Old Environmental Folk Songs

Subject: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Peter T.
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:44 PM

I have asked this before in various ways without getting much, so I thought I would ask again in a different kind of way. I am looking for folk songs, traditional songs about environmental deterioration, loss of woods, species, messed up land or water, man's inhumanity to nature, etc. There are (for example) coal and mining songs, but not back too far; and all kinds of songs from the 1950's on (Pete Seeger, etc.). I am looking for any songs that come to mind from much earlier, like before 1850. (This is in part for a class).

Leads would be great.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: GUEST,Julia
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 04:51 PM

Not sure of the dates on this, but how about Bonnie Portmore or Cill Cais, both Irish songs about the loss of trees. Also Burns (1759-1796) wrote a poem about the cutting of trees "Verses on the destruction of the woods near Drumlanrig" Perhaps you could set it to a tune in the old tradition? (Let us know if you do!)
His "song composed in August" aka Westlin' winds has anti-hunting sentiments as well.
Hope this helps

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 09 Sep 03 - 11:09 PM

Australian Song

Please give your forest to the woodchip man - not yet in the DT...


The Woodchip Man
A song by Denis Kevans *
©Denis Kevans


I think that I shall never see,
a poem like a wood chip factory,
Aesthetically it knocks me out,
to see another forest flyin' out the spout.

Chorus:
Please give your forest to the woodchip man,
he's got a factory in old Japan,
He turns 'em into kleenex, Uncle Bill**,
he's doin' it for Australia you dill.

Trees are very sacred to the Japanese,
so the big companies don't chop their trees,
They've too much nouse to chip their own,
so they come down south where the gumtree's grown.

For thousands of years the Karri has stood,
reclaiming dry land, and making it good,
But we don't need the forest to cure our souls,
we need it to wrap our chicko rolls!

Bjelke invested in the Reef's destruction,
sayen' "Crush up the coral for road construction,
Rig up your derricks on the Barrier Reef" -
the minds of such people are beyond belief.

My auntie Lil flew to Japan,
she went and abused the wood chip man,
The wood chip man he said "Aw geez,
you can't see the wood chip for the trees".

The honey-eater and the flying possum,
they couldn't find any red gum blossom,
The wood chip man said "Hip hooray!
You can eat McDonald's every day".

Tourists love the forest, so chop them down,
we don't want those tourists throwin' money around,
Cuddlin' koalas, patten' possum,
photo for Kyoto in the red gum blossom,

The kangaroo and the little tom tit,
they couldn't make head nor tail of it,
The wood chip man said "Take a look,
we'll give you a chapter in a nature book".

When the forest has gone, and the birds and the bees,
and the wood chip's higher than the blue gum trees
We'll have the paper from old Japan,
all sing the praises of the wood chip man.

When the forest has gone to the factory,
to be turned into paper for the lavatory,
I won't complain, I won't be glum,
I'll just rip off my heritage and wipe my bum.

Notes

* The final verse was added by John Dengate

** This line is often sung as: "He turns 'em into kleenex in his paper mill,
..... "

Denis Kevans,
63 Valley Rd,
Wentworth Falls NSW
Ph: 02 4757 3119


Obtained from Mark who runs a website for Traditional Aussie Folk Music at crixa.com the address of which I have lost at the moment...

Robin

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 03:30 AM

You can add Burns' "Wounded Hare" to Julia's list.Don't know of any melody, though.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: GUEST,Symlog
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 08:15 AM

There is an anonymous Welsh poem which is a protest against the felling of trees in the Cynon Valley, South Wales, to be used as charcoal in the iron industry rapidly being developed (mainly by ironmasters from England)during the second half of the 17th century:
Here is a translation of it by the late Professor Gwyn Willimas from his book 'The Burning Tree' (Faber 1956):
            
                Glyn Cynon Wood (Glyn = Vale)

                Aberdare, Llanwynno through,
                all Merthyr to Llanfabon;
                there was never a more disastrous thing
                than the cutting of Glyn Cynon.

                They cut down many a parlour pure
                where youth and manhood meet;
                in those days of the regular star
                Glyn Cynon's wood were sweet.

                If a man in sudden plight
                took to flight from foe,
                for guest-house to the nightingale
                in Cynon Vale he'd go.

                Many a beech tree green of cloak
                (I'd like to choke the Saxon!)
                is now a flaming heap of fire
                where iron-workers blacken.

                For cutting the branch and bearing away
                the wild birds' habitation
                may misfortune quickly reach
                Rowenna's treacherous children!* (*the English)

                Rather should the English be
                strung up beneath the seas,
                keeping painful house in hell
                than felling Cynon's trees.

                Upon my oath, I've heard it said
                that a herd of the red deer
                for Mawddwy*'s deep dark woods has left
                bereft of its warmth here.
                   (*many miles away in North Wales)

                No more the badger's earth we'll sack
                nor start a buck from the glade;
                no more deer-stalking in my day,
                now they've cut Glyn Cynon's glade.

                If ever a stag got into a wood
                with huntsmen a stride behind,
                never again will he turn in his run
                with Cynon Wood in mind.

                If the flour-white girl once came
                to walk along the brook,
                Glyn Cynon's wood was always there
                as a fair trysting nook.

                If as in times gone by men plan
                to span the mountain river;
                though wood be found for house and church
                Glyn Cynon's no provider.

                I'd like to call on them a quest
                of every honest bird,
                where the owl, worthiest in the wood,
                as hangman would be heard.

                If there's a question who rehearsed
                in verse this cruel tale,
                it's one who many a tryst has kept
                in the depth of Cynon Vale.
               
I know of at least one other translation - by Harri Webb - 'Harri Webb: Collected Poems' Meic Stephens (ed.) Gomer 1995. The Welsh version is sung by a group whose name escapes me at the moment.
Hope this is of interest. Will be away for the next week, but will be happy to attempt to answer any queries after that.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Peter T.
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 08:18 AM

Thanks for the leads -- I had thought of Bonny Portmore, it certainly stands out. I will check out the Burns poems.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: fiddler
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 09:28 AM

I can add Flush the magic toilet!

To the obvious tune - Written about Peterlee in county Durham.

If it is wanted email me and I'll add it - I'm not around much at present.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 09:37 AM

Peter - be interesting to see what you can find on this. My first inclination would be that they are few and extremely hard to find - because as I understand it - up until quite recently the general attitude was "it's all here for the benefit of man".

even the welsh poem above seems more tr bemoan more that the woods no longer exist to be exploited then to mourn their lack of existance period.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 10:25 PM

I suspect if you look at songs to do with work (coal or tin or other mining, fishing, logging, rough physical labor songs) you'll find the connection between how nature rewards or punishes the humans who work in those worlds. Can you make something of that?

Many cultures have had a more altruistic views of the world than the western industrial world puts forward as far as exploiting resources. But they may not have materials that line up with the request for folksongs.

SRS

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Mudlark
Date: 10 Sep 03 - 11:26 PM

Though I can't get my memory filing system to work I'm pretty sure there was a song decrying, or at least mentioning the denuding of forest for shipbuilding...

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Kevin Sheils
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 04:18 AM

There's a reference to that Mudlark in "Dancing at Whitsun"

Gone where the forest of Oak went before
Gone to be wasted in Battle

or words to that effect (off the top of my head).

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: sian, west wales
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 04:41 AM

Symlog, I wonder if the group might be Mabsant. It sounds like there sort of song ...

sian

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 08:04 AM

Is Dancing at Whitsun a song? yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Jeri
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 08:53 AM

Peter, here's Dancing at Whitsun in the DT. It's relatively modern.

"I am looking for any songs that come to mind from much earlier, like before 1850." -- Peter T., first message.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Jon W.
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 11:54 AM

How about "Johnny of Brady's Lee"? It's about how a dastardly poacher met his just reward at the hands of the heroic king's foresters for the crime of hunting on lands protected by the national government.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Mudlark
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 05:17 PM

No, Kevin, I don't think that's it (good song tho!), something older (think, think, think.....nope, hopeless).

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Peter T.
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 05:21 PM

Thanks for trying, I know it is difficult -- I have been scouring around!! yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Nerd
Date: 11 Sep 03 - 05:48 PM

Mudlark,

another might be "where are they now?" which Steeleye Span recorded in the 1980s:

The forest turned into the tall ships
and though they fought for England well,
The emptiness is ringing down the ages
Like a hollow bell

But of course too recent to fit Peter T's needs.

The thing about Bonny Portmore is, if you examine the many threads about the song here, it seems as if the tree in question was actually uprooted by a giant storm, rather than by any human action. But many nowadays take to have an environmentalist sentiment, so why not?

Subject: ADD: Garbage (Bill Steele)
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 12:12 AM

I'm not sure what is meant by "old", but these have been around for at least 30 years.

GARBAGE!
(Bill Steele)

Mister Thompson calls the waiter, orders steak and baked potato
But he leaves the bone and gristle and he never eats the skins;
Then busboy comes and takes it, with a cough contaminates it
As he puts it in a can with coffee grounds and sardine tins
Then the truck comes by on Friday and carts it all away
And a thousand trucks just like it are converging on the Bay
Garbage! Garbage! We're filling up the sea with garbage
Garbage! Garbage!
What will we do when there's no place left To put all the garbage.

Mr. Thompson starts his Cadillac and winds it up the freeway track
Leaving friends and neighbors in a hydrocarbon haze
He's joined by lots of smaller cars all sending gases to the stars
There to form a seething cloud that hangs for thirty days
While the sun licks down upon it with its ultraviolet tongues
Till it turns to smog and settles down and ends up in our lungs
Garbage! Garbage! We're filling up the sky with garbage
Garbage! Garbage!
What will we do when there's nothing left to breathe but garbage.

Getting home and taking off his shoes he settles down with
evening news
While the kids do homework with the TV in one ear
While Superman for thousandth time
sells talking dolls and conquers crime
They dutifully learn the date of birth of Paul Revere
In the paper there's a piece about the mayor's middle name
And he gets it done in time to watch the all-star bingo game
Garbage! Garbage!
We're filling up our minds with garbage
Garbage! Garbage!
What will we do when there's nothing left to read
And there's nothing left to hear
And there's nothing left to need
And there's nothing left to wear
And there's nothing left to talk about
And there's nothing to walk upon
And there's nothing left to care about
And nothing left to ponder on
And nothing left to touch
And nothing left to see
And there's nothing left to do
And there's nothing left to be but garbage!

Subject: ADD: Tapestry (Don McLean)
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 12:14 AM

TAPESTRY
(Don McLean)

Every thread of creation is held in position
By still other strands of things living
In an earthly tapestry hung from the skyline
Of smoldering cities, so gray and so vulgar,
As not to be satisfied with their own negativity,
But needing to touch all the living as well.

And every breeze that blows kindly is one crystal breath
We exhale on the blue diamond heaven:
As gentle to touch as the hands of the healer,
As soft as farewells whispered over the coffin.
We're poisoned by venom with each breath we take
From the brown sulfur chimney and the black highway snake.

And every dawn that breaks golden is held in suspension
Like the yolk of the egg in albumen.
Where the birth and the death of unseen generations
Are interdependant in vast orchestration,
And painted in colors of tapestry thread
When the dying are born and the living are dead.


And every pulse of your heartbeat is one liquid moment
That flows through the veins of your being.
Like a river of life flowing on since creation
Approaching the sea with each new generation,
You're now just a stagnant and rancid disgrace
That is rapidly drowning the whole human race.

And every fish that swims silent, every bird that fly freely
Every doe that steps softly,
Every crisp leaf that falls, all the flowers that grow,
On this colorful tapestry, somehow they know
That if man is allowed to destroy all we need
He will soon have to pay with his life for his greed

---

I finally read the original post more carefully. Try to pretend Garbage and Tapestry aren't there.

Subject: RE: Old Environmental Folk Songs
From: Kevin Sheils
Date: 12 Sep 03 - 05:54 AM

OK pretending it's not there but you just reminded me that I've got the old vinyl LP of Garbage by Bill Steele on Bay records tucked away somewhere, haven't played it for years so time to go digging.

And, mudlark, yes clearly D at W is not within Peter T's remit so I'll get the old grey matter more focused.