The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #86822   Message #1618114
Posted By: Abby Sale
01-Dec-05 - 10:29 AM
Thread Name: Happy! - Nov 30 (Newman Levy)
Subject: RE: Happy! - Nov 30 (Newman Levy)
Absolutely! That's an easy one.

Here's the entry I've used in some years:

Mark Twain was born on 11/30/1835 in Florida, Missouri (d4/21/1910) In his autobiography (required reading, BTW, get to it!) he noted that by his birth he had raised the population of the town by a full 1%. He was confident that this phenomenal and nearly unique accomplishment was due to some innate quality in himself - not due to any freak of statistics. He was sure that he would have accomplished the same feat _wherever_ he was born!

The well-known Mississippi River sounding call is called "Mark Twain." As in 'Mark twain is four fathoms!'   Ie, 'Marking on the twine is...' and supposedly from whence Clemmens took his name. I have one version from the Field, collected by Lomax on Lib of Congress "Negro Work Songs and Calls." It was popularized by Harry Belafonte who did a fine job of it.

There's also one in DigTrad, THE RAGING CANAL. I have that sung by Hullfish et al. I believe it went into tradition and was based on a song written by Twain (also in DigTrad.