Reverend John Eliot's NATICK Bible (1661-3), commonly called the "Eliot Indian Bible," a full translation of old and new testaments into Algonquian/Wampanoag/Massachuset/Nonantum/Natick, was the first book printed in the new world (on a letterpress imported from England by the Company for the Propogation of the Gospel in New England and Parts Adjacent in America). Eliot and Job Nesutan and the native people of Nonantum peaceably and respectfully exchanged languages and world-views. The natives sang as a way of life. In late October, 1675, the "Indians" were suddenly and forceably removed from Natick and interned on Deer Island in Boston harbor over the winter because the Massachusetts Bay colonial government, over the objections of Eliot and many others, saw them as a potential security risk in the war with Metacom, "King Philip's War."
Natick was a language, Natick is a town. No one speaks the language, all of them are gone. They lived here by the hundreds and grew upon the land And welcomed some white strangers and offered us a hand, But only their shadows remain. John Eliot, a preacher, came to see the ones Who sang and danced in worship of the morning sun. He taught them trust and English, they taught him of the times When only air and spirit abounded in these climes, But only their shadows remain. A language was invented to suit both families' needs: To preach a Christian gospel and speak to whispering reeds. A language known as Natick was spoken here by tongues Of natives and of settlers: a new world had begun, But only their shadows remain. A generation later or two there came a war Of Englishmen and "Indians," and racism and more Then spilled upon the people who had welcomed us before And had trusted Reverend Eliot, but now they are no more. Only their shadows remain.
I first met Jez Lowe in 1983 at Eisteddfod here in MA. He had recently completed an earlier version of THE HIGH PART OF THE TOWN. In England in 1994, I enjoyed playing it with Jez and The Bad Pennies. Smashin' song, eh?
I first learned THE TINKERMAN'S DAUGHTER accompanying Cilla Fisher and Artie Trezise ten years ago. I recently relearned it from Iain MacKintosh. This version was written by Mickey McConnell, Cathal's brother. Peter Burnham offers this earlier history: "The Ballad of the Tinker's Daughter was written by Sigerson Clifford, born in Cork of Kerry parents in 1913, died in 1985. Tim Dennehy put it to music in 1986 and recorded it on his tape 'A Thimbleful of Song'. "There are 11 verses to this poem and whilst it's possible to see how this inspired Mickey McConnell to write 'The Tinkerman's Daughter', it tells a more complex story: farmer steals tinker's daughter; she returns to the gypsies where she dies during child-birth; some years later the boy returns to the farm and is shot by father (who no longer lets gypsies on his land); before he dies the boy tells farmer who he is; farmer hangs himself; villagers bury the pair of them and are joined by a red-headed gypsy girl in the funeral procession, who dissappears once the 'mound was patted down'."
Tommy Collins, a preacher and songwriter from Bakersfield, CA wrote I MADE THE PRISON BAND for Merle Haggard.
Holly and I wrote STRANGERS while in FL and it has evolved with a lot of help from our friends.
LADY MARGARET, or "Fair Margaret and Sweet William," is Child 74. All three versions are late 17th century broadsides. The song is at least as old as Beaumont and Fletcher's "Knight of the Burning Pestle," 1611. The banjo part is mine, using Tom "Clarence" Ashley as a model.
LOVE COMES TO THE SIMPLE HEART. Chuck Hall, is right, of course.
I love to sing MOONLESS NIGHTS to celebrate my old friend Andy May's discovery of Lauren and her discovery of him.
My grandfather encouraged me to play banjo as we listened to Uncle Dave Macon perform on the radio on WSM's Grand Ole Opry. I'm sad I was not able to play RISE WHEN THE ROOSTER CROWS for E. B. before he died.
I first heard THE PRODIGAL SON on Mike Seeger's Folkways recording of "Dock" Boggs in 1963. All of us who love oldtime country music owe a great deal to Mike.
QUABBIN MOON, by Andy May, reminds me of Amherst, MA.
I first heard LOCKS AND BOLTS more than 30 years ago on a recording by Hally Wood who sang it unaccompanied. I was just learning to play banjo, and experimenting with strange tunings.
THE HARVEST is Andy and Lauren's first collaboration. This recording was made as a demo in 1989. I asked Andy and Lauren to let me include it here. Thanks.
I first heard LIGHTS ACROSS THE BAY in Dublin in 1993. Iain MacKintosh and many helpful people on the internet helped me track it down to Phil and June Colclough.
TAM LIN, Child 39, is the resolution of the story of Thomas Rymer, Child 37, and The Wee Wee Man, Child 38. Excellent instruction in how to rescue someone from enchantment! The earliest printed fragment appears in Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, but the story is certainly much older. I edited the traditional lyrics and reset them to an Irish tune, "The Whin Blossom." Francis James Child (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, part II, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company via The Riverside Press, Cambridge, MA, (c) 1884, p 317) writes, first of Thomas Rymer, number 37: "Thomas of Erceldoune, otherwise Thomas the Rhymer, and in the popular style True Thomas, has had fame as a seer, which, though progressively narrowed, is, after the lapse of nearly or quite six centuries, far from being extinguished. The common people throughout the whole of Scotland, according to Mr. Robert Chambers (1870), continue to regard him with veneration, and to preserve a great number of his prophetic sayings, which they habitually seek to connect with 'dear years' and other notable public events. A prediction of Thomas of Erceldoune's is recorded in a manuscript which is put at a date before 1320, and he is referred to with other soothsayers in the Scalacronica, a French chronicle of English history begun in 1355... "'During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries,' says Chambers, 'to fabricate a prophesy in the name of Thomas the Rhymer appears to have been found a good stroke of policy on many occasions.'" Thomas Rymer appears to have lived in the 1230's, A.D. (Child, p. 318) Further, Child (p. 319) asserts: "The fairy adventures of Thomas and of Ogier (le Danois and Morgan the Fay) have the essential points in common, and even the particular trait that the fairy is (mis-)taken to be the Virgin." The Wee Wee Man, number 38, is given in Child from Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776 and Scott's Minstrelsy from the 1802 edition, where I found and modified the Tam Lin text using Burns for some passages. In regard to Tam Lin, Child number 39, Professor Child writes (ibid., p 336): "This fine ballad stands by itself, and is not, as might have been expected, found in possession of any people but the Scottish. Yet it has connections, through the principal feature in the story, the retransformation of Tam Lin, with Greek popular tradition older than Homer..." "Though many copies of this ballad have been obtained from the mouth of the people, all that are known are derived from the flying sheets, of which there is a Danish one dated 1721 and a Swedish one of the year 1738." (c), (p) 1995, Rick Lee CD: 753114001622 Cassette: 753114001646 up to Rick Lee home page