Ben Fisher

DESCRIPTION: "Ben Fisher had finished his day's hard work, And he sat at his cottage door; And his good wife Kate sat by his side, And the moonlight danced on the floor." They look back on their twelve years of marriage; they are not rich but are as happy as anyone
AUTHOR: Fisher B. Gauh? (source: Brooklyn Register)
EARLIEST DATE: 1859 (Brooklyn Register)
KEYWORDS: marriage children farming
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (3 citations):
Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan 118, "Ben Fisher" (1 text)
Dime-Song-Book #4/72, pp. 9-10 and #4/64, pp. 9-10, "Ben Fisher and Wife" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: Brooklyn Register, May 21, 1859 (available on the Library of Congress web site, filed for some reason among the Walt Whitman papers, mss1863002842-4), p. 6, "A New Poem" (1 text)
ST GC118 (Partial)
Roud #3699
ALTERNATE TITLES:
A Home Picture
NOTES [76 words]: Standard nineteenth-century treacle, with a bit of a temperance message ("Ben Fisher had never a pipe of clay, Nor never a dram drank he, So he loved at home with his wife to stay").
Internet searches failed to find any mention of Fisher B. Gauh. The obvious suspicion is that he and "Ben Fisher" are the same person. I have no idea why the piece was filed in the Walt Whitman papers at the Library of Congress -- maybe it was just something Whitman kept? - RBW
Last updated in version 6.6
File: GC118

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