for to come and plant wild flowers of spring on my tomb,
Let me lie where my loved ones will weep o’er me, oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea.”

And there is another that tears shall shed for him that lies in the cold ocean bed,
“In hours that it pains me to think of now she hath twined these locks and kissed the brow,
In the hair she wreathed will the sea-serpent hiss, the brow she pressed will the cold wave kiss,
For the sake of that bright one who waits for me, oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea.”

“She hath been in my dreams…” His voice failed there, they gave no heed to his dying prayer,
They lowered him slow o’er the vessel’s side and above him closed the dark blue tide,
Where to dip her wing the sea fowl rests, where the blue waves dance with their foaming crest,
Where the billows bound and the winds sport free, oh, bury me not in the deep, deep sea.

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I had had a string of inquiries lately about this song which Randy Gosa and I recorded on our Falling of the Pine album so it seemed like a good time to cover it in this column. The above version is closely based on one collected from Sarah Neilson of Hoople, North Dakota in the early 1920s by Franz Rickaby. Hoople is about 60 miles northwest of Grand Forks and about as far away as one can get from the deep, deep sea!

The song began as a poem called “The Ocean Buried” first published in 1839 and written by American Universalist preacher Edwin Hubbell Chapin on the east coast. It was later set to music by George N. Allen and distributed widely as a song sheet in the eastern US. The song entered oral tradition in New England and Atlantic Canada and eventually became the model for another widespread folk song “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” Interestingly, Neilson (born in Canada) did not sing Allen’s (rather bland in my opinion) melody but rather a variant of the beautiful tune associated with “The Parting Glass.”

11 May

The Boy of Love

The boy in love without no fear like me some time ago
Like a hero bold through frost and cold to see my love I’d go
But the moon shone bright to give me light along my dreary way,
Until I arrived at my true love’s gate where all my fancy lay.

When I arrive at my true love’s gate, my step being soft and low,
She will arise and let me in, so softly I will go,
Saying, “Will you come to my father’s house?” “No dear, but come to your own,
Come with me, love, to the Parson’s and there we’ll be made one.”

“Oh no, oh no kind sir,” said she, “for prudence would not agree,”
“Well, then, sit down along by my side, for I must talk with thee,
For seven long years I have courted you against your parents’ will,
I was always resolved you would be my bride, but now, pretty girl, farewell.

“My ship lies in the harbor all ready to set sail,
And if the wind is from the East we’ll have a favoring gale,
And when I reach Columbia’s shore it is often I will say,
May the Lord above protect my love where all my fancy lay.

We return again this month to another fine Irish song from the repertoire of Minnesota singer Michael C. Dean. Irish song scholar John Moulden has traced this song, well known today in Ireland as “When a Man’s in Love He Feels No Cold,” back to its original composer: County Antrim schoolmaster Hugh McWilliams. McWilliams included “A Man in Love” in his book Poems and Songs on Various Subjects which was published in 1831 in Antrim.
The song entered folk tradition where, over the next hundred years, it gained some words, lost others and was set to several different melodies. Dean’s “Minnesota version” provides evidence of the furthest distance the song traveled from its source.

Since Dean left us only his text, I based the above melody on the melodies used for two other transatlantic versions collected in Marystown, Newfoundland by Maud Karpeles in 1930 and printed in Folk Songs from Newfoundland.