Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain

Subject: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 08:16 PM

Joe Offer especially please note:

I ran across this listing among your Silver Burdett threads.

Subject: Index: Music In Our Country (Silver Burdett)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 29 Apr 04 - 04:59 PM

Book: Music In Our Country .....
Grade: 5
Date: 1956

Long, long ago I heard a Kentucky West Virginia version of "Swannanoa Tunnel" called "Mingo Mountain."

Is the "Mingo Mountain" listed in the above book the same? Would love to have the lyrics posted. It's one of those long-ago Great Lost Songs for me.

Thanks! Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 11 Jul 06 - 09:56 PM

I been a-travelin over these mountains
Many a long year, many a long year
I'm goin back to Mingo Mountain,
That's my home, that's my home.

Anyone know more verses?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Jul 06 - 07:28 AM

refresh

Subject: ADD: Mingo Mountain
From: cetmst
Date: 12 Jul 06 - 09:08 AM

In The Bridge of Song, Cooperative Recreation Services and Music For Our Country, Silver Burdett Company:

Mingo Mountain

I've been travelin' over these mountains
Forty long years, forty long years.
I'm going back to the Mingo Mountains,
That's my home, that's my home.

Ain't no hammer on these mountains
Rings like mine, rings like mine.
This old hammer rings like silver,
Shines like gold, shines like gold.

---

from Joe Offer:
Here's the tune, from Silver Burdett's Music in Our Country. The echo is

1. Yes, forty long years....That's my home, that's my home.

2. Yes, rings like mine....Shines like gold, shines like gold.

Click to play

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: kytrad (Jean Ritchie)
Date: 12 Jul 06 - 08:37 PM

From my shelves I learned that it was also published in the old Cooperative Recreation Service booklet, Songs From Michigan (or was it, Michigan Songs?). I don't have that one. CRS was bought by World Around Songs. They were located at: Rte. 5, Burnsville, N.C.28714. They may have moved since.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 08:35 AM

Is there a mingo mountain? Where? I grew up in Mingo County WV but am not familiar with Mingo Mountain. There was also once upon a time a Chief Mingo after whom the county was supposedly named.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 13 Jul 06 - 08:57 PM

Ohio has a Mingo Junction. I thought I remembered a Mingo placename in Kentucky but can't find it on any map so I may be wrong. So any Mingo Mountain, if there was one, may well have been renamed by now.

Mingo was a Native American name, seems to me I remember it as a derogatory name for one of the Delaware tribes? Perhaps mentioned in Last of the Mohicans? It's too vague in my memory for me to be sure.

Apart from that, I have no other knowledge of the name.

Sure would like to find more verses to the song, though. I do know it was current around Berea College in the mid-1950s; I heard it from a female student, introduced to me I think by Edna Ritchie. But what the student's source was I don't know.

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 14 Jul 06 - 01:55 AM

There's a Mingo Mountain in Washington State (Stevens County).
West Virginia has both a Mingo County and a hamlet called Mingo (in southernmost Randolph County).
And RootsWeb turns up Mingo Mountain Mines near Middleboro KY: http://archiver.rootsweb.com/th/read/COALMINERS/2001-05/0989949100

Of course, given the way they mine coal in West Virginia these days, a Mingo Mountain is as likely to have been levelled and demolished as renamed.

--Charlie Baum

(then too, there was Daniel Boone's sidekick Mingo played by Ed Ames (1964-1968))

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 12:49 PM

I have not progressed any further in finding the song, except to learn that the melody has been used in a classical suite.

However, I have found Mingo Mountain, Kentucky. (I knew it was there somewhere.) If I read the topo map correctly --

http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=36.588&lon=-83.7958&size=l&symshow=n&datum=nad83

-- it is a steep face rising at the back of Mingo Hollow, a long valley running west-southwest out of Middlesboro, Kentucky -- the extreme southeastern nub of the state near Cumberland Gap. The hollow begins near the western boundary of the city, starting in Bell County and ending in Claiborne County.

It is indeed the victim of coal mining. This remote site is above the community of Mauring. A Charleston WV Gazette headline in 1998 read "Clear Landings Mean Mingo Mountain Goes." I take it that implies strip mining, though I haven't been able to find the article yet.

I am still working my way through a fascinating site that gives some local history: "Three Tragic Events in Mingo Hollow" --

http://smithdray.angeltowns.net/h/mh.htm

It tells of the Hollow's involvement in:
1. The Cherokee Wars around 1700.
2. The Quarterhouse Battle (1902) during which at least 7 people lost their lives in a gun battle between the staff of the Quarterhouse ("a one-stop den of iniquity to entice the coal miners" with gambling, meals, homebrew and prostitution as well as staged animal fights) and a posse of over 50 men under Bell County Dep. Sheriffs Thompson and Ball.
3. The Fork Ridge Coal Minte War, 1941.

Piquant detail: the state line sign in the neighborhood is riddled with bullet holes. But the hollow is said to be quiet and largely inactive today.

Fascinating bit of Kentucky history! All this by way of trying to find more verses to the song. On that, no luck yet.

Can anyone recall or point the way to more of the song????

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 01:06 PM

By the way, concerning the Native American reference, the name is not derogatory as I thought, glad to clear that one up.

The Mingo are an Iroquois group, who migrated west to the Ohio River ahead of the white pioneers in the 18th century. They exist to this day, not a large group. There has recently been a revival of interest by descendants in the nation and in the Mingo language. They have historically been more friendly to whites than not. They lived in the Ohio River valley in present-day West Virginia, then a western part of Virginia, and could be found in Ohio and into Pennsylvania as far as Springdale.

The city of Logan and Mingo and Logan counties, WV, were named after Chief Mingo, a tribal leader whose English name was Logan. So, apparently, was Mingo Mountain. Members of his family were murdered in white massacres, who took revenge in a series of battles, content to go after the killers but not any other whites. However, the Mingo were crushed, the survivors mingling with the larger Shawnee and Miami nations.

There are a number of good articles about this on the web; Wikipedia is a good place to start.

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: Joe Offer
Date: 15 Jul 06 - 02:41 PM

I think I have all the "World Around Songs" songbooks currently in print. It's in cetmst's copy of THE BRIDGE OF SONG, for Iowa's singing (see above), and I found it in a World Around Songs book currently in print called One Tune More. I also found it in Silver Burdett's fifth-grade music text, Music in Our Country (1956). CRS/WAS has a huge collection of songs, and they use them for publishing custom-order songbooks for various groups.

Cooperative Recreation Service Songbook Index

Silver Burdett Songbook Index

---

The Silver Burdett book says "Mingo Mountain" is a Kentucky mountain song, but that's all it says. Silver Burdett says the song was published in Sweet Freedom's Song by the Cooperative Recreation Service. The song is also published in an anthology titled Sweet Rivers of Song: Authentic Ballads, Hymns, Folksongs From the Appalachian Region (compiled by Gladys Jameson, published by Berea College in 1967), titled "The Mingo Mountains," but with the same first line. I don't have that book.
Roud groups this song with "Nine Pound Hammer," #4299. There's no entry for "Mingo Mountain" in the Traditional Ballad Index.

Anybody have the Jameson book????

-Joe-

---

Here's the tune, from Silver Burdett's Music in Our Country. The echo is

1. Yes, forty long years....That's my home, that's my home.

2. Yes, rings like mine....Shines like gold, shines like gold.

Click to play

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 08:57 AM

Lament of Mingo Chief Logan

I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace.

Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as I passed, and said, "Logan is the friend of the white man." I have even thought to live with you but for the injuries of one man, Colonel Cresap, who last spring in cold blood and unprovoked murdered the relatives of Logan, not even sparing his wife and children.

There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This has called on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killed many; I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice in the beams of peace.

But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 16 Jul 06 - 09:57 AM

Interesting!

The tune Joe gives differs in some ways from the one I heard from the Berea College student in 1955. There are enough similarities, though, to show it's related.

Guess we'll never know where Silver Burdett picked it up. The melody does seem to have entered the classical repertoire, and again, I have no idea how. I'm wondering if it became a choral number in colleges, deriving maybe from Berea's use of it?

I've sent an inquiry to the Berea archivist to see if I can turn up anything there.

Meanwhile it seems to be a hammer song roughly in the widespread family the stretches from "Nine Pound Hammer" to "Swannanoa Tunnel." The way I heard it, though, was a very slow lament, nothing like a hammer song.

The search goes on. I'd still like to know if there are more verses. My memory is that the student sang four or five stanzas.

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 10:01 AM

refresh

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 17 Jul 06 - 10:05 AM

Current address for World Around Songs is

World Around Songs, Inc., 20 Colberts Creek Rd. Burnsville, NC 28714

They have a website and are still actively issuing songbooks, including some with American folksongs.

Don't yet know whether they have any background on "Mingo Mountain" or whether it is even included in any of their current books.

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 05:34 AM

It looks as if I'm on to a possible Berea College version.

Harry Rice, Special Collections and Archives, Hutchins Library, Berea College, refers to two Gladys Jameson Collections, "Wake and Sing," 1955, and "Sweet River of Song," 1967, both containing the song. Her note, he says, "vaguely suggests a West Virginia connection. She describes her source as 'teacher who told me that very often, at night, she heard this song floating up a valley sung, perhaps, by "a lonely rider on a lonely trail."'"

I am pursuing this, may shortly have a text. As some old 1920s 78 artist (unremembered at the moment) said, "I'm a-gittin' on a HOT trail now!"

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: Joe Offer
Date: 18 Jul 06 - 06:24 AM

Hi, Bob -
I can send you a scan of the song form the World Around Songs songbook, One Tune More, which is currently in print. Yes, I wonder too if World Around Songs might have background information on the songs in their collection.

See if Berea College can send you a photocopy of the Jameson version - libraries are often willing to do that.


-Joe Offer-

e-mail me if you want a scan - [e-mail]

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Jul 06 - 06:36 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: Bob Coltman
Date: 24 Jul 06 - 08:29 AM

More about the location of Mingo Mountain:

According to Berea College faculty member Gladys Jameson's 1955 notes to "Mingo Mountain" furnished by the Berea College Archive, "Mingo Mountain is in West Virginia." This contrasts with my location of the mountain in Mingo Hollow near Middlesboro, Kentucky. (More or less related to Claiborne County, Tennessee's ridge named the Mingo Mountains.)

It also clashes with any assumption that the Mingo Mountain named in the song had anything to do with the hills of Mingo County (where the Mingo Lookout Tower stands) or Logan County in the SW part of WVA.

Mingo Knob is a 4080-ft peak lying toward the northeastern part of West Virginia: Randolph County, in the Cheat Mountain area of the Monongahela National Forest. There is a small community named Mingo in the Tygart Valley there.

If the song does refer to that area, "going back to Mingo Mountain" from Kentucky would be no small journey -- well over 100 miles.

It's unlikely we can pin it down to one or the other at this point. On the one hand Jameson, the song's collector, puts the mountain in West Virginia. On the other hand, she presumably heard "Mingo Mountain" in Kentucky, since she calls it a Kentucky folksong, so I don't know whether she has authority for thinking it refers to a West Virginia locale, or just made that assumption.

My thanks to Joe Offer, and to Harry Rice of the Berea Archive, for furnishing scans of various publications of the song.

Bob

Bob

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Russ
Date: 24 Jul 06 - 09:15 AM

I grew up in Mingo County.
I do not remember ever hearing of Mingo Mountain.

This is the "official" story:
"Mingo county was formed from a part of Logan county in 1895, and derives its name from the Mingo tribe of Indians, of which Logan was the famous chieftain. It was the last county to be formed in West Virginia"

A lot depends on where the collector, Jameson, got the song and when. If the source lived in eastern Kentucky my guess is that the singer simply assumed that Mingo Mountain was in some way associated with Mingo County which is right on the border of WV and Eastern Kentucky, across the river from Pike County Kentucky.

If the singer was from further west in Kentucky, my guess is that the singer had heard of Mingo County WV and made the same assumption. Mingo and Logan counties occasionally showed up on the national news during the mine wars. Mingo county would have been mentioned in any article about the "Matewan Massacre" for example.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: Charlie Baum
Date: 24 Jul 06 - 10:27 AM

The small community of Mingo in the Tygart River Valley is pretty obscure, though it's now known to some recent generations of revival singers and musicians, many of them Mudcatters, who enjoy folk music weekends at the BrazenHead Inn there.

--Charlie Baum

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Mingo Mountain
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 02 Aug 06 - 02:14 PM

The text furnished by Berea College is identical to that in the sources Joe Offer mentions. Guess the song trail ends there.

Russ, I agree entirely. I think Gladys Jameson made an unwarranted assumption. Though it's perhaps sketchily supportable via Mingo Knob in West Virginia, that seems less likely than Kentucky's Mingo Mountain.

My conclusion is that the Mingo Mountain meant in the song probably was the one in Mingo Hollow, Ky/Tenn., extending westward from Middelesboro. But it's probably never going to be possible to be definitive about this.

Here's an appeal to any Kentuckians, West Virginians, or Tennesseeans, or anyone else for that matter, who may know more verses to this (so far) two-verse song!

Thanks all,

Bob