Gold Lake and Gold Bluff
[AIR—Fisherman's Daughter.]

In eighteen hundred fifty, when Gold Lake was in its prime,
The people swore the dirt would pay from three cents to a dime;
The merchants trusted out their goods, the miners ran away,
They soon returned, well satisfied that Gold Lake would not pay.
Lad el de fal, etc.

In eighteen hundred and fifty-one, Gold Bluff was all the go,
The ships, with passengers and grub, were full as they could stow;
They'd nothing in the world to do, but gather up the sand,
The fools that went without a cent, Gold Bluff tee-totally d--d.
Lad el de fal, etc.

They climbed up to the very top, where gold must surely be,
They laid down on their bellies, and peeped over in the sea;
They tied a rope unto a pail, dipped up a little sand,
But all the gold was in the sea, too far away from land.
Lad el de fal, etc.

They left their grub and blankets, and patent gold machines,
The fleas were thick, and body-lice were large as Chile beans;
They all returned, well satisfied they'd all been nicely fooled,
For nothing there was to be found, as speculators told.
Lad el de fal, etc.

Put's Original California Songster, p. 39

Lyrics (no tune) in Dwyer & Lingenfelter, The Songs of the Gold Rush, p. 149

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[Tune notes by Artful Codger]
This tune is a bit of a mystery. I found about four songs titled "[The] Fisherman's Daughter", plus a couple more called "Fisherman's Lassie", but none seem to correspond metrically to the present text. There are also a number of poems titled "Fisherman's Daughter" or (for example) "Katie, the Fisherman's Daughter", any of which could have been regionally popular in song form.

However, I think the most likely candidate to be a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes titled "The Ballad of the Oysterman" (ca. 1833) which features a fisherman's daughter, fits metrically, and in some broadside versions includes a folderol section. It has been set to music a number of times, particularly in the 1840s. Of the renditions I found, I chose the melody I thought most similar to those Stone chose for his other songs: a setting by "Mr. Shaw" titled "The Tall Young Oysterman" (1842):

Click to play (joeweb)

Sheet music [PDF]in the Lester S. Levy Collection
Mudcat thread: [The Tall] Young Oysterman [with lyrics, ABCs, MIDIs]

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