This old mandolin is made out of earth and of stone:
If the sound of the railroad leaves you feeling all alone,
This old mandolin will take a hobo back home.

This old mandolin is sure full of sand,
It'll play out-of-tune if there's a cop on the train,
Sing you the rhythm of the Superchief out of St. Paul
And that ain't all.
This old mandolin'll make a young girl open her window
Like a warm breeze on a rainy night,
And like a hex-sign on a barn,
This old mandolin will keep a hobo from harm.

This old mandolin is made out of old barns and watertanks,
If the jukebox is busted and you need an old song,
This old mandolin will take a hobo back home.

Return To The Land

Return To The Land

©1982, Elmer Beal, Jr.

        Elmer Beal has been a teacher, woodcutter, farmer, songwriter and travelling singer. I've toured with bin in the past, and he's good, thoughtful company. He still teaches at College of the Atlantic, runs a restaurant, and tours with Maine's favorite acoustic group, "Different Shoes." While watching a BBC show on the "third world," a few years back, he was wondering at the strong connection he felt to the migrant workers of those countries - and realized that the connection was the land they both worked, and that supported them.

There comes a time when I look out to find
That the hungry are hungry again.
When did I last think to ask
How to help ease their pain?
When hope leaves, I know I get hopeless,
Like a spark in the rain.
And when castles crumble, it makes me feel humble,
As though I'm the one who's to blame.

CHORUS
But nothing is won when the crying is done
Till your friends take you up by the hand.
Return to the earth; you feel your own birth come again.
When your bridges are burned,
You try to return to the land.

South of the border, the coffee beans order,
The coca is turned to cocaine,
Tons of bananas and miles of the sweet sugarcane
Grown for the pleasure of some by others who strain.
And long do they stand and stare at the land
That they work for another man's gain...

CHORUS

And there is the other, forgot by his brother,
Alone at the end of the day.
Searching in vain for the work that would gain him his pay,
He tries to forget all the strangers he's met by the way.
And there in the dark, a voice in his heart
Calls him home to a place far away.

CHORUS

And when you are through,
It always forgives you, the land.

Get Her Into Shore

Get Her Into Shore

©1978 Larry Kaplan

        Larry wrote this song many years ago, a little while after he left the boats and went into medical school, I believe. He dreamed it up, he says, and about a week after he first sang it aloud, he read in the paper that a startilingly similar occurence happened on the banks. I'm not surprised at all.

Well we set our traps in the bitter cold
On the third day of the year
There was three of us then
We were the youngest of ten
Two for lines, and one to steer
When it blows Northeast on the Georges Bank
You don't like to take your time
But the engine was old
It didn't like the cold
And we fell back on our lines

CHORUS
Get her into shore
She can't take it anymore
We're too far from home
It's gonna break her bones
Can't you get her into shore?

Jack throws the switch
He says, you old sonofabitch,
What the hell do you think you're doing?
Well you've brought us to the poor house
Too many times
You ain't taking us to our ruin
But the line went slack
We saw the stern turn back
And we started up again
But she just tightened up
And I knew we were stuck
Lying broadside in the wind

Get her into shore…

Tom picks up the axe
Cuts us free from the traps
He swung so hard he smashed the rail
Then he looks hard at me
And he spits in the sea
His face was whiter than the hail
We tried her again
Gave her all that we could
And we felt that screw turn round
And I remember I prayed
For some more steerage way
On that black and ugly ground

Get her into shore…

Jack puts her hard over
So to run with the tide
But she fell into the trough
And with her side to the swell
She just leaned in and fell
And I knew we all were lost
And all that I saw
Was her rotten old keel
With that line flung across her stern
But I couldn't hold to her
And I couldn't go down
I just wished I'd never been born

Get her into shore…

Well the tide runs hard
In the wintertime
You're a fool to go and try
God help the poor man
Who is born on the sea
God save the poor ones who try (die)

These Dry Stone Walls

These Dry Stone Walls

©1986 Dave Goulder
Dave Goulder, of Rosehall by Lairg, Scotland, is one of my favorite singer-songwriters. We share tours together when we can.He's also a master builder and instructor of the art of making mortar- less stonewalls,both in this country and in the U.K.The sheer poetry of his songs has long been an inspiration to me.

These miles of dry stone walls
That hold in ploughed brown fields and kingly halls
The dead of centuries in hills of sand
The stones that bind them
Are proud as what lies behind them
And varied as the counties in this curious land

In Cumberland they built them
On hills that surely must have killed them
Through broom and juniper and stunted ling
Two thousand feet over
With just a tarpaulin cover
They sat through wind and rain and waited for the spring

In Aberdeenshire valleys
The fields were only open quarries
The stone was gathered up and made to stand
But with every ploughing,
You’d think it was stone they were sowing
The walls grew fatter here than any in the land

The Irish built in courses
Of single stones the size of horses
Of glacial boulders without edge or face
And if you could view them
Above, with sun lighting through them
You’d swear the hills were edged with broken granite lace

When Pict and Viking took
Stone pages from some prehistoric book
Of sandy flagstone under Orkney fields
They lingered a-while, and
Left history in the islands
This is what water, wind and time and toil reveal

From Yorkshire’s limestone dales
Through Derbyshire, to the coast of Wales
Or Shetland’s salty rocks to Devon lanes
Just look and discover
Two walls that lean against each other
You’ll never see them in quite the same way again

The Fiddler of Dooney

The Fiddler of Dooney

©Words by W.B. Yeats, Music by Jo-Ellen Bosson

        Very famous poem by William Butler Yeats. Many people quote it; few have ever had the guts to write a tune strong enogh to carry it. Jo-Ellen Bosson, of Yorktown Heights, New York, did that. I think she gave it to us when we gathered at Folk-Legacy to create "Another Land Made of Water". Thank you.

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney
Folk dance like the wave on the sea.
My cousin is priest in Kilvarnet,
My brother in Mocharabouie.

Oh, I passed my brother and cousin;
They read in their books of prayer.
Ah, but I, I read in my book of songs
That I got at the Sligo Fair.

When we come to the end of our time,
To Saint Peter all sitting in state,
He will smile on these three old spirits,
But pass me first through the gate.

For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle, aye,
And the merry love to dance.

So, when all the folk up there spy me,
They will all come and gather 'round me,
Saying, "Here is the fiddler of Dooney,"
And they'll dance like a wave on the sea.

Oh, the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle, aye,
And the merry love to dance.

And when all the folk up there spy me,
They will all come and gather 'round me,
Saying, "Here is the fiddler of Dooney,"
And they'll dance like a wave on the sea.
They'll dance like a wave on the sea.

Lament For Limerick

Lament For Limerick

©Traditional, Irish

        Can't remember where I heard this first. The Boys of The Lough play a similar Scottish tune called "Lochaber No more", and they set me on to this one. I'm told it is one of the tunes attributed to the Irish Rory Dall, but I'm not sure of that, either. I play a slightly shortned version of it. It is also known as "Limerick's Lamentation".

Bare-Legged Kate

Bare legged Kate with your natural grace,
The big big sad eyes in the Irish face.
A poor bush girl when the summer is high
In the stony hills of Gundagai.

Bare legged Kate why do you weep
When the men ride by with the travelling sheep?
Does the sight of the drover make you sad?
Do you think of the father you never had?

Bare legged Kate why do you run,
Down to the creek in the setting sun?
Down where the eyes of the world cannot see -
Run Kate, run, from poverty.

Bare legged Kate, there is gold in the hills
But you know that the cyanide process kills.
Poisons the miners and cuts them down
In the mean little homes below the town.

Bare legged Kate, when the floods come down,
It's the poor on the creeks are the ones who drown:
When the great Murrumbidgee is thundering by
Through the haunted hills of Gundagai.

The Wreck of The Green Cove

The Wreck of The Green Cove

©Stanley Triggs

        I found this in the Canadian Folk Music Bulletin. If I remember right, the boat, the crew, and the job were all true, but Stanley hated the whole outfit so much that he took his poetic revenge in this song. I sang this to Doug Urner, of Washington, who had fished these waters, and he brought me a chart of the area; sure enough, you could trace the whole trip from Vancouver, BC, up to Desolation Sound and back to Sargeant Bay.

Oh, I was broke in old Vancouver,
Met a friend, an all-time loser
He set he could help me out
So to the towboat office we set out.
Well, right away, they said, "My boy,
We'll sign you up this very day!"
So to the harbour, unsuspectin',
Ridin' high I made my way.

When first I saw the old Green Cove
Her keel was bent, her planks [pipes] were stoved
Her decks they leaked upon the bunks
And paint was peelin' off in chunks.
Her engine-room was thick with grease
Her stack with rust was eaten through
Deck-head it was in a shambles,
Towline broken right in two.

I went aboard: the mate was drunk,
The skipper passed out in his bunk
The chief was in an awful pain
With a bout of rheumatis again.
In great despair, I wandered aft,
The bilge in the galley was knee-deep
Dirty dishes in the sink
While rats about the shelves did creep.

Oh, I'll never know how we made it out
From the dockside in and round about
Past Brockton Point in a dismal fog
The Green Cove ridin' like a log
But the fog in the mate's befuddled mind
Was thicker than it was outside
As at the wheel he weaved and swayed
As we set out on our fateful ride.

That night as I heard the mate a-snorin',
Keeping time to teredos borin'
I tried my darnedest not to think
Of the long ride down if the ship should sink.
In the dead of night, a storm came up
The pumps gave out, the seas came in
I had to pump her out by hand
And I thought, by God, that the sea would win.

Next day we reached our destination,
A windswept bay, sheer desolation,
Blowin' gale, blowin' cold,
The coldest night that year, I'm told.
We tied the boast up to the tow;
There wasn't much else we could do;
The skipper says, "Boys, let 'er blow,
We'll patch her up as good as new,."

Three days did pass, the wind died down.
We set off towin' logs to town
A mightier wind was yet to blow
But how the hell were we to know?
For old Dame Fate, she smiled at us
As past Refuge we did wind,
Potato Point, Harwood Island,
Towin' logs and makin' time.

Now this good luck that we could not match
Gave out when we reached the Cabbage Patch
Down Malaspina we did trail,
A westerly upon our tail.
We rounded Scotch Fir, turned up Jervis,
Buckin' tide all on the way,
Made poor time at Agamemnon,
Had to tie up in Boom Bay.

Oh, the wind died down and we cast off
But the engine soon began to cough,
The patched-up seams began to leak
And the poor boat she did groan and creak.
We were desperate, low on vittles -
Had some coffee and some tea
Plus twelve cans of Campbell's finest -
Chicken Noodle and Green Pea.

At Merry Island, late at night
A southeast struck, it was a fright,
Trail Islands we knew we must reach
Or the tow would soon be on the beach.
But the skipper he was reading Climax [Penthouse]
Missed the channel in the dark
With a sickenin' grindin' and a crash
He piled her up on Southeast Rock.

He piled her up, he bent her wheel,
He cracked her bowpost, broke her keel
And off that rock we felt her slide
With a terrible list to the starboard side.
The seas did roar, the winds did blow [howl]
The Green Cove went three times around,
She whistled us a last farewell
And slithered forty fathoms down.

Now the skipper and the chief grabbed the only lifeboat
Rowed like mad from the sinking tugboat
Rowin' hard for the nearest land -
That's the last they were seen by any man.
The chief, that skunk from Campbell River
Grabbed the life-rings, one, two, three,
All I had was a hemlock sliver
Tossin' round on the stormy sea.

I was washed up at the break of day
Upon the shores of Sargent Bay
The lone survivor of that gale,
Lived to tell this mournful tale.
And now that you have heard my story
You'll know why forever more
I'll never go to sea again -
I'm quite content to stay on shore!

A Little Road and A Stone To Roll

A Little Road and A Stone To Roll

©John Stewart

        Every few years, Bob Zentz and I organize a little tour together, partly just to see what happens and have an adventure, partly because we enjoy each other's perspective on the world. On the last tour we sang this song almost every night...both of us sorely needed the message, I think. Bob says that at one time John Stewart was a member of The Kingston Trio. It's nice how things do come around. Bob, by the way, has been called "the man who singlehandedly put the ‘folk’ back into Norfolk (Virginia)." He doesn’t agree with that, but there are a lot who do. I play twelve-string here. Ross Fanuef and Lois Lyman came down from New Hampshire and got roped into singing along, and Bruce Boege, who runs the recording studio LIMIN’ MUSIC in Bayside, Maine, kindly provided the sleepy steel-six guitar.

A little road and a stone to roll,
A little road and a stone to roll,
A little road and a stone to roll,
Everybody needs a stone to roll.

Everybody needs some old, loose shoes,
Everybody needs a little good news,
Everybody with a growing soul,
Everybody needs a stone to roll.

Everybody needs a fire inside,
Everybody needs a dream to ride,
Everybody needs a sheet to fold,
Everybody needs a stone to roll.

Everybody needs a little more room,
Everybody needs a Glenn Jenks* tune,
Everybody needs a hand to hold,
Everybody needs a stone to roll.

*Your favorite tunemaker here. I don’t know what the original was.

And here’s one that’s being sung around now, that Ross and Loie and I put together:)

Everybody needs a secret place,
Everybody needs a rain-washed face,
Everybody needs a raft to pole,
Everybody needs a stone to roll.

The Arbutus

The Arbutus

©Paddy Graber

        My friend and musical guru Richard Scholtz, of Bellingham, Washington, sang this to me a few years ago. He learned it from Paddy Graber, of Vancouver, BC. Paddy learned it from his mother, who learned it from her mother, who learned it from her mother, so it’s been that long out of Ireland . . . truly an American (Canadian) version. Arbutus, on our west coast, is a tree that sheds its bark rather than its leaves, a member of the Madron family. The song speaks very deeply to me. I play it here on laud and the old ’cellamba. My words may have wandered a bit from Paddy’s original, which is printed here.

Our king he has a daughter fair,
Arbutus is her name,
And he has gone a-soldiering
To the court of the king of Spain,

Where her harpers sang of her gentle grace,
Her beauty and her fame,
And the Spanish king declared his love
And begged she might share his name.

Our Irish king he's hurried home
With all speed he could command,
And he has told his daughter fair
He's promised away her hand.

Her lovely eyes they filled with tears
And her cheek blushed scarlet red.
"Oh, Father dear, I can't marry him;
I'd rather you see me dead."

"But you shall do as I command,
I swear it by my sword.
Go dress yourself in bright array;
I'll hear not another word."

"Oh, but Father dear, I love a man,
Will o' Winsbro is his name,
And I'd not leave my own true love
For the hand of the king of Spain."

"But I swore you were a maiden fair,
And my chiefs did all agree.
I command you now, take off your gown
That I may examine thee."

"Oh, Father dear, don't shame me so,
I would rather you see me dead
Before I let your noble lords
Search for my maidenhead."

"Take thee off your berry-brown gown
And stand upon the stone,
For if you be a maiden or none,
The truth it must be known."

So she's taken off the berry-brown gown
And she's let the gown fall free,
But before its hem could touch the ground,
She's turned into a tree.

And her lover's turned to the gentle breeze,
Through her branches he does play.
And she has shed her soft brown bark
Until this very day.

The Swag and The Shiner

The Swag and The Shiner

©Paul Metsers

        From a tape sent to me by Larry Carpenter, now of Minnesota, who, with his wife, Grace, worked in New Zealand and who has given me many fine songs and tapes from that area.

When I was a lad, well, I made up my mind
That I didn’t belong to the laboring kind.
Me hands were too good and me body too fine
And me brain, sure, it was even finer.
That to spoil them by working, it seemed such a shame,
So I learned all I could of this wayfaring game,
By way of Australia, to New Zealand came,
And hurrah! for the swag and the shiner.

Now some folk drink tea but water's less risky
And with others it's sherry or beer makes them frisky
But give me the Irish and Jamieson's whiskey
The warmest and best stomach liner
And many's the infamous trick I've conceived
And many's the barman that's gladly believed them
So of many free whiskies I often relieve them
Hurray for the swag and the shiner

One hot day as I tramped with my mate, Gypsie Lee
He points down at the road, "A dead sparrow," says he
"That's a skylark," says I, "And, a free drink for me,
If you'll follow the plan of the Shiner,
So at the next pub I says, "You wait outside
But, stay by the door with your ears open wide,
And, at the right moment you comes straight inside
But, you don't know the swag or the shiner."

So, at the next shanty I swear it's a lark
"It's a sparrow" the barman is heard to remark
Says I "I'm so sharp I can tell in the dark
The difference 'tween Magpies and Minahs"
"I'll wager a whiskey all round then" says he,
"That the next man comes in here a sparrow will see"
So in comes old Gyp, "'Tis a skylark" says he;
Free drinks for meself and the shiner.

Now houses and mansions I let them all be
And I'm certain that working each day ain't for me
On the road with me swag on me shoulder I'm free
And I pity the navvy and the miner
Now, some people like me some think I'm a nut
And, some say I'm lazy 'cause I like the shortcut
But, a regular job gets a man in a rut, so
Hurray for the swag and the shiner.

Song of The Wheelhouse Door

Song of The Wheelhouse Door

©Sean Gagnier

        I learned this from Paul Lauzon, a Canadian folk-singer. He said Gagnier wrote it when he lived off Grand Manan, an island off the Maine/New Brunswick border. Giles Laurent once told me he thought that it was about a true happening... and I can believe that. Grand Manan is surrounded by nasty ledges, magnetic anomalies on the bottom, and it lies alongside one of the biggest fog-factories on this coast. Between that and the currents working up into Fundy, it can be a pretty desperate place.

The winter's ice clings to cliff,
To beach, and empty shell;
The cold wind moans on the bones of summer,
And takes a slap at the bell.
And all the boats are upside down,
Or else pulled in to shore:
Parson G, Clarissa Lee,
That used-up, shore-rigged whore;
And old Lindy Lou with her sides stove through,
Her riggings rotten and tore.
There's many a night when the wind's been right,
And the weather's been getting poor,
That I tried to sleep, but I can't sleep,
For the banging of the wheelhouse door.

I lie in bed, like a kid, you know,
And figure she'll go away;
But no such luck, goddam her bones,
So it's down to the kitchen for me.
Find the old pipe and get lit up,
Take the tea down from the shelf;
Ida's been dead since '61,
So I've gotta do for myself.
No sooner the smoke's curling over my book,
The tea's ready to pour;
Then sure as I stand, I can hear Pete McCann,
And the banging of the wheelhouse door.

Pete and me we were heading back,
With half a catch below;
Tryin' to raise the south head light,
And, Jesus, did it blow.
By the time we heard the breakers roar,
We were too close in to shore;
With a prayer and a curse, I felt her lurch,
As the rocks dug in and tore.
And old Lindy Lou fell a cryin' and a dyin',
With the ocean pouring through;
I got knocked off my feet, I couldn't find Pete,
And I don't recall much more.
'Cept the last thing I heard, the sound of a word,
And the banging of the wheelhouse door.

I came to four days later,
In a hospital in St John's;
In a body cast, 'cos I hurt my back,
And I found out Pete was gone.
They never found his body,
Though they searched ten miles of shore;
I'm getting on, my back is gone,
And I really can't fish no more.
And old Lindy Lou with her sides stove through,
Was towed and left on shore.
There's many a night when the wind's been right,
And the weather's been getting poor,
That I tried to sleep but I just couldn't sleep,
For the banging of the wheelhouse door.

I Held a Lady

I Held a Lady

words ©1995 Colm Gallagher, Colm Music, ASCAP

        I learned this from Tommy Makem. The tune is traditional - "The Munster Cloak."(GB)

I held a lady, oh laddie-daddie,
I held a lovely brown-haired girl,
I held a lady, oh laddie-daddie,
I held a lovely brown-haired girl.
I know that she was warm,
For I held her and touched her.
I held her so long. It was lovely
Holding her against my body.

I hear her laughing, I see her smiling,
I feel her arms around me
From morning, when sun is shining, til evening,
Even when the night is falling down,
All down the calling way,
Calling you, young lady.
For you, brown-haired – oh laddie-daddie,
Diddley-eye dadden-adda – lady.

Oh I remember, how I remember
Old Days when I was young, days
When I held a lady, oh laddie-daddie,
I held a lovely brown-haired girl;
Old days are dean-and-gone days,
Alive in the morning,
Alive in the sun – laddie-daddie,
Diddley-eye adden-daddle – lady.

Red lips that love at my lips, a heart and
Thigh, hips and legs and eyes, slips
Away in the dawning day, laddie-awning,
I looks along the old road,
That old Sally Noggin Bog road
Where I held a lady,
Where I held a lovely – adden-dadden,
Diddley-eye dadden-addle – lady.

O Mar (The Ocean)

O Mar (The Ocean)

©Doreval Caymmi

        I believe it was Larry Holland, who had lived off and on in Brazil, who had first brought me Caymmi's singing. He was the fisherman's poet of the Northeast of Brazil, and sang in the peculiar, soft-spoken dialect of that area. Fine guitarist, too. I think my accompaniment of this is quite close to his: I know I intended it to be at the time, even to singing the verses in 3/4 and playing the guitar in 4/4. (I didn't know that this was happening at the time, just that it sounded good.) The translation we print here is a rough sketch. I haven't seen the Portuguese in print (Or heard this song pronounced by anyone but myself) for almost thirty years, so there's some definite slippage here.

The ocean ---- When it laps on the
beach ---- it is beautiful.

The ocean, whenever the fisherman goes out,
Doesn't know whether it will keep him
or give him back. How many people have
lost their husbands, their sons, to
the waves of the sea?

The Ocean----
Pedro lived by fishing;
went out in his boat
at six in the evening
and returned when the sun rose.

Everyone liked Pedro,
and most of all
Little Rose the Fair,
the most beautiful
and well-formed
of all the girls
there on the beach.

Pedro went out in his boat (one day)
at six in the evening;
passed the whole night out there
and didn't return when the sun rose.

They found the body of Pedro
thrown up on the beach, eaten by the fish,
Without boat, without anything
Just thrown up there
On the corner of the beach.

The Ocean --

Poor Rosita De Chica,
Who was once so beautiful,
now appears gone-crazy;
lives at the edge of the beach,
walking, turning,
standing, saying:
He's dead,
he's dead.

And the ocean, when it laps on the beach,
it's beautiful.

Sally

Sally

©Words by J.B. Goodenough, Music by Gordon Bok

        Judy sent me this years ago, with a note asking if I'd ever met a person like this. Turns out I had. Marrowbone and Eighty-Eight, she said, are towns near where she grew up in North Carolina. You'll notice, fairly often, that i print the "proper" versions in the text here, when I can find them, though my singing version has wandered from the truth. "Yellow Petticoats" is important. I don't know how they ened up "silken", but I apologize. A poet of Judy's Caliber does not confuse things like this. Gordon: Twelve String, Bruce Boege: Steel-Six.

Sally's in the kitchen garden, tucking up her skirt,
Pulling tap the radishes, shaking off the dirt.
She's weearing yellow Petticoats and high-heeled shoes
There's a man at her window, but I don't know whose.

She's danced in the sunlight and she's danced by the moon,
Sung every song and whistled every tune.
She's been our lover-- and our friend-- the best we ever had,
But our fine-feathered lady's looking sorry-eyed and sad.

Spring is over, Sally, and the summer's going by;
There's smoke in the air and there's geese in the sky.
And none of us get younger, Sally; some of us get old,
And the rest of us get lonely when the bed gets cold.

Close your shutters, Sally, put the loch upon your door;
No one's coming down the road, no one any more.
There's nothing much to do here; nothing left to say.
So it's off and down the road you go and far, far away.

Sally went to Marrowbone, she went to Eighty-Eight.
Some say she went crooked, some say she went straight.
Some say she's married upp, others say she's free,
But I want Sally back again, just looking after me.

Culebra

Culebra

© 1984 Gordon Bok, BMI

 

A remembrance of a day delivering a sad old boat from St. Thomas, VI to Puerto Rico, wherein we strove to avoid damaging the island of Culebra.

 

Gordon – Spanish guitar

 

 

Pearly (Little Red)

Pearly

© 1983 Gordon Bok , BMI

 

This was a very vivid dream that hauled me out of the sack at about 4:00 am one morning.  I wrote it down on a huge piece of wrapping paper and it kept me going right through breakfast.

            Like most dreams, it exposes a fellow's neuroses – in this case, authority, crowded places, claustrophobia, and the thought that you might never get-back-home.

            Little Red was the name the cop used, and we both knew we were talking about Dave Mallet, though his real name never came up in the dream.  At one of our all-too-infrequent meetings, I asked Dave if the name "Little Red" meant anything to him.  He said "How could you know that?  That's the name my older brothers used to call me when we were kids."  I forgot to ask him if he ever knew a Pearly…

            I finally met Pearly, but not until years later, when he was Police Chief in Rockport.  A good man, wise and kind, as you'd expect from the song.

            I noticed that, as I was writing this, a certain Mallet-style was creeping into it, hence the use of the old traditional tune, "The Blue Skirt Waltz" that I used to play with Capt. Hawkins back on the schooners.

 

 

Down in the dark and the doom of the city,

There's a monstrous old gathering hall,

And a man there making a windy long speech,

To the lords and ladies all.

 

Fifteen thousand, twenty thousand people,

Milling and murmuring there,

"And this ain't the place," says I to myself,

"For a fellow that needs the fresh air."

 

So I asked for directions to get me outside,

And I followed them all for sure;

And I ended up down, ten floors underground,

And I never saw an exit door.

 

The first live soul I saw was a policeman,

He was long, he was leaning on a rail;

I says "I'll get to him before he sees me,

"And ferried me off to jail."

 

So I ease myself upon his starboard quarter,

I says "Excuse me, your honor, for sure,

But if you've got a minute, and nothing to do,

Could you head me out toward the air?"

 

Well, he pointed his finger back over my shoulder,

And I peered away through the gloom,

And there, sure enough, was an exit sign,

Bright as the crack of doom.

 

Well, I thanked him as nicely as ever I knew,

And I eased my way toward the door,

But he fell into step with me, right along side,

I could hear his heels on the floor.

 

Well he smiled like the sharks out off Little Green Island,

He had teeth all over his face;

He says, "You know there's folks'd give an arm and a leg

Just to get inside the place."

 

"Oh boy!" Thinks I, "I've got my foot in it now,

"I never should have come to this town,

And I don't know what I'm doin' here now,

But I'm sure I'm doin' it wrong."

 

He says, "There's people travel all over the country

"Just to come and see this thing

But if I know your type, you’d rather sit around home

And listen to Little Red sing."

 

"Little Red," I said, "I'll be damned," I said,

"I got a friend by that name back home."

And he smiles and says, "Look in this crazy world,

You got to call them like they come."

 

"And I can tell a Maine man any damn where,

I can tell him by his tongue,

And you ain't far from the exit door,

But you're a damn long way from home."

 

Well, he laughs till the echoes laugh again,

He says "Ok: hold out your paws."

So I closed my eyes, and I held out my hands,

Like my fingers were breaking the laws.

 

And there was blueberries, blackberries,

Tumbled into my hand,

Rosehips bright with the small of the night,

From off of the summer land.

 

He says, "little sister stayed home on the island,

She visits us now and again,

Brings us all she can pick from the hills

And it sure does taste like home."

 

Well, we stood in the darkness chomping them berries,

Eating them our of our hand,

And my heart went away to the rocks and the bays

And my friends in that lonesome land.

 

He says "Tell me, speaking of our mutual friend,

How that tough little fast picking fool

Can find his way through the brambles and rocks

Of a homesick Maine man's soul."

 

Ah, but I guess he knows when the days get too long,

And the morning comes too soon,

There's nothing will knock off the edge of your troubles

Like picking an old-time tune.

 

Well, he stowed the empty bag away in his pocket,

turned on his heel to go,

And he says, "Well good luck, and if you see Little Red,

Tell him Pearly says hello."