Shanty Boy on the Big Eau Claire, The [Laws C11]

DESCRIPTION: A girl loves a shanty boy. Her (father/mother) sends her away to keep them apart. She dies of disease and grief; her lover kills himself. They haunt her (father), whose business goes bankrupt. The moral: Don't fall in love with a shanty boy (?!)
AUTHOR: William T. Allen (Shan T. Boy)
EARLIEST DATE: 1926 (Rickaby-BalladsAndSongsOfTheShantyBoy)
KEYWORDS: separation suicide ghost love father mother family humorous
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW)
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Laws C11, "The Shanty Boy on the Big Eau Claire"
Rickaby-BalladsAndSongsOfTheShantyBoy 11, "The Shanty-boy on the Big Eau Claire" (2 texts plus a fragment, 2 tunes)
Rickaby/Dykstra/Leary-PineryBoys-SongsSongcatchingInLumberjackEra 11, "The Shanty-boy on the Big Eau Claire" (2 texts plus a fragment, 2 tunes)
Peters-FolkSongsOutOfWisconsin, pp. 132-133, "The Shanty-Boy on the Big Eau Claire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Beck-TheyKnewPaulBunyan, pp. 207-212, "The Big Eau Claire" (1 text)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 183-184, "The Big Eau Claire" (1 text)
DT 819, EAUCLAIR
ADDITIONAL: David C. Peterson, "Wisconsin Folksongs," chapter in _Badger History: Wisconsin Folklore_, State Historical Society of Wisconsin (Volume XXV, Number 2, November 1973), pp. 56-57, "The Shanty Boy on the Big Eau Claire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #2219
RECORDINGS:
Art Thieme, "The Shanty Boy on the Big Eau Claire" (on Thieme02) (on Thieme05)
NOTES [135 words]: Like many of William Allen's songs, this has a "serious" plot but is couched in humorous language, with lines such as:
Every girl has her troubles; each man likewise has his.
But few can match the agony of the following story, viz.
It relates about the affection of a damsel young and fair
Who dearly loved a shanty boy on the Big Eau Claire.
Allen reported writing this around 1875, but by the time Rickaby met him some forty years later, he had forgotten the tune he used.
Shoemaker's notes say this was written by "Charles Evans," but Shoemaker never bothers with background research; his attributions are unreliable, and the text of this screams William T. Allen's style of tragicomedy, peculiar wordplay, and oddball invocations of ballad commonplaces. I have no doubt whatsoever that Allen wrote it. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: LC11

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