Classic Poem

When I was lumbering up on Thirteenth Lake,
Old " Singing Sam " was " greaser " on our job.
A " greaser " is a camp cook's handy man
Who washes dishes and does all odd tasks
Peels the potatoes, cleans up after grub,
And gets kicked round the camp by everyone.
Sometimes he is a crippled lumber-jack
Who got hurt in the woods, or some poor fool,
Or often a Canuck with Frenchy ways
And he just gets his board and nothing more.

But Singing Sam was all plain Yankee blood;
I think he was a little soft or queer.
He had a knack for fiddling, and a voice
And memory for every song he heard.
And there were songs he sang he'd never heard,
They weren't set down in any music book.
He used to say, when he tramped up and down
The woods, there was a wild woman who came
And fiddled for him under old gnarled trees
And taught him songs that no one ever knew.

When we were turning in around the fire,
Filling our pipes and feeling at our ease,
We'd call him in to get his fiddle out
And sing a tune before we all bunked in.

He had a fiddle that he made himself, —
Leastwise the most of it. When it was new
A man had smashed it in a bar-room fight,
And it was thrown out on the rubbish heap;
And Sam had picked it up and whittled out
The neck and sounding board from maple wood
And seasoned it a while, then stretched the strings,
And 'twas as good as new.

How Sam could play!
They sometimes sent for him from miles away
To fiddle for a dance. He'd play all night,
With one eye cocked up wide, the other drooped
As if he saw the music in his head.
I never heard another fiddler play
" The Devil's Dream " one half as well as Sam, —
Or all those hornpipe tunes, and reels and jigs.

In those days all the Shanties had their songs;
The lumber-jacks made new ones every year
About something that happened at the camp.
Our Shanty Boss was William Anderson.
We made a song near twenty verses long;
It started out with something of this kind:


My name, 'tis Billie Anderson,
I'll have ye for to know;
They put me in the corn field
To scare away the crow.
Oh, lock-oon-ge-aye, lock-oon-ge-aye,
Lock-oon, lock-oon, lock-oon-ge-aye,
Whack-ful diddle-ful di-do.

Another one we called " The Shanty Boy " ;
It set us thinking of the girls back home.


As I walked out one evening
As the sun was going down,
I walked into a place
Called Crinkling Town.


I heard two girls conversing
As slowly I passed by;
One said she loved a farmer's son,
The other a Shanty Boy.


Oh, the one that loved the farmer's son
These words I heard her say:
" The reason why I love him —
At home with me he'll stay.


" He'll stay at home all winter;
Not lumbering will he go;
And when the springtime it comes on,
His lands he'll plant and sow. "

And we would cheer when he came on to this,
About the girl who loved the Shanty Boy:


" Oh, how I love my Shanty Boy,
Who goes out in the fall;
He is both strong and hearty,
And able to stand a squall.


" How happy I'll receive him
In the spring when he comes home;
His money free he'll share with me,
While your farmers' sons have none. "

He had one song about some " Frenchy Joe "
Who got drowned river-driving in a jam.


" Oh, Joey wasn't handsome,
But Joey he was tall;
And we called him Old Joe Muffereau,
The Bully o' Montreal. "

There was another song he used to sing,
(That one was written down in an old book);
It was about a woman who was wild
And hid her lover in a big tea-chest.
And then the husband comes and takes the chest:


Oh, they picked up the chest
And they lugged it along,
And they hadn't gone o'er half the ground
Afore they sat down to rest,
And says one to the other:
Think the devil's in the chest —
Tum-a-raddle-faddle-daddle
Tum-a-raddle-faddle-day.


They opened up the chest.
Right there before them all
There lay the little tailor,
Like a piggy in a stall.
I'll take you down to China,
And I'll trade you off for tea;
I'll not have you round
Making trouble for me.
Tum-a-raddle-faddle-daddle
Tum-a-raddle-faddle-day.

And sometimes Sam would sing " The Cumberland, "
And our eyes smart as we thought on the thing;
And all join in when we came to the lines:


Slowly they sank in Virginia's dark waters;
Their faces on earth shall be seen nevermore.

And sometimes we would have him sing " James Byrd " :


Listen to me, sons of Pleasure,
And ye daughters, too, give ear.
You a sad and mournful story
As was ever told shall hear:
Hull, you know, his troops surrendered
And defenseless left the west;
Then our forces quick assembled
The invader to resist.

Oh, I could go on telling you all day
The songs he picked up somehow, here and there.
He was a cheerful fool, and after all
We missed him like a brother when he died.
He left a paper with a bit he'd saved
To hire some music for his funeral.
We sent out fifty miles down to " The Falls "
And hired a big brass band to come up here.
They wore red coats and horse tails on their heads,
And when we laid old Singing Sam away
They stood around the grave and played the tune
He used to play when we bunked in at night.
There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar,
For the Father waits over the way
To prepare us a dwelling place there.


In the sweet bye-and-bye
We shall meet on that beautiful shore;
In the sweet bye-and-bye
We shall meet on that beautiful shore.