Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Came to Caledonia
From:
Date: 24 Apr 06 - 04:07 PM

Jamie,

You may be happy to hear that your friend Dave Stone sings this song on occasion. I'll tell him you stopped in to the Mudcat.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Came to Caledonia
From: GUEST
Date: 30 May 06 - 07:08 PM

Just a thought/interpretation

"Were spearing eels in the month of April
And starving slaves out on Scatterie"

read as

'We're (*we are*) spearing eels in the month of April
And (*we are* - unspoken) starving slaves out on Scatterie'

i.e. - the 'we' are working our butts off trying to catch eels which don't bring in a living,'we' ARE the slaves working for nothing on Scatterie
(from me central-heated house !!!)

Subject: RE: When first I came to Caledonia
From: GUEST,jamie snider
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 01:20 AM

Many months later, revisiting this dialogue, that last post makes good sense, given the relationship between captains/merchants and fishermen in the old days....I'll include that verse again now when I sing the song, all in a {somewhat} good conscience.

Subject: RE: When first I came to Caledonia
From: GUEST,thurg
Date: 16 Dec 06 - 07:52 AM

I'd like to see someone come up with an innocuous variation on that line that makes sense without requiring explanation. I suspect that "starving slaves" is a mangling of the original wording (not that I claim that as a unique insight!), but clearly no one sees what words were being mangled. It's possible that someone just made up the verse off the top of his head and those were the words that bumbled out of his mouth, but even then it seems very awkward and unlikely phraseology.

It's too bad we didn't have another source for the song; I think it was fairly well known at one time, at least in that area of Cape Breton.

After reading some of this thread awhile back, I started singing that line as "TWO starving slaves out on Scatterie", which suggested that suggested meaning a little more strongly, but it's still a pretty weak line ...

Of course, it depends on how you feel about making any kind of alteration in the received text.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 03:09 PM

Check out Fine Friday's recording of this song on their album "Mowing the Machair." It will make you cry.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 30 Mar 07 - 03:27 PM

If you know the tune, all you need for the words is whatever phone book is handy ...

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST,meself
Date: 22 Apr 07 - 07:59 PM

Hmmm - that last post of mine was in reference to a question about Ronnie MacEachern's song "Go Off on Your Way" - I don't know how it ended up on this thread, which wasn't up at the time ...

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Dec 07 - 02:24 PM

i hope this message gets through. there was a typo in the book when it came out the line should have read starving staves out on scatterie, a stave being one piece of wood of which many would be hooped together to make a pickling barrel for fish, eel, meat, rum etc, i suppose they could be laid flat for making a flake or fish /eel drying platform.the fellow in the song and i suspect this particular verse was made my lauchlin macneil of french road was just saying that he and his brother caught so many they figured they didn't leave any for the people on scatterie island who would catch and process the eels, drying or salting but probably in this case drying for selling or to be consumed later simply preserving for when it became more difficult to get out on the ocean. eel is very delicious and tastes a lot like trout in my opinion. somebody asked about erwick harbour. i think the words they cant make out are "their BIG HARBOUR" NOT REFERING TO ANY BIG HARBOUR but more specifically to Big Harbour which is over by boulenderie. the melody was taken from the gaelic song mo ruin geal dileas but i transcribed it as amby sang it which was a variant on the typical melody line. sorry folks i missed that typo and then the book was published and i guess it was just compounded transmission trouble after that.its all my fault!

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From:
Date: 26 Dec 07 - 09:42 PM

Thanks, Ron. Appreciate the correction. Much appreciate all your songs.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST,ronnie maceachern
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 05:09 PM

this is another note concerning this song which i got from amby thomas. it was amby (ambrose) himself who told me the song was to be sung to the air of "mo ruin geal dileas"......when he sang the song to me his version of the melody was close but not the usually sung melody. the man he learned it from (lauchie macneil) was a singer of gaelic songs and i suspect this melody variation is one of ambys creation, not having heard the song or sung the song for a few years before i came and asked him to sing it...... around the same time as i was recording songs with amby (1975-1977 APPROX.) I WAS ALSO VISITING MIKE AND MARY-ANN MACDoUGALL OF ingonish . i asked mike if he knew of the song and sang it to him as amby had sung it to me. mike said he had heard the song being sung but the melody was .....and then he sang me to standard version of mo ruin geal dileas melody, only without words, as he could not remember which gaelic song that melody was to. however !!! and this is where things get really exciting bouys and gulls!!!! i was listening to one of the recordings i made the evening we had this discussion and while mike was singing to me the melody to caledonia as he remembered it, mary-ann (mikes mother and traditional singer of great note) was singing along with him...i guess the stars were just alighned properly or maybe just my lucky night...the only line sung, the only words remembered, were........"and starving souls out on scatterie".....so here we have it..   just to backtrack a little now...when i first visited amby he sang the words starving staves....i did not understand what this was and after going home and transcribing the song i went back and asked him what the lyric meant...he said he didn't know and said he might have remembered it wrong and he wondered if i knew what it might be....i said no i didn't know and suggested (which i never should have done) that maybe it was something else that sounded like staves, like maybe slaves and he said well yes maybe that was what i was.....a few weeks later when i was visiting amby again he asked me if i could record the song again as he was sure that slaves was the right word. so we recorded the song again with the word slaves... i have ever since that day been quite sceptical about this word and feel that amby may have accepted this word because i had suggested it. i felt stave was the proper word for the song and when i sent the lyric to the publisher to be printed i am quite sue i sent stave, mainly because i remember my great disappointment when i got the finished product and there was slave......so as you can imagine i am totally shocked to find this mary-ann lyric version, and i truly hope someone appreciates this discovery as do i......thank you for your time and interest....have a nice day


this note is dedicated to the slaves, the staves and the souls of scatterie

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 05:37 PM

Thanks, again!

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: meself
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 05:57 PM

Thanks for that, Ronnie.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 11:32 PM

Hi Ronnie,
Welcome to the Mudcat! I once had an Amby Thomas songbook which I can't find now. Songs From Deep Cove or something like that. Were you involved in its publication or perhaps Allister? I enjoyed your stuff back in the days of the Rise And Follies.
Why not join up on Mudcat as your knowledge and expertise would be welcomed! I could use some help pushing Cape Breton music as well.
                Sandy

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 27 Jan 11 - 11:37 PM

If I had taken the time to read again this old thread my question would have been answered earlier. In any case Welcome!

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: Joe Offer
Date: 05 Feb 11 - 09:48 PM

"When First I Came to Caledonia" is the song for February 6 in Jon Boden's A Folk Song a Day project....and you'll note that this is one of the first threads in the history of Mudcat.

-Je-

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: Diva
Date: 06 Feb 11 - 06:08 AM

I'm sure I've heard Jim McFarland singing this song..awfie braw

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From:
Date: 13 Oct 13 - 10:25 AM

Just talked to a friend, Lee Price, who explained that there was a convict ship ran aground on Main-a-dieu, and felt the slaves may have referred to them

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST,Woodpecker
Date: 07 Feb 16 - 09:41 PM

I suppose it couldn't be "starving saithes" (young pollock, coley, coalfish)? Taking the eels that they feed on and thus causing a shortage of fish?

"The saithe spawns offshore in 100-200 m of water to the north-west of Britain, in the northern North Sea, off Norway, Faroes and south Iceland. It spawns from January to April, and the eggs, which are about 1 mm in diameter, float in the upper 30 m of the open sea for 6-9 days before hatching. The young fish moves close inshore by midsummer, and may spend from 1-2 years in shallow water there, feeding on animal plankton and the eggs and fry of other fish species. The immature fish then moves offshore, but continues to live near the surface for a further 1-2 years, feeding on small crustaceans, sand eels, herring and other small fish."

http://www.fao.org/wairdocs/tan/x5924e/x5924e01.htm

Any evidence of saithe(s) in Cape Breton?

Frances.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST,Joyce
Date: 17 Mar 17 - 10:09 PM

I've got a version of this song from a book called The Cape Breton Songster, published in 1935 in Sydney, NS. It's described as being on the tune of Mo rùin geal dileas and follows the Gaelic lyrics, but notes that the English words are "in no sense a translation" of the Gaelic. The lyrics are similar to the Helen Creighon version but with the following verse:

Peter Edwards and Duncan Rory
The damnedest shavers you ever see
A-spearing eels in the month of April
And starving slaves out on Scatterie

A pair of brogans is a pair of shoes, from the Scottish Gaelic. This song is still sung in Cape Breton.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: Gutcher
Date: 18 Mar 17 - 12:18 PM

Starving is still in use here to describe extreme cold.

Ex slaves from the southern parts of the U.S.A. would certainly feel the effects of the cold at that time of the year in Cape Breton.

It would be a natural expression for a person of Scots extraction to use in Cape Breton.

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: jonniewilks
Date: 26 May 17 - 10:08 AM

There are copies of the Amby Thomas pamphlet available as PDFs online. Here's one, in fact: http://www.openmine.ca/sites/default/files/2528_bdc.pdf

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: meself
Date: 26 May 17 - 02:52 PM

Thanks, jonniewilks!

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: Ross Campbell
Date: 26 May 17 - 07:50 PM

Indeed, thanks, jonniewilks - I've been looking for this for ages!

http://www.openmine.ca/sites/default/files/2528_bdc.pdf

Ross

Subject: RE: Origins: When First I Went to Caledonia
From: GUEST,Julia L
Date: 27 May 17 - 07:49 PM

Just a note that Cape Breton is not the only place that variations of this song are found in North America. Noted in Sam Henry is "The Ripest Apples" which was collected in Maine USA. There are many songs collected here with cross-over versions. I'll be publishing the first volume of my transcriptions of Maine songs soon (over 100 songs)
Julia