Octogenarian Memories

DESCRIPTION: "A song for the early times in Pennsy, our green old forest home, A song for that gladsome life whose pleasant memories freshly yet (sic)." The singer remembers the old days in the untamed land "In the days when we were pioneers, fifty years ago"
AUTHOR: William D. Gallagher (1808-1894)
EARLIEST DATE: 1931 (Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania)
KEYWORDS: home work
FOUND IN: US(MA)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 55-56, "Octogenarian Memories" (1 text) (pp. 45-46 in the 1919 edition)
NOTES [213 words]: Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania speculates that this is "probably from some old New England poem." His speculation was correct: It is clearly derived from "Song of the Pioneers" by William D. Gallagher:
A SONG for the early times out West,
And our green old forest home.
Whose pleasant memories freshly yet
Across the bosom come:
A song for the free and gladsome life,
In those early days we led,
With a teeming soil beneath our feet,
And a smihng Heav'n o'erhead!
Oh, the waves of life danced merrily,
And had a joyous flow.
In the days when we were Pioneers,
Fifty years ago !
(There are five more verses; the final verse looks forward to the afterlife.)
There is no question that this is the same poem (I find no evidence that it was ever a song), but it has clearly been very much changed.
An Internet source claims this was published in Gallagher's 1881 book Miami Woods, A Golden Wedding, and other poems, but it's not in the edition on Google Books. So I don't know where or when it was first published.
There is a Wikipedia entry on Gallagher, but it is very short. He may have been popular in his time, but he was quickly forgotten; Granger's Index to Poetry lists only three of his works (this is not one of them), and has only one citation for each.- RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: Shoe055

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