Category: Publications

Introduced by Dick Swain

A stout drinking song with a great chorus. At least two versions of the song, both probably dating back to the 1870s, have been published and recorded. The “Shanty Song” version was collected from Mrs. Annie V. Marston of Charlestown, Maine and first published in Eckstorm and Smyth, Minstrelsy Maine (1926). The earliest version of the “Raftman’s Song (Old Butler)” I have found is in the Joel Kimball Diary, April 24, 1874, Livingston Manor, NY (Sullivan County) (accessed May 23, 2021).

The most complete version of the “Raftsman’s Song” (with words almost identical to Joel Kimball’s version) was collected by Ellen Stekert from Ezra Barhight of Gallilee, Pennsylvania and published in “Four Pennsylvania Songs Learned before 1900, From the Repertoire of Ezra V. Barhight” in Goldstein and Byington, Two Penny Ballads and Four Dollar Whiskey (1966).

The Maine version, “Shanty Song,” presented here includes lumber mill locations which would have been familiar to many itinerant mill workers and immigrants in the last quarter of the 19th century – Albany, Philadelphia, and Lewiston, Maine. The song gained a new life after verses localizing the song to the Erie Canal were written in the early 1980’s by John Mayberry, a former member of the CDSS Board and a Toronto Morris Man. Verse 4 of the version here includes my modification of one of John’s verses – it’s a good finish to an excellent song.

For more information, check out:

• “Raftman’s Song” and “Old Butler” at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
• “Shanty Song” at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
• “Shove Around the Grog” at the Traditional Ballad Index

Listen to Cliff Haslam sing “Shove Around the Jug” from his album Leaning in the Wind, © 2012 Cliff Haslam.
“Shanty Song” with additional Erie Canal verses by John Mayberry.

Listen to Dave Ruch sing “Shove Your Grog Around” from The Oldest Was Born First, 2008.“The Raftman’s Song (Old Butler)”

Lyrics

Eckstorm, Fanny Hardy and Mary Smyth. Minstrelsy of Maine. 1927, p. 60
Barry, Phillips. Maine Woods Songster. 1939, p. 17
Last verse by John Mayberry.

I courted a girl in Albany, one in Montreal,
Another in Philadelphia, but the best at Lewiston Falls

Chorus:
Shove the grog around me boys
A chorus ‘round the room
We are the boys who fear no noise
Although we’re far from home

A dollar in a tavern is very easily spent
If we had it in Old Ireland, we’d have to pay down rent

Chorus

When you go to Albany to give the girls a call,
They’re not at all to be compared to the girls at Lewiston Falls

Chorus

The logs are at the mill, me boys. The fish are in the sea.
The cork is in the bottle, but the whiskey is in me

About Dick Swain: Combining his skills as a librarian with a life-long interest in folk music, Dick researches and performs songs from the places he has lived and worked, including the Great Lakes Region, Pennsylvania, and Maine. He accompanied Sandy Ives on several trips to Prince Edward Island and has performed at folk festivals, museums, and libraries in the U. S. and Canada. He was Program Director of the CDSS Pinewoods Folk Music Week four times and was a staff member of the Traditional Music and Dance (TradMaD) Camp in 2017. He is especially proud that Sandy Ives signed his copy of the book Drive Dull Care Away with the words: “For Dick Swain, who sings the old come-all-ye’s the way they should be sung!”

Introduced by Moira Craig

In Scotland, the law concerning the general crime of infanticide took two forms during the period 1660-1800. If a married woman (or less commonly man) was prosecuted for the killing of a newborn child, the charge would remain the common law offence of murder, unless it could be proved that the child was born healthy and that the accused had wilfully killed it.

The only chance a lower-class woman had, if she didn’t want to go into service, was to marry and to try to marry well. Unfortunately, if a girl became pregnant before marriage and the father refused to acknowledge the pregnancy, she was likely to be ostracised and banished from the family or village and her chance of marriage in the future was unlikely. It was probable that she would live a life of penury and destitution. It is not surprising, then, that women would try to hide their pregnancy and kill their babies in an attempt to continue a “normal” life.

“The Cruel Mother” exists in a number of variants, in some of which there are verses where the dead children tell the mother she will suffer a number of penances each lasting seven years, e.g. “Seven years to ring a bell / And seven years porter in hell.” Those verses properly belong in “The Maid and the Palmer” (Child ballad 21). Variants of “The Cruel Mother” include “Carlisle Hall,” “The Rose o Malinde,” “Fine Flowers in the Valley,” “The Minister’s Daughter of New York,” and “The Lady From Lee,” among others. “Fine Flowers of the Valley” is a Scottish variant. “Weela Weela Walya” is an Irish schoolyard version.

A closely related German ballad exists in many variants: a child comes to a woman’s wedding to announce himself her child and that she had murdered three children. The woman says the Devil can carry her off if it is true, and the Devil appears to do so.

Infanticide and illegitimacy have been recurrent themes in many European ballads. This version is from the Greig Duncan collection. The woman kills the babies to conceal the fact that she is no longer a virgin and of marriageable material. However, her conscience plays tricks on her and she awaits her fate.

Listen to Moira Craig singing “The Cruel Mother:”

Lyrics

There was a king’s daughter in the north,
Hey the rose and the linsie O;

And she has courted her father’s clerk,
And awa’ by the greenwood sidie O.

She courted him a year and a day,
Till her appearance did her betray.

She leaned her back against a tree,
Thinking that she would lighter be.

She leaned her back against a thorn,
And bonny are the boys she has born.

She took out her wee penknife,
And she’s ta’en awa’ their twa sweet lifes.

She took the kerchief fra her neck,
And she’s wrapped them in a winding sheet.

She buried them beneath a marble stone,
Thinking to win a maiden home.

She looked owre her father’s castle wa’,
And she saw twa bonny boys playing at the ba’.

O bonny boys, gin thou were mine,
I’d dress ye in the silk sae fine,

The sovilne* and the green-grass silk
Ye’d never drink nane but the farrow cow’s milk

O mother, mother, when we were thine,
We never saw nane o’ your silk sae fine.

The sovilne and the green-grass silk;
We never drank nane o’ your farrow cow’s milk.

O bonny boys, come tell to me,
The kind of death that I’m tae dee?

Seven years a bird in the bush,
And seven years a fish in the flood,

Seven years a warning bell,
And seven years in the deeps o’ hell.

Welcome, welcome, bird in the bush,
And welcome welcome, fish in the flood.

Welcome, welcome, warning bell,
But God keep me from the deeps o’ hell.

* Sovilne: sable fur

Moira Craig writes: I was born and brought up outside of Glasgow and my home was always full of singing and music. I never thought much about it; it was normal to me. While Scottish traditional songs are my main love, I’ll sing anything at the drop of a hat and hopefully will continue to do so till the day I die.