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User Name Thread Name Subject Posted
Joe Offer Origins: The Erie Canal (E-Ri-E) (26) ADD Version: The E-Ri-E (Sandburg & Lomax) 24 Jul 08


Not much in Sandburg or Lomax & Lomax:

The E-RI-E
(no songwriter attribution)

We were forty miles from Albany,
Forget it I never shall,
What a terrible storm we had one night
On the E-ri-e Canal.

Refrain:
Oh, the E-ri-e was a-rising,
The gin * was getting low,
And I scarcely think
We'll get a drink
Till we get to Buffalo,
Till we get to Buffalo.

We were loaded down with barley,
We were chock-up full of rye;
And the captain he looked down at me
With his goddam wicked eye.
REFRAIN

Oh, the girls are in the Police Gazette,
The crew are all in jail;
I'm the only living sea cook's son
That's left to tell the tale.
REFRAIN


from Carl Sandburg's The American Songbag (1927), pp. 180-181. Sandburg says, "We have this text and tune from Robert Wolfe and Oliver R. Barnett of Chicago."

*In Walter D. Edmonds's Rome Haul, "strap."

The Sandburg text also appears in American Ballads & Folk Songs, John A. & Allan Lomax (1934), pp. 470-471


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