South Peace Historical Society

    • Home
    • About / Contact Us
    • About Dorthea Horton
    • About This Collection
    • Bibliography
    • Brief History of the Peace
    • Credits
    • South Peace Historical Society Archives (External Link)
  • Table of Contents

    • Part 1: First Nations of the Peace River Region
    • Part 2: The Fur Trade Era
    • Part 3: Transportation and Communication
    • Part 4: Old Timers and the Price of Land
    • Part 5: Dawson Creek: The Story of the Community
    • Part 6: Mysteries, Adventures and Indian Legends
    • Part 7: Arts, Crafts and Recreation
    • Part 8: Agriculture
    • Part 9: Church Histories
    • Part 10: Schools
    • Part 11: Health Care
    • Part 12: Industries and Enterprises
    • Part 13: Policing the Peace
    • Part 14: Pouce Coupe, Rolla, and Other South Peace Communities
    • Part 15: Chetwynd and the Fort St. John Area
    • Part 16: The Alberta Peace
    • Part 17: Natural History of the Peace River Region
    • Part 18: Interviews with Old Timers
    • Part 19: Remembering Our Veterans

  •  

07-016: Folk Songs and Folk Verse

By Dorthea Calverley
In pioneer days, he-men did not apologize for reading verse, or for writing it.

Publication — if there was any, was usually oral. The annual Christmas concert, weddings and other social gathering s were often enlivened with recitations of original compositions in which humour and pathos enjoyed almost equal attention. Ballads commemorating individual events were less common.

In pioneer days people made their own music. Precious fiddles, banjos or accordions were often the last things travelers voluntarily discarded along the Athabasca, Slave Lake, or Edson Trails. Mouth organs, Jew’s (or juice) harps and even “bones” came into the country in packsaddles and parka pockets as far as the lonely men penetrated the wild places in search of furs. Any settler’s home that had a piano or an organ was a social centre, not only for dancing but also for singing, and services of worship. Singsongs were the common entertainment at which most people sang. A new song brought in by a newcomer was soon copied and like the repertoire of the old travelling minstrels became a vehicle by which news travelled from trading post to trading post and from camp to camp.

If people had no instrument of any kind, they were capable of improvising with what was at hand. A comb, a carpenter’s saw, a washboard — almost anything could became accompaniment for a song.

One of the most ingenious was constructed by trappers along the Pine River, where it was the custom to gather at Goodrich’s cabin for the Christmas season. One year four men found themselves without any music. One of them drove nails into the log walls at various distances. Snare wire was tightly twisted onto the pairs of nails and tightened to produce several different musical tones.

So one played a jig and the rest danced — about fifteen of them on the floor. In the far off places they made their own fun.

People sang. They sang the old tunes with the old words and they sang the old tunes with new words, often putting a humorous twist on the privations of their hard life. Many old timers say these singsongs were the happiest times in their whole life.

If a collection of these long lost songs had been written down, much history — now lost or dimly remembered — would have been preserved.

« 07-015: Harry Giles – Freelance Friend of the Peace

07-017: Quilting – A Pioneer Home Craft »

© 2023 South Peace Historical Society. All Rights Reserved.