Canadian Boat Song, A

DESCRIPTION: "Faintly as tolls the evening chime, Our voices keep tune and our oars keep time.... Soon as the woods on shore look dim, We'll sing at St. Anne's our parting hymn." An encouragement to and prayer for good rowing when there is no wind
AUTHOR: Thomas Moore (1779-1852)
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1804
KEYWORDS: river nonballad
FOUND IN: Canada
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Fowke/Johnston-FolkSongsOfCanada, pp. 60-61, "A Canadian Boat Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #240, p. 17, "The Canadian Boat Song" (1 reference)
Dime-Song-Book #9, p. 8, "The Canadian Boat Song" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Leslie Shepard, _The Broadside Ballad_, Legacy Books, 1962, 1978, p. 151, "Canadian Boat Song" (reproduction of a broadside page with "The Pretty Plough Boy," "The Spotted Cow," and "Canadian Boat Song")
Charles W. Eliot, editor, English Poetry Vol II From Collins to Fitzgerald (New York, 1910), #489, p. 819, "A Canadian Boat-Song" (by Thomas Moore)
ST FJ060 (Partial)
Roud #13847
NOTES [80 words]: Moore's poem is sung to a French folk tune, "Dans mon chemin j'ai rencontre," but the result does not qualify as a voyageur piece and does not seem to have circulated extensively in oral tradition. (Granger's Index to Poetry cites three anthologies, but none of them folk-influenced.)
Moore wrote it after a visit to Canada during which he sailed from Kingston to Montreal. The winds on this trip were so poor that the sailors were obliged to row the whole way; hence the poem. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: FJ060

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