Wild Mustard River, The (Johnny Stile) [Laws C5]

DESCRIPTION: Johnny catches his foot among the logs while breaking up a jam; he is swept away as the jam breaks up. His badly torn body is recovered and buried by his fellow workers
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1934 (Detroit News, reprinted in Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan)
KEYWORDS: logger death drowning
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW) Canada(Mar,Ont)
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Laws C5, "The Wild Mustard River (Johnny Stile)"
Fowke/Mills/Blume-CanadasStoryInSong, pp. 177-179, "Johnny Doyle" (1 text, 1 tune)
Bethke-AdirondackVoices, pp. 84-86, "The Wild Mustard River" (1 text, 1 tune)
Beck-SongsOfTheMichiganLumberjacks 56, "Wild Mustard River" (4 texts, one called "The Old Tamarack Dam"; 1 tune)
Beck-TheyKnewPaulBunyan, pp. 145-148, "Down by the Wild Mustard River" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Beck-LoreOfTheLumberCamps 71, "Wild Mustard River" (3 texts, 1 tune)
Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan 111, "The Wild Mustard River" (1 text)
Lomax/Lomax-OurSingingCountry, pp. 228-230, "Johnny Stiles, or The Wild Mustard River" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fowke-LumberingSongsFromTheNorthernWoods #30, "Johnny Stiles" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Manny/Wilson-SongsOfMiramichi 100, "The Wild Mustard River" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, p. 415, "Down by the Wild Mustard River" (1 text)
DT 714, WILDMUST*
Roud #637
RECORDINGS:
Tom Brandon, "Johnny Stiles" (on Lumber01)
Joe Kelly, "Johnny Doyle" (on Lumber01)
Carl Lathrop, "The Wild Mustard River" (AFS, 1938; on LC56)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Old Tamarack Dam
NOTES [78 words]: Fowke believes, on the basis of the distribution of variants, that this song originated in Ontario, but cannot cite an incident on which it is based.
Patrick Doyle of Halifax may have the solution. His great uncle Johnny Doyle died July 6, 1906 on a log drive in Ontario. He tells me that the river was the Moose River.
Based on his family's history (http://tinyurl.com/tbdx-JohnnyDoyle), it appears that Doyle would have been between 29 and 31 years old at the time. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.2
File: LC05

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