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Nappy is sent to St. Helena, 8/8/1815 (actually arrived 8/17)
Bony he is gone from the wars of all fighting
He is gone to the place he never took delight in,
Oh there he may sit down and tell the scenes he has seen, ah!
While forlorn he doth mourn on the isle of St. Helena.
"Buonaparte on St. Helena," Forget Me Not Songster, 1835
The Forget Me Not (sometimes Forget-Me-Not) series was an interesting
production. Much like Rise Up Singing, a collection of mostly traditional
but also much other stuff. No tunes & only very rare attributions,
however. Copyright was hard to enforce then. These were "popular" songs
and ballads and it was expected that most people knew the tunes. They
were cheaply printed and circulated in the 1000s throughout (mainly)
northeastern US. Many source singers in turn got their material there!
It was in its 1847 edition that Ephraim Braley of Hudson, Maine read
"Canadee-i-o" the sea/love song (as per Nic Jones). Braley was a local
"bard" but pretty wimpy as a lumberman (sure and it's a sad thing when
singer/songwriters are driven out to work.) Perhaps mainly as a satire,
he wrote "Canaday I. O." stealing the known tune & meter but really doing
a new set of words. The latter song went instantly into tradition,
spreading with lightening speed through out the US.
Its general idea - of labor protest of the severe working conditions in
Maine lumbering - caught on so strongly it was "processed" with amazing
speed to Michigan lumberjacks, Pennsylvania coal miners, Mexico-trail
cowboys and "Buffalo Skinners," becoming "the great American ballad" in a
scant 40 years.
[Well, I guess this has little to do with Nappy or August 8th. I've been
tracking "Canadee-i-o" for so many decades I kind of got carried away.]
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