Sunday 25 November 2012

Lay Me Down & Fundy Bay

Lay Me Down

Two tracks this week, the first was recorded at last Wednesday's Up in the Gallery by James Riley:


Fundy Bay



The second was sung by Alan Farrow who was passing through for the recent Mummers Festival last week:

"I picked (the song) up off of a Lou Killen Lp/cassette.Cannot find notes from said recording but I remember there being a reference to a singer/sailor with some Dutch sounding name who sailed on a scooner from Ann Harbour, Maine to Nova Scotia and got becalmed in a fog bank for 17 days with a 30 foot tide to contend with along with the shoals and the other coastal traffic in the late 19th century. (Otherwise there was "no pressure!" )



You now know as much as I do!"

With a little more searching I found the album that Alan referred to and a little more on the song though not much, have a look here and here, the song was originally written by Gordon Bok and recorded to the album "Bay of Fundy". In his sleeve notes, Bok wrote:

"This is about a long and weary, windless trip from Maine around to Halifax on a little black schooner that seemed to move only by the slatting of her gear. We had a coal stove in her, and the foresail used to downdraft onto the charlie noble, turn the stack into an intake and the cabin into a chimney. So, with the coalgas and the wet, the offwatch was not much more comfortable than the deadwatch"

Alan & Tim

All you Maine-men, proud and young,
When you run your easting down,
Don't go down to Fundy Bay,
She'll wear your time away.

Fundy's long and Fundy's wide,
Fundy's fog and rain and tide,
Never see the sun or sky,
Just the green wave going by.

Cape Sable's horn blows all day long;
Wonder why, wonder why.

Oh, you know, I'd rather ride
The Grenfell Strait or the Breton tide,
Spend my days on the Labrador
And never see old Fundy's shore.
All my days on the Labrador
And never see old Fundy's shore.

Cape Sable's horn blows all day long;
Wonder why, wonder why.

Give her staysail, give her main
In the darkness and the rain,
I don't mind the wet and cold,
I just don't like the growing old.
I don't mind the wet and cold,
I just don't like the growing old.

Cape Sable's horn blows all day long;
Wonder why, wonder why.

East-by-North or East-North-East,
Give her what she steers the best;
I don't want the foggy wave
To be my far and lonely grave.
I don't want the foggy wave
To be my far and lonely grave.

Cape Sable's horn blows all day long;
Wonder why, wonder why.

Cape Breton's bells ring in the swells;
Ring for me, ring for me.

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