I's the B'y

• the most recorded Newfoundland song
• near-universal recognition shown by referential value: like in magazine articles, “I’se the b’y who gets the grants” (Canadian Business), “I’se the b’y that does the books” (Eastern Provincial In-Flight)
• many parodies on it
• extremely well-known in Hiscock’s childhood (b. St. John’s, 1952)
• earliest known audio recording by Kenneth Peacock in 1951
• first commercial recordings by Alan Mills (our version) and the Leslie-Bell Singers in 1953
• first publication in 1954 national best-seller Folk Songs of Canada by Edith Fowke and Richard Johnston
• mid-1960’s, another flurry of attention, associated with the rise of self-consciousness of Newfoundland culture in the Toronto region, with the Come Home Year celebrations of 1965, and their interaction with Canadian Centennial Year interest around 1967
• Fowke/Johnston most highly influential version outside of Newfoundland
• most widely circulated version within the province was the version published by Gerald S. Doyle in 1955 in his third edition of Old-Time Songs of Newfoundland

-this version was relatively short, however

• Hiscock learned from a singer with roots in Notre Dame Bay that the song was widely sung there with plenty of variant verses: “hundreds of them”
• Hiscock learned the songs at schook in the late 1950’s, and these were the words published by Fowke and Johnston
• Fowke in her published version comments that there were more traditional but unpublished stanzas because some were “hardly suitable for publication” (1954:117)
• Hiscock subsequently confirmed that many of the suppressed verses from Notre Dame Bay has sexual content – even Doyle’s text suggests scandal, but it is easily brushed off
• today it is an active piece for some local performers, while others shun it as hackneyed and perhaps even offensive
• Hiscock has put together over 80 commercial recordings of the song

• inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2005
• cover artists: Alan Mills, Omar Blondahl, Great Big Sea, Dick Nolan and Ian Benzie; operatic parody by Free Beer - Lorne Elliott and Kevin Blackmore
• many choral arrangements (http://www.cbc.ca/nl/story/nf-ise-the-bye-20050208.html)
• I’se The B’y That Builds the Boat: p.116-117; From: Fowke, Edith Fulton and Richard Johnston, eds. Folk Songs of Canada. Waterloo, Ontario: Waterloo Music Company Limited, 1954.
• “Most Newfoundlaners love to dance, and this lively ditty is one of their favourite dance tunes. It has many stanzas, some of which are hardly suitable for publication. Fogo, Twillingate, and Moreton’s Harbour are ports around Notre Dame Bay in north-eastern Newfoundland”