The Lumber Camp Song
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Transcription: by Darryl D. Bush
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Lyrics:
Come all you jolly fellows and listen to my song;
It's all about the shanty boys and won't delay you long.
We're the jolliest good bunch of fellows that every you could find,
And how we spend our winter months is hurling down the pine.
At four o'clock in the morning the boss he will shout:
"Heave out my jolly teamsters; it's time to be on the route."
The teamsters they all jump up all in a frightened way:
"Where is me boots?" Where is me pants? Me socks is gone astray!"
The next gets up is the choppers, whose socks they cannot find;
They blames it on the teamsters ans swear with all their mind.
Some other man may have them on and he be standing near.
Laugh it off all with a joke and have a hearty cheer.
At six o'clock it's breakfast and ev'ry man is out.
And if a man he is not sick, he's sure to be on the route.
There's sawyers and choppers to lay the timber low;
There's swampers and loggers to drag it to and fro.
"Crack! Snack! goes my whip; I whistle and I sing;
I sit upon my double sleigh as happy as a king.
My horse is always ready, and I am never sad;
There's no one else so happy as the double-sleigher lad."
The next comes is the loader, all at the break of day:
"Load up my slide, five hundred feet; to the river drive away."
You can hear those axes ringing until the sun goes down.
"Hurrah, my boys! The day is spent. To the shanty we are bound"
we all arrive at the shanty, cold hands and wet feet.
We there pull off our larrigans, our supper for to eat.
We sing and dance till nine o'clock, then to our bunks we climb.
Those winter months they won't be long in hurling down the pine.
The springtime rolls around, and the boss he will say:
"Heave down your saws and axes, b'ys, and help to clear away.
The floating ice it is all gone and business is arrived;
Two hundred able-bodied men are wanted on the drive."
The springtime rolls around and glad will be the day
When folks relate unto their friends, who wander back that way.
So now my song is ended, and don't you think it's true?
But if you doubt one word of it, just ask one of our crew.
"The Lumber Camp Song" is an American and Canadian ballad. The earliest known date of it being<br> collected is 1896.<br> The term "lumberjack" is somewhat archaic, usually referring to a logger from an earlier time<br> before the advent of chainsaws and other mechanized logging equipment. Lumberjacks were<br> exclusively men who worked in lumber camps, often living a migratory life, following timber<br> harvesting as jobs opened. Their work was seasonal and usually involved living in bunkhouses or<br> tents for months at a time. Camps could be found where there were vast forests to be harvested<br> and a demand for wood. Common tools included the axe and the crosscut saw.<br> Lumber camps developed a distinctive culture of work songs which were often sung on Sundays or<br> evenings after supper and tool cleanup. Many were based on traditional tunes with lyrics that<br> reflected lives, experiences and concerns of lumberjacks, with themes of cutting, hauling,<br> rolling and driving, as well as narrative songs which involved romance. The songs migrated<br> with the lumberjacks who sang them.<br> It was printed in<br> Beck's Lore of the Lumber Camps (1948),<br> Beck's Songs of the Michigan Lumberjacks (1941),<br> Beck's They Knew Paul Bunyan (1956),<br> Cazden, Haufrecht and Studer's Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982),<br> Dibblee's Folksongs from Prince Edward Island (1973),<br> Doerflinger's Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman (1972),<br> Eckstorm and Smyth's Minstrelsy of Maine: Folk-Songs and Ballads of the Woods and the Coast (1927),<br> Flanders and Olney's Ballads Migrant in New England (1953),<br> Fowke and Johnston's Folk Songs of Canada (1954),<br> Fowke's Lumbering Songs from the Northern Woods (1970),<br> Gardner and Chickering's Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan (1939),<br> Greenleaf and Mansfield's Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland (1933),<br> Korson's Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (1949),<br> Lewis's Favorite Michigan Folk Songs (1987),<br> Peacock's Songs of the Newfoundland Outports (1965),<br> Peters's Folk Songs out of Wisconsin (1977),<br> Rickaby's (Dykstra and Leary ed.) Pinery Boys: Songs and Songcatching in the Lumberjack Era (2017)<br> and Rickaby's Ballads and Songs of the Shanty-Boy (1926).<br> It is in the Roud Folksong Index as #667.<br> It was recorded by Joe Glazer on Songs for Woodworkers (1977).<br>
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