Fifteen Years Ago

DESCRIPTION: I'm thinking of the place Tom, where oft we used to roam, The little cot beneath the trees we called our forest home." The schoolhouse is gone, the mill wheel quiet. The people we knew are in the graveyard, and we will follow soon.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports)
KEYWORDS: age grief home courting death derivative
FOUND IN: Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports, pp. 130-132, "Fifteen Years Ago" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #24938
NOTES [162 words]: Guigné-ForgottenSongsOfTheNewfoundlandOutports's text is a rewrite, possibly localized, of the song indexed here as "Twenty Years Ago (Forty Years Ago)"; while the theme and structure are the same only the first and last lines are really close. "Courting" is one of the keywords for "Twenty Years Ago (Forty Years Ago)": "Down by the spring, upon an elm, you know I cut your name; Your sweetheart is just beneath it, Tom -- and you did mine the same; Some heartless wretch has peel'd the bark .... I thought of her I loved so well ... I visited the old churchyard ....." There is no reference to courting in "Fifteen Years Ago." Otherwise the kinds of change are the same but the changes themselves are different: in one case "the old school-house is altered some" while in the other "the schoolhouse was not on the hill." Death of old friends is an important theme in both songs but dominates "Fifteen Years Ago," while the other song has more to do with other changes. - BS
Last updated in version 4.2
File: Guig130

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