Greg Nolan
enthusiast
Driving from Brooklyn, NY to Dover-Foxcroft, ME, an 8 hour +/- drive, the music I listen to often includes a CD 1856: Songs of Hope and Home sung by Anonymous 4 with Bruce Molsky. It is a favorite when travelling alone (no audience) – I can sing along loudly and improvise harmonies without embarrassment.
Earlier this week driving north, though I have heard the pre-Civil War song Darling Nelly Gray many times before, the peculiarity of the song’s references to “floating down the river in my little red canoe” and “gone from the old Kentucky shore” caught my attention for the first time.
The singer, learning that his love, the slave Nelly Gray, has been sold from Kentucky to Georgia and he is mourning the fact that she is gone. They will never float down the river or be together – “My canoe is under water and my banjo is unstrung . . ..”
The song was first published in 1837. The composer, B. R. Hanby, was a composer, pastor, and abolitionist from Rushville, Ohio, a stop on the underground railroad. (He is also the composer of the carols Jolly Old St. Nicholas and Up On the Housetop.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelly_Gray_(song)#/media/File
arling_Nelly_Gray_Sheet_Music_Cover.jpg
What kind of “red canoe” would a slave in Kentucky in 1837 have the use of? What kind of canoe would a churchman in Ohio be familiar with?
Birchbark? Dugout?
Birch trees are not native to Kentucky, and are unusual except at the northern edge of Ohio. I suppose that dugout canoes might have been in use – but were either birchbarks or dugouts regularly painted?
Any thoughts?
Greg
Earlier this week driving north, though I have heard the pre-Civil War song Darling Nelly Gray many times before, the peculiarity of the song’s references to “floating down the river in my little red canoe” and “gone from the old Kentucky shore” caught my attention for the first time.
The singer, learning that his love, the slave Nelly Gray, has been sold from Kentucky to Georgia and he is mourning the fact that she is gone. They will never float down the river or be together – “My canoe is under water and my banjo is unstrung . . ..”
The song was first published in 1837. The composer, B. R. Hanby, was a composer, pastor, and abolitionist from Rushville, Ohio, a stop on the underground railroad. (He is also the composer of the carols Jolly Old St. Nicholas and Up On the Housetop.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelly_Gray_(song)#/media/File
%23/media/File:Darling_Nelly_Gray_Sheet_Music_Cover.jpg "Big Grin :D")
arling_Nelly_Gray_Sheet_Music_Cover.jpgWhat kind of “red canoe” would a slave in Kentucky in 1837 have the use of? What kind of canoe would a churchman in Ohio be familiar with?
Birchbark? Dugout?
Birch trees are not native to Kentucky, and are unusual except at the northern edge of Ohio. I suppose that dugout canoes might have been in use – but were either birchbarks or dugouts regularly painted?
Any thoughts?
Greg
