I just received the much anticipated note from Clary Croft concerning this song. For those who aren't familiar with him, Clary has long been the foremost authority on the Helen Creighton collection of songs from the Maritimes. You will find that Clary fills out some of the background to this song, but doesn't have definitive answers to all the song's puzzles. Here is what Clary says:



Helen Creighton recorded two variants of the song. The first, in 1943,
from
Dennis Williams, Musquodoboit Harbour a few kilometres away from
Chezzetcook; the second from [Mr.] Grace Clergy in 1951 who lived in
East Petpeswick, also not far from Chezzetcook. Incidentally, it was in nearby West Petpeswick that Helen first collected the Nova Scotia Song. This area was one of Helen's richest collecting fields.

Here's what I can offer to the discussion:

"Husky black and tan" - I asked Ronald Labelle about this one. Ronald is Titulaire Chaire de Recherche McCain en ethnologie acadienne, Département d'études françaises, Université de Moncton. He is also the author of Acadian Life in Chezzetcook [Lawrencetown Beach: Pottersfield Press, 1995] and acknowledged as the preeminent Acadian scholar in the world. He doesn't know! How's that? I have some theories but they are just that and unproven.

Re: reference to "the sugar factory believed to have been in Woodside". The Nova Scotia Sugar Refinery, which began operations in 1880, was relocated on the waterfront near Young Street in Halifax but was destroyed in the 1917 Halifax Explosion. The business then moved to Woodside. Although the company did have private capital it was also publically subsidized with a supply of free water and an exemption from taxes. This could make the "average honest working man" a bit peeved at tax dollars going to subsidize business. [In
today's terms, think Nova Scotia governments subsidizing call-centres, tire manufacturers and forest industries today]

Diane Oxner released Traditional Folksongs of Nova Scotia in 1956. The Rodeo recording is a re-issue.

My belief is that the song Edith Fowke calls "The national anthem of
Cape Breton workers" was a comment on cheap labour imported from, among several sources, a foreign country - Newfoundland. Protecting home rule would be similar to our discussions of Free Trade today. After all, Newfoundland didn't allow Canada to join up with her until 1949. Numbers of Acadian workers were also brought in to work in lobster factories and coastal fishing operations. Along Nova Scotia's Northumberland shore, Acadian female workers from
New Brunswick and the Eastern shore of Nova Scotia [my wife's Acadian grandmother, as example] worked at the delicate operation of extracting the meat from the lobsters. They were known as fils de l'Acadie.

Helen has been criticized for not collecting bawdy or labour songs, but she did both. [Sometimes unknowingly.] From my biography, Helen Creighton: Canada's First lady of Folklore, come this knowing, August 7, 1943, entry as quoted from Helen's diary: "Dennis Williams ... keeps a country store, so Saturday afternoon is the worst possible time to go there. However, he didn't hesitate to close the shop up while he and his wife, their daughter and
her children all came to the house. ... He wouldn't let his name go with his singing of the Honest Working Man in case some Cape Bretoner heard it on the radio from New York and came and beat him up."

As for access to Helen's collection - visit http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/creighton/ This site contains the
finding aid for her collection at the Nova Scotia Archives and Record Management. The Helen Creighton Folklore Society http://www.helencreighton.org/ has already released one archival field recording of material from her audio collection [Songs of the Sea - double CD featuring 47 songs or narratives] and Ronald Labelle and I are currently working on a joint production with the Creighton Society and Université de Moncton of a book/CD of Acadian material from Helen's collection.

Cheers,

Clary