Oleanna

DESCRIPTION: The singer sings the praises of "Ole, Oleanna," where "land is free," the crops grow themselves, the livestock cooks itself, and "the poorest wretch... becomes a king in a year or so."
AUTHOR: Norwegian Words: Ditmar Meidell (English words by Pete Seeger and others)
EARLIEST DATE: 1853 (Krydseren, March 5 issue)
KEYWORDS: emigration farming money talltale nonballad
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (8 citations):
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 42, "Oleanna" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 47, "Oleanna" (1 text)
Foner-AmericanLaborSongsOfTheNineteenthCentury, p. 286, "(Oleana)" (1 fragment, a translation not derived from Seeger's)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, p. 147, "Ole Oleanna" (notes only)
DT, OLEOLEAN*
ADDITIONAL:Theodore Blegen and Martin B. Ruud, editors & Translators, _Norwegian Emigrant Songs and Ballads_, University of Minnesota press, 1936/Arno Press, 1979, pp, 187-197, "Oleana" (1 Norwegian text with literal English translation, 1 tune)
Rochelle Wright and Robert L. Wright, _Danish Emigrant Ballads and Songs_, Southern Illinois University Press, 1983, #105, pp. 222-223, 274-275, "I Oleana Der Er Det Godt at Vaere" (1 Danish text with literal English translation, 1 tune)
Pete Seeger, _Where Have All the Flowers Gone: A Musical Autobiography_, A SIng Out Publication, 1993, 1997, pp. 119-120, "Oleana" (1 text, 1 tune, the Seeger translation, plus some of the Norwegian words)
RECORDINGS:
Pete Seeger, "Oleanna" (on PeteSeeger10) (on PeteSeeger12)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Darling Neddeen" (absurdist sorts of claims for the town)
cf. "Oleona Hauling Song" (town of Oleanna/Oleona)
NOTES [404 words]: Ole Bull was a Norwegian fiddler who tried to found a colony in Pennsylvania. Despite his extravagant hopes for the settlement (satirized in this song), it was too poor and too far from transportation arteries, and eventually failed.
Bull, incidentally, was quite a character, playing both violin for classical pieces and hardanger fiddle for folk dances. He was a fervent Norwegian patriot, and Oleana (the usual spelling) was not his only attempt to help other Norwegians find a better life, though it was the most spectacular.
Bull inspired several books; the most recent, as far as I know, is Einar Haugen and Camilla Cai, Ole Bull: Norway's Romantic Musician and Cosmopolitan Patriot, University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. It devoted 22 pages to the short life of the Oleana colony, which theoretically was active from 1852 to 1857 but which really existed only for part of 1853.
It perhaps tells you something that Bull is not listed in (no author listed), Pennsylvania Biographical Dictionary: People of All Times and All Places Who Have Been Important to the History and Life of the State, American Historical Publications, Inc., 1989.
The original tune to this was apparently called "Rio Janeiro" (so Wright/Wright), but there are several tunes -- e.g. the one you've probably heard from Pete Seeger or his imitators is not the same as the one in Blegen, though they started from the same roots. The Danish tune in Wright/Wright diverges even more, to my ears.
Some of the jokes in this are ancient. The food that offers itself to you goes back to at least the fourteenth century; versions of the legend "The Land of Cockayne" describes "geese that fly into the mouth ready-cooked" (Thorlac Turville-Petre, Poems from BL MS Harley 913: 'The Kildare Manuscript', Early English Text Society/Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 3). Indeed, the version of that legend that Turville-Petre edited sounds surprisingly like this song, allowing for half a millenium of language change:
In Cokaigne is met and drink
Wiþute care, how and swink;
Þe met is trie, the drink is is clere
To none, russin and soper (lines 17-20; Turville-Petrie, p. 4), i.e.
In Cockayne is food and drink,
Without care, trouble, and work;
The food is fine, the drink is clear,
At noon, afternoon snack, and supper.
You can even sing it to the same tune! - RBW
The town now calls itself "Oleona," and contains a museum celebrating the colony. - PJS
Last updated in version 6.4
File: LoF042

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