Chase the Buffalo (I)

DESCRIPTION: Lads and "girls of New England," let's seek "new pleasures ... on the banks of the pleasant Ohio." There's plenty of fish, grain in Kentucky, gold from the New Mexico. Girls spin, lads farm, and we'll range the wild woods and hunt the buffalo.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1860 (broadside, LOCSinging sb20164b)
KEYWORDS: travel farming fishing gold hunting America nonballad settler
FOUND IN: Britain(England(West),Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "BUFFALO, THE"
Greig/Duncan6 1103, "To Chase the Buffalo" (1 text, 1 tune)
Reeves-TheEverlastingCircle 17, "The Buffalo" (1 text)
Gundry-CanowKernow-SongsDancesFromCornwall, p. 50, "Chase the Buffalo" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #932, p. 63, "Hunt the Bufalo, or the Banks of the Pleasant Ohio" (2 references)
Roud #1026
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(1742), "The Buffalo" ("Come all you young fellows that have a mind to range"), H. Such (London), 1863-1885
LOCSinging, sb20164b, "Hunt the Buffalo" or "The Banks of the Pleasant Ohio" ("Come all ye likely lads that have a mind for to range"), J. Andrews (New York), 1853-1859
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Pleasant Ohio" (lyrics)
NOTES [130 words]: Roud splits the British song from the US play-party song, though the structure and tunes are similar. The songs are certainly related, if not deserving of being lumped. The phrase "chase the buffalo" shows up in the poem "I Think of old Ireland, Wherever I Go" attributed to J. H. Howard:
And 'tis soon I'll be home, in the land I love best,
In my own dearest Emerald Isle of the West,
Though now I am chasing the wild buffalo,
For I think of old Ireland wherever I go.
[from] LOCSinging, as106400, "I Think of Old Ireland Wherever I Go," J. Andrews (New York), 1853-1859
Broadsides LOCSinging sb20164b and as106400: J. Andrews dating per Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS
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File: GrD61103

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