Occupational Songs: Lumbering

• work in lumber camps inspired the greatest number of native songs in New Brunswick and Ontario, and some have been sung all across Canada
• three groups of songs:

1. those that describe life and work in the woods, often taking the form of an account of a winter spent in a particular camp; often called simply “The Lumbercamp Song”, and some version was known by nearly every man who worked in the woods (Hogan’s Lake is derived from this)

• patterned on a music-hall ditty about “Jim the Carter Lad”, sometimes called “A Jolly Shanty Lad” or “Jack the Shanty Lad”
• describes the activities of the camp from daybreak until evening
• Mrs. Greenleaf, who collected it in Newfoundland, described it as “the best, most robust, and most finished air in the Dorian mode that I have ever heard”
• same tune used for other Newfoundland songs: “The Sealing Cruise of the Lone Flier” and “The Herring Gibbers”; and one from the Great Lakes, “The Bigler’s Crew”
• other songs, like Hogan’s Lake, are more localized

2. other songs recount the hardships endured by the shantyboys

3. almost as numerous are those that describe death in the woods and the rivers – ie. “The Jam on Gerry’s Rocks”

• less common are those about ghosts of men who died in the woods – like “Lost Jimmy Whelan”, a variant of “The Unquiet Grave”

a smaller group of songs tells about shantyboys and their girls, and the lively times the boys had when they came out of the woods in the spring with the winter’s pay in their pockets (“The Shining Birch Tree”, though newer, is along these lines); or their fondness for liquor

From: Encyclopedia of Canadian Music Online: “Occupational Songs, Anglo-Canadian: Lumbering”

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1SEC794539