Water Mill, The

DESCRIPTION: "Listen to the water-mill Through the live-long day.... and a proverb haunts my mind As a spell is cast, 'The mill cannot grind With the water that is past.'" The hearer is repeatedly urged to make use of time, not to waste it
AUTHOR: Sarah Doudney (1843-1926) ? (See NOTES)
EARLIEST DATE: 1870 (McCallum); probably first published 1864
KEYWORDS: warning work | water-mill time
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Ford-SongHistories, pp. 233-241, "The Water Mill" (2 texts, of the Doudney and McCallum versions)
ADDITIONAL: Sarah Doudney (with a preface by the Rev. R. G. Baynes), _Psalms of Life_, Houlson and Sons, London, 1871 (available on Google Books), pp. 82-84, "The Lesson of the Water-Mill" (1 text)
D. C. McCallum [Daniel Craig McCallum], "The Water-Mill and Other Poems_, privately printed, Brooklyn, NY, 1870 (available on Google Books), pp. 9-11, "The Water Mill" (1 text)
Hazel Felleman, Best Loved Poems of the American People, pp. 343-345, "The Water-Mill" (1 text)
Martin Gardner, editor, _Famous Poems from Bygone Days_, Dover, 1995, pp. 52-54, "The Lesson of the Water Mill" (1 text)
Roud #V13532
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Lesson of the Water Mill
NOTES [516 words]: Traditional? Assuredly not. It's one of "those" sorts of moral poems. I truly have no idea why Ford saw reason to include it in his book, but since he did, I have to talk about it.
Although written as a poem, it eventually was set to music by Washington Irving Bishop, and sung, both in America and Britain, by Irving Bishop. Which led to a curious dispute about its authorship (Ford-SongHistories, pp. 234-235). The Bishops had it from a publication by "General" Daniel Craig McCallum (1815-1875), who published it in 1870 in The Water Mill and Other Poems. But when Irving Bishop visited England, he found it copyrighted in the name of Sarah Doudney.
Here's where things get tricky. Doudney's copyrighted version was published in 1871 in a book called Psalms of Life in 1871. But, when contacted, she said that she had published it in The Children's Family Magazine in 1864 (Ford-SongHistories, p. 241; Gardner, p. 52).
Ford was unwilling or unable to decide which author was earlier; it sounds as if he was unable to find The Children's Family Magazine version. (Possibly the problem is that the magazine was elsewhere called The Churchman's Family Magazine. I don't know which is right.)
I find it interesting that McCallum called himself a general on the Union side in the American Civil War. "[Born in] Scotland. An architect, builder, and railroad engineer, he was appointed (11 Feb. '62) director of all military railroads in the country. Commissioned Col. Add. A.D.C. on that same day, he was mustered out in 1866" (Boatner, p. 523). This is the only one of my three dictionaries of Civil War generals to mention him. Phisterer, p. 260, lists him as a Colonel who was made a brevet Major General in March 1865. Which means he was... a colonel. Brevet promotions at that time were courtesy promotions with absolutely no meaning; today, we'd give him a medal, not a brevet promotion. Many officers by brevet used their brevet title, so McCallum wasn't unique -- but it's a little deceptive.
I can find no other mentions his poetry in my literary reference works. Granger's Index to Poetry does not mention any poems by him.
Doudney is also the likely author of "I Bid You Goodnight (The Christian's Good-Night)," which is one of two poems of hers listed by Granger's and is her other poem in the Index. Julian, p. 307, lists eight of her sundry poems as becoming (moderately) popular hymns but lists neither "The Water Mill" nor "I Bid You Goodnight."
Thus, while neither of them can be called a famous poet, Doubeny is a much more established poet and author than McCallum.
So here is a summary of opinions about authorship --
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Centennial Edition of 1955): Doubeny
Ford: Undecided between Doudney and McCallum
Felleman: Doudney
Gardner: Doudney
Granger's Index to Poetry: Doudney
It certainly looks to me as if McCallum (whose text differs from Doudney's by the addition of one verse and a few other minor changes) was a plagiarist. The good news is, this isn't a traditional song, and is mercifully forgotten, so we don't have to care! - RBW
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File: BrdWatMi

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