Join us each month in song!

Since 2016—our designated Year of Song—CDSS has featured a traditional song each month. Lorraine Hammond spearheaded this effort, and it was such a popular feature that Judy Cook volunteered to continue the tradition in 2017 and beyond. 

Note: Many of these old songs should be looked at as “fairy tales for adults” in that they often address very strong, and sometimes scary, subject matter. They allow us to deal with difficult situations and emotions with the distance afforded by putting it in a song. They are cautionary tales, and had their use as such.


This month’s song:

  • Carved wooden figurehead of a woman February 2025: The Old Figurehead Carver
    Submitted by Cindy Kallet

    This song, crafted by the inimitable and much-missed Dick Swain from a poem by Hiram Cody, tells the story of a old wood carver, who, even as his eyesight falters and his hands become less sure, can still remember in vivid detail his experience of carving the figurehead for the Marco Polo, built in St. John, New Brunswick in 1851, and considered at the time to be the fastest clipper ship in the world. Dick set the poem to music and added a chorus.

    Below are links to both Dick Swain and John Roberts singing the song. Unfortunately, the video of Dick doesn’t start until partway through the first verse, but you can hear his own melody to the chorus, and then John’s modification of it.

    Sheet music for "The Old Figurehead Carver"
    Download the sheet music for “The Old Figurehead Carver.”

    Lyrics: The Old Figurehead Carver

    Adapted from a poem by Hiram Cody in Songs of a Bluenose, McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, Canada, 1925
    Music & chorus by Dick Swain

    I have done my share of carving figureheads of quaint design
    For the Olives and the Ruddicks and the famous Black Ball Line
    Brigantines and barks and clippers, brigs and schooners, lithe and tall
    But the bounding Marco Polo was the flower of them all.

    Chorus:
    While my hands are steady, while my eyes are good,
    I will carve the music of the wind into the wood.

    I can see that white-winged clipper reeling under scudding clouds
    Tramping down a hazy skyline with a Norther in her shrouds
    I can feel her lines of beauty, see her flecked with spume and brine
    As she drives her scuppers under, and that figurehead of mine.

    ‘Twas of seasoned pine I made it, clear from outer bark to core
    From the finest piece of timber, from the mast-pond on Straight Shore
    Every bite of axe or chisel, every ringing mallet welt
    Wrought from out that block of timber all the spirit that I felt.

    I had read of Marco Polo, til his daring deeds were mine
    And I say them all a-glowing in that balsam-scented pine
    Saw his eyes alight with purpose, facing every vagrant breeze
    Saw him lilting free and careless over all the seven seas.

    That was how I did my carving, beat of heart and stroke of hand
    Putting into life and action all the purpose that I planned
    Flowing robes and wind-tossed tresses, forms of beauty, strength, design
    I saw them all and tried to carve them in that figurehead of mine.

    And when my hands are feeble, and my outward eyes grow dim
    I will see again those clippers reeling o’er the ocean’s rim
    Great white fleet of sailing rovers, wind above and surf beneath
    With the Marco Polo leading, and my carving in her teeth.

    Cindy Kallet writes: I am a singer, guitar player, and songwriter who has lived in New England most of my life. I have been drawn to both songs of the sea as well as songs with lyrics that create vivid pictures, illuminate personal experiences, and evoke a strong sense of place. In my opinion, “The Old Figurehead Carver” does it all! Grey Larsen and I have performed this song with Grey playing concertina and me playing the “fiola” (a violin strung up as a viola).


Past Songs