Hogan's Lake and the daily life in lumber camps

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  • common for many songs to describe the daily routine in the lumbering camp, like “The Lumbercamp Song”, “Jim Porter’s Shanty Song”, “Jim Murphy’s Camp”, “The Shanty Boys in the Pine”, etc
  • Hogan’s lake is set to the tune of “The Lumbercamp Song” as it is sung in Newfoundland, and is of the “daily routine” type; but Fowke argues that it should be considered a separate songs rather than a variant
  • variants of “The Lumbercamp Song” follow much the same pattern and include similar verses, but “Hogan’s Camp” (typo?) is quite different except for the 7th stanza
  • lively and accurate account of life in a square-timber camp (as distinct from a logging camp)
  • until about 1870, most of the wood shipped from Canada to Britain was in the form of square-timber because it could be loaded on ships with less wasted space
  • song probably goes back to the 1860’s, although a few square-timber camps continued until the turn of the 20th century
  • Black River – in Quebec, just across the Ottawa River from Pembroke
  • the “Thoma Laugheren” of the first stanza is probably a corruption of “McLaughlin”, the name of a well-known firm of timber contractors in the Black River area
  • square-timber gangs usually consisted of 5 men: the liner, the scorer (who was the boss), the hewer (the most expert axeman), and two choppers and a hacker, who were rough workmen (by my count that makes six, but whatever)
  • the liner chose the trees, showed how they were to fall, and directed the choppers as they chopped them down; then he showed the choppers where they were to cut off the top, and drew two chalk lines down the length of the trunk to which the hewer was to come
  • he (the hewer?) then made a series of fairly deep notches at right angles to the length of the tree and with wedges drove off the waste in blocks
  • the hacker cleaned it off roughly, and then the hewer smoothed off with a broadaxe the whole length of the tree
  • the process was then repeated on the other side; the half-finished stick was then rolled over and the other two sides squared up
  • the liner often did the timber-cruising in summer, searching out the standing timber that would be needed to fill contracts the next year
  • “Hogan’s Lake” – catches the spirit of the rugged north country where wild animals roamed through the woods while the men brought the trees down despite storms and snow
  • the last stanza pictures the evenings in the rude log shanties where the shantyboys provided their own entertainment
  • “The Girl That Wore the Waterfall” was a popular nineteenth century songs: the waterfall refers to a hair style in which the hair was pulled over a pad at the back of the neck
  • #7, FW 4052 Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties, 1961

collected by Edith Fowke, various artists