Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer

Subject: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Jon W.
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 08:53 PM

I haven't seen any lyrics for Mississippi Sawyer on the threads about lyrics for old time fiddle/dance tunes. Does anyone know any (the cleaner the better).

Thanks,
Jon

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Sorcha
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 11:45 PM

If there are, they might be in Ira Ford's Trad. Music of America. I can't look because Jon Freeman has my copy.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 07 Aug 03 - 11:51 PM

No lyrics in Ford's book (pp. 32 & 183-4).

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 08 Aug 03 - 09:42 AM

There're some versions recorded with calls, as in "Mississippi Sawyer" on Square Dance Music & Calls [with sound clips], but they are not lyrics. "Mississippi Sawyer" by Priscilla Herdman (Click here) IS a song, but is a different one with the same title.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 08 Aug 03 - 10:07 AM

See also Lyr Req: Downfall of Paris?.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 08 Aug 03 - 04:35 PM

Every old time fiddler in the states plays a version. I've played and heard it for decades all over the place, but have never heard anyone sing it.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Jon W.
Date: 09 Aug 03 - 07:45 PM

Thanks, everyone. I guess there aren't any. That answers that question.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Les B
Date: 10 Aug 03 - 12:36 AM

There are a set of French words at Ceolas - always a good place to look for info on fiddle tunes.

DOWNFALL OF PARIS, THE (Ceimsios Parais). AKA - "Scrios b-Paris," "Fall of Paris." AKA and see "Hae You Ony More Ado" (Shetland), "Mississippi Sawyer" (USA). Irish, Hornpipe or Set Dance; English, Hornpipe; Old-Time, Breakdown; Scottish, March. G Major (Kerr, O'Neill): D Major (Ashman, Old-Time versions): C Major (Winstock). Standard. AABCC (O'Neill/Krassen): ABCCDD (O'Neill/1915): AABBCCDD (O'Neill/1001): AA'BBCCDD (Sweet): AA'BBCC'DD" (Kerr): ABBCDDEE (O'Neill/1850). Better known in the American South and among modern American fiddlers as "Mississippi Sawyer," the melody was called "The Downfall of Paris" in Europe and this title was at one time retained in parts of Tennessee and the Ozarks. According to Winstock (1970), the tune's popularity may have surpassed that of the famous "The British Grenediers" in its day. It was played early in the 19th century when the allies entered Paris after the battle of Waterloo, but "on that occasion (the British commander) Wellington sharply put a stop to it, and the offending Royal Regiment played instead 'Croppies Lie Down.' Apart from being played by military bands on every conceivable occasion, its 'one tormenting strum, strum, strum' was the delight of amateur pianists throughout Britain" (Winstock, 1970; pg. 105).
***
The melody, however, had not been new to France in Wellington's time. Famously, it had been the vehicle for the song "Ça Ira," or "Ah ca ira" ('les aristocrates a la lanterne', or, roughly, 'Lets go lynch the aristocrats'} sung by the first and bloodiest French Revolutionaries in the late 1780's. Elson (The National Music of America, 1899) reports: "It was sung to many a scene of massacre and bloodshed; it was warbled and trilled out when the mob carried the head of the beautiful Princess de Lamballe, on a pike, through the streets of Paris, and thrust it up for the unhappy queen to look at." Despite this gruesome association the melody began innocently enough as a light vaudeville piece composed by one M. Bécourt, a side-drum player at the Opéra. It soon proved popular as a contra-dance melody and frequently appeared in the French cotillions prior to its being seeped in blood. Interestingly, especially in view of the tune's later importation to America, the title was suggested by none other than Benjamin Franklin who used the phrase (which translates as "It will succeed") in connection with the prospects of the American Revolution. General Lafayette took Franklin's expression and passed it to a street singer named Ladré as a good refrain for a popular song. "Ça Ira" first appeared innocently enough as:
***
Ah! Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Le Peuple en ce jour sans cesse répète:
Ah! Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Malgre les mutins, tout réussira.
***
After the Paris mob burst forth in its fury, carried the Tuileries by assault and massacred the nobles in prison, these words appeared:
***
Ah! Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Les Aristocrat' à la lanterne;
Ah! Ça ira, ça ira, ça ira!
Les Aristoncrat' on les pendra.
***
It took some time after this for its dance roots to resurface, but in 1816 the melody was again printed, this time in England in Wilson's Companion to the Ballroom. Vic Gammon, in his 1989 article "The Grand Conversation: Napoleon and British Popular Balladry," says the "La Ira" (sic) was adopted as a military march by the British Army, initially as a means of confusing the enemy on the battlefield. It later developed into the dance tune "Downfall of Paris" and became widespread in Britain, where it appears in collections of Irish music as well as in southern English village musicians' tune books. It us one of the official set dances (for dance competitions) in Ireland.
***
The title appears in a list of traditional Ozark Mountain fiddle tunes compiled by musicologist/folklorist Vance Randolph, published by 1954. Some 'crooked' versions are extent in the United States (see Charlie Acuff's version which has 15 beats in the 'A' part). See note for "Mississippi Sawyer" for more on the American variant. Source for notated version: a c. 1837-1840 MS by Shropshire musician John Moore [Ashman]. Ashman (The Ironbridge Hornpipe), 1991; No. 28, pg. 8. Kerr (Merry Melodies), Vol. 4, No. 372, pg. 40. O'Neill (1915 ed.), 1987; No. 395, pg. 189. O'Neill (Krassen), 1976; pg. 165. O'Neill (1850), 1979; No. 1562, pg. 289. O'Neill (1001 Gems), 1986; No. 957, pg. 164 (set dance version). Sweet (Fifer's Delight), 1964/1981; pg. 44. Thomas and Leeder (The Singin' Gatherin'), 1939; pg. 59. Winstock (Music of the Redcoats), 1970; pg. 106. Island ILPS9432, The Chieftains - "Bonaparte's Retreat" (1976). Charlie Acuff. Rounder Records, Darley Fulks - "Traditional Fiddle Music of Kentucky, Vol. 2: Along the Kentucky River" (1997. An unusual version set in waltz time

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 08 Oct 03 - 12:53 PM

The Mystic based sea music group Forebitter on their VOYAGES CD, © 2000, has an interesting note on what a "sawyer" is in "Mississippi Sawyer":

"The sounds and names of these traditional dance tunes evoke the calm splash of a mountain stream, the bustle and hum of a steamboat arrival in a river town, and the sense of headlong speed and risk as a boat booms along, the pilot all the while watching for dangers such as 'sawyers': barely submerged deadfall trees that, if struck, could tear the bottom out of the hull."

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Oct 03 - 12:58 PM

Charlie Noble, I was under the impression that 'sawyer' is a sawman, especially as on a 2-man crosscut saw in the days when timber was felled manually.

In the olden days, that is how my father logged. And used draft horses to snake them out.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Oct 03 - 01:22 PM

Yer both right, sez the Oxford English Dictionary.

Charley's sense:
1786- Beatty, Diary, Sept. 6, "Arrived at Guyandot this evening and lay all night off its mouth in rapid water- obliged to make fast to a sawyer."
1797- "These sawyers are large trunks of trees, which are brought down by the force of the current."

Ebbie's sense:
Spelled sawier, later sawyer, the word was used in print as early as 1350 in the sense posted by Ebbie. OED

A sawyer is also a kind of beetle.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 08 Oct 03 - 05:34 PM

Ebbie-

I agree with you that there is a more common definition of the word but in terms of this tune, "Mississippi Sawyer," I think Forebitter has nailed the particular reference.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: GUEST,reggie miles
Date: 08 Oct 03 - 10:25 PM

As a "musical" saw player, not from Mississippi, I was hoping this was something other than what it turned out to be. I have yet to find any early examples of players to look to for inspiration nor songs refering to the art form. I did, however, find a song called "Sawing A Woman In Half" on a 78rpm. As inspiration from other players is shy, I may try to add the routine of sawing an audience member in half just to spice the show up a bit.

Stay on the cutting edge of things, is what I always say.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Oct 03 - 11:14 PM

Hey, a real sawyer-yer-yer-yer-yer-yer--- !

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 08 Oct 03 - 11:38 PM

B. A. Botkin, in "A Treasury of Mississippi River Folklore," quotes T. B. Thorpe, "The Mysteries of the Backwoods," 1846- Uprooted trees "become attached to the bottom of the river, and yet by some elasticity of the roots they are loose enough to be affected by the strange and powerful current, which will bear them down under the surface; and the tree, by its own strength, will come gracefully up again, to be again engulfed; and thus they wave upward and downward with a gracefulness of motion which would not disgrace a beau of the old school. Boats frequently pass over these "sawyers," as they go downstream, pressing them under by their weight; but let some unfortunate child of the genus of Robert Fulton, as it passes upstream, be saluted by the visage of one of these polite gentry, as it rises ten or more feet in the air, and nothing short of irreparable damage or swift destruction ensues, while the cause of all this disaster, after the concussion, will rise above the ruin as if nothing had happened, shake the dripping water from its forked limbs, and sink again, as if rejoicing in its strength."

Now that is disaster treated as poetically as can be.
Thorpe goes on to describe these sawyers more thoroughly, and cites them as more dangerous than the "planters," another manifestation of the strength of uprooted but "re-planted" trees when they become firmly rooted in the bottom, immovable, their heads pointed downstream.
I would like to get a copy of Thorpe's book.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mississippi Sawyer - Any lyrics?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 09 Oct 03 - 09:15 AM

That's a wonderful quote, Q.

I'll have to forward it to Forebitter.

But I wonder if you "saw" it first?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble