Well, it's September, and we're still in forest fire season here in the Northern California Sierra Foothills. Nonetheless, there's a good chance we'll fire up the woodstove by the end of the month. We use about a cord of wood to heat the house for a season, so I bought my cord of oak for $295 a month ago. After I had my stroke five years ago, I convinced my stepson that I'm too old for stacking and fetching firewood, so he now has that job. But at this time of the year, I start thinking of this song.

And the mystery remains. The poem was unattributed in Punch Magazine in 1920, but there is a claim that the annual index of Punch shows the author as Honor Goodhart. And I thought the melody came from Golden Bough, but Margie Butler of Golden Bough says she learned from a folk singer on the West Coast named Linda Curry, who learned it from a singer from the East Coast. And there's a source that says the tune comes from Kevin Adams, but the Adams Website has no chorus and we don't know what his tune was.

We couldn't have used this song in the Rise Again songbook because our publisher, Hal Leonard, would have insisted that we have a license or prove that the song is in the public domain. I think we're clear on the lyrics being public domain because I found them in print in 1920, but we still can't prove the source of the melody.

Has anybody come up with more information? The mystery remaineth. To my mink, the safest thing to say is that the author of the lyrics and tune is unknown....but I don't think that Hal Leonard would accept that.

Here's a recording by Danny O'Flaherty, with different lyrics:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqcf12QGq6U

-Joe-