Hi all,

Joe e-mailed me about this thread last night, but we were in the path of a procession of thunderstorm cells. I unplugged everything and went to bed.

The text Sara sings, which Joe has transcribed above, is one I copied from from a file cabinet of Mrs. Flanders's material that passed to Margaret MacArthur after HHF's death. These were materials that had not gone to Middlebury College. Whether Margaret still has them, or whether she has passed them on to Middlebury or another archive, I don't know. I don't recall a date/place of collection, but I'll see if I can find my original copy.

There was no tune transcription, just text. Although the tune I sing is a bit "MacArthurish," I think it is just my own tweaking of good old "Derry Down."

On the ballad generally, two things:

First, it seems to have been pretty common in the Adirondacks, and perhaps in Vermont, and to have picked up a local cast of characters wherever it went.

How do I know that ? The first v. I learned was essentially the Yankee John Galusha text. I'd heard Frank Warner sing it. But I believe I actually learned it from Lawrence Older. I suspect that Lawrence, himself, got it from John. But what intrigued me was the he (Larry) was able to tell me who everyone in the ballad was. Alas, we were somewhere, where I couldn't write it all down (patching the muffler on my first SAAB at about zero degrees F, as I recall). All I remember is that "Dandy Pat" was a Moynihan...presumably not our late senator.

Shortly after, Vaughn and I were visiting the Patons and Lee Haggerty in Huntington, Vt. A young trucker/logger-type, who'd heard there was "a record company" in Huntington and who aspired to a country-music career, dropped by (it was a Saturday afternoon). We explained what Folk-Legacy did, and he responded by recalling a fragment with different characters, and with the line "...of the rackets we had around Lake Bomoseen, Derry Down, etc."

Lake Bomoseen, FYI, is on the western border of VT, near Fair Haven.

Some years later, while we were driving to a gig somewhere, Adirondack fiddler Vic Kibler ( whom I'd known and recorded for twenty years at that point) came out with the fact that there'd been a version of the song made about a relative of his. The relative had been a lumber camp cook for a time. "Pretty good old fella, really," Vic said, "I think they did it just to tease him, you know."

And before you ask, no, Vic has never remembered any of the words.

And there was the time that Jim Hutt (co-founder with Sheila, his wife, of the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts in Blue Mtn. Lake) asked me to sing the Yankee John text at a concert Vaughn and I gave there. What Jim knew - and carefully avoided telling me - was that the late Franklin Mitchell, a direct descendant of the Bill Mitchell of the song, was in the audience. He saved that tidbit for when he introduced us to Franklin afterward.

"I didn't know him much," Franklin said, "but from what I heard, I guess he was sorta like the song says he was."

So are about half the old guys in the Adirondacks.

And here's the second piece to consider:

Not many years ago, the late Clarence "Daddy Dick" Richards (whom I've memorialized somewhere in the Valley-of-Forgotten-Threads [click]) turned to me and said:
"You remember radio station WGLC out of Glens Falls, dontcha ?"

"Nope," says I (an old coot of very little seniority, compared to Dick).

"Well, the 'GLC' stood for Griffin Lumber Company. They used to have a copy of that ballad you sing about Blue Mountain Lake up on the wall in there."

[ "Old Griffin, he stood there, the crabby old drake;
   A hand in the doings we thought he might take..."]

It was just not that unusual for this stuff to circulate in print.
Bob Bethke comments in Adirondack Voices (pp. 66-7) that the "Tebo" ballad was printed up and circulated by the A. Sherman Lumber Co., for whom Joe Thibeault was working when he was killed on a drive on the Jordan River (the one in the Adirondacks, not the better-known one).

Real songs, real people. Never speak disrespectfully on anyone in a small community (however great its acreage). You have no idea what all the connections are! And that's what I love about it.

Well, this is long. But Joe did ask.... ;)    - George

P.S. Dave Ruch, I can't haul out to Clarence tomorrow. But we'll connect sometime. Now, Vermont...there's a state of a manageable, sensible size. - G