#7: Earnin' a Livin'

Songs tell some stories some people as I

rode out with Jean Ritchie in one of the nation's outstanding folk artist is produced by Riverside

radios of a new RV are in New York City.

Hundreds ran from the National Association of educational broadcast

programs about a topic close to a song earning a living. One

trustworthy thing about music is that because it's spontaneous expression of people's feelings

about things it does always accurately reflect the kind of lives that singers lead their habits of

worship.

Crime and Punishment their way of dealing with children they're going on about the serious business of courtship and

marriage and of course the geography of their locality and their patterns of work.

For instance one expects that in Wales I'd be a good many mining songs and there are

but let's get back to where it all began. The land and the worker on the land the farmer.

I suggest that a good place to hear the farmer singing is in a pub in rural England and use the

cheerful cosy half and we'll share the town of West Lavington.

A sturdy man just ready to burst into song as Fred Perry or there's an accordion warming

up and the other villagers want to join in. They're

more than likely begin with the one they always do. The term of hoeing song because all the farmers

around race tournaments are turnips you'd say. The turn appears singled out for special

attention because it needs special attention needs more hoeing than most vegetables because

there's a pesky black flag in the song that people call it the fly in their local

dialect. But now they're beginning. So listen or join in if you like.

All right. They are all water. Well you're right.

Right. Fire or die if you were. Well you all want it all. Well you know

a lot for our right

0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0

0 0.

Well you know you like my

work and well you

all are.

Well in wheelchair nice hauteur nips in Kentucky we hope corn for that's our important

crop just time part and it was not many years ago you can hear for yourself in this whole

mountain song of ours.

We used to use it at home to tease the boys when we wanted to accuse them of being no can.

It's the young man that wouldn't go coon.

President in the song a man about a

man and then it is.

Without you know has gone

down into the wind and the guy is out

of this

and going and going.

Yes.

Honest one

man that won't raise Carnes and dad I was

praying.

Well in other parts of our country there were in those times more important things than hoeing corn.

Hard for me to believe because that have all corn so many hot days and we

respect that corn field too partly because of my dad and partly because it was so

important to respect work and to be a good worker. Mostly though it was because

in that new ground lay our bread for the winter and tender sweet

roasting years for the summer and good sound years for the mule in wintertime and nubbins for the

cattle and scratch that scorched ground corn for the chickens.

My father taught all his 13 grown children early that whatever a man's work is

that's about the most important thing in the world next to religion that is

out on the Great Plains while the Kentucky mountaineer was raising his corn and his beings in Tater's garden

truck. There was another business going on that of hunting and driving off the

great menacing buffalo herds. The meat was gamey but it was good and the

hads could be so traded. Sometimes a man would go into the buffalo hunting business. Hire

hands to go hunting for him and pay them wages. He sometimes worked out and sometimes it didn't.

But when he was a tale about it sung by Pete Seeger on a record entitled industrial

songs it's a Folkways record. Number three to five one. And it's a canned of a lament I

guess. Called the Buffalo Skinners.

Well in the town of Jacksboro in the spring of 73

a man by the name of Craig.

Said How do you do and how do you like to go

and spend on summer clothes and arranging the buffalo.

It's me being out of it

that's going out all the battle range depending upon the

transportation.

Do I think sir I will go

to the range of the buffalo.

Well that's now we've crossed river borders our troubles have begun.

First of all stinker that I cut Christ how I cut my thumb.

I'm just going to dump all our lives that I have no show

for the Indians watch to pick us off while skinning the buffalo

the season being near over.

Oh he did say that crowd had been

extravagant to him that day.

We coaxed him and we are. That was a.

Real leftist damned old bones to bleach on the range of the buffalo.

It's now we've crossed the river homeward we are.

No more not all fire country.

That was the sad tale of the buffalo Skinner.

There are two universal truths about a person's work a man's way of earning a living one. It's

very important almost sacred. And two it's almost always hard.

Now the song doesn't have to be sad or tragic but I've noticed that even when it's a light hearted ditty

It's about a man's work wise dedication to his job is evident in a song that is

one can tell that he realizes the importance of his work even as he makes fun of it in song.

He may dislike his work be very bitter about it but he rarely belittles it if he happens to like

his way of earning a living. You hear him expressing himself in song just the opposite way. And this Irish

fisherman does as he sings of his beloved Bill. Well in Ireland they seem to be less tense about their

jobs anyway. Now here's a song a man song sung by a girl list time.

But that's allowed especially if the girl is smart and she's playing her beautiful

arias sharpen. Well there's a love song after all or old man little boat.

But all my little boat tradition number 1 0 2 4 was Mary

O'Hara singing a man's love song to his boat. That's a real Irish

voice. So delicate in truth I'm convinced that the actual

geographical location has a lot to do with how voice is handled in house song.

Now for instance you know many thousands hundreds of thousands well really untold numbers of Irish people

have left around and come to America and many many of them went out west to become cowboys and

ranchers. And they brought their Irish songs. The bard of Armada is the same tune

as the Streets of Laredo and green girl the Latics is in Ireland green girl

the laurel. But what a difference in delivery and voice timbre between the two countries.

The wild west the wide open spaces in the Big Sky where you had to talk pretty loud to make

any noise at all especially if you were trying to round up a herd of stubborn cattle delicacy and

restraint had to be abandoned I guess. Here comes Harry Jackson to prove my point he's riding a

bucking horse and has some choice words to say to him. Then he lights into a round up holler.

So get out of the way he comes back.

But go on boy. If you go to look for me

bunker cowboy walks my boy she's a bareback in a

lot of what I wrote to her back and I almost never heard it.

On the wall. Then one morning a

year.

Now to go put your

hat back in getting

the boy.

You know you miss

my.

Old while woman to be your new role.

Well

marking their

way

through now.

Yeah

that's a smashing record called The cowboy Folkways FH

5 7 2 3. Just thought you'd like to know. In our old

home in Kentucky up stairs is a room called the even ROOM. There my mother keeps her loom and I

used to be put to sleep and waking up by the sound of the treadles in the thread gauge in the carriage

a sort of fumble fumble fumble fumble

for a plan. Life sound. Things are happening kind of sound. Well a

secure home is sound. Mom used to help her grandmother weave all the cloth for the family's clothes

when she was growing up homespun for trousers and shirts for the men of the

boys and skirts for the women. Linsey woolsey for the lot of garments.

Nowadays she only weaves rugs for us and neighbors but she loves weed and so we keep the loom

in Scotland on the Allens of the Outer Hebrides Harris and Lewis. The old time we've

instilled in her the flex is planted and cultivated harvested so. And then

Walt I worked the tin until a stick got fibers are out and the

pulp is smooth on my field trip I heard for the first time the old walking songs

used to set the rhythm for beating the Tweed. Musta been like the work ins at home in Kentucky where

neighbors gather at each other's houses to help with harvest corn Chalons and beans string ins and so on.

Well around the table are the flex is be and work stand the women men help too sometimes

one woman will sing the lead and the rest will answer and all will sing the refrain.

Yonder is the walk in shed now and you can begin to hear the walking song. Kitty Macleod leans.

Here's an echo of the old bardic poetry. The text is a candid eulogy of one of the princely

houses of the ass. The words mean son of the Earl of the bike. I

saw your ship on the ocean.

The rudder was of go the mast and the sails were of Spanish Still

I am.

God

I am.

Times have changed since the sound of this music meant that a large and thriving trade was being carried on

the machine age descended like a monster all over the world in our country the Wild West was

not so wild anymore. I suppose that even where they're still raising cattle they're using Jeeps now instead of

horses for the most part. The little fishing boats in Ireland have been left to rot by the

thousands as big commercial fisheries and canning factories have taken over and made the price of fish so

low that it doesn't pay to fish for the local markets anymore. The buffalo long

gone from the plains. And as for the Tweed makers the spinners and the Weavers people

whose trades of had been all important suddenly while they became almost of no

importance. Quaint old fashioned curios to be gazed at the tourist

stripped of the dignity and the sense of well-being that had been theirs for long generations. Well what could I do.

Well I could protest I could lament. I could get mad and holler.

Stop with us here in this Irish Weaver's cottage and hear their bitter song.

Waver.

Make

a game a top and get

back to.

Me.

And.

You Today.

Many of.

Us.

Close to

be.

Close.

Ewan MacColl Vanguard v r s 9 0 9 0 B the 4 and

Weaver singing the lament of the hand weavers.

Well that was one reaction to the machines. Of course eventually folks had to be

practical and look for work in other fields. Many in desperation took to tramping the roads looking

for any kind of work and a tinker girls named Unique

white walking along the Hieland roads of Scotland sayings of the one trade that many

hundreds could take up to keep them from starving the trade of begging

for.

It was.

Not everybody had to big Thank goodness. Even the cursed machines had to

have people to run them. Some lucky folks found work for the whole family and made

more money than they had ever made before.

Little as it was Jim copper a farmer in Rottingdean Sussex England

sings such a lucky family in a song about the threshing machine. It's there's old

father Howard machine used to put my old Mother Howard she does make up and Mary

she sits and feeds all day while Johnny carries the strong way singing

rumbled on dairy flareup Marion maker old table all table is the feed table of the

machine.

It's all very well known throughout the machinery of death ratio we don't have data

after a ship and windowed operate Prospero. Thank God I don't bargain so Bruce

been saying it wrong. They don't dare a flare up Mary and I can

rotate

writers and only about every cog where you get a lot of

Bakewell rugs done didn't want all of them the three of them during

she get it wrong or dumb Gary Player up Mary don't break their own table.

There's all private I would just don't book what I thought I would make

very she said second phase all very well Johnny carries no straw

she Iraq the day or a prayer at Marianne Maiko table.

Big game and we generally start her back to a lab that would be your

right. Then all three go girl wanted to Iraq I don't

care if they are at very low tables.

Jim copper on Columbia disc 2 0 6 the ruled library of folk and

primitive music collected and edited by Alan Lomax. Jim brings our

subject of earning a living back to land real began. There are many trades and jobs we

didn't even mention who could in just half an hour. I'd like to sing for a closing song the

oldest farm song I know to an ancient English tune played on my ancient

dulcimer. I learned the song years ago in Brest town North Carolina. The Campbell folks

coo It's called Come all you jolly playboys and I think the second verse about the

211 brothers is a reference to Cain and Abel. Anyway our whole

philosophy and one which would be a good one for the whole world for any kind of work is

expressed in the two lines for if we don't labor how shall there be bread. We will

sing and be merry with all.

I hope you'll join us again next week when we take another trip through the folklore and music.

I'm here to end the show.

Many of the portions of this program were compiled from recordings made by Ms Ritchie and her husband while

he was on a pool ride scholarship in the British Isles. Next week's program will present many of the

songs collected by Gene Ritchie while he was in Ireland. His program was produced by a

steward's builder and directed by Isidore halo as I rode out with Jean

Ritchie is a recorded production of Riverside radio w RTR in New York City under a

grant from the National Association of educational broadcast.

And this is the ABC radio network.