Shenandoah

DESCRIPTION: Usually has chorus "Away, you rolling river... Away, we're bound away, across the wide Missouri (world of Misery, etc.)" The basic text seems to have told of the white man who "loved the Indian maiden" but came from a different world and now is returning
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1894 (Alfred M. Williams, _Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry_, p. 7)
KEYWORDS: shanty courting separation Indians(Am.)
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW,NE) Canada(Mar) West Indies(St Vincent) Ireland
REFERENCES (40 citations):
Doerflinger-SongsOfTheSailorAndLumberman, p. 77, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Walton/Grimm-Windjammers-SongsOfTheGreatLakesSailors, pp. 36-37, "Shenandore" (1 text, 1 tune)
Bone-CapstanBars, pp. 104-105, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Colcord-SongsOfAmericanSailormen, p. 83, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Harlow-ChantyingAboardAmericanShips, pp. 112-114, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hugill-ShantiesFromTheSevenSeas, pp. 173-178, "Shenandoah" (4 texts, 1 tune) [AbEd, pp. 140-143]
Hugill-SongsOfTheSea, p. 29, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sharp-EnglishFolkChanteys, XI, p. 13, "Shanadar (First version)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 148-149, "Shenandoah or The Wide Missouri" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Eckstorm/Smyth-MinstrelsyOfMaine, p. 243, "Shenandore" (1 text)
Shay-AmericanSeaSongsAndChanteys, pp. 66-67, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kinsey-SongsOfTheSea, pp. 72-73, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Smith/Hatt/Fowke-SeaSongsBalladFromNineteenthCenturyNovaScotia, p. 24, "Shanadore" (1 text)
Mackenzie-BalladsAndSeaSongsFromNovaScotia 105, "Rolling River" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sandburg-TheAmericanSongbag, p. 408, "The Wide Mizzoura" (1 text, 1 tune)
Terry-Shanty!, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Abrahams-DeepTheWaterShallowTheShore, pp. 73-75, "Oh, My Rolling River" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Lomax/Lomax-FolkSongUSA 41, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax-FolkSongsOfNorthAmerica 25, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lomax/Lomax-AmericanBalladsAndFolkSongs, pp. 543-546, "The Wild Miz-zou-rye" (1 text, 1 tune); p. 546, "Shenandoah" (1 text)
Fife/Fife-CowboyAndWesternSongs 1, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kane-SongsAndSayingsOfAnUlsterChildhood, p. 127, "O Sally Brown, I love your daughter" (1 fragment)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 314-315, "Shenandoah" (1 text)
Arnett-IHearAmericaSinging, p. 44, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Seeger-AmericanFavoriteBallads, p. 17, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Messerli-ListenToTheMockingbird, pp. 49-51, "Shenandoah" (1 text)
Fireside-Book-of-Folk-Songs, p. 136, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 85, "Shenandoah" (1 text)
Averill-CampSongsFolkSongs, pp. 55, 230, "Shenandoah" (notes only)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsNThings, p. 35, "Shanandore" (1 text, 1 tune)
Zander/Klusmann-CampSongsPopularEdition, p. 33, "Shanandore" (1 text)
BoyScoutSongbook1997, p. 85, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
GirlScout-PocketSongbook, p. 35, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
SongsOfManyNations, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune) (12th edition, p. 24)
33MuchLovedSongs, p.6, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
MidwestFolklore, Ivan H. Watson, "Folk Singing on Beaver Island," Volume 2, Number 4 (Winter 1952), p. 246, "Shenandoah" (reference only)
DT, SHENDOAH*
ADDITIONAL: Captain John Robinson, "Songs of the Chantey Man," a series published July-August 1917 in the periodical _The Bellman_ (Minneapolis, MN, 1906-1919). "Shenandoah!" is in Part 2, 7/21/1917.
Maud Karpeles, _Folk Songs of Europe_, Oak, 1956, 1964, p. 48, "Shanadar" (1 text, 1 tune, from Sharp; I suspect it may be composite; see the notes to "Shanadar (I)")
Frederick Pease Harlow, _The Making of a Sailor, or Sea Life Aboard a Yankee Square-Rigger_, 1928; republished by Dover, 1988, pp. 322-323, "Shenandoah" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST Doe077 (Full)
Roud #324
RECORDINGS:
[Al] Campbell & [Henry] Burr, "Shenandoah" (Columbia A-2300, 1917) (Victor 18327, 1917)
Minster Singers, "Shenandoah" (Victor 61147, n.d., prob. c. 1903)
Paul Robeson, "Shenandoah" (Victor 27430, 1941)
Pete Seeger, "Shenandoah" (on PeteSeeger18)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Shanadar" (lyrics)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
World of Misery
Across the Wide Missouri
The Rolling River
NOTES [250 words]: Lewis H. Gray, Ill Wind: The Naval Airship Shenandoah in Noble County, Ohio, Gateway Press, 1989, p. vii, quotes an un-named librarian on the origin of the name "Shenandoah": "it is from an Algonquin Indian word 'Schind-han-dowi,' Star Daughter." A fascinating derivation, given that the singer in the song quotes Shenandoah's daughter, but I have to note that the range maps of the Algonquian languages that I have consulted do not include the Shenandoah region. They came to within a few hundred miles, but not the Virginia valley itself.
Bone-CapstanBars reports, "I have never heard this song sung at other duty than weighing anchor.... The very beauty of the air has even curbed the license of wild singers in the text. No bawdy lines, no plaint of mistreatment, no blasphemous exhortations were ranted in the singing of it." - RBW
The St Vincent shanty has some of the usual, if transported, lines -- "Salambo, I love your daughter ... Salambo, this white mulatta" and "Seven long years we toiled the ocean ... Seven long years I never wrote her" -- but a good deal about catching whales and the danger and hard times of the blackfish whaler's life. - BS
Edward Harrigan, The Mulligans, G. W. Dillingham, 1901, p. 428, quotes a verse of this:
Oh, Shenandoah! I love your daughter!
Hooray, you rolling river!
I love to plow the deep salt water
Ha! Ha! We're bound away on the wide Missouri!
He calls this a sailor's shanty but has it sung by people going on the Mulligan picnic in New York. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.8
File: Doe077

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