Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song

Subject: Canadian Boat Song
From: GUEST,Beth
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 09:18 AM

Dear Mudcatters,

I am looking for the tune (sheet music or midi would be nice) to the "Canadian Boat Song".

The 1st verse & chorus are:

  Listen to me, as when ye heard our fathers
     Sing long ago, the song of other shores;
  Listen to me, and then in chorus gather
     All your deep voices, as ye pull your oars.
  
  Fair these broad meads, these hoary woods are grand,
  But we are exiles from our father's land.
  

Thanks for your help.
Beth

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Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: MMario
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 09:29 AM

this site has the lyrics in English and Gaelic.

url=http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/Heritage/FSCNS/Scots_NS/Mission/Domain/Canadian_Boat_Song.html

the only midi's I have found are a different song.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 09:49 AM

Background MIDI here, with a quote from the song, but I don't know the tune. Is this it? Seems like the rhythm fits.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 10:06 AM

It didn't play in the background for me, but assuming that it was the one mentioned at the bottom of the page, it was The Mist-Covered Mountain, which I don't think is what we're looking for.  For an earlier discussion of both "boat" songs, not yet indexed by the search engine here, see  Canadian Boat Song

The only tune anyone came up with was the French one used by Thomas Moore.  If there was a tune given in the original publication of the "Scottish" song, nobody has mentioned it, so I'm assuming that it was set later on; I've heard it referred to any number of times over the years, but never sung.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: masato sakurai
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 01:18 PM

This is not a traditional song, but a poem contained in English Poetry III: From Tennyson to Whitman (The Harvard Classics, 1909–14).

The Canadian Boat Song
J. Wilson (?) (19th century)

  LISTEN to me, as when ye heard our father  
  Sing long ago the song of other shores—  
  Listen to me, and then in chorus gather  
  All your deep voices as ye pull your oars:  
  Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand;   
  But we are exiles from our fathers' land.  
    
  From the lone shieling of the misty island
    Mountains divide us, and the waste of seas—  
  Yet still the blood is strong, the heart is Highland,  
  And we in dreams behold the Hebrides:
  Fair these broad meads, &c.  
    
  We ne'er shall tread the fancy-haunted valley,  
  Where 'tween the dark hills creeps the small clear stream,
  In arms around the patriarch banner rally,  
    Nor see the moon on royal tombstones gleam:
      Fair these broad meads, &c.  
    
  When the bold kindred, in the time long-vanished,  
    Conquered the soil and fortified the keep,—  
  No seer foretold the children would be banished,  
  That a degenerate Lord might boast his sheep:  
         Fair these broad meads, &c.  
    
  Come foreign rage—let Discord burst in slaughter!  
    O then for clansmen true, and stern claymore—  
  The hearts that would have given their blood like water,
   Beat heavily beyond the Atlantic roar:
  Fair these broad meads—these hoary woods are grand; 
       But we are exiles from our fathers' land.  
  

(From HERE)

~Masato

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: Amos
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 02:59 PM

Masato rides again!!! You're terrific.

A.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 03:35 PM

See the thread cited by Malcolm Douglas above (and the various related sites) re the authorship of this. J.Wilson is by no means accepted as the only contender and (IIRC) one of the Oxford collections gives Anon as author.

There seem to be no tunes cited anywhere, except the Dans Mon Chemin.. used for the Moore words. (Incidentally there are copies of sheet music for this at: UNC-Chapel Hill Library(pub.Firth&Hall) and also in the 19th century ballad sheet collection at the Library of Congress(pub Wrigley)

Mick

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: MMario
Date: 20 Nov 01 - 03:41 PM

Mick - your links are to the Moore piece - not the one Beth was looking for. Whoops! never mind - see that you cited that the tune as for the Moore one. never mind.

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: GUEST,Beth
Date: 21 Nov 01 - 09:43 AM

Thanks for your help!

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: GUEST,Beth
Date: 21 Nov 01 - 10:03 AM

Hey, its me again!

This is such a beautiful and haunting poem that it seems a shame not to sing it... any ideas on other traditional tunes that might be appropriate to the metre and content of the song? I'd really like to put this song back in circulation some day and I'm sure others would too.

Just an idea!

Thanks again, Beth

Subject: RE: Tune Req: Canadian Boat Song
From: masato sakurai
Date: 26 Nov 01 - 10:25 PM

In the Noctes Ambrosianae section of Blackwood's Magazine there appeared in September, 1829, the following message with the English text (see Canadian Poetry linked to below):

NORTH
By the bye, I have a letter this morning from a friend of mine now in Upper Canada. He was rowed down the St. Lawrence lately, for several days on end, by a set of strapping fellows, all born in that country, and yet hardly one of whom could speak a word of any tongue but the Gaelic. They sung heaps of our old Highland oar-songs, he says, and capitally well, in the true Hebridean fashion, and they had others of their own, Gaelic too, some of which my friend noted down, both words and music. He has sent me a translation of one of their ditties ? shall I try how it will croon?

The authorship of "The Canadian Boat Song" has been discussed for a long time since then. Among the candidates has been John Wilson (see the post above), John Galt (HERE and HERE), Galt and "North" jointly (HERE), Sir Walter Scott(HERE and HERE), and of course Anonymous (HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and at other sites).

On this matter, Canadian Poetry (no. 6 (Spring/Summer 1980), 69-79) featured articles under the heading of "The 'Canadian Boat-Song': A Mosaic," compiled by D.M.R. Bentley. It assembles the text from Blackwood's Magazine and documents the controversy surrounding its authorship through contributions by Linda Dowler ("The Authorship of the 'Canadian Boat-Song': A Bibliographical Note"), Elizabeth Waterston ("John Galt and 'The Lone Shieling'"), and Gary Draper ("Tiger Dunlop and the'Canadian Boat-Song'"). Theses articles are online (HERE and HERE; the contents are the same). Dowler and Waterson say at the outset of their articles respectively:

From its first, anonymous appearance in Blackwood's Magazine for September, 1829, the "Canadian Boat Song" has tantalized its admirers, for the question of its authorship has remained an unsolved puzzle. The literature which has been generated by the problem of attribution is consid erable; the following, while not attempting an exhaustive bibliographical listing, will trace the major turns of the argument as it has appeared in print. There are, in all, eight names in the list of those for whom the laurel of authorship has been claimed. They will be reviewed here in the order in which they were entered.

Three Scottish puzzles have intrigued the literary world: the authenticity of the Ossianic Fragment, the authorship of the Waverley novels, and the provenance of "The Canadian Boat Song". The first mystery was cracked by detection, the second by gossip; the third has never really been cleared up. No manuscript, no diary jotting of a gossiping revelation has finally settled the origin of the poignant song of "The Lone Shieling".

Dowler's conclusion is:

As the present evidence seems unlikely to justify anything more substantial than such best guesses, and as the taste for literary enigmas has tended to decline among scholars, the mystery of the "Boat Song's" authorship would appear to be safe with the ghosts of "Christopher North" and his Ambrosian accomplices.

There's a composed work! This poem was set to music by Chrishelen Mackay (CLICK HERE; PDF files). Incidentally, pictures of the "Lone Shieling" (Nova Scotia) are HERE, HERE and HERE ("a replica of a Scottish sheep crofter's hut").

~Masato